Women to Watch: Dr. Pamela A. Hymel

Dr. Pamela A. Hymel

Senior Corporate Director, Integrated Health and Global Medical Director

Cisco Systems

San Jose, Calif.

Age: 51

Prior to joining Cisco, Dr. Pamela A. Hymel worked for a year as senior vp of Sedgwick CMS and for 16 years at Hughes Electronics Corp., where she last served as vp of human resources, medical services and HR systems. Dr. Hymel is board certified in both internal medicine and occupational medicine and is a Fellow of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Dr. Hymel is on the Board of Directors for both the National Business Group on Health and ACOEM.

Advice for young women: "My primary advice is to follow your passion. It makes the day-to-day activities even more fulfilling. One of the main reasons I entered preventive medicine was because I wanted to help improve the health and well-being of employees by encouraging them to take better care of themselves in order to prevent chronic disease. Being passionate about the end goal helped me to be creative by taking the seemingly mundane tasks of setting up benefits and health management plans and integrating them into an overarching employee health program."