About Us

Our coaching clients love their new careers for the higher work satisfaction, more work-life balance, more focus on patient care, and less metric-driven work. They care about patients, how work influences their family and friends, so they don’t want to settle with a “job”, they want a career they love. 

By using our Career Coaching Programs our pharmacist clients find their dream career. Doing what we love fringes on working with pharmacists towards an Indispensable career and in turn, improving our profession, one pharmacist at a time. That’s why Happy PharmD is dedicated to finding pharmacists who really care about their work – those who value their patient care, value doing work that matters, and who also happen to be genuine human beings.

Alex Barker, the Founder

Alex Barker is the CEO and Founder of The Happy Pharm D, a nationwide coaching firm guiding pharmacists to inspiring careers and more fulfilling lives.

Alex is an accomplished public speaker, a published author and teacher. Since 2017, his coaching program and career development seminars have guided over 2,000 pharmacists into new jobs and roles they love. His bookIndispensable: A prescription for a fulfilling pharmacy career, has motivated countless pharmacists to love pharmacy again.

Alex is a husband and the proud father of two daughters. He loves drinking coffee and eating good guacamole (though not at the same time). When he isn’t working, which happens occasionally, he plays Nintendo, Dungeon & Dragons, and reads comics.

The Happy PharmD was born out of a burdensome, burnout, and grateful hope for pharmacy. Alex Barker, PharmD started his career with the same hopes pharmacy students hold when graduating: I hope I can find a decent job.

After his residency, he worked as an ambulatory care pharmacist at the Veteran’s Affairs Administration. He discovered three things:

1. He didn’t love his job
2. He was bullied
3. He felt like a failure as a pharmacist

This almost stopped him in his tracks as he struggled with burnout, bullying, and feeling stuck. But he decided to use his creative energies to build businesses on the side. After quite a few failures and lessons learned, he discovered coaching and decided to hire coaches. He thought,

“If someone else knows how to accomplish my goals, why wouldn’t I invest to fast-track my progress?”

He received feedback from his coaches that he would have a natural talent for coaching. After multiple classes, coaching over 150 people and helping them achieve life, career, and business goals, he realized that pharmacists probably felt the same way he did when he started his career: confused, frustrated, dissatisfied with pharmacy, unable to find fulfilling work and that they would benefit from coaching to achieve their career goals.

After over 300 phone calls with pharmacists, dozens of pharmacy manager interviews, and questioning hiring executives and association leaders, Alex discovered that pharmacy had a gaping hole: How to create a fulfilling career in pharmacy. Most pharmacists told him they felt dispensable, like at any moment their hospital could close or their manager would fire them. They felt like the medicine they dispensed: disposable, replaceable.

Alex mapped out The Happy PharmD path, based on his coach training, experience, and the pharmacy job market, to help pharmacists create Indispensable pharmacy careers. Fast forward to today, The Happy PharmD has grown to over 20 team members, including 10 pharmacist career coaches. No one has a crystal ball on the pharmacy job market. But that won’t stop us from helping pharmacists, like you, to stop the guessing game and instead intentionally build a career where the job offers come to you.

We have a few values that guide us…

Integrity
We are authentically transparent; We own our mistakes.

Grit
Long-term passion and perseverance for goals.

Disrupt
Move fast, break things. Progress over perfection. We aim to disrupt how pharmacists achieve fulfilling careers. 

Results First
Our decisions and goals are driven by data.

Fun
We aim to make all experiences exciting.

Resilience
Our work environment supports well-being.