The Directors: Louis Weiner and Taofeek Owonikoko on keeping up morale amid uncertainty

Speaking on The Cancer Letter Podcast, Taofeek Kunle Owonikoko recalled recent conversations with two junior faculty members at the University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center. 

One faculty member was worried about losing institutional support as Trump era cuts work their way through the system. 

“I had to reassure them, ‘Yes, we’re not reneging on our commitment,’” Owonikoko said on the podcast. “It’s a challenging phase that we’re all going through, but we’re going to get through this. So, we have to help give them that cushion, that support, that level of at least some degree of certainty for them to keep plugging at this.”

The other faculty member had even greater misgivings about the feasibility of a career in science. 

“The second person I was talking to actually had to do with whether or not this is the type of career they want to pursue going forward,” Owonikoko said. “And I think this is another risk that we actually have to pay attention to, people who are already committed to this track, but now they’re looking at it, say, ‘Wow, how often do I have to worry about this? We just got through COVID, now this. What is next?’

This is another risk that we actually have to pay attention to, people who are already committed to this track, but now they’re looking at it, say, ‘Wow, how often do I have to worry about this? We just got through COVID, now this. What is next?

Taofeek Kunle Owonikoko

“And helping them to see beyond the immediate challenge to say, ‘If you keep at it, eventually everything would even out and you’ll be successful at it.’ But it’s very, very tough.” 

Owonikoko is the executive director of the University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center, senior associate dean of cancer programs at University of Maryland School of Medicine, and associate vice president of cancer programs at University of Maryland, Baltimore.

Keeping up morale is a big part of the job for a cancer center director. 

“We have to believe that the work we do matters, and that it’s going to have an impact, and that the world will allow us to continue doing it,” said Louis M. Weiner, director of Georgetown University’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center. 

“I have to believe in the future. And where I think I lead is by communicating that belief, that faith in the future, and the critical importance of projecting an optimism that the hard work we do is going to yield positive results. I think people respond to that really well, and I think it can be inspiring.

“And the major thing we have to do, in my view, is to be good communicators now. It involves management by walking around, is the old line that people used to use. It involves town hall meetings, all-hands meetings, whatever you want to call them. It involves regular communications.”

In addition to being the director of Georgetown, Weiner is the Francis L. and Charlotte G. Gragnani Chair and is professor of oncology and chair of the Department of Oncology at Georgetown University Medical Center, and director of the MedStar Georgetown Cancer Institute.

Weiner and Owonikoko appeared on the latest episode of The Cancer Letter Podcast, as part of a monthly series called The Directors, which focuses on the problems that keep directors of cancer centers up at night. 

Beverly Ginsburg Cooper, managing director for research at Huron Consulting Group and a discussant on this episode of The Directors, said she is seeing resilience and perseverance on the part of her clients as their institutions adjust to unprecedented changes.

“When we all heard about the [indirect costs] maybe going to 20%, and hearing about wonderful colleagues who do extraordinary research where grants are being held up, it was a sucker punch. We all felt depressed and we were all talking about what’s going to happen,” Ginsburg Cooper said.

“I spent days talking from one center director to the next, and it took about two or three days. And then you heard, ‘What are we going to do next? Give me some strategies. What do you think the new PAR for the CCSG will be?’ And everybody started to pick themselves up off the floor and start to move forward.

“So, I don’t hear the ‘woe is us’ and ‘the sky is falling’ anymore.” Now we talk about what we’re going to do and we’re back in the game, and everybody is determined to continue. 

“The one caveat, and it was said earlier on the call, is that great scientists and staff are reaching out to all of us because even though they haven’t been RIFed,, they may not want to stay. I’m getting a lot of resumes and a lot of people calling, and it’s the young people who are now saying to me, ‘Maybe I picked the wrong career.’ 

“And that’s very worrisome, because they’re our future.”

A transcript of the podcast is available below:

Paul Goldberg: Welcome to the third episode of The Directors. With us, we have Taofeek Owonikoko of the University of Maryland, and Louis Weiner of Georgetown, my neighbor, actually. And, I guess my first question is always the same: “Gentlemen, what keeps you up at night?”

Louis Weiner: Well, traditionally, what kept me up at night was my patients, and, frankly, my excitement about the research we do, and the opportunities, and all that. It’s obviously a little different now.

