Student Business Plan Becomes a Reality

She was a member of the University at Buffalo team for the National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA) Pruitt-Schutte Student Business Plan Competition, along with team members and fellow PharmD Class of 2009 students Alexandra Centeno, Christina Ramsey and Liliana Yohonn.

Their plan for Isabella’s Apothecary, a woman-owned, woman-operated pharmacy in the Rochester suburb of Pittsford, won first place. It also gave Seelman an understanding of what goes into opening a business. “Typically working in a pharmacy, you aren’t thinking about the costs or cash flow or how to bring patients in the door,” she says. “The business plan opened those conversations.”

During her last year in pharmacy school, she did an Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experience (APPE) rotation at a compounding pharmacy where the pharmacist was doing patient hormone consults. She witnessed the impact that hormonal imbalances had on women and their struggle to find proper treatment. The experience further ignited her passion to focus her career on women’s health.

Seelman and her husband (and business partner) David Seelman, PharmD ’10, founded Rochester’s Irondequoit Pharmacy in 2019. Then, in April 2020, she took ownership of Twelve Corners Apothecary, a compounding pharmacy, also in Rochester.

The groundwork laid over a decade ago has come full circle. Through her new business, Seelman hopes to expand hormone and functional medicine consults, making them more accessible to more patients.

“When I graduated from UB, I did not set out with the goal of completing my exact plan,” she says. “It just happened that my career opportunities led back to it!”