Joining Memorial Sloan Kettering

This week, I am join­ing the world-renowned Me­mori­al Sloan Ket­ter­ing Can­cer Cen­ter, where I will have the priv­ilege to serve as their Chief Di­git­al Of­ficer. For a tech­no­lo­gist, this is an un­par­alleled op­por­tun­ity to help cure and care for can­cer pa­tients and to con­trib­ute to hu­man­ity’s on­go­ing quest to con­quer can­cer. Data, ana­lyt­ics and tech­no­logy are trans­form­ing health­care, ac­cel­er­at­ing sci­ence and em­power­ing pa­tients like nev­er be­fore, so the op­por­tun­ity and need for crit­ic­al change is enorm­ous. I’m honored, humbled, and eager to help make a pos­it­ive dif­fer­ence for pa­tients and MSK.

A bit more de­tail, for my friends and col­leagues…

Early in 2021, I heard from an ex­ec­ut­ive re­cruit­er who I’ve got­ten to know over the years. He said, “MSK is look­ing for a Chief Di­git­al Of­ficer. It looks like a good fit for you. Shall we talk?” Sit­ting in a house in the woods near Bo­ston, I said, “New York City, right?” You could hear him rolling his eyes over the phone. “Yes, that MSK. You know… pres­ti­gi­ous can­cer care cen­ter, world-class re­search, massive di­git­al trans­form­a­tion un­der­way.” “Oh right, that MSK.”

Of course I said “sure, let’s talk”. The Great Resig­na­tion was well un­der­way; every­one was talk­ing. And to be fair, for the right thing, I was will­ing to con­sider leav­ing Flag­ship. I’d built a great team, we had com­pleted a ma­jor stra­tegic goal (a baseline for the di­git­al back­bone for the port­fo­lio com­pan­ies), and pri­or­it­ies were shift­ing. I was open to look­ing for op­por­tun­it­ies that were more in line with my ideal job cri­ter­ia over the long term.

I talked to the re­cruit­er, then, over a series of weeks, met with the first set of in­ter­view­ers just to hear what was go­ing on. I have to say, I star­ted out skep­tic­al - I’ve talked to a lot of com­pan­ies over the years and have heard a lot of stor­ies about data-driv­en de­cisions, or­gan­iz­a­tion­al turn­arounds, and di­git­al trans­form­a­tions. Those usu­ally end when I hear things like “ransom­ware ate our lunch”, “stra­tegic, but fo­cused on SAP”, “budget align­ment”, “glob­al role with rap­id ex­pan­sion in Bangladesh and Ant­arc­tica” or “re­ports to the CFO”. Been there, done that, more or less.

But these in­ter­views were dif­fer­ent. Already deep in a di­git­al trans­form­a­tion, with the Board en­gaged and all the ele­ments mak­ing sense. Di­git­al pro­gram a key part of over­all Cen­ter strategy. A ton of tech­nic­al chal­lenges, needs and leg­acy head­aches that they wer­en’t hid­ing from, but also bril­liance in the use of di­git­al for sci­ence. Pa­tients, pa­tients, pa­tients. Plus: I really liked all these people! They were in­ter­est­ing and com­pel­ling and thought­ful and prag­mat­ic and clearly at the top of the game. After a hand­ful of these con­ver­sa­tions, I’d flipped from “prob­ably not” to “hmmmmmm”.

Time passed. Waves of in­ter­views took place. I learned more. I met more amaz­ing people. I crossed a lot of wor­ries and con­cerns off my list and checked the boxes for must-haves and very-cools. My wife and I some­how moved from “NYC, nah” to “NYC, let’s go!” Dozens of con­ver­sa­tions later, they said, “so, you should come work here” and I said, “I’m in”.

Over­all, the op­por­tun­ity to join MSK to lead their di­git­al ef­fort is in­cred­ibly com­pel­ling. There is a chance here to make a tre­mend­ous dif­fer­ence for can­cer pa­tients and can­cer re­search through di­git­al strategy, pro­grams and op­er­a­tions. MSK un­der­stands how im­port­ant data, ana­lyt­ics and tech­no­logy are in the world of health­care today and is mak­ing ma­jor in­vest­ments and de­cisions in­ten­ded to main­tain their pree­m­in­ence in the world of can­cer care while im­prov­ing the lives of can­cer pa­tients. The people I met - both dur­ing the in­ter­views and af­ter­wards - were the kinds of people I want to work with, to join, and to help. The IT situ­ation is ne­ces­sar­ily large and com­plic­ated, which, be­cause I’m sort of broken that way, I find com­pel­ling. I think there’s a reas­on­able chance I can help, so I’m go­ing to try my damnd­est.

To all of you who were part of my sound­ing board and sup­port sys­tem through this de­cision and in­to this trans­ition - my thanks. Wish me luck. :-)