UCSF Chancellor Offers Advice to Women Leaders

Speaking recently to women leaders at UCSF, Chancellor Sue Desmond-Hellmann, MD, MPH, shared her experiences during a successful career spanning patient care, private industry and leading a premier health sciences university.

She gave insight into her personal and professional life by telling stories and showing photos from her past. Once while running in the Sunset neighborhood, she stopped to help someone who collapsed on the sidewalk when a firefighter elbowed her aside saying, “Honey, we’ll take care of this.”

Throughout the triumphs and tribulations, she said, “I think you have to laugh. You have to have a sense of humor.”

While responding to a question from the audience, Desmond-Hellmann said it is ok to be dogged, determined, persistent and even impatient, when these actions are put into context – the quest to fulfill the mission.

“In the end, I want to get things done,” Desmond-Hellmann said. “So it’s not about me or who I am. It’s about the mission. It’s about the students and the faculty and the staff and the patients and the community. It’s not about me.”

For the approximately 200 women faculty and staff from varying levels of management who came to Cole Hall on Nov. 3 to hear Desmond-Hellmann’s talk, it is about her and who she is—UCSF’s first woman chancellor.

“You are already making a difference,” said Marcy Fraser, a director at the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, who added that news of her appointment in May generated a “collective sigh of relief.”

In an event organized by the Center for Gender Equity, Desmond-Hellmann offered sage advice to the women at UCSF, which ranks as No. 2 next to UC Santa Cruz with women in leadership positions in the UC system. Women make up 42 percent of senior management positions at UCSF, although women of color continue to be underrepresented in the top jobs, she said. Six of the female senior managers are white and just two are women of color, Desmond-Hellmann noted.

“One of the most important things that I’ve learned is: don’t underestimate yourself.”

Desmond-Hellmann said it’s amazing at how often people are startled when she introduces herself as the new UCSF chancellor. “I would love to say [that’s] because I am so very young,” she laughed. “I think that it is just the way it is that the first eight chancellors of UCSF were all men.”

“If we did the things that we are capable of we would literally astound ourselves,” she said. “One of my hopes is that it’s not all that astounding to see a woman as chancellor or see a woman as a leader in the future,” she said. “But it’s important to understand the environment that we all operate in and to be realistic that in fact that people will and do and might startle when they see many of us in positions of leadership.”

Acknowledging that there is “an enormous amount of talent here,” Desmond-Hellmann says more work must be done to create an environment where women can feel empowered and energized to lead.

Empowerment comes in part from forging alliances, taking advantage of institutional support and services, such as mentoring programs, and working together in groups, whether it’s the Academic Senate, faculty or staff councils or Academic Business Officers Group, to achieve common goals. “Use the power you have by participating in these groups,” she said.

Feeling energized comes from achieving work-life balance that allows people to be productive while on the job and have fun and unwind on the weekends. For Desmond-Hellmann, relieving stress and reinvigorating her sense of optimism comes from running, mountain biking or hiking around the San Francisco Bay Area.

Lessons Learned

Desmond-Hellmann said she encountered some bumps along her 14-year career path at Genentech, the South San Francisco-based biotech firm where she climbed from the junior level position of a clinical scientist to president of product development leading drugs through FDA approval to market.

Her strategy to thrive in what she described as Genentech’s incredibly intense science-driven and “very macho culture,” was to team up with Richard Scheller, a 19-year Stanford University neuroscientist and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, who was recruited to the biotech firm to serve as chief research officer.

“Richard and I knew that we needed each other to succeed,” said Desmond-Hellmann, showing a picture of the smiling duo wearing respective R and D T-shirts while at Genentech. “The most important deal [we made] … is that we would be each other’s greatest fans and supporters.”

Despite their different personalities, Desmond-Hellmann and Scheller worked together pushing each other to be successful and in so doing helped Genentech become the nation’s leading cancer drug developer.

Collaborating with Scheller proved to be one of the most important lessons she learned while at Genentech: don’t be afraid to ask for help to advance and achieve professionally. “Don’t expect people to know what to do to help you succeed,” Desmond-Hellmann said.

“Remember that when you’re the only woman – which I’ve spent most of my career being the only woman or the first woman—you can’t assume that everybody knows who you are or where you come from. And being a little more pushy … to say, ‘here’s how you might help me succeed,’ I think it’s not only desirable, but actually necessary.”

Among Desmond-Hellmann’s other tips for leaders:

• Start early: From the age of eight, Desmond-Hellmann knew that she liked telling other kids what to do and thought about becoming a doctor. The second of seven children, she grew up taking responsibility for and often babysitting her siblings. She realized early on that she enjoyed leading and today brings her lifelong experiences as a big sister to the table. “Being a really great leader is tapping into who you are and never pretending to be something you are not.”


• Take risks: One of the riskiest moves that Desmond-Hellmann made in her career came in 1989 when she and her husband sublet their flat, sold their Honda Civics and moved to Uganda to study HIV/AIDS. This was risky because she left a lot of connections, jumped off the faculty tenure track and departed to a place without running water or electricity. But, Desmond-Hellmann explained, the experience was life changing personally and worth sacrificing something professionally. The real reason to take risks is to think about long-term personal development, she said. What she “learned living in Uganda for two years and trying to conduct decent medical research” was more important than her next promotion. She also gained appreciation for the many gifts – education, parents, clean water and opportunities—that are too often taken for granted in America.


• Persevere: Some of the most inspiring leaders are those who are tested and overcome hardships, she said. Desmond-Hellmann was tested herself when Genentech’s drug Avastin failed in 2002 to improve survival rates for women with late-stage breast cancer. At the time, she was quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle saying that she held out hope that the drug would prove worthy for treating colon, kidney and lung cancer (which it did). “The true test of a leader is the ability to persevere,” she said, acknowledging that being resilient is not an easy characteristic to have.


• Set the bar high and find a great mentor: Setting a high standard in life sciences research is the norm for UCSF’s scientific community, where the faculty has won four Nobel Prizes since 1989. Desmond-Hellmann credited Lloyd “Holly” Smith, MD, for building a “world-renown medical program in no small part because of his charm and leadership.” Although their mentoring relationship was informal, Desmond-Hellmann said she benefitted from the climate Smith helped shape that allowed junior faculty to thrive.


• Hire and develop great people: Desmond-Hellmann said she worked for many years to put together a talented and diverse team at Genentech. Two of her four team members had children in day care and she was sensitive to the fact that they had to leave at a certain time to pick them up. She said it’s important to have family friendly policies and to pay attention to and understanding people’s lives.


• Provide meaning: Desