Dec 21, 2020
Retiring ASCO Chief Medical Officer Dr. Richard L Schilsky gives a far-reaching interview with ASCO in Action podcast host ASCO CEO Dr. Clifford A. Hudis, who examines Dr. Schilsky’s trailblazing medical career, his leadership in ASCO and indelible mark on its research enterprise, and what he sees for the future of oncology. ASCO’s first-ever Chief Medical Officer even offers some friendly advice for Dr Julie Gralow, who starts as ASCO’s next CMO on February 15, 2021. In a touching tribute, Dr. Hudis also shares what Dr. Schilsky’s friendship and mentorship has meant to him personally, and suggests that Rich will still be supporting ASCO on critical priorities moving forward. Don’t miss this exchange with one of oncology’s greats!
Transcript
DISCLAIMER: The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement.
CLIFFORD HUDIS: Welcome to this ASCO in Action podcast brought to
you by the ASCO Podcast Network, a collection of nine programs
covering a range of educational and scientific content and offering
enriching insights into the world of cancer care. You can find all
of the shows, including this one, at podcast.asco.org.
The ASCO in Action podcast is a series where we explore the policy
and practice issues that impact oncologists, the entire cancer care
delivery team, and the individuals we care for-- people with
cancer. My name is Dr. Clifford Hudis. And I'm the CEO of ASCO and
the host of the ASCO in Action podcast series.
For today's podcast, I am especially pleased to have as my guest my
friend, colleague, and mentor Dr. Richard Schilsky, ASCO's chief
medical officer. Now, I am sure that many of our listeners have
already heard that Dr. Schilsky will be leaving ASCO in February of
2021, retiring.
However, I want to reassure everybody that even in retirement, he
will continue to make contributions and provide leadership to all
of us. And his illustrious and path-blazing career in oncology
spanning more than four decades is not quite over thankfully.
Rich is ASCO's first chief medical officer. And as such, he has
made a truly indelible mark on all of us. He started with a
proverbial blank piece of paper. The position had no precedent. It
had no budget. It had no staff.
But now after just eight years in the role, he has helped make the
CMO a critically important position at the society. And I have to
say that success is more than anything due to Rich's vision and his
leadership. And that's some of what we'll be talking about
today.
So Rich, thank you very much for joining me today for what I hope
is going to be a great casual but informative conversation about
your amazing career, your unique role at ASCO, and maybe most
importantly in the end what you see for the future of oncology not
just in the United States, but around the world. Thanks for coming
on, Rich.
RICHARD SCHILSKY: Thanks, Cliff. It's great to be here today.
CLIFFORD HUDIS: So with that, let's just dive right in and start at
the very beginning. Rich, tell everybody why you decided to become
an oncologist and maybe share a little bit about what those early
days looked like for you and, in that context, what it was like to
have cancer at the beginning of your career.
RICHARD SCHILSKY: Well, I knew from an early age that I wanted to
be a doctor. And in fact, I had written a little essay when I was
in sixth grade as a homework assignment called My Ambition. And my
mother had tucked that away in a scrapbook. And I found it a number
of years ago. And on rereading it, it was quite amazing to me to
see what I was thinking about even then.
Because I said not only did I want to be a doctor, but I didn't
think that was enough, that I wanted to be a medical researcher
because I wanted to discover new information that would help people
heal from whatever their diseases might be.
And so it was never really any doubt in my mind that I would be a
physician. I went to medical school at the University of Chicago.
But I was living in New York City at the time having grown up in
Manhattan. And the only year we had off in medical school, the only
time we had off in medical school, was the summer between the end
of the first year and the beginning of the second year.
So during that time, I went back to Manhattan. And I was able to
get a fellowship from the American College of Radiology that
allowed me to essentially hang out in the radiation therapy
department at New York University Medical Center, which was within
walking distance of where I grew up. And so I would go over there
every day. And I was taken under the wing of a young radiation
oncologist.
And of course, I wasn't really qualified to do anything at that
point except to follow him around, talk and listen to the patients.
But that turned out to be a really formative experience for me
because we saw the whole gamut of cancer. We saw head and neck
cancers. We saw lung cancer. We saw patients with breast cancer and
prostate cancer.
