Mark Ogunsusi,
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Associate attorney, Powers Pyles Sutter & Verville PC
To make a mark in healthcare as a young person, perhaps it helps to start in eighth grade, as Mark Ogunsusi did.
Ogunsusi, now an associate attorney at the Washington, D.C.-based law firm Powers Pyles Sutter & Verville, served when he was a kid as what was called an area clerk, essentially assisting nurses at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta.
He worked as a pharmacy technician in high school before earning a degree as a pharmacist, and then moving on to earn a law degree at Georgetown University.
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See which young leaders made list.Now he helps his firm win cases on behalf of safety-net hospitals, such as a 2022 Arkansas ruling upholding a law that bars drugmakers from restricting where drugs are sold in the 340B discount program. "I've never been involved in a case that has been lost," Ogunsusi said.
He's also helped draft legislation in a number of states and at the federal level.
His motivation, he said, came from observing the safety net up close as a kid, seeing the people it helped, even beyond the walls of the hospital. He also worked later as a pharmacist at the now closed Atlanta Medical Center. In his legal work, such practical knowledge more than once helped him find something the other side missed.
"At the end of the day, what we all do is work," Ogunsusi said. "But the edge is I understand how public hospitals work. I understand the people they serve."
—Michael McAuliff