From the Pharmacy, to the Classroom and Back

Nadia Reyes, BS ’23, PharmD ’25, will graduate this spring from Saint Joseph’s University with nearly 20 years of experience in the pharmacy setting. 

Reyes, a resident of Vineland, New Jersey, worked as a pharmacy technician at Walgreens for five years before landing at the specialty pharmacy of Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Camden in 2014.

Her path to pharmacy school, however, wasn’t a linear one.

After high school, Reyes attended community college and wasn’t sure of her career path. She took the Pharmacy College Admission Test, which, at the time, was a standardized test used for pharmacy school admissions. 

Her scores didn’t grant her admission to any schools she was interested in, so she started working full time. Shortly afterward, her father was diagnosed with cancer, complicating her trajectory. She started to make a living, had her daughter, Nyla, and settled in.

It wasn’t until a position as a pharmacy manager at her workplace came available that she realized she wanted to go back to school.

“I just felt capped,” she says. “I was the ideal person; I was doing everything, I knew everything. But because I didn’t have the credentials, I couldn’t get that position.”

As a pharmacy technician with Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Reyes was impressive, recalls Scott Greene, RPh, MS, PhD, clinical assistant professor in the Department of Pharmacy Practice and assistant dean of experiential programs. 

The hospital happened to be one of the sites where Philadelphia College of Pharmacy students complete on-site education with a pharmacist acting as their preceptor. She worked closely with the pharmacist and, as a result, the pharmacy students.

“She was a great tech doing great things,” Greene says. “We heard so much from our students about her and the role she played in their training there.”

For Reyes, although the pharmacy at Our Lady of Lourdes worked with pharmacy students from various area schools, she says, “something about PCP students stood out.”

“Professionally, the way they carried themselves – mind you, I was older than these students – I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, I want to be like that,’” she says.

The pharmacist encouraged Reyes to talk with Greene about going back to school. It would be a difficult journey as a single mom in her 30s with an hour long commute. But it was even more difficult for Reyes to stomach the “What if?”

“It’s one of those things where you just have to dive in,” she says. “Just do it, don’t be scared. That’s what I did and that’s how I’m here.”

In 2018, Reyes enrolled at University of the Sciences (now Saint Joseph’s University), where she completed her bachelor’s degree in two years and will soon wrap up her final year of pharmacy school. It’s been a busy seven years, working, parenting and going to school full time. 

The coronavirus pandemic was especially challenging as classes moved to an online format and she struggled to adjust to the learning style while also helping her then 4 year-old use a computer for learning. So was grieving for her father, who died in 2021.

“That was something that was just beyond me; it was one of the hardest things I’ve had to navigate in my life,” Reyes says. 

Getting back to class and finishing her degree afterward was difficult, but she knew her dad supported her journey and would want her to finish, she says. 

Reyes credits her friends’ and family’s support. Nyla, especially, now 11 years old, kept her going, she says. 

“She was just my biggest motivation, she kept me very grounded,” Reyes says. “Even if I was worried, just hugging it out with her would make things a lot better.”

And while being a nontraditional student with a job, family and other responsibilities is challenging, it’s also been an advantage, Reyes says. She came into the program with a background in patient care and extensive knowledge of pharmaceuticals.

Greene has seen her confidence and capability firsthand.

“She’s going to graduate in a couple weeks and she's going to already have almost 20 years of experience; it would take somebody graduating now 10 more years to get there,” Greene says. “She came to a very challenging professional program and excelled as a student while also excelling in her personal and professional life. I find her accomplishment remarkable.”