And in those years-- this is the early 1970s-- many of these
patients have fairly locally far advanced disease and were quite
debilitated by it. But listening to their stories, hearing about
their hopes and their struggles, really demonstrated to me the
human side of cancer.
So I went back to school and thought about this in the context of
my own personal experience, which dated back to when I was in
college when my mother's mother, my maternal grandmother, was
diagnosed with breast cancer. This was 1968. And as you well know,
there were very few therapies available for breast cancer in the
late 1960s, mostly hormone therapies.
And my grandmother had the treatment that was considered standard
of care at that time, which was extended radical mastectomy
followed by chest wall radiation. And some years after that first
mastectomy, she had a breast cancer that developed in the opposite
breast and had a second extended radical mastectomy and chest wall
radiation. And these were very traumatic and disfiguring procedures
for her to go through.
Anyway, long story short is after another few years, she developed
bone metastases and then brain metastases. And there was really
very little that could be done for her other than hormone
therapies. And having observed her go through that illness and
realizing how limited our treatment options were and then having
the experience after my first year in medical school pretty well
cemented for me that I wanted to be an oncologist.
I thought actually about being a radiation oncologist. But then I
did my internal medicine rotation in medical school, fell in love
with internal medicine. And that sort of put me on the path to be a
medical oncologist.
The clinical challenge of caring for cancer patients, the emotional
attachment to those patients, and, of course, even then, the
unfolding biology of cancer was so intellectually captivating that
I actually applied for oncology fellowship when I was a senior
medical student. So even before going off to do my medical
residency, I had already been accepted as a clinical associate at
the National Cancer Institute to start two years hence. And that's
how I became an oncologist.
CLIFFORD HUDIS: So it's so interesting. Because, of course, the
story I'm sure for many people interested not just in oncology, but
even medical education, there are little things that don't happen
nowadays that happened with you like that last little vignette
about the early acceptance into an advanced training program before
your fellowship among other things.
Can you remind us about the timeline? Because I think one of the
things that many of our listeners often can lose sight of is just
how new oncology really is as a specialty. ASCO itself founded in
1964. And the first medical oncology boards were mid-'70s, right?
So you were in med school just before that second landmark,
right?
RICHARD SCHILSKY: That's right. I graduated from medical school in
1975. I started my oncology fellowship in 1977. And I got
board-certified in medical oncology and joined ASCO in 1980. And so
that was the time frame at that point.
CLIFFORD HUDIS: So the internal medicine was actually, if I heard
you right, just two years, not the now traditional four.
RICHARD SCHILSKY: Yeah. I was a short tracker. I did only two years
of internal medicine training rather than three. I did my training
at Parkland Hospital and University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas
with at that time a legendary chair of medicine, Don Seldin, who I
had to get permission from him to leave the program prior to
completing the third year of residency because I had already been
accepted into fellowship at NCI.
And he, Seldin, who was a brilliant chairman and a brilliant
nephrologist, was not at all interested in cancer. And it took a
bit of-- I was going to say arm twisting, but it really took
bleeding on my part to get him to agree to allow me to leave the
residency program to go to the NCI. But he eventually agreed.
And in those years, the first-year clinical fellowship at the NCI
was like being an intern all over again. There were about 15 of us.
We were on call overnight in the clinical center once every two
weeks. We cared for all of our inpatients as well as had a cadre of
outpatients.
We did all of our own procedures. We had no intensive care unit. So
patients who were sick enough to require ventilator support, we
cared on the floor in the inpatient service on our own with
guidance from senior oncologists. It was a bit different from the
way it is now. But, of course, it was fantastic on-the-job training
because we just learned a ton and had to learn it very quickly.
CLIFFORD HUDIS: So that's actually a great segue to the advances
because there was a lot to learn then. But, wow, there's a lot more
to learn, I think, now. And I have real sympathy for trainees and
younger oncologists for the breadth of what they need to learn.
Again, just testing your memory, but platinum came along pretty
much in the mid-'70s as well, right? That was a pivotal expansion
of the armamentarium for us.
So what do you see-- when you summarize progress in cancer research
and care over these decades, what do you think are the most pivotal
or revolutionary milestones that you identify over the span of your
career?
