The secret to a long-running private clinical research firm? Lead with your gut.

Lynne Merriam was working as a nurse in an emergency room in the early 1990s when a leadership position in the research department opened up. She saw the opportunity to make a switch. “That’s how I got into research and I learned it from the ground up,” she says. 

She later went into private research and started Gulf Coast Clinical Research with two other physicians. She bought them out and reincorporated as Clinical Research of West Florida in 1995. The firm specializes in medicinal research of mass marketed drugs. Pharmaceutical companies will inquire with projects needing a certain population size and type, and if it's a go, gathering the right group of people can take months and the trial length can be years — a long cycle the firm has done well in.