Flora Health’s Leah Pytlak Puts Together the Pieces

Leah Pytlak started working with Flora Health more than two years before she actually joined the company. She first encountered it while serving as a sales exec at data and analytics firm Definitive Healthcare, and immediately sensed a kinship with its mission and people.

“There were three employees at the time and I got to see what they were building,” she recalls. “I had quite literally a front-row seat to the vision [CEO] Angelo [Campano] had about supporting people in a really meaningful way. I remember thinking, ‘I need to be a part of this.’”

Pytlak got her wish in March when she joined Flora Health as deputy principal, growth and strategy; she has since been promoted to AVP, growth and strategy. Her arc speaks to a need for today’s ascending media and marketing leaders to be equally well versed in health and in technology, in sales and in marketing, in data/analytics and in analog metrics.

Ask anyone about Pytlak and that’s the first thing they’ll tell you: That she understands the importance of both a well-rounded skill set and a singular focus on problem-solving. Combine this with a natural curiosity that manifests itself in an easy ability to connect with everyone in her midst, and it’s no surprise that Pytlak finds herself in a leadership role in an organization on the rise.

“Leah has this electric energy,” says Flora Health chief product officer Shannon Pfeffer. “It’s not like she’s high-strung or bouncing off the walls, but there’s almost a gravitational pull. She makes you feel like you’re the only person in the room.”

Finding her voice

Pytlak was born and raised in Buffalo and arrived at the State University of New York at Fredonia as a music major with a concentration in voice. Doubts about her trajectory crept in during an opera course, which prompted her pivot to a communication/business focus. She hosted “High Noon Friday,” a student-produced variety program on the school’s radio station, and set her sights on a career as a radio broadcaster.

Her first job after graduation, at Buffalo-based Townsquare Media, kept her on that path. She started as an intern, helping coordinate events for the company’s radio stations, before promotions into customer success/account management and sales roles. The company proved a good fit with both Pytlak’s professional ambitions and her personal passions.

“Townsquare had WYRK, a local radio station that’s country-focused, so I got to go to concerts and meet these incredible performers,” she says, referencing her time in an a capella group during college and playing violin, guitar and piano. “Even now, every time I go to New York City I have to see five shows.”

Along the way, Pytlak realized that she liked working with local businesses as much as she did belting Carrie Underwood songs in the shower. In her early years at Townsquare, Pytlak gravitated to the agency’s commercial sales meetings and started to learn more about client campaigns and strategies in the works.

“I’d never done sales in my life, but I wanted to be a part of it,” she says. “I went to the sales leader and said, ‘I know I’m young, but can you give me a chance?’”

The decision to add Pytlak to the sales team paid off for everyone involved. One client engagement stands out to Pytlak as particularly important in her development.

“My sales leader told me so many people had tried to win over this one local casino. I made a cold call and gave a presentation of a creative way I could embed our radio station events into the casino, with all these details that were so corny but so fun. I was talking with my hands and everything,” she recalls. “I remember walking out of the meeting thinking I wasn’t sure if it landed, but a couple of days later I got a call saying they wanted to sign on the dotted line, without any changes to what I presented.

“I was shaking when I took the contract to my sales leader. He was like, ‘They signed?’” she continues. “I learned that I could listen to a client’s challenges and put the pieces together to build a program that works for them. It gave me confidence.”

Pytlak quickly realized, however, that she couldn’t sell just anything. “I always say that if you ask me to sell a pencil or a stapler, I won’t do a good job – because I use pens and when was the last time I used a stapler?,” she explains. “That’s why I’ve been very intentional about my career path. I loved radio and I followed where it took me.”

‘This is my end game’

Her move to Definitive Healthcare in 2022 was similarly deliberate. Over the course of her Townsquare tenure, Pytlak had noted a sharp uptick in the number of marketing campaigns driven by data. In Definitive, she saw a company truly steeped in data-centricity.

“The goal was to find an organization in the healthcare industry doing what I had been doing,” she says. “I wanted to get creative with the data I had at my disposal.”

Pytlak stayed for just over three years. When Flora Health came calling, she wasn’t necessarily looking to leave – she had just welcomed her first child and her husband had just moved to a new role in his company – but knew the decision was “a total no-brainer.”  

Her first four months at the company confirmed that instinct. “Data drives everything here. We have the ability to find data in near real-time that’s not traditionally offered in the market,” she says. “My job is to curate it in a way that supports our partners at the point of care. Basically, I put together the pieces.”

With her daughter approaching her first birthday, Pytlak has plenty on her plate outside the office. The young family recently swapped their Buffalo Bills season tickets, which they had held for years, for Buffalo Sabres ones. “The open roof at the new stadium? I don’t know why Buffalonians have this desire to freeze to death during the winter. I guess it’s a cultural thing,” she says with a laugh.

Pytlak seems constitutionally incapable of inactivity. Beyond their nine-to-five lives, she and her husband manage a handful of rental properties in the Buffalo area (“it’s a passion project for us”). When Pytlak and a friend found themselves dissatisfied with sock options for yoga and pilates, they started their own brand (the company moniker, Elles, is a play on the first names of founders Leah and Lex). 

“I’m the kind of person who doesn’t know how to sit still. If I have a moment, it’s like, ‘What business should I start?’” she says.

Asked where she sees Pytlak 10 years from now, Pfeffer jokingly responds, “It better be with Flora.” She expects Pytlak to continue to flourish, both in her official role and in her side projects. “Once Leah has an idea, she has the gumption and grace to make it happen. There’s nothing she can’t do.”

Flora Health chief growth officer and GM, market access, Karina Castagna agrees, pointing to Pytlak’s willingness to immerse herself in all aspects of the company’s operations. “We’ve given Leah some assignments for clients whose needs are across the portfolio – what she does, but also patient access and media – and she hasn’t blinked. She’s such a quick learner.”

Pytlak has every intention of continuing to accumulate new skills and competencies, but is very clear about wanting to do so at Flora Health.

“Lots of the time, people enter into a new company or a new career path because it’s good for the resume or because it’s another notch on the totem pole,” she says. “But this is my end game. Ten or 20 years from now, I want to be sitting right here saying, ‘I was employee number 30. I was a part of this process. I helped create this methodology.’”

After this week, solli Elevate will pause for the next two months before returning on Wednesday September 2. To nominate a candidate for an upcoming profile, click here. Many thanks for your readership and engagement with the series – have a great summer.

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