And what keeps me up at night now is the maintenance of our cancer research mission, the sustainability of our cancer care mission, and our ability to make a difference in the community we serve.

Taofeek Owonikoko: Well said, Louis. I will reflect the same type of sentiment, in terms of what keeps me up at night is actually the same thing that keeps me awake during the day, which is how do we use the opportunity we have, the platform that we have to make the human condition better.

Whether that is preventing disease or taking good care of those who have come down with disease, and in our case, patients with cancer.

I think when you ask typically about now, ‘What is the additional factor that we all worry about that maybe keeps us even much more awake at night?’ is ‘How do we make sure that the progress we’ve made over the past 40, 50 years in the fight against cancer, that we can sustain that momentum and keep going for the next 40, 50 years, so that we are in a better place in 50 years than we are today?’

Louis Weiner: So, I just want to reflect on that for a second, Taofeek.

Much as I’d love to be able to be here in 50 years to celebrate those accomplishments, the thing that really sustains us that we all love I think about our jobs is the ability to influence the next generation, and to help nurture that next generation and the generations that follow, our graduate students, our residents, our fellows, our junior faculty, the advocates that we work with, the people who actually carry the ball down the field.

We all walk on the shoulders of people who came before us.

And what I worry about most is uncertainty at this moment. I don’t think any of us know how any of the current events are going to play out in the long run.

I guess in thinking about the uncertainty of this, do you have to project certainty as part of being leaders of your institutions? How do you do it? Do you fake it, or do you really see a way of making people feel better about what’s happening?

Taofeek Owonikoko: I think we have a much higher level of uncertainty now that we’ve had in the past, but there’s always some degree of uncertainty about the future.

And as leaders, part of what you have to do is you have to have a broader viewpoint. You have to have a much more comprehensive idea about what you’re able to accomplish today and in the future, while not also losing sight of potential threats and risks.

So, my approach has been to provide steady leadership reassurance to people, to say things might look uncertain at this point, but it will not always be the same. Just like we did not anticipate today being the way it is today.

Similarly, if we keep at it, all we can do, all we have control over, is the best that we bring to what we do.

So, as long as we do that, we’ll allow the future to take care of itself, while we plan against some degree of uncertainty.

So, part of what I’ve done now is to be available to people, because a lot of our faculty members and trainees, not only are they suffering from the uncertainty about the future, they also want to know what the current reality is.

And providing that information to them, to say, “This is where things are, these are the things we can do, given our current circumstance. These are the things we plan to do that may or may not happen, depending on where we are.”

So, actually, I learned this from some of my other colleagues, which is we have to confront that fear about the future by having faith in the fact that the future will always develop in our present if we keep at it.

Louis Weiner: So, first of all, Paul, I don’t think you can fake this stuff. People will spot inauthenticity in a leader, especially given the general intimacy of cancer center leaders and the people who we are charged with serving.

So, we have to be authentic. It has to come from a place of deep inner confidence and resolve.

I also think that many of us are battle-hardened, because we just not that long ago had to help our institutions move through COVID, which was a cataclysmic impact on research and healthcare delivery.

So, it’s déjà vu all over again in some ways. But I think that, in fairness, I do feel optimism. I just cannot allow myself to believe that the extraordinary progress that we’ve made over the last 50 years is going to be cast away entirely and irrevocably.

And that we have to believe that the work we do matters, and that it’s going to have an impact, and that the world will allow us to continue doing it.

I have to believe in the future. And where I think I lead is by communicating that belief, that faith in the future, and the critical importance of projecting an optimism that the hard work we do is going to yield positive results.

I think people respond to that really well, and I think it can be inspiring.

And the major thing we have to do, in my view, is to be good communicators now. It involves management by walking around, is the old line that people used to use. It involves town hall meetings, all hands meetings, whatever you want to call them. It involves regular communications.

Paul, I think you know that I have a weekly blog that I have used as a communications tool to help the people at the cancer center know what’s going on—in my head at least. And also, not just the news of the day, but also the feelings I have about what’s going on.

And I’ll tell you that when we went into COVID and we were all in lockdown, I did a blog every day for about four months, just because people were all isolated. And I can’t tell you how many people came up to me afterwards and said it was like a lifeline for them, because it’s not that my writing is so great—it was just that there was a communication.

