People of Amgen: Kristen Little-Presta
People of Amgen: Kristen Little-Presta
It hasn’t been easy for Kristen Little-Presta to live with ankylosing spondylitis from a young age. And yet she’s made it her mission to bring joy and positivity to everyone she encounters, be that her own friends and family; viewers of her YouTube channel, Anky Spondy; or the people she meets in her work as a Senior Biopharmaceutical Representative with Amgen Canada.
In this video, Kristen talks about the sense of fulfilment and belonging that she has experienced at Amgen Canada, and explains how embracing diversity and disability are core values for the company.
My name is Kristen Little Presta, and I am a senior biopharmaceutical representative with Amgen Canada. So some of my earliest memories of having enclosing spondylitis were, um, really as a young child, I just had a lot of aches and pains that my friends didn't have.
So I can remember feeling different and almost feeling um sort of ashamed of the pain I was feeling. So enclosing spondylitis is a form of arthritis. It, um, causes chronic pain and also a lot of chronic fatigue. Because your body is fighting so much inflammation that it makes it tired.
On the worst days, I'll wake up in the middle of the night feeling that I have a vice grip between my hips, because my SI joints are in so much pain. As far as my outlook on the disease, I would say that I started to get a little more positive when I was told there was treatment. So I started a YouTube channel called Akiondi.
And this is something I've been wanting to do for a while. It's just me with a video camera, just going through, um, any gadgets, you know, I found that helped me, uh, experiences I've had.
I look at it as a one stop place for finding hope and happiness. I wanted to really concentrate on what I could do, and not what I couldn't do. So I try to bring a very positive attitude to my job when I Got the job at Amgen.
They actually knew that I was very upfront about my illness. So I was very impressed that as a company, they were willing to work with me on that and understand and take on someone that has somewhat of a disability.
Amgen really embraces diversity and also disability.
I think they saw the resiliency in me, and that show must go on attitude. It helps understand things from a patient's perspective, so I think that really brings a lot of benefit to my customers because I really speak from experience.
So to know that a company like mine and others, especially mine, is developing such a strong pipeline in things for inflammation and also oncology, it's, it gives hope to people. At the end of every day, I feel like I've made a difference in people's lives.