RICHARD SCHILSKY: Yeah. It's really interesting to think about it
historically. There were the early years of discovery in oncology
from the 1950s to the 1970s when we really had the introduction of
the first chemotherapy drugs and the miraculous observation that
people with advanced cancer could actually obtain a remission and,
in some cases, a complete remission with chemotherapy and
combination chemotherapy in particular.
And so that was the formative years of oncology as a medical
specialty and really proof of concept that cancer could be
controlled with drugs. When we got into the 1980s, the 1980s in
many respects were the doldrums of progress in clinical oncology.
There really was not a lot of innovation in the clinic.
But what was happening and what was invisible to many of us, of
course, was that was the decade of discovery of the fundamental
biology of cancer. That's when oncogenes were discovered, when
tumor suppressor genes were discovered, when it became clear that
cancer was really a genetic disease. And that is what transformed
the field and put us on the path to targeted therapy and precision
medicine as we think of it today.
So I think that clearly understanding the biology of cancer as we
do now and all that it took to lead us to that point, which was a
combination of understanding biology, developing appropriate
technology that would, for example, enable the sequencing of the
human genome and then the cancer genome.
And the other formative technology in my opinion that really
changed the way we care for cancer patients was the introduction of
CT scanning. When I was still a fellow at the NCI, we did not have
a CT scanner. If we needed to get detailed imaging of a patient, we
did tomography. And if you remember what tomograms looked like,
they were really blurry images that you could get some depth
perception about what was going on in the patient's chest or
abdomen. But they really weren't very precise.
When CT scanning came along, it really revolutionized our ability
to evaluate patients, assess the extent of disease, stage them in a
much more precise way, which then allowed for better patient
selection for curative surgery, better radiation therapy planning.
So we don't often point to imaging advances as some of the
transformative things that paved the way in oncology, but I think
imaging is really overlooked to some extent.
So I think the technology advances, the biological advances, are
the things that really allowed the field to move forward very
quickly. And by the time we got into the mid-1990s, we were
beginning to see the introduction of the targeted therapies that
have now become commonplace today.
And then it was around 2000, I think, that we saw the introduction
of Gleevec. And I'm reminded always about an editorial written by
Dan Longo in The New England Journal a few years ago. And Dan and I
were fellows together. We worked side by side on the wards at the
clinical center and became very good friends.
And Dan in his role as a deputy editor of The New England Journal
wrote an editorial a few years ago that was titled "Gleevec Changed
Everything." And Gleevec did change everything. It changed our
entire perception of what were the drivers of cancer and how we
might be able to control cancer very effectively and potentially
put it into long-term remission.
Now, of course, we know now that the whole Gleevec story is more of
an exception than a rule in targeted therapy. And, of course, we
know that tumors become resistant to targeted therapies. But we
couldn't have known any of this back in the early years of oncology
because we had no real insight into what caused cancer to grow or
progress. And the notion of drug resistance, while we realized that
it occurred, we had no idea what the mechanisms were. So it's such
a different landscape now than what it used to be. It's quite
remarkable.
CLIFFORD HUDIS: So as you tell the story, there's, of course, a lot
of focus on technology, whether it's biology and understanding the
key features of malignancy or imaging or more. But what I also note
in your story and I want to come back to is the people. And I can't
help but reflect on where we are in this moment of the COVID-19
pandemic. Yes, we've moved to telemedicine. Everything can be
accomplished via technology. And, yet, the human touch is so
important.
When we think about being in the room with people, when we think
about face to face from the context of career development and your
own career, you touched on Dr. Seldin, I think, already from the
perspective of internal medicine training. But are there are other
mentors or important shapers of your career that you think we
should know about?
RICHARD SCHILSKY: Well, probably, the most influential person early
in my career in medical school was John Altman. John, you may know,
was the inaugural director of the University of Chicago's
NCI-designated Cancer Center, which was one of the very first
NCI-designated cancer centers in 1973 after the National Cancer Act
of 1971 created the cancer centers program.
And John, who was a leading oncologist studying Hodgkin and
non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, was a faculty member there. He was the
director of our cancer center as I said. He took me under his wing
even when I was in medical school and served as a real role model
and mentor to me.
