President & Principal Medical
Writing Consultant
VIOLA
What country, friends, is this?
CAPTAIN
This is Illyria, lady.
VIOLA
And what should I do in Illyria?
My brother he is in Elysium.
Perchance he is not drowned. What think you, sailors?
CAPTAIN
It is perchance that you yourself were saved.
VIOLA
O my poor brother, and so perchance may he be.
-- Act 1, Scene 2, Twelfth Night
About Dr. Katz
Nancy R. Katz, Ph.D., MWC, has worked in the biopharmaceutical industry since 1996. Prior to consulting, she had medical writing careers at Berlex Laboratories, Covance, Matrix Pharmaceutical, Protein Design Labs (PDL), and Genentech. Dr. Katz headed up the Medical Writing group at PDL and the Development Editing group at Genentech. She founded Illyria Consulting Group in 2006.
Dr. Katz is active in numerous professional organizations. She is an active member of the Drug Information Association (DIA). She served as the DIA Medical Writing Community Education chair and also headed this community’s E3 Task Force, which helped implement a Question and Answer series to the International Conference of Harmonization (ICH) Guideline E3, Structure and Content of Clinical Study Reports. She has also delivered numerous presentations at DIA conferences on ways to create scientifically accurate and cost-effective eCTD-compliant documents for global drug applications. She is an active member of the American Medical Writers Association (AMWA). She is now president, for the second time, of the Northern California chapter of AMWA and has served twice on AMWA’s national Board of Directors. Under the aegis of AMWA, she teaches workshops about medical writing. She has served as a member of the pharmaceutical content subcommittee of the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). She mentors writers through AuthorAID, an organization that helps researchers in developing countries publish their work, as well as candidates in the Biomedical Writing Program at the University of the Sciences, Mayes Colles of Healthcare Business and Policy.
Dr. Katz earned a Ph.D. in English from UC Berkeley, a certificate in Training and Human Resource Development from UC Berkeley Extension, a Clinical Sciences certificate from the Pharmaceutical Education Research Institute (PERI), and the following AMWA certificates: Advanced, Concepts in Science & Medicine, Pharmaceuticals, and Editing/Writing. She is a Medical Writer Certified® (MWC), per the standards established by the Medical Writing Certification Commission.
About Illyria
From Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Illyria is an island where confusion reigns as the characters are beguiled by disguise, trickery, and misunderstanding. Ultimately, harmony and order are restored, and happiness rules.
As in the conclusion of Twelfth Night, Illyria Consulting brings clarity and harmony to document confusion.