糖心Vlog

Sara Toyloy has always enjoyed a challenge. In fact, it was a challenge from a cousin at 15-years-old that led her to attend then-Cal State Hayward. 

After graduating from high school early, Toyloy was gifted a trip by her older cousins Joan and Ernest Simien from her island home, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, a small island in the Caribbean, to visit them in Fremont, California. It was during that trip, her cousins took her up to the university’s Hayward campus to admire the bay view and asked her whether she’d ever want to attend school there. 

Not long after, with approval from the university’s president because of her young age of 15, Toyloy enrolled in classes. 

“It was absolutely frightening those first few days, walking around a huge campus,” she said. 

Now the president of new therapies and chief regulatory officer of Elixir Medical Corporation, Toyloy oversees the clinical, regulatory and quality teams. In short, ensuring the devices Elixir creates — drug eluting stents for heart attack patients — are approved as quickly as possible for use nationally and around the world. 

It’s a challenge that suits her just fine. 

Although Toyloy started out as a research scientist after graduating, she transferred into the regulatory affairs department where she quickly gained a reputation for finding success where others previously hadn’t and started getting assigned the “disaster projects.” 

After learning through many difficult assignments, Toyloy landed one  of her greatest successes — a device that received U.S. Federal Drug Administration approval in 113 days, which at the time was a record for the industry. 

The work is intrinsically satisfying too, although Toyloy admits it can take stepping back from the day-to-day sometimes to see that. 

“In reality, everything that we do on a daily basis, also has a great impact on human life, not just in the U.S. but around the world,” she said. “Heart disease is still the number one cause of death, but slowly and surely, we’re reducing that year over year.” 

Her tenacity and drive, which helps push devices through the FDA regulations