When I was in my internal medicine training as I mentioned earlier,
Don Seldin, the chair of medicine, was never particularly
interested in oncology. So, to some extent, I didn't have-- I had
great internal medicine training. But I did not have good
mentorship in oncology. When I got to the NCI, then my whole world
really opened up.
And the two pivotal people there in my career were Bob Young, who
was chief of the medicine branch and was my clinical mentor and
remains a mentor and friend to this day, and then, of course, Bruce
Chabner, who was the chief of the clinical pharmacology branch.
And in my second year of fellowship when we all went into the
laboratory, I went into Bruce's lab. And that's where I really got
interested in the mechanism of action of anti-cancer drugs and
ultimately in drug development and early phase clinical trials. And
both Bob and Bruce remain very close to me even today.
CLIFFORD HUDIS: So I'm concerned about time on our call today on
our discussion. Because we could obviously fill lots of hours on
all of these remarkable experiences and amazing people you worked
with. But I'm going to ask that we fast forward a little bit.
You and I share, I think, passion and love for ASCO. So I think
that it's reasonable for us to focus a little bit on that for the
time we have left here. You didn't start out obviously as chief
medical officer at ASCO. But you were a really active ASCO
volunteer and leader. Maybe tell us a little bit about some of the
ASCO volunteer roles that you engaged in and what that meant to you
at the time and how that led to this role.
RICHARD SCHILSKY: Well, I'll be brief. I joined ASCO in 1980 at the
first moment that I was eligible to join ASCO. I had attended my
first ASCO meeting the year before, 1979, when I was still in my
fellowship training. And it was clear to me even then when the
whole annual meeting was about 2,500 people in two ballrooms in a
hotel in New Orleans that that was a community of scholars and
physicians that I wanted to be a part of.
And so, over the years, I did what people do even today. I
volunteered to participate in whatever ASCO activity I could get
involved with. Over the years-- I think I counted it up not too
long ago-- I think I served or chaired 10 different ASCO
committees, more often serving as a member, but in a number of
those committees also serving as the chair over many years.
And as I became more deeply involved in ASCO and saw other
opportunities to engage, I had the opportunity to run for election
to the board and was-- after a couple of tries was elected to serve
on the board and then eventually elected to serve as ASCO president
in 2008-2009.
But the attraction of ASCO in many ways was a community of diverse
but, in many ways, like-minded people, people who had similar
passion and drive and focus. But I think what you get at ASCO in
many ways is the wonderful diversity of our field. If you work in a
single institution for much of your career as I did and as you did,
you get to know that institution pretty well. You get to know its
perspectives and its biases and its strengths and its
weaknesses.
But there's a whole world of oncology out there. And you can get
exposed to that at ASCO because you meet and work with colleagues
from every clinical setting, every research setting, people who
have remarkable skills and interests and passions. And it's just a
wonderful environment to help develop your career. So I consider
myself to be extremely fortunate to have had the journey in ASCO
that I've had culminating, of course, with ultimately my coming on
the staff as ASCO's first chief medical officer.
CLIFFORD HUDIS: We often joke about that blank sheet of paper. But
in retrospect, it's very obvious that you had built up that
collection of LEGO blocks, and then you assembled them all into the
ASCO Research Enterprise, a name you gave it.
And it really, in retrospect, builds, I think, very cleanly upon
all of your prior experience, but also the vision that you
developed based on that experience for how research should be
conducted. Can you maybe share with everybody the scope and vision
for the ASCO Research Enterprise, what the intent was, and where
you see it going, and what it includes today?
RICHARD SCHILSKY: Sure. I won't claim that I came to ASCO with the
whole thing fully developed in my mind. As you said, when I came, I
literally did have a blank slate. Allen Lichter, who hired me,
said, come on board and help me make ASCO better. And so I, in a
sense, reverted to what I knew best how to do, which was clinical
research.
And having in my career been a cancer center director, a hem-onc
division chief, a cooperative group chair, I had a lot of
experience to draw on. And it was obvious to me that ASCO was
fundamentally an organization that took in information from various
sources, evaluated it, vetted it, collated it, and then
disseminated it through our various channels, most notably our
meetings and our journals.
But ASCO itself did not contribute to the research enterprise. And
that seemed to me to be a lost opportunity. We knew that ASCO had
lots of data assets that could be of interest to our members and to
the broader cancer community. But they were scattered all around
the organization and not particularly well annotated or organized.
So we began to collate those. And they are now available to ASCO
members on the ASCO data library.
I recognized that we did not have an organized unit in ASCO to
support or facilitate or conduct research. So, in 2017, we formed
the Center for Research and Analytics and brought together staff
who were already working at ASCO but scattered in different
departments but all people who had an interest in clinical research
or research policy and brought them into this new unit, which has
really become the focal point for research work at ASCO.
We recognized that ASCO members for many years were interested in
surveying their colleagues, surveying other ASCO members, to help
advance research questions. But ASCO actually had a policy that
prohibited that.
So that never really made good sense to me. It seemed like a lost
opportunity. And we were able to create a program and have the ASCO
board approve it whereby any ASCO member could opt in to
participate in what we now call the Research Survey Pool.
And in doing so, they are essentially agreeing to participate in
research surveys conducted by their colleagues. So that program is
now up and running. There are, I think, eight surveys that have
been completed or are currently in the field. And this is now a
service that ASCO provides through CENTRA to its members to enable
them to survey their colleagues for research purposes.
Most importantly, I think we saw an opportunity back in 2014 or
2015 to begin to learn from what our colleagues were doing in
clinical practice as they began to deploy precision medicine. And
there was a lot of genomic profiling that was going on at that
time. It was revealing actionable alterations in roughly 30% or so
of the tumors that were profiled.
But there was a lot of difficulty in doctors and patients obtaining
the drugs that were thought to be appropriate to treat the cancer
at that particular time because most of those drugs would have to
be prescribed off label. And there was not a sufficient evidence
base to get them reimbursed. And, moreover, even if they could be
reimbursed, there was no organized way to collect the patient
outcomes and learn from their experiences.
So that led to us developing ASCO's first prospective clinical
trial, TAPUR, which really solves both of those problems. Through
the participation of the eight pharmaceutical companies that are
engaged with us in the study, we are providing-- at one point, it
was up to 19 different treatments free of charge to patients.
These are all marketed drugs but used outside of their FDA-approved
indications. And we were collecting data on the patients, the
genomic profile of cancer, the treatment they received, and their
outcomes in a highly organized way.
And so now this is a study that we launched in 2016. We're now
almost to 2021. We have more than 3,000 patients who have been
registered on the study, meaning consented to participate, more
than 2,000 who have been treated on the study. And we are churning
out results as quickly as we can about which drugs are used or not
useful in the off-label setting for patients whose tumors have a
specific genomic profile.
So we built all this infrastructure. And having this in place has
also then allowed us to respond rapidly to unmet needs. So when the
COVID-19 pandemic overwhelmed all of us, and when our members were
looking for information about what was the impact of COVID-19 on
their patients, one of the things we were able to do because we had
CENTRA, because we had a skilled staff and an infrastructure, was
to very quickly stand up the ASCO COVID-19 registry, which we
launched in April of this year.
And there are now about 1,000 patients who've enrolled in the
registry from around 60 practices that are participating. And we
will follow these patients now longitudinally and learn from their
experiences what has been the impact of the COVID-19 illness on
them and their outcomes, how has it disrupted their cancer care,
and ultimately how that impacts their overall cancer treatment
outcomes.
So as I now contemplate leaving ASCO after eight years having
started with a blank slate, I'm very proud of the fact that I think
I'm leaving us with a remarkable infrastructure. We now have a
clinical trials network of 124 sites around the country
participating in TAPUR that we never had before. We have through
the work of CancerLinQ a real-world evidence data generator that is
beginning to churn out valuable insights.
We have a capacity to survey ASCO members for research purposes. We
have an ability to stand up prospective observational registries to
gather information longitudinally about patients and their
outcomes. We have a core facility in CENTRA with highly skilled
data analysts and statisticians that can support these various
research activities.
So ASCO is now primed, I think, to really contribute in a very
meaningful way to the gaps in knowledge that will forever exist in
oncology just because of the complexity of all the diseases we call
cancer. And that's what I mean by the ASCO Research Enterprise. It
is in fact remarkable and, I think, powerful enterprise if we
continue to use it effectively.
