By Kelly Sylvester, director of development and alumni relations
For Hung Truong (’00) and Megan McIntyre, a Montana pharmacy graduate from 2004, meeting at a Bartell Drug store was all it took for a future to unfold. They met when Megan was on a Pharmacy Administration rotation with Bartell Drugs in the summer of 2003 and Hung worked at Bartell’s Coal Creek location. If Hung was telling the story he would say that she was his intern. According to Megan, she was technically licensed as an intern but met Hung when she was training him on her rotation project to establish new point of care services throughout Bartell Drugs (of course, Megan tells the correct version). And the rest is history.
Megan and Hung had to think back carefully to remember their first date, which took place at a restaurant in Seattle called The Flying Fish, probably sometime in the summer of 2004, when it was located on First Avenue. They recall sitting on the inside balcony and having a great conversation. It’s unclear to both when they knew they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together. But a few years later, on a beach in Vietnam, (and without much prior discussion) Hung proposed to Megan. By that point, they knew a lot about each other, “and I made sure that he knew my all-time favorite band was Creedence Clearwater Revival,” Megan joked. And of course, they had discussed a few other important ‘go/no go’ topics as they fell in love and embarked on their pharmacy careers at the same time.
Now, both are in high-level, demanding pharmacy positions. Megan is currently the vice president of pharmacy and clinical consulting for Premera Blue Cross and Hung is the executive director of Madrona Specialty Pharmacy. They have two children: Beckett, aged eight, and Beatrix, four, and they joke that neither child has yet expressed an interest in a career in pharmacy. In fact, when they ask their children what they think Mom and Dad do for work, the kids say they, “work hard and are on the computer all the time without free time to play.”
When asked what they like best about being married to a pharmacist, their answer was, “We both know what M357 stands for and more importantly we can both appreciate and understand the challenges that exist in our work. This way we can be more supportive to one another and offer an educated perspective to help each other.” In addition, they are drawn to less common pharmacist roles, with Hung having a strong entrepreneurial and business mindset, and Megan being passionate about elevating the role of pharmacists in health care leadership.
Congratulations to this successful pharmacy couple, who are making a difference in pharmacy and health care in Washington State.