Chapter 14: Changes to MD Anderson’s Culture and Ronald DePinho’s Resignation
Files
Loading...
Description
Dr. Holleman sketches the faculty’s concerns about Dr. DePinho and Dr. Chin. He also sketches changes in MD Anderson culture that were created after Dr. DePinho assumed leadership of the institution.
He then notes that Drs. Emil J Freireich and Emil Frei are “veteran physician-scientists” who represent the old culture of MD Anderson. He talks about the first impressions of Ronald DePinho and then explains how Dr. DePinho’s decisions shifted the culture.
Next, Dr. Holleman talks about Dr. DePinho’s resignation and what appears to have led up to it. He notes that he is hearing a lot of optimism from the faculty now that Dr. Marshall Hicks has been named interim president. He also notes that the selection of the interim team represents a return to the old values of MD Anderson: a focus on patient care and clinical research under the stewardship of servant leaders.
Dr. Holleman and the interviewer discuss how, during this interim period, the institution will be rediscovering its core values. Dr. Holleman then sketches the positives as well as the negatives that Dr. DePinho brought to the institution.
Identifier
HollemanWL_02_20170420_C14
Publication Date
4-20-2017
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Warren L. Holleman, PhD, Oral History Interview, April 20, 2017
Topics Covered
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center - Institutional Change; MD Anderson Culture; Leadership; Working Environment; Institutional Politics; Controversy; Growth and/or Change; Critical Perspectives on MD Anderson; MD Anderson History; MD Anderson Snapshot; Ethics; Professional Values, Ethics, Purpose; Critical Perspectives
Transcript
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
And if you'd like, I think I could summarize what the main concerns of the faculty were.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah, sure.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
I'd say two types of concerns; one were the ones we've been talking about that are not just at MD Anderson, the concerns that clinicians have about overwork, being treated as, quote, "workforce members" rather than professionals, professional healers. Losing control of their clinics, having all this paperwork and bureaucracy. Then on the science side, the research side, the concerns that I wrote about over and over were, what can we do to support faculty who are losing NIH funding? Not because of a lack of quality, but federal changes. What can we do to reduce the bureaucracy? What can we do to improve the relationship between faculty and administration and leadership? Those were the sort of things that are not just at MD Anderson, they're concerns at every institution. In addition, though, there were specific concerns with Dr. DePinho and Dr. Chin and some of the people they brought in with them. By far, the one that created the greatest degree of anger was the sense that the ethics rules that applied to all the rest of us did not apply to them. When they came in, there was a nepotistic relationship that was never addressed. It just seemed so wrong. She got all kinds of special privileges because she was married to him.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Now, what department was she hired into?
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
She was the director of the big research institute. She was given a very high salary to run the—
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
This is the Institute for Applied Cancer Science?
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Yes. I'm sorry, Institute for Applied Cancer Science. And—
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
So she didn't have a faculty grounding, or a departmental grounding?
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
She probably did.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
She must have done.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
I don't know. Yeah. So one of the concerns was nepotism, and she didn't help it by her behavior. She would be very rude to other faculty and other employees. She would cut in line for coffee, just do little things that were insensitive and privileged and entitled. When people would say, "Wait, what are you doing?" She'd say, "Well, do you know who I sleep with?" That was her standard line. That just wasn't a very smart thing to say.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Well, and it's extremely tone-deaf to the culture here.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
It was arrogant.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah, it was. Absolutely.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
I mean, I'm happy to say that, because that's the way—I think that's accurate. And it had a tremendous impact on the culture here. This has been a place that was really collegial. And they brought in their friends from the Northeast, and created this sort of culture war between the newbies and the veterans.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Now, tell me a little about that.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Well, the veterans were people who were dedicated to the mission of MD Anderson, and planned to spend their whole career here. And the typical, quote, "veteran faculty" was a physician who also did clinical research. Of course, we were known as the number one cancer center in the world, and we were also known as doing the best translational research, I think, around. So these were the people who were treating the sickest cancer patients and coming up with new treatments and new innovations and better treatments all the time. Dr. Freireich [oral history interview] would be the paragon of that type of physician scientist, just incredible what he accomplished with Dr. Frei, in terms of curing childhood leukemia. And I think that was the model of the MD Anderson faculty. And I think the veterans here thought we had a pretty good things going. When we had problems, we were getting more bureaucracy, as I said, things like that. But still, we were a great place to work. And then when Dr. DePinho was hired—
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Let me just—before you go into that, I wanted to ask you kind of how—what did—I'm sorry, I'm having trouble asking this question. When Dr. DePinho was hired and prior to his arrival, what was the attitude toward people? When he came down and gave some of those original presentations to faculty, what was the buzz about who this new person was who was coming to take over from John Mendelsohn?