There was an empathy that they were sensing and a connection that they felt. And I think that we have to not pull apart at this time, but rather band together.

You both run urban cancer centers. That gives you a different view. Actually, our guests on the last episode were Ray DuBois and Roy Jensen, who run very rural centers, serving very rural populations in very red states. So, what do you see?

Taofeek Owonikoko: Yes. I think running a cancer center located in an urban location has its own challenges, just as it’s offered some additional advantages.

As we all know, a significant proportion of patients actually live a little distance—or far distance—from cancer centers. When you think about it, the urban-located cancer centers primarily cater to that urban population, but we also have people traveling distances to come to the cancer center.

So, we actually have to deal with both population and those two challenges at the same time. But there are unique challenges that we face, because there are specific challenges that we have to pay attention to.

A lot of our academic medical centers are based in urban populations. And compared to the general U.S. population, actually, this data from American Association of Medical Colleges, that only 5% of all inpatient beds in the U.S. academic medical centers are inpatient beds—only 5%.

But a quarter of all inpatient days actually occur in those 5% of patients.

So, we take care of five times as many patients as the bed that we control. And part of that is because it’s not just that we are located in highly populated places, but people actually travel from far and near to access the level of expertise that you can only find at academic medical centers.

The other thing that we also have to grapple with is when you look at the urban population, the insurance mix and healthcare coverage is different. You have a lot more people, extremes of lives, both young and old. So, you have to be ready to take care of those.

We have a lot more, maybe, under-insured, uninsured, and even those who are insured with maybe Medicaid insurance.

About a third of our patients are Medicaid patients when we take care of the urban population. So, these are unique challenges that we have to grapple with, in addition to the general challenges that every healthcare organization will have to face.

But we’ve been doing this over and over again. And I think a lot of us, of course, much, much longer than I’ve been doing this and have your style as to how to address that, is actually where you have to partner better with the healthcare system that you are part of.

Because a lot of what we do, we don’t do in isolation, since the majority of us are not stand-alone cancer centers. So, things that we may want to do, we also have to make sure that it aligns with the mission of the school, as well as the mission of the healthcare system that we belong to.

So, we grapple with all these multiple contending forces and we have to become great triangulators of interest to make things happen.

Louis Weiner: Yes. So, those are really good points. Like most cancer centers these days, we have a primary urban base, but we also have a health system that extends out quite a ways with a total of 10 hospitals for MedStar Health.

And then our consortium partner, Hackensack Meridian Health, has 18 hospitals. And while not all those hospitals are in the actual defined cancer center population, they’re the health systems that we’re working with. And trying to figure out how to both provide the kinds of highly elevated care that we typically provide in a tertiary medical center, but also thinking about how we now push that out into the community, is an area of real importance.

One of the really neat things about working in D.C. is how incredibly diverse it is. You have some of the richest neighborhoods in the country and some of the poorest neighborhoods in the country.

You have some of the most diverse populations, international populations, a large population of underserved minorities that have to be cared for. And it creates, again, great challenges, but also enormous opportunities. And The Cancer Letter has written already about the work we do with our Ralph Lauren Center for Cancer Prevention and the work we do in the community to provide enhanced services, navigation services for underserved patients.

And I think that’s something I really embrace. And when I moved here from Philadelphia, which has a large urban disadvantaged population as well, I was convinced that I wanted to be sure that we would provide the same quality of care to everybody, irrespective of their background, their race, their socioeconomic status, et cetera.

And what I’ve learned fairly quickly, actually, was that I was wrong, that everybody deserves the same chance for a good outcome and the same good outcome. And it doesn’t matter what your background is; some people need more help than others to get that same good outcome.

And frequently, it’s the people who are poor or have less health literacy, or face discrimination for one reason or another, who are the ones who really need our help the most. And I think that what I’ve learned in, as Taofeek generously says, my many years of being a cancer center director, is the critical importance of recognizing the relevance of our cancer centers to our community’s health.

And I think many of us come from backgrounds where we were very science-oriented and very clinical trials-oriented.

And I think this whole idea of being a vital part of the community that makes a big difference in the community, through our community outreach and engagement activities, is a really special opportunity for us to make a difference.

