Building on Our Strengths

You’ve worked at St. Jude for many years, beginning as a student. What have been some of the most significant changes?

It’s easy to say how much the campus and the organization have grown in size, but I think the most impressive aspects have been the quality of people we’ve been able to recruit and retain, the quality of the programs we’ve built, and the importance St. Jude has assumed on a global scale. In spite of our physical growth, we’ve worked hard to retain the feel of a relatively small place and our culture of compassion, collaboration, innovation and quality. People know each other; they work together: they interact and innovate. It was a major achievement that this did not change while we were growing. Sustaining these interactions and collaborations is why our productivity and creativity remain exceptional.

What sets St. Jude apart from other research institutions?

There are few places in the world where basic science and patient care are as well integrated as they are at St. Jude. We have incredible people and incredible support from the public, which give us the resources we need to be like no other place—to try things that other places can’t try. We place great importance on doctors and scientists knowing each other and working together. It’s an intrinsic part of our culture, and we design our facilities and infrastructure to facilitate this. For a scientist who’s working at that interface of patient care and research, there isn’t a better place to do that kind of work than here.

At most other academic medical centers, the biochemists, pharmacologists and geneticists are on one side of campus, and the hospital and doctors are on the other side of campus. Often, those groups rarely meet or intersect. Whereas at St. Jude, week in and week out, we focus on how we can integrate the scientists, doctors, patients and staff. This is one thing that attracted me to St. Jude in 1976 and a major reason, beyond our mission, that has kept me here for my entire career.

How does St. Jude foster that integration?

Dr. Don Pinkel, the first director at St. Jude, basically said, “We’re going to organize everything around the patient—so the science needs to connect to the patients, and the patients and doctors need to connect to the scientists.” In the last 20 years, the entire scientific community has moved toward that model, which is called translational research. St. Jude was doing this before these buzzwords were created.

We’ve continued to do things to make the interaction between doctors and scientists a natural one and to keep that small-institution feel. We often place laboratory research in the same building as patient care or clinics. In our newest building, for example, the proton therapy center, Surgery and the ICU are going to be in the same building as research labs. In that way, many of our buildings are a microcosm of the greater campus, which focuses on people working in collaboration. This also enriches the environment for those doing pure basic science that may be many steps removed from translation, because every day they see the ultimate benefactors of their fundamental discoveries, our patients.

How will St. Jude remain on the cutting edge of research going forward?

It has been interesting to see how much technology has evolved in the last decade—how that technology has accelerated science, changed the scale of research we can do, and accelerated the pace at which we can understand what causes childhood cancer and how better to treat it. It’s hard to imagine what things are going to be like in 10 years, because it’s moving so quickly. An organization has to move quickly while staying focused and remaining committed to quality. For St. Jude, it’s not just how fast we do it; it’s how well we do it. It’s not how big we are; it’s how much better we are at doing things. By keeping that attitude first and foremost, St. Jude will continue to be the best at what it does.