CLIFFORD HUDIS: Well, that's an interesting segue to my next
thought, which is really about what comes next. I'll talk about
you. But let's start with ASCO first. Your successor, Dr. Julie
Gralow, obviously has been announced publicly. She's an
accomplished clinician and researcher. She has a known recognized
passion for patients, patient advocacy, clinical research through
her leadership at SWOG but also health care equity and global
oncology.
So from your perspective, having created all of these assets and
resources, what advice would you give Dr. Gralow publicly on how to
make the position hers, what to take us to next? And I do want to
acknowledge for everybody listening that the hints I've been making
up until now are that Rich has agreed that he will continue to
contribute as a leader to TAPUR for the short term, at least, at
least the next year helping Julie get fully oriented to this
program and others. So what will your advice be to Julie?
RICHARD SCHILSKY: That's a great question. She's a great selection.
And congratulations on hiring her. I think there are two key
issues, I think, maybe three. One is to have a broad scope and cast
a wide net. Oncology care and cancer research and cancer biology
are incredibly complicated and nuanced and broad in scope.
And although Julie is an accomplished breast cancer clinician and
researcher, in this role at ASCO, you have to be very broad. You
have to understand all of cancer care, all of cancer research, all
of policy and advocacy not as an expert in necessarily in any one
aspect of ASCO's work, but you have to understand the impact of all
of those things on cancer care providers and on cancer
patients.
And it's important to always be looking to the future. The future
is going to be here before you know it. And we as a professional
society have to prepare our members for that future. So that leads
me to the second point, which is listen to the members.
The members are the people on the front lines who are delivering
care to patients every day. And, fundamentally, ASCO's job is to be
sure that our members have all the tools and knowledge and
resources that they need to deliver the highest quality care to
patients every day. So listening to what they need, what their
struggles are, what their burdens are, is extremely important.
And then the third thing I would recommend to her is that she get
to know the staff and colleagues that she'll be working with. ASCO
has a remarkably accomplished, skilled, motivated, passionate
staff, many of whom have been with the organization for years, if
not decades, who understand what ASCO can and cannot do and who
understand what our members need. And she will be well advised to
spend a good portion of her first few months on the job just
listening and learning from her colleagues.
CLIFFORD HUDIS: That's always good advice for anybody making a big
career move. But, of course, the wisdom you bring to it is palpable
and much appreciated. And I'm sure Julie will be taking your
advice. And, by the way, so will I continue to do that even after
you make your move. So speaking of your retirement, can you share
with us a little bit about what it's actually going to look like
for you? Is it about family? Or are you still going to have some
professional engagement? Again, I suggest that there might be some
already, but maybe you could expand on it.
RICHARD SCHILSKY: Yeah. I'm still fully focused on my work at ASCO.
And, of course, as you know, when I wake up on February 15, I will
no longer be ASCO's chief medical officer. And it's going to be a
bit of a rude awakening. Fortunately, I will be able to continue my
engagement with ASCO through the TAPUR study as you mentioned. I
will, of course, forever be at ASCO member and a donor to Conquer
Cancer and be willing to serve the society in any way.
I have a number of activities that I've been involved with even
throughout my time at ASCO. Not-for-profit boards, for example--
I'm on the board of directors of Friends of Cancer Research. I'm on
the board of directors for the Reagan-Udall Foundation for FDA.
I plan to continue with those activities as long as they'll have
me. I've been serving the last few years on the board also of the
EORTC, the large European cooperative clinical research group. And
I expect to continue in that role.
Beyond that, I will see what opportunities come my way. I think one
of the things about retirement if you will that I'm looking forward
to is the opportunity to pick and choose what to work on based on
what interests me without having the burdens of having a full-time
job.
On the personal front, of course, we're all looking forward to
crawling out from the pandemic. I've basically been locked in my
home outside Chicago since March. And I'm looking forward to
getting back out to a little bit of a social life. As you know, I
have two grown daughters and now three grandchildren, two of whom
are in Atlanta, one of whom is near by us in the Chicago area. So
looking forward to spending time with them as well.
So it will be a change for me to be sure after working as hard as--
I feel like I've worked for really now 45 years since I graduated
from medical school. But I also feel like I'm not quite done yet
and that I still have ways in which I can contribute. I just feel
like at this point, maybe it's time for me to choose how I want to
make those contributions and spend a little bit more time doing
some other things.