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Yeah, well, there was a lot of positive buzz, because he brought a fresh vision. He had a lot of energy and enthusiasm. He was a very sort of charming and persuasive speaker. And he had a vision of curing cancer, which engendered a lot of debate, just to use those terms, because that's—many felt it was overreaching.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
And this is referring to the Moon Shots Program.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Yeah. But the idea that we're going to do everything we can to find new cures was a great idea. I think a lot of the basic scientists were excited, because basically it was felt that his mandate was to raise the bar of our basic sciences departments. And the problem was, many were worried that he would raise the bar of basic sciences at the expense of what we had always been so good at. And that's exactly what happened. Many of our top physician scientists left after he came, because they felt marginalized. And when he would bring in somebody, some friend of his from the Northeast and say—and give them a salary that was double or three times what someone here was making who was doing similar work, that felt demeaning— And it created these two cultures; one was called the F-O-R, Friends of Ron. No, F-O-R-D, FORD. Friends of Ron DePinho. And then the veterans, the people who had always been here. That was very unfortunate. I learn all that I've learned from musicals, and from Oklahoma, the ranchers and the farmers should be friends. That was what I said. We should raise the bar of everybody. But the clinicians felt that instead of being here to spend half their time seeing patients and half their time doing research, now they were asked to spend 80 percent or even 90 percent, or even 90 percent of their time seeing patients to generate more income, to pay for the Moon Shots. And that was their fear, that this would happen. And that's exactly what happened. And I didn't come here just to be a cash cow. I came here to cure cancer myself. That was the sense. So there was an excitement because he was going to raise the bar on the basic sciences side, but there was a fear that he'd do that at the expense of the clinical enterprise. And I think that is what happened.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Now, what's your read on kind of the feel of the institution right now? And just for the records, I mean, Dr. DePinho submitted his resignation, and it was, what, three weeks ago? Three and a half weeks ago? Something like that. You know, did you have a sense that this was coming, you know—well, first I'll ask you that. Did you have a sense? Did people kind of know that that was coming?
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Yeah. I kind of knew it was coming. It came a little faster—I predicted March 31st. I think it happened March 15th—I don't know.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Now, what were the signs you were seeing that told you that was coming?
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Some of it was just pure intuition. When the audit was published, and I think that was maybe February, of Dr. Chin's breaking a lot of financial rules, just the fact that the UT System was beginning to audit her activity, a number of us knew—a number of us believed that she was breaking a lot of rules. She had broken a lot of rules. But we didn't know whether the leadership in Austin was going to look into it. So when they published the audit, the first thing was not even the results of the audit, it was just the fact that she was being audited, showed that somebody cared. And that was very gratifying. Because when you work for an institution, you want to believe that it has integrity. And we have a number of integrity rules around here, compliance rules. And we follow them to the letter. We're required to. But then there's always the perception that our top leaders were given exemptions for everything. So now we learned that maybe that was no longer the case. And that was very gratifying, I think, to a lot of faculty. So when I found out that she was being audited, that her activity had been audited, I just felt good about that. I felt better about working here, and I think a lot of people suddenly felt better, that integrity still matters. And then secondly, I started learning about our new chancellors and vice chancellors, and they're people who—from all I can tell, they're people who really value integrity. And they like to—they think leaders should practice what they preach. And—
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Now, we're talking about Chancellor McRaven.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Yeah.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
And vice chancellors, I haven't heard their names. Who are some of the people?
