This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed, I spoke with Fran Cruz and Marlene Valderrama. Recorded before a live audience following IPWatchdog’s Women’s IP Forum, our conversation explored how professionals build relationships that lead to business, career opportunities, and better ways of doing their jobs. Drawing on their perspectives at Juristat and Halliburton, respectively, Fran and Marlene returned to a fundamental point: earning someone’s attention begins with understanding what matters to them. That requires asking questions and actually listening.

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed, I speak with Nancy Braman. Recorded before a live audience at IPWatchdog’s 2026 Women’s IP Forum, our conversation explores how practitioners create opportunities, develop professional relationships, and build the skills necessary to succeed in patent law. From taking PLI patent bar review course before law school, to attending Franklin Pierce Law School, to spending more than three years writing and researching for IPWatchdog and now litigating high-stakes patent and intellectual property disputes for life sciences and technology companies. She has already had quite the journey, and I sense it is really just beginning.

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed, I spoke with Steve Caltrider, Vice President and Chief Intellectual Property Officer at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and a former General Patent Counsel at Eli Lilly. The discussion also examined patent quality and the role of examination. Caltrider’s view is that the best time to establish confidence in a patent is when the USPTO examines it—not years later through PTAB review or district court litigation, after investment decisions have already been made. He recognized the need for an error-correction mechanism, while cautioning that review should not become so extensive or unpredictable that it undermines the value of issued patents.