2019 AWARDS
Marcie McClintic Coates
Head of Global Policy, Mylan
West Virginia is such a special place to me.
There is something enduring about this place
that never leaves me no matter where I go.”
Photo by Liza Wolfe Photography.
BY KRISTEN UPPERCUE. A few months
after being hired by Mylan, Marcie
McClintic Coates was visiting with her
husband’s grandmother when she proudly
showed McClintic Coates that the cost of
her blood pressure medication had just
been cut by almost $75, thanks to a new
generic version available on the market.
As it turned out, she was boasting about a
Mylan medication that McClintic Coates
had provided legal work on in order to
help seniors gain earlier access to more
affordable prescriptions.
With that experience, McClintic Coates,
a White Sulphur Springs, WV, native,
was able to quickly see the kind of posi-
tive impact from her hard work that she
had witnessed her parents have in their
community while she was growing up.
Her mother had worked at the front desk
of the Greenbrier Clinic and delivered
homemade meals to widows and those
with relatives in the hospital nearly every
week. Her father was a local principal,
coached many sports teams and served
as the associate pastor of their church.
“My mom taught me the importance
of common sense and kindness, and my
dad taught me the importance of educa-
tion,” she says. “They worked hard for
me and my siblings to have every oppor-
tunity to succeed.”
From a young age, McClintic Coates
knew she wanted to study law. She served
as the president of her student body in
junior high and high school, where she
was passionate about fairness and equality
as it pertained to school policies.
“Even though I didn’t know any law-
yers, I understood that being an attorney
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WEST VIRGINIA EXECUTIVE
meant you could help change things that
weren’t fair or right, and this excited me,”
she says. “A law degree seemed to be a
good starting point to build a career I
could feel passionate about.”
She attended Wittenberg University
in Springfield, Ohio, where she majored
in business management. During her
undergraduate years, McClintic Coates
spent a semester studying in Washing-
ton, D.C., and was selected as the Oval
Office intern during President Bill Clin-
ton’s last six months in office. She credits
this experience as the one that solidified
her desire to study law because during
that internship she was surrounded by
professionals with law degrees.
After completing her undergraduate
degree in 2002, she enrolled at West
Virginia University (WVU), where she
worked toward a law degree and MBA
simultaneously.
“I loved working on my MBA in paral-
lel with my law degree,” she says. “Unlike
law school, which was based on individ-
ual learning, the MBA program was very
team focused. I brought the team-based
approach from the MBA program to
the West Virginia Law Review, where I
was editor in chief, and this allowed us
to divide up our workload and use the
remaining time to plan the largest sym-
posium WVU Law had ever held.”
Like many of her peers, McClintic
Coates was inspired by her property law
professor, Joyce McConnell, because she
made sure her students understood the
unintended impacts law can sometimes
have on people and their communities.
McConnell also encouraged her to get
involved with the law review because of
the boost it would give her résumé after
graduation.
“I didn’t even know what the law review
was, but Joyce insisted I do it, so I did,”
she remembers. “She was totally right.
My time as editor in chief helped distin-
guish my résumé in the highly competitive
D.C. market after law school.”
There were many steps along McClintic
Coates’ path to Mylan that helped pre-
pare her for her current role as head of
global policy. One of particular impor-
tance was a class she took in law school.
“I took a seminar class that gave me
the flexibility to study a health care law
topic of my choice for the semester,” she
says. “A couple of people on my MBA
team were employees at Mylan, and I
was intrigued with how generic drugs
could legally come to market. Little did I
know that I would end up writing a sem-
inar paper outlining my future job as a
regulatory attorney for Mylan.”
After completing her law degree and
MBA, McClintic Coates began practic-
ing law with Faegre Baker Daniels in
McClintic Coates and
her husband, Bill, at a
WVU football game.