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Well, the one that's relevant for us is Dr. Ray Greenberg.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Okay.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Vice chancellor for Health Affairs. I guess I was referring primarily to Chancellor McRaven. He had come here a couple of times to meet with faculty. And he talked about how leaders—he expected leaders to walk the walk. And so that began to make us think that a new sheriff was in town, and this was somebody who would help us, whether Dr. DePinho stayed or went, he would ask our leadership to follow the rules. So that was great. But then when the audit came out and it was just so damning of her activity, I think five of six projects that she funded were done without following the rules. I personally felt that that was just—that meant that—how did she get away with that, and none of the rest of us could? So that would mean that the president was involved in some way. And so I thought that it's just a matter of time now before they make a change. And I think that's what most people believed. I used to think it was just the faculty who felt that way, but I started talking with staff, and they all felt that way, too. I'll tell you what, in the last year, the prevailing thing that people would say is, it really hurts your morale to work at a place where you are doing things the right way, but all you ever see in the newspaper is that MD Anderson is breaking this rule or that rule. And the fact is, MD Anderson is not breaking the rule. Most of us are following the rules. It's just a few individuals. And that was a real morale killer. And so the average person who worked here wanted—I think they wanted Dr. DePinho to leave because he—they would say, "My friends read the newspaper, and they say, 'What are you doing over there? You guys are just doing whatever you feel like.'" And they say, "No, we all are doing the same thing we've always done, it's just a few people at the top." But the newspaper wouldn't—the image was that—
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Sure.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Yeah. That we were all wasting state tax money, and that kind of thing.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Now, what are you kind of hearing now? You know, Marshall Hicks has stepped in as interim, and there have been—you know, there's an odd mood around the place, you know, what are you picking up now during this interim period?
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Well, I'm picking up a lot of optimism. I think that the interim leaders are very well liked and well-respected. And Dr. Hicks and the others, I don't think they could have done a better job of picking who they picked.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
What do people like Marshall Hicks and the others represent?
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
I think they hearken back to the, what I call "the veterans." The physicians who put patient care first, and then have clinical research as a close second, and are here to promote those things, and are not here just to promote their careers, or their own fame or egos. And they're what Chancellor McRaven and his group calls "servant leaders;" leaders who see it as their job to help those under them be successful. Not to come here and just sort of cherry-pick money for my pet projects, which is the feeling—whether it's fair or not—which was the feeling of the DePinho administration.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Now, there's Dr. Hicks, and who else is he working with at this point? REDACT $$ That's okay—
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
This is embarrassing. I'm blanking on the—please don't put this on there, but—
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Well, I can pause it. Hang on just a second. (break in audio)
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Back on again.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Okay.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Okay, so the person, the COO is—
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Yeah. So the interim president is Dr. Marshall Hicks, and the COO is Dr. Steve Hahn. And there's a strong sense that they are—that they represent what the best of MD Anderson, in terms of being good clinicians and good researchers, doing—good patient care is the most important thing, and then doing research that improves treatments is important. And being here as servant leaders to help—they're not here to promote their own egos or their own careers, primarily. They're here to serve others. And to help the rest of us be successful, so to speak, or to accomplish the mission in the institution. I think there's a strong loyalty to the institution. They're not going to be here for three years and then go off somewhere else. So then they have their character, their personality. I mean, if you passed them in the hallway, they'd look at you and say, "Hello." You sense that if you had a problem, you could share it with them, and they'd listen. You'd trust them with it. They would care about it. It's not that some of our other current leaders aren't that way as well. I'm just saying these are the two new ones who've come in to fill up this vacuum for right now. I think there's a sense they were very good choices.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah, when Dr. DePinho submitted the resignation, I was thinking to myself, you know—I was wondering what message was going to be sent by the choice? I thought, yeah, MD Anderson is going to want to go back to its core values. And that's certainly—
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
That's what I've been trying to say the whole time. They represent the core values.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah. Yeah, they really have, yeah.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Yeah. And I think a number of our other executive leaders do, too.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
It's just I think that for whatever reason, I don't think Dr. DePinho fully represented them. And I think—yeah. In the effort to shoot the moon, we kind of lost track of our core values, or our core identity.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
That's the perception.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah. I mean, it's kind of an interesting period, because—I mean, there are obviously a lot of very, very negative things that happened during the six-year period, that almost six-year period that Ron DePinho was here. But I mean, I think there were some positive things that were done, certainly. But if it's almost as if the—if you will, the downfall is helping the institution understand better what it's really about, and make some hard decisions about what to focus on the future. It's an interesting process to see an institution going through.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Yeah.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Painful, but, you know—
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Well, you're right. This could really help us all realize who we truly are. I think when Dr. DePinho was hired—I think there's a temptation to blame him for everything, and I don't think that's fair. I think he was hired with a mandate to raise the bar on basic science.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Absolutely.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
And that's what he was trying to do. But is that the type of person they should have hired in the first place? Or, would he have been the person to hire at a research—if we had been a research institute and not a cancer treatment center, he would have been the choice. But we're a cancer hospital, you know. I mentioned earlier that I think—you ask why he was hired in the first place, and I said that his vision of curing cancer was very attractive, especially to our scientists. And to people around the state, you know, everybody wants to cure cancer. But the other reason that I think he appealed to the leadership in Austin at the time was that he pointed out that there could be a financial windfall from the type of research that our faculty do, and that we weren't capturing those revenues. That we could develop drugs and develop inventions that would be very lucrative. And there are a lot of—in Texas, a lot of business people and entrepreneurs sit on the Board of Regents, too. That was attractive, too. Why are we running a nonprofit when we could be making billions of dollars? So most people were probably like me, we didn't feel qualified to assess the risk to benefit ratio. When you try to develop a new drug, it's kind of a long shot, it takes a lot of investment. But if you hit the mark, you make a ton of money. That's sort of like shooting the moon, too. Either you make it or you fail. But anyway, the financial aspect was also very attractive. So there was the scientific achievement and the financial. Those two made him a very attractive candidate. But I think that the Board of Regents and the chancellors at the time forgot that that's not really what MD Anderson is. We're a place where patients come for care. And then our best research is the research that's based on—is empirical, our own patients. Not looking at lab rats, and trying to develop things through the lab. So our core values, our core identity, we lost track of those.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
And DePinho certainly made a number of—I mean, even if we took out the ethical considerations, he made a number of pretty serious leadership mistakes. The not listening, not communicating, not being as aware as he needed to be that there was a culture here. The north-south distinction and also an East Coast—Texas distinction was really an important chasm to work across, you know?
