‘Here For It All’: Victoria Takala Solves for Strategy, Mentorship and Change

Shortly after Victoria Takala graduated from college in 2015, the company she was working for in Milwaukee offered her a job in New York City – and offered to pick up the tab for the cross-country move. Takala eagerly accepted and, just weeks later, found herself living in a city she had visited exactly once before. “To me, it was still the place you saw in movies,” she recalls.

Takala warmed to metropolitan life, but the professional opportunity proved fleeting: Eight months in, the company asked her to relocate back to Wisconsin. Takala refused and, at age 23, found herself unemployed in a region of the country not known for its modest cost of living.

She shook off the disappointment and dove into a handful of gigs, helping real estate agents hone their promotional activity for the social media era and working as a host and server at a restaurant. One night, shortly after she had been promoted to assistant general manager, she got to talking with a customer she met during her shift.

The customer told Takala about her work at pharma media stalwart Healix, which was in growth mode a few years after its founding. “She gave me her contact information and told me, ‘If you think something like this might be a fit for you, shoot me an email,’” Takala says.

It took about six months before Takala reached out (“I wasn’t feeling it initially,” she admits). Once she did, however, she found a career uniquely suited to her skills and enthusiasms – and the industry found a true lifer.

“At the time, I thought of it as an opportunity to try something different,” Takala says. “Now I’m eight or nine years into pharma and can’t imagine doing anything else.”

‘She was different’

Takala grew up in Hayward, a small town in northern Wisconsin. While she looks back on her upbringing with much fondness, she was ready to move on after graduating high school. “It was a close-neighbors-are-a-mile-away situation,” Takala recalls. “I loved that part of my life, but I knew I would be leaving it.”

During her teen years, she considered pursuing a career as a surgeon, mostly because she was a big fan of Scrubs. “It was more ‘that looks cool on TV’ than ‘I can see myself going to medical school,’” she says with a laugh.

As she majored in business and management at Alverno College, Takala sought to add experience through a host of internships. She worked in PR for the Milwaukee Admirals, in marketing for a local ESPN Radio affiliate and, in what she characterizes as “a pretty strong conversation-starter,” as a racing sausage for the Milwaukee Brewers. (Technically she was a member of the team’s Brew Crew promotional arm.)

Upon arriving at Healix in early 2018, Takala found the agency environment to be very different from what she had expected. To begin with, there were more women than men. Also, her more senior colleagues were kind, supportive and generous in sharing their knowledge.

“I had this kind of Mad Men idea of it in my head,” she says. “I was this overwhelmed, fish-out-of-water person who didn’t know what ‘RSP’ stood for… I remember thinking, ‘Wait, you’re giving me a laptop?’”

To hear Ben Assor tell it, Takala fit in immediately. Assor, then SVP, media strategy at Healix, hired her as an assistant media planner, a “functional role” that she quickly transcended. “We’d give her guidance and directions, but it became evident from day one that she was different. She took on far more responsibility than any assistant media planner I’ve ever seen.”

Within months, Takala was tasked with planning simulations, budget optimization exercises and other activities usually assigned to more experienced staffers. She was promoted to media planner and then digital strategist, availing herself of any and all opportunities to learn more about the media business as well as carve out a place for herself within it.

Takala credits her Healix teammates with giving her the opportunity to succeed – and fail. “When you’re at an agency that’s fairly new to the world, like Healix was at the time, you get to be a part of everything, versus a more established company where the roles are structured and you just stay in your lane,” she explains. “I had the chance to figure things out on my own. I worked on a brand that was first in its category and I had absolutely no idea how rare that was.”

Mentorship and AI safe spaces

After three years at Healix, Takala accepted a media supervisor role at Heartbeat. Given the media team’s status as a smaller unit within an agency primarily known for its creative work, Takala once again enjoyed a broad remit. The difference this time was that, in her new supervisory capacity, she was expected to pass along her accumulated knowledge to more junior members of her team.

Asked if mentorship came naturally to her, Takala responds, “I think I’ve grown into it. For me it’s not, ‘What can I do to help grow talent?’ It’s more that I want everyone to see and appreciate the value they bring to a project.”

Takala relishes that particular challenge, which carried over into her current role at Solve(d). She joined the agency in mid-2022 as the second person on the agency’s nascent strategy team. The first person on that team, SVP, media strategy director Desiree Barreras, says Takala’s leadership and hands-on approach were crucial to its growth. 

By way of example, Barreras points to a project from early in Takala’s Solve(d) tenure. “We were building specialty physician profiles to be used as a resource for planning. Victoria used different sources to put her own spin on it – very visual, very insights-driven,” she recalls. “She made it so much better than what I had started. She made it more useful for our internal teams.”

Along those lines, Takala has assumed a leading role in driving the use of AI throughout Solve(d). Every month she co-hosts AI office hours, which she describes as “a safe space for people to see how other people in the agency are using AI.” She believes that such informal get-togethers are better drivers of adoption than top-down mandates: “AI is scary to some people. It makes sense to discuss it in an environment that feels more natural, as opposed to having somebody put a mandatory session on your calendar.”

That same approach informs Takala’s life outside the office. She spends plenty of time with friends and family – Barreras says that Takala has converted any number of colleagues into pickle martini enthusiasts – and is currently “in full puppy mode” with Lambeau, her nearly five-month-old pitbull mix (Lambeau, she takes pains to note, is named after the stadium in Green Bay, not the Lamborghini). Takala also finds time to indulge her inner reality-TV junkie: “For better or worse, I can talk about every single couple that’s been on 90 Day Fiancé.”

Eighteen months after she was promoted to director, media strategy at Solve(d), Takala hesitates when asked to predict her professional future. “I mean, does anyone know what media jobs are going to look like in five years?” she responds.

Assor, on the other hand, sees one potential road ahead: He thinks she might someday lead her own consultancy. “She could spend her career at an agency and work her way up and become part of the executive team – she’s already on that path. But I think Victoria likes the fluidity and flexibility of jumping from project to project… She needs that freedom to stretch her mind.”

Takala agrees with her mentor’s assessment. “As a ‘90s baby, I grew up with the internet changing everything. Now I get to see that happen again with AI,” she says. “I’m eager. I’m excited. I’m here for it all.”

This profile is part of the solli Elevate series, celebrating the Next Generation of Pharma Media Leaders. View all profiles here.