Courteney Pienaar

PIPS Host Organisation: Cambridge Healthcare Research

During her three-month internship at Cambridge Healthcare Research, Courteney worked within the Purple Business Unit, supporting competitive intelligence initiatives through comprehensive secondary research. Her role involved a range of responsibilities, including conducting landscape analyses across five distinct therapeutic areas: obesity, ATTR-CM, generic sterile injectables, hemophilia, and Alzheimer’s disease. She carried out both deep-dive investigations and ongoing monitoring projects in these areas.

Courteney was responsible for producing detailed research briefs, developing client-ready presentation decks, and preparing materials for client workshops. Additionally, she advanced her technical skills by developing web scraping capabilities to systematically gather commercial intelligence on competitor activities.

Courteney described the placement as, “a great opportunity to be able to work in a fast-paced corporate environment and get to learn about different disease areas and the process of drug commercialisation and lifecycle management”.