CLIFFORD HUDIS: Well, both you and my predecessor, Allen Lichter,
are modeling something, have modeled something, that I think is not
often discussed but can be very important. For people and for
institutions, change is not a bad thing. And setting the
expectation that you will pour your heart and soul into something
but not necessarily do it alone or forever and not prevent others
from taking that role at some point, that's a really-- I think it's
a selfless kind of sacrifice in a way.
Because, of course, you could stay and do what you're doing for
longer. But as you and I have discussed, there is a value for all
of us collectively in having fresh eyes and new people take
organizations in a new direction. That's how I ended up here
frankly. And I think that's the kind of opportunity you're creating
right now, something that should be celebrated in my opinion.
RICHARD SCHILSKY: Well, thanks. And I couldn't agree more. When I
look back at the arc of my career and having all the different
kinds of leadership roles that I've had, I basically have made a
job change every 8 to 10 years. I was the director of our cancer
center for nearly 10 years. I was associate dean for clinical
research at the University of Chicago for eight years, another
position that I created from a blank slate at that institution.
The exception was serving 15 years as a CALGB group chair. But that
was a position I really loved and enjoyed and felt like at the end
of the first 10 I hadn't quite accomplished everything I wanted to
accomplish.
But the point is that I think it is both necessary for
organizations to have regular leadership change. And it's also
refreshing for us as individuals. There gets to a point where you
feel like you can do your job in your sleep. And I actually think
that's a good time to make a change.
Because if that's the way you feel, you're not being sufficiently
challenged. And you're probably not being sufficiently creative.
And so it's a good time to move on and refresh your own activities
and give your organization a chance to bring in someone to
hopefully build on whatever you've created and bring it to the next
level.
CLIFFORD HUDIS: Well, I agree with all that, although I think your
comment there about doing the job in your sleep would not apply
because I'm pretty confident that the environment and opportunities
have continued to evolve in a way that has made it interesting from
beginning to end. But you don't have to rebut me on that. I just
want to thank you very, very much, Rich.
As we set up this podcast, I expected that we would have a really
fun and enlightening conversation. And, of course, you did not
disappoint. We could talk for much, much longer if we only had the
time.
On a personal note to you and for the benefit of our listeners, I
want to share that Rich has been for me a remarkable friend and
mentor and colleague. I first met Rich at the very beginning of my
career when my mentor, Larry Norton, pushed me out from Memorial
into the larger world. And he did that first and primarily through
ASCO and the Cancer and Leukemia Group. Those are really the two
places where I was exposed to the world.
And through the CALGB, Rich really began to offer me and others,
many others, opportunities that shaped careers plural, mine and
others. So when I got to ASCO as CEO, Rich was there. And I knew I
could always depend on you to be clearheaded, intellectually
precise, constructive, visionary. And the thing about you, Rich, is
that you never would say yes to anything unless you knew for sure
you could do it and indeed, I think, how you could do it.
I always share this story which your staff at CENTRA pointed out to
me. And I have to admit that I hadn't picked it up myself. But in
all the years of now working down the hall from Rich, probably
hundreds and hundreds of hours of meetings, he never has taken a
note in front of me. And, yet, everything we talk about, every
action item we conclude to pursue, they all get done.
So I don't know, Rich. You have a remarkable way of organizing your
thoughts and your plans, keeping it together, and getting things
done. And I'm going to miss that tremendously in the years
ahead.
So, Rich, I want to say congratulations. Congratulations on
reaching this really important milestone in your life. Thank you on
behalf of ASCO and the broader oncology community and the patients
we care for and their families for making the world a better place.
And just as a small thing, thank you for joining me today for this
ASCO in Action podcast.
RICHARD SCHILSKY: Thank you, Cliff. It's been great.
CLIFFORD HUDIS: And, for all of you, if you enjoyed what you heard
today, don't forget to give us a rating or a review on Apple
Podcasts or wherever you listen. And, while you're there, be sure
to subscribe so you never miss an episode. The ASCO in Action
podcast is just one of ASCO's many podcasts. You can find all of
the shows at podcast.asco.org. Until next time, thank you for
listening to this ASCO in Action podcast.