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Yeah.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
All of those things. It's just kind of a general insensitivity to those issues.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Exactly. I think I was asked—one time, after The Faculty Voice closed down, I was wondering if I would ever be asked my opinion on his leadership. I think I was asked one time. And I had prepared—I tend to go on for hours on this, so I said, I've got to have a 30-second elevator speech. Somebody said, "What's your assessment of Dr. DePinho's leadership?" I knew I had about 30 seconds. And part of me said, well—part of me was thinking, should I really say this? So I said, "What the faculty tell me is, A, they question his integrity. He's had conflicts of interest in terms of his business, and then there's a nepotism concern with his wife. So there's a lack of trust in his integrity as a leader. And secondly, the faculty feel that he doesn't listen. We've had a number of attempts to create venues where he's there to listen to our concerns. And invariably, he winds up lecturing us. It's clear to us he doesn't listen well." So I got that in 30 seconds. I've always been glad I said that, because I felt my job is to hear the faculty and reflect back what they're saying. I think the majority of the faculty, that those were the two concerns.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Mmm.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
I think the ethics thing, in a sense, it wasn’t even his fault. He should have never been given waivers in the first place.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
I mean, it was the people above him that set up that faulty system.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
I mean, they also approved hiring his wife within the institution, too. That was part of the package.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
And that was a huge mistake. Now, he should have had the moral intelligence to realize himself that that wasn't smart. But really, that was set up by the people who hired him. Then as far as not listening, I think half of that was that he's so enthusiastic about research that he always—if you get the group of people together, he wants to share with them his vision. And that's attractive, to have a visionary leader. But the flipside of that was, he was not just a researcher, he was a leader. And leaders have to listen. And it would be more powerful to create a vision of the whole group. Let us give input to the vision so that we feel we own it, too.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Absolutely.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
And we never felt that he wanted to know that. When I'm in a good—when I'm being charitable, I would say that it was because he was just so excited about his vision. But when I'm realistic, I think he also had some problems with ego and—
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
And some skills he never developed.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Yeah. He just really didn't care what I thought. I think he thought he was smarter than me and the others, and he didn't want to know what we thought. That was the conclusion most people reached, was—you know, we were number one in the world before you got here. Shouldn't you want to hear what we think? Don't you want our input? There was just this sense of, "No, I'm not really interested in what you think, because I'm smarter than you are, and I'm going to bring in these people who are smarter than you are."
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Well, it'll be interesting to see how things evolve, for sure. For sure. We're almost at 11:30, and I will need to stop then. But it would be great if we could schedule another shorter session, to just do some final tie-up.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Sure. Sure.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Is that okay with you?
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Yeah.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Okay, great. Do you want to stop for today, then?
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Sure. What—
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
It's 25 after 11, so let me just say thank you.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Has this been helpful for your project?
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Yes. Oh, absolutely, yeah. Absolutely.
Warren L. Holleman, PhD:
Okay.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Absolutely. No, you're the first person that I have spoken to about this particular period, and it's a really important period for the institution, and to get the read on what's been transpiring in the last year, so...
Recommended Citation
Holleman, Warren L. PhD and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 14: Changes to MD Anderson’s Culture and Ronald DePinho’s Resignation" (2017). Interview Chapters. 1088.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1088
Conditions Governing Access
Open