And it’s actually been one of the most important things that I think I’ve been able to bring. And, honestly, when I look back on my nearly 18 years as a cancer center director, I think one of the things that gives me the greatest sense of satisfaction is how we’ve been able…

Believe me. It’s not just me, it’s Lucille Adams-Campbell, it’s our whole team, how we’ve been able to really push out into the community, and really help elevate the health of the community in ways that were not the norm when I took the job.

RIF notices are coming in and hitting a lot of people in your catchment areas. I guess, it’s probably a question on two levels. First, the patients, what are you seeing there? And—two—gosh, is it possible for you to be recruiting people who are losing their jobs in the government?

Louis Weiner: Well, I’ll take that first one, because there’s too many people losing their jobs in the government for any one university to take them all, first of all.

Secondly, what a tragedy it is for everybody who’s losing their jobs.

Good people doing good and important work, suddenly finding themselves at loose ends competing with an enormous number of people for a relatively limited number of jobs. My heart breaks with them.

What we have found is that there are a number of people who are clinicians, clinical investigators with families who are hoping to stay in the general area of D.C., obviously, and so we’ve had no shortage of applications. And I’m sure that’s true for cancer center directors around the country.

And we will, in a way that’s disciplined and appropriate, look at people who may be aligned with our mission and with our fiscal resources. It’s really hard with the scientists, I think, because many of the scientists at NCI or NIH, are career NCI/NIH people with no peer-reviewed funding, no clear way they’ll be able to support themselves, at least initially.

And I think health systems and universities are going to be perhaps reticent to take one additional risk when there’s such an uncertain time. And I don’t know what’s going to happen with all that.

Taofeek Owonikoko: Yes. Definitely, a very, very difficult time we’re all going through, especially when it comes to people losing their jobs.

We’ve been constantly getting emails, phone calls.

It’s not just people losing their jobs; it’s their family members. At times, you have maybe two-income families where both of them work for the government, and half of that is gone. So, it’s not just the person losing the job that has the angst of what’s going to happen. It’s the entire family.

And if things were otherwise stable on this side, you can say, “Whoa, what an opportunity! Let me get these highly-trained, highly successful people and bring them into the mix.”

But then you also have our healthcare system having issues around, “Oh, we don’t know how things are going to be—let’s be a little bit more conservative in terms of our growth strategy.” We have universities now, some of them are going on to new policies around hiring freezes. So, when you have a hiring freeze, even if you have the best candidates in front of you, it becomes very, very difficult for you to engage them. But at least here at Maryland, what we’ve tried to do is for scientists where we have some independent institutes supported by state funding, we’ve figured out a way to connect them, and see whether the expertise that they bring and the experience that they all have acquired over these decades could be of value.

I think for the physicians, it’s a little bit tricky, because oftentimes we don’t have open slots for physicians to just come into. And a lot of them have been in quasi-clinical/administrative roles.

They’re not the busiest clinicians out there, and they’re probably not looking at this stage in their career to all of a sudden become full-time clinicians. So, how do you engage that group of people?

We’ve been looking at, maybe, alternative engagement strategies, where someone can have a part-time appointment with an institute and, maybe they just have a clinical outlet, if possible. We’re talking about some people wanting to just volunteer to maintain their clinical skills and not looking for a full-time clinical job.

But it’s still a very, very challenging time.

Louis Weiner: Nobody knows, bluntly. I mean, I think that I can tell you just today, we were notified by Krzysztof Ptak that the annual NCI Cancer Center directors meeting that was held, organized by NCI, was canceled.

It was scheduled for May 21.

And this is an important time for us to get together and have interaction with the NCI director. Now, they don’t have an NCI director. And I assume that’s one of the reasons why they decided not to have the meeting.

But it’s very difficult. I will tell you one thing, that the program officers, the staff that we’ve interacted with around grants, around our CCSG non-competing renewal that we submitted in March, have really been marvelous.

They’re there to try and help us continue to do the work they do. And I felt very supported. And I think that’s been the general experience of the cancer center directors, administrators, et cetera, the grantees.

The program officers are genuinely on our side. And it’s interesting, because I think until this all happened, I think there was always, maybe, a vaguely adversarial kind of feel to it all. But we find that, really, they want to make a difference. This is how they make their difference.

Taofeek Owonikoko: Yes. I really want to second that.

I think use this to make the plug of appreciation for all of our colleagues at the NCI and NIH writ large.

