Cory Sydorenko is Pharmacy Director, Western Canada, at Neighbourly Pharmacy. His role includes overseeing 134 community pharmacies in British Columbia, Alberta and the Northwest Territories. He holds a Doctor of Pharmacy from the University of Waterloo and is a registered pharmacist in both Ontario and British Columbia.
How did your journey in pharmacy begin?
When I was a teenager, I always thought that I was going to go into medicine and be a doctor. My parents really supported that. They never had the opportunity to attend post-secondary education, and they were quite proud of me.
Back then, my father owned a retail golf shop and managed a private golf and country club, where I would help out and learn about customer service and business fundamentals. And as I was going through university, I realized that I also had a drive for entrepreneurship. I loved the aspect of owning a small business and pharmacy allowed me to tie that to my love of helping people through health care.
I decided to pursue pharmacy and graduated from the University of Waterloo with a PharmD in 2016. One of my first jobs was at a small, independent, community-focused pharmacy group called Lovell Drugs in Ontario. Lovell Drugs was special. It was one of the oldest family-owned private health chains in the country still in existence, at over 115 years old.
With Lovell, I started first as a pharmacy manager. Three years later, in 2019, our company was acquired by Neighbourly Pharmacy. This is when I started taking on more progressive leadership roles. I worked as a regional director in Ontario, and in 2023 I was asked to move to Vancouver to look after our British Columbia operations, in the Lower Mainland and northern B.C.
After a year, I was asked if I wanted to be the Pharmacy Director for Western Canada, looking after 134 locations in B.C., Alberta, and the Northwest Territories.
Can you describe your current role?
I currently work as Pharmacy Director for Western Canada at Neighbourly Pharmacy. Neighbourly Pharmacy is the third largest operator of pharmacies in this country and the largest operator of independent pharmacies in the country, with just under 300 stores coast to coast.
We operate 68 stores in B.C., 65 in Alberta, and one in the Northwest Territories. Within the Western Canada region, we have seven district directors, and I support those district directors from the pharmacy side. This includes growing external pharmacy business, such as developing relationships with nursing homes or long-term care group homes. I support pharmacy teams with workflow and technology enhancements by making sure that our teams are using best practices, and I also help our teams practice to their full scope allowed by the provincial governments.
"I know all the support I provide to our pharmacy leaders, our pharmacists, our district directors, eventually flows down to better patient care." — Cory Sydorenko
What does your day to day look like?
It’s a busy job with a lot of travel. About half of my time is spent in an office, looking at trends, business data, analyzing things, making future decisions, and helping to coach the district directors on their pharmacies. The other half of the time I’m on the road, connecting with our teams.
In our Burnaby head office, I might be interfacing with our cross-functional partners. This could be finance; looking at results and forward views and forecasting, and helping with business planning. In people management; coaching pharmacy managers, district directors, and employees at all levels of our organization.
On the road, I spend my time connecting with our stores and ensuring that we’re executing our company’s initiatives. This could be anything from digital enhancement of our stores to ensure proper workflows, implementing the latest technology to help drive efficiencies in our stores, and helping unlock more time for our pharmacists to focus on patients.
My favourite part of my job is solving issues and helping others. That’s what drives me, because I know all the support I provide to our pharmacy leaders, our pharmacists, our district directors, eventually flows down to better patient care.
I’m still a pharmacist even though I’m no longer working behind the dispensary counter. While I miss working directly with patients, I realize that in my role I’m able to help many more people across our region’s 134 stores, which together serve more than 200,000 patients.
What would you say are the skills needed in this type of role?
Being a really good communicator is probably the number one skill set that you need to have in any kind of role where you’re leading large teams or leading multiple locations.
You need to rally teams. You need to bring people together. You need to be a good coach and a good mentor and be an overall supportive person.
When we look at elevating younger pharmacists that are looking to get into leadership roles or seeking to take on bigger roles within their companies, we’re looking for them to have the ability to think outside the box and have more global thinking. A good skill set to have is to be able to identify best practices, strengths and weaknesses, and to be able to share those between teams, to help everybody collaborate.
Having curiosity and being eager to ask questions is also important. Someone who is aspiring towards a leadership role should educate themselves on the business of pharmacy, understand the ins and outs of drug plans, reimbursements, the commerce of pharmacy and how community pharmacy businesses operate.
It’s one thing to be a great pharmacist and a great clinical thinker. To develop business level thinking, that can be a result of your curiosity. For me, I learned a lot through other leaders in my organization. I had some great mentors who were able to teach me those things and kind of pass on the torch of the lessons they learned throughout their careers.
Cory Sydorenko poses with team members at one of the stores in his group: Pharmasave Howe Street in Vancouver.
What areas of growth are you most excited for in British Columbia?
I’m extremely excited about pharmacists prescribing. I think there is potential in increasing B.C.’s minor ailments program, perhaps unlocking the ability of pharmacists to do what we can do in Alberta and actually be prescribers.
We want to unlock the pharmacists’ ability to connect with our patients more, take some of the burden off doctors and the health care system overall, and continue growing our scope. I’m very excited about the ability for pharmacists to requisition lab tests. It’s still early and we don’t have a reimbursement framework for lab tests in B.C., but I’m excited to see how pharmacists will be able to order lab tests, and initiate therapy or make changes to therapy.
What did you think being a pharmacist would be like when you first stepped out of those doors at school, versus what you know now?
When I first came out of school, I had a good general idea of pharmacy. At that time, I thought pharmacy was filling prescriptions, standing at a counter, maybe doing a medication review or a flu shot. I was used to that, and I was prepared for that out of school, but slowly, over the last 10 years the scope of practice has just increased so much to the point where my view of pharmacy is completely different.
I now see the pharmacist as the most accessible health care provider. I see pharmacies as health care hubs in communities. They’re not only places where people go just to get prescriptions. They’re places where people go to get medical advice, where they go to be treated for minor ailments.
Sometimes, people are struggling and they just can’t get any kind of assistance. They go into a pharmacy looking for help, and they do that because a pharmacist is somebody who’s accessible and even if the pharmacist can’t help you, they can likely connect you to the right place or get you on the right path. I really see that pharmacist as that central, patient-focused person in that health care hub of the community.
Filling prescriptions is a technical aspect that will always be a component of pharmacy. But the role of the pharmacist today is really to perform clinical services, to prescribe and to connect with patients, and to utilize all of our extensive knowledge. It’s changed a lot.
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