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Class will soon be in session at Allergan Aesthetics.
Allergan Medical Institute (AMI), the educational arm of Allergan, is opening three training centers in the U.S., starting with Irvine.
The 21,000-square-foot facility will complement and help expand AMI’s existing training programs, according to AMI Vice President Matt Williams.
“This is really our opportunity to truly level up what medical education looks like in the aesthetic space,” Williams told the Business Journal.
Williams said that there isn’t adequate training for aesthetics in medical schools, given it’s a relatively new space.
“We see this as a huge part of our responsibility to deliver this training into the marketplace because it’s very complementary to the work that we do to develop our products, protocols and clinical data,” he said.
The Irvine training center is slated to open at the end of June, followed by two more locations in Atlanta and Austin.
Five Training Courses
AMI, established over 10 years ago, trains between 125,000 to 140,000 aesthetic providers annually.
Prior to these centers, AMI faculty would go to different practices and teach in those clinics, or partner with labs and rent out their spaces.
Creating dedicated training sites will allow for longer amounts of training, Williams said.
“It will give us more time to accelerate their consultative and clinical skills, give them that expertise and confidence to deliver those outcomes, and ultimately allows us to engage with them throughout their learning journey,” he said.
Allergan did not disclose how much it is investing in the centers. The facilities will offer five training courses with the longest lasting four months, focusing on challenging treatment areas for injectors such as the jawline, lips and platysma bands.
Another five-day course is intended to cover the basics from aseptic technique to building a treatment plan for patients. Students will also learn the fundamentals of Allergan’s most well-known products like Botox and Juvederm.
Two of the courses notably will focus on the business side of aesthetics and teach owners and managers about patient safety and how to grow their practice.
“A lot of our partners are small business owners, so there’s a combination of the clinical training but then also the business education,” Williams said.
Williams expects to have up to 1,000 students train at the center annually and roughly 15 to 20 full-time staff once it’s up and running. Visiting AMI faculty will also rotate through as visiting guests for specific training techniques.
Applications are currently open to enroll in courses with the cut-off set at seven days prior to course start dates.
Allergan for many years was a stand-alone company that successfully launched Botox as a treatment for wrinkles. It was acquired in 2020 by AbbVie Inc. (NYSE: ABBV), which sports a $318 billion market cap. The aesthetics unit generated $5.2 billion in 2024.
360-Immersive Theater
The Irvine AMI training center was designed to not only provide “best-in-class” clinical training but also promote community engagement, Williams said.
Included in the design is a 360-immersive theater that will screen media such as a manufacturing facility tour of Botox in Ireland or the Juvederm collection in Pringy, France.
“We have a lot of historical artifacts that can give a bit of connection to how this industry was started and how it was built,” Williams said.
Besides the theater, training will take place in the form of hands-on experience, roundtable forums, live webcast events and an online training program called AMI Online.
Williams also said that individual treatment rooms in the training center are personalized in different styles intentionally to give practitioners ideas of what their treatment room could look like.
If there’s something a practitioner likes, they can pick out that material at AMI’s equivalent of a genius bar and have it sent directly to their practice.
“We think it’s a really nice value add, especially for someone who is starting up a new practice,” Williams said.
11 Global Locations
The opening of the three U.S. centers will bring AMI’s total locations to 11 globally.
AMI’s other eight centers are located in Italy, China, Spain, Australia, Israel, South Africa and India.
They’re overseen by Dr. Saami Khalifian, medical director of the AMI training centers and double-board certified dermatologist.
“Continued investment in medical education, paired with a strong community of supportive peers, helps any provider achieve their full potential of excellence,” Khalifian said in a statement. “I look forward to seeing the impact that AMI will continue to have on the aesthetics community.”
Williams said that Atlanta and Austin have all the features AMI was looking for when deciding on additional locations.
“These are primarily geographically located to be able to serve the needs of the marketplaces,” he said. “They’re markets that have good access, generally have good weather and are places that our customers want to go to.”
Carrie Strom Announces Departure from AbbVie
Carrie Strom, who has led AbbVie’s Allergan Aesthetics unit since its inception in 2020, has left the company.
“While it’s difficult to leave such a great team, after 25 nonstop years at Pfizer and AbbVie/Allergan Aesthetics, an AbbVie Company, I’m loving the precious quality time with my family right now,” Strom wrote in an April 11 LinkedIn post. “Thank you to everyone on this journey.”
Strom oversaw worldwide operations from Irvine as senior vice president of Allergan and president of Global Allergan Aesthetics.
Her journey at Allergan began in 2011 as a product director for Botox. She helped launch the first urological indication for the cosmetic injection.
Strom went on to spend nearly a decade in different marketing roles, working up to senior VP of medical aesthetics at Allergan, before she was tapped to lead the global aesthetics unit of AbbVie.
Prior to Allergan, Strom held sales and marketing roles at Pfizer for more than 10 years.
Strom’s replacement has yet to be announced.
— Yuika Yoshida