That despite the tremendous uncertainty that they experience in their own personal lives and their job situation, we’ve actually not seen that being transferred to us. You would expect some degree of aggression to say things are so tough, but they’ve been so accommodating, so understanding.

We are very, very appreciative and understanding of the tremendous pressure they’re under this point.

Back to your question about how do you figure out who is there.

Actually, it’s not just knowing who left. Part of the things that we also know is some of our faculty members also have spouses who work for NIH or NCI and other federal agencies in the area.

And for those who even have the job right now, the level of anxiety that people have not knowing what’s going to happen tomorrow is tremendous. I’m actually worried about those that we think are there today, that because they’re not sure of whether or not they have a job next month or a year from now, they are beginning on their own to look for alternative options, which is going to further decimate the level of support that we need within the NCI and the NIH program.

Louis Weiner: Yes. In fact, most of the people who we’ve been contacted by have jobs still. They’re not the people who were fired. They’re the people who say, “This may not be the best environment for me.”

And that’s really heartbreaking. And I certainly hope that changes.

Louis Weiner: Yes. Well, you know what? I’ve heard the same names that everybody else has heard. And I believe none of it, because I think that it’s such a fluid situation. The NCI director will be important. But I think as far as I can tell that, the directives from HHS are probably more important right now and maybe will continue to be.

Taofeek Owonikoko: Now, let’s not forget that appointments come and go.

We know that any role, whether NCI director or NIH director is never a permanent appointment anyway. They always come in and go.

And while the person is important, they’ll bring their own perspectives. They’ll bring their own style. I think what is much more important that we all also have to pay attention to is actually the structure and the infrastructure that has been created over these past three, four, five, six decades.

But that is really what has sustained the NIH and the NCI, that really allows us to have all these advances that we’ve had.

While the director is key—they catalyze a lot of the ideas—but the structure there, we have to pay attention to that. We continue to maintain that structure to help us accomplish our goals.

Louis Weiner: I wanted to actually take a moment to give a shout-out to Kim Rathmell, who I thought was an exceptionally well-qualified and effective director, even though she was only at the helm for a very short time.

She reminded me that who the director is can make a big difference. They can really make a big difference. And I certainly hope that whoever succeeds her…

And a shout-out to Doug Lowy, who is the cancer center world’s favorite relief pitcher. But he does such a wonderful job.

And he has managed to, I think, keep much of what’s of great value at NCI intact through this very challenging moment. And I’m grateful to him, and to Krzysztof, and all those, and genuinely appreciative.

And I think I probably speak for the entire cancer center director community—

Taofeek Owonikoko: Absolutely.

Louis Weiner: In communicating those thanks and recognition of what they’ve done.

Louis Weiner: Yes. I mean, I actually had heard from the get-go that COE was probably not going to be a focus of cutting, that the real focus is, at least at this moment, DEI.

What we don’t know is whether that’s just an excuse to go after stuff, or whether it was really the only thing they wanted to go after.

And we just don’t know that yet.

And we also don’t know, frankly, how much of a funding portfolio they’ll be moving forward for anything. I think that one of the challenges that we all face is how do we diversify our funding portfolio sources in order to be able to do high-impact work moving forward?

There are not a lot of good choices.

Taofeek, have you had a chance to look at the PAR?

Taofeek Owonikoko: Not in full detail yet, but we’ve had some conversations about what to expect. And I think, based on the email that Krzysztof shared with all the directors, we know the major change that we have to pay attention to is we know that the PED section is off.

We know COE is still there.

We have to then understand how much of a tweak should we anticipate around COE, but it’s good that that component of the PED is still intact.

How have you been affected in terms of grants and contracts?

Louis Weiner: We have so far not been hugely damaged. Where Georgetown has been damaged mostly is in its global health areas, with all the stuff, all the cuts that have occurred with USAID and all that.

And we have a large global health effort, and so, that was really hammered. We’ve had really not much else.

The thing we’ve been noticing most is how slow it has been to get grants that have had fundable scores, actually getting a NOGA [Notice of Grant Award] out of it. And we’ve also had some grants submitted where study sections have not yet been assigned, although that’s beginning to speed up again. But what none of us know is what the payline’s going to be.

If the pay line’s 3%, I mean, that’s going to be a real problem. We just don’t know. We just don’t know.

