Chapter 23: The MD Anderson Presidents
Files
Description
Dr. Pollock reviews the MD Anderson presidents he has worked with. He begins with a few comments on Dr. R. Lee Clark, a visionary who say the promise of multi-disciplinary care. Dr. Charles LeMaistre, he says, had an unparalleled understanding of how central clinical care is to the mission of the institution. He protected and helped the institution grow during difficult times. Dr. Pollock says he was “smitten” by Dr. LeMaistre’s style, particularly his ability to listen, and is grateful to Dr. LeMaistre for his support when he transferred his interests to molecular biology.
Dr. Mendelsohn, he says, was a builder with a strong vision for the institution growth. It was Dr. Mendelsohn who selected Dr. Pollock for the position of Head of the Division of Surgery. He offers an anecdote to demonstrate Dr. Mendelsohn’s style of dealing with differences of opinion within senior leadership. He also recalls a meeting in 2005 that led to the creation of the Sarcoma Research Center and notes the original investment of $400,000 has given rise to $25 million in philanthropy and grants. Dr. Pollock then says that he has not had enough interaction with Dr. Ronald DePinho to comment on him.
Identifier
PollokRE_03_20121119-C23
Publication Date
11-19-2012
Publisher
The Making Cancer History® Voices Oral History Collection, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Raphael Pollock, MD, Oral History Interview, November 19, 2012
Topics Covered
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center - Key MD Anderson FiguresPortraitsLeadershipMD Anderson HistoryMD Anderson CultureBuilding/Transforming the Institution Multi-disciplinary ApproachesInstitutional Mission and Values
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Disciplines
History of Science, Technology, and Medicine | Oncology | Oral History
Transcript
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
I never asked you formally about your views of the MD Anderson presidents that you’ve worked with, so I wonder if you would just tell me a little bit about how you saw their leadership styles and what you think the mark is that they left on MD Anderson.
Raphael Pollock, MD:
Well, I was never here when R. Lee Clark was the president, although I was very fortunate that my first endowed position was the R. Lee Clark Professorship in Surgical Oncology. I was able to receive that professorship in Dr. Clark’s presence. He was still alive, although he had had his CVA and was pretty much aphasic, but I could tell from his smile, such as it was, that he certainly knew what was happening. I can only ascribe to him the sense of respect for his genius in how this institution was organized as a multidisciplinary cancer care venue. When he started Anderson, it was a time when cancer care was surgery and pretty much surgery alone and pretty much radial surgery at that. And here’s an individual who was very able to perform the radical surgery as a surgeon who recognized right from the start that that was not going to be the answer and that we had to go forth with multidisciplinary care. So while I never worked with him, I did study some of what he wrote. There was this great book. I don’t know if you have this—The First Twenty Years, which I read cover to cover, which espoused a lot of his philosophy. And this whole multidisciplinary conception was tremendous and remarkable. I was told that he was very able to—he was a man of grand vision and was a doer and an implementer. Obviously that’s something that I respect in others. So the first president that I actually worked under was Dr. [Charles] LeMaistre, who I have, likewise, tremendous respect for. Dr. LeMaistre had an understanding of this institution and the centrality of clinical care to the mission of the institution that is unparalleled. He clearly was one of the best political operators—and I don’t mean that in a negative, pejorative sense—within the state of Texas. He protected this institution. He helped this institution grow tremendously. He was critically responsible for organizing the external philanthropy that was so important to the growth of this institution and the way that the institution was perceived and accepted throughout the state, and his personal style was one that I totally—I’m smitten by. He was a very good listener—is a very good listener to this day. There is something about him that places him in that Greatest Generation group. He is a very strong believer in handwritten notes, personal communication, and it not only makes you feel special, but it also tells you that he is not manipulated by the pushing and pulling and the pressures. That there’s time to write personal notes, that there’s time to reach out and find people on a personal level is very, very powerful. In the early 1990s, when Mass General tried to recruit me to come up and set up their surgical oncology program, Dr. LeMaistre was instrumental in crafting a retention package that enabled me to stay. It included a short sabbatical so that I could retool as a molecular biologist, a small amount of funding that would enable me to make the transition in my laboratory program. I will be forever grateful to him for having made that possible. He’s a very, very special man. Dr. Mendelsohn, I think, inherited an institution that had weathered the early managed care storms of the early 1990s. John is certainly a builder, a very strong sense of vision for how the institution should grow—its need for growth. This was the person who selected me, after a national search, to be the division head, for which I was very grateful. I think he took a flier on me. I was relatively young for that role. One of the things that I really appreciated about John was that the relationship was more personal than I had with Dr. LeMaistre. Some of that is simply a function of the fact that I was higher in the food chain at that point within the organization. But the way that John handled difficulties—if he thought that you were doing something that he wasn’t happy with, he would arrange a private meeting, and he would tell you what it was that he didn’t like, and then he’d listen to you. If you could justify what you were doing, he would say, “Okay. I’ve got your backside. Go forward.” If he disagreed, he’d say, “That doesn’t fly. You can’t do that. Here are the reasons why.” It was an active mentoring of senior leaders, which, again, I am very, very grateful to him for. I think that there is a strong set of listening skills that that implies and a sense of where things are moving. I never had the sensation that he equated himself with the institution. That was also true of my perceptions of Dr. LeMaistre. I think they both recognized that they had steward roles. That creates— When someone will see themselves in realistic as compared to grandiose terms, that’s another tool that is useful in creating trust. I never had the sensation that either of those individuals ever lost sight of where the institution was going, and yet I also knew that they did think about the welfare of the people that reported to them and what these folks were trying to accomplish. That didn’t mean you had to agree. At that level, disagreement was acceptable and tolerated so long as it was justified and not oppositionally defiant and things of that sort. I really appreciated that aspect of John. I just remember a number of times—not frequent, but at least two or three times—being asked to meet with him about a concern and being able to present my point of view and being heard, not necessarily with agreement, but the listening mode was fully engaged and I really appreciated that. That was very, very useful, and he was very, very helpful as a source of advice at a couple of critical junctures in my own career. Not the least of which in ’05, when the huntsman at the cancer center at the University of Utah was trying to recruit me, John asked me in a private meeting what it was that I wanted to accomplish by staying here, if I wanted to stay. I described to him my vision for this integrated multidisciplinary sarcoma research center, and he agreed with it and basically brought me and a proposal to the attention of Dr. [Margaret] Kripke, and the three of us had several meetings to craft a strategy. It did not feel like I had their attention simply because I was under recruitment elsewhere. It was clear to all concerned that this was going to be a good solution to a number of different activities and problems that we had, given that sarcoma research was in piecemeal and different locations, being able to coalesce this all together.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
And that makes a huge difference.
Raphael Pollock, MD:
It made a huge difference.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
It’s just when you know that something isn’t an arbitrary gift, but the solution to the problem is integral to what its institution needs.
Raphael Pollock, MD:
Well, if you add up the philanthropy and grants that came out of a $400,000 investment—and this is just in the past six years—it’s over $25 million. That’s pretty good return on an investment. And John and Dr. Kripke deserve a huge amount of credit and thanks for having enabled this to happen. I think in fairness to Dr. DePinho, he and I have not had enough interaction, let alone enough positive interaction, for me to really comment for the record. I certainly hope that he’s successful in this realm.
Recommended Citation
Pollock, Raphael E. MD and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 23: The MD Anderson Presidents" (2012). Interview Chapters. 1335.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1335
Conditions Governing Access
Open