Taofeek Owonikoko: Yes. Same here. I think, from the cancer center side, where we’ve been particularly impacted by whether the slowdown or inability to submit competing renewals, is really in our CRTEC portfolio.

A lot of the training grants now, some of them particularly focused on building a diverse pipeline of trainees and junior faculty. Unfortunately, it had to either be revised or maybe even sunset altogether.

That, actually, I worry so much going forward in terms of the CRTEC portfolio across cancer centers as a whole, because we know that building a diverse pipeline has been a major component and major focus of most cancer centers around the country.

Louis Weiner: Right. We all feel like we’re undergoing whiplash right now, because I think most of us became increasingly sensitized in a very positive way about the value of diversity in leadership.

And now, of course, we’re not allowed to talk about it. I don’t think any of us are against global excellence, and so, we just have to think about how we talk about the work we do to get the best possible leaders.

Louis Weiner: But I want to be clear about one thing, though. Taofeek and I stay awake at night worrying about all these things, but I think I probably speak for him as well. We are resolute. We are committed to continuing to move the work forward.

And I, for one, certainly have great optimism that we will be able to execute this. I mean, it may be time, and it may be a bump in the road here for sure, but we continue. We’ve got to continue.

How long do you think it can last?

Louis Weiner: As long as it takes, man. As long as it takes.

Taofeek Owonikoko: It’s been a great exchange.

Louis Weiner: No, I don’t think so. I think that the only thing that I would like to emphasize again, is going back to my concern about the trainees.

I think that we, as leaders, have an obligation to our trainees to make them feel seen, to make them feel heard, and to let them know how we are committed to supporting their career journeys. And make sure they feel our confidence, that they feel our commitment to their futures. Because a lot of times, trainees feel like they’re being buffeted by these huge waves that they have no control over. And to some degree it’s a true statement.

But we have a responsibility to be trusting the life preservers and keeping them afloat so that they can move forward, and feel like there’s a future for what they do.

Taofeek Owonikoko: I do agree as well that the future belongs to all of us, whether young or old. But we have to make sure that the young ones are really our future.

And whatever we can do to not just provide them that support for today, but to make sure that we preserve these opportunities for them to be there for them going forward, I think is critical.

Earlier today, I spoke to two junior faculty members.

One of them was not sure of whether or not some of the support that was already promised before was still going to be there.

I had to reassure them, “Yes, we’re not reneging on our commitment.”

It’s a challenging phase that we’re all going through, but we’re going to get through this.

So, we have to help give them that cushion, that support, that level of at least some degree of certainty for them to keep plugging at this.

The second person I was talking to actually had to do with whether or not this is the type of career they want to pursue going forward.

And I think this is another risk that we actually have to pay attention to, people who are already committed to this track, but now they’re looking at it, say, “Wow, how often do I have to worry about this? We just got through COVID, now this. What is next?”

And helping them to see beyond the immediate challenge to say, “If you keep at it, eventually everything would even out and you’ll be successful at it.”

But it’s very, very tough.

Taofeek Owonikoko: Thank you.

Louis Weiner: Thank you.

Well, thank you, Bev, for agreeing to be the discussant on this. And you’ve heard what Dr. Wiener, Dr. Owonikoko had to say. What are your thoughts?

Beverly Ginsburg Cooper: Well, first, now you know why these are two of my favorite cancer center directors in the country.

And the way I would characterize it is today you heard about profiles in cancer centers, courage and leadership. This is one of the most turbulent times that many of us have experienced.

If you’ve been in this game long enough, you’ve been through a few.

But this is one in which there is more uncertainty because we just don’t know what the principles are and the road ahead is. But as you saw with Lou and Taofeek, they’re providing steady leadership.

They’re talking to their people, they’re speaking honestly, but they’re also exuding the relentlessness, the determination, the persistence that I think is the hallmark of a great leader. But also all of the cancer scientists, doctors and staff, we do this because we want to give each patient the best chance for cure.

I do it administratively, and working with centers. Taofeek and Lou do it as clinicians and scientists. There are navigators, CTO staff, we all do our part, because we care.

And what you heard today was, despite uncertainty to chaos, not knowing what’s going to happen, we are determined to find a path forward.

What you also heard is how concerned they are about individuals who are either planning their careers and are still students, or are in jobs and just simply afraid. And I am most concerned about that. I’m concerned that the uncertainty is making people rethink or wonderful scientists and clinicians leave the field.

So, even if in 90 days, suddenly IDCs are all worked out and NCI goes back to humming again, this has created a shockwave. But the role of the cancer center director and other leaders is to really look at realistically where we are today, prioritize where we can move forward. Maybe we can’t do everything, but with the resources that we have, what can we do? What will be most impactful?

Partnering with the leaders in your organization, working together and maybe doing collaborations, where you used to do things alone, and really creating a path forward because it’s not that nothing can be done. We’re just not sure where things are headed.

So under that kind of environment, to reduce your risk, to use your resources wisely, you have to prioritize where your investments are and make sure that you’re moving ahead in the best way possible, for your community, for your patients, for your scientists, for your people. And I think in working with Lou and Taofeek, each one is doing that and they exemplified that so well today on the call.

Well, looking back, you mentioned previous challenges. And the one that comes to mind is of course, COVID, which was the time when we did not know we were all going to live or die, individuals as well as institutions were in jeopardy, because they were losing maybe a hundred, 200 billion, millions, billions, whatever, lots of money. And how does that compare to this?

Beverly Ginsburg Cooper: It’s a great question. In some ways, it’s the same. Many people have never experienced this kind of shock, this kind of change, along with the uncertainty, which is both organizational—we didn’t know whether the organizations would be able to survive—and then personally.

And Lou was very articulate about what was happening to individuals, and I think Taofeek mentioned the two-career families.

So there are many parallels that are similar.

And that’s where, for those of us who have gone through these kinds of periods before—I’ve been in industries where we didn’t— One year we made a hundred million, and the next year we lost, and that is a true story.

And I’ve been in other industries where you make a great product, and then somebody beats you. So, we have to help those that have never gone through this before, to realize that there are really good foundational principles that one applies. And there always is a path forward.

And I know, again, working with Lou and Taofeek, that’s what we look at: how to reduce the risk, how to create path forward opportunities, move things forward. It’s not like all grants are over, but we do have a reality.

 As I was meeting with some foremost scientists last week—they have a grant ending, they’re not sure they’re going to get the next one in the timeframe that they would anticipate—so it’s looking both strategically and then in a granular manner.

And I think that’s what we did during COVID. We had to adapt, and that’s what this is. We didn’t know what the future of COVID was. We didn’t know that a vaccine was going to happen. We didn’t know what caused it. We didn’t know how many feet away we needed to be, but we figured out different ways of doing things.

I traveled five days a week until COVID hit, and then suddenly I was at home on my couch. We had to change the way we were doing business. The same thing for doctors, telemed, etcetera. So we have to be adaptable, flexible, realistic, but determined. We can’t lose our confidence, our faith, and our determination because that means that cancer patients’ lives are at stake, and we need to continue the great science that will lead to the next discovery.

Beverly Ginsburg Cooper: The short answer is yes, but let me clarify. When we all heard about the IDCs maybe going to 20%, and hearing about wonderful colleagues who do extraordinary research where grants are being held up, it was a sucker punch.

We all felt depressed and we were all talking about what’s going to happen.

I spent days talking from one center director to the next, and it took about two or three days. And then you heard, “What are we going to do next? Give me some strategies. What do you think the new PAR for the CCSG will be?” And everybody started to pick themselves up off the floor and start to move forward.

So, I don’t hear the “woe is us” and “the sky is falling” anymore.

Now we talk about what we’re going to do and we’re back in the game, and everybody is determined to continue.

The one caveat, and it was said earlier on the call, is that great scientists and staff are reaching out to all of us because even though they haven’t been RIFed, they may not want to stay. I’m getting a lot of resumes and a lot of people calling, and it’s the young people who are now saying to me, “Maybe I picked the wrong career.”

And that’s very worrisome, because they’re our future.

Well, thank you very much. This is a hopeful and scary comment at the same time.

Beverly Ginsburg Cooper: Well, I’ll just say we are a resolute group. We don’t give up. We work really hard. We write over long hours, and that’s because we want to take care of patients and be a part of the next discovery and treatment.

So, thank you, Paul. It was so interesting, the conversation that we had. Thank you for letting me be a part of it.

Well, thank you, Bev, for finding the time to do this and for giving us your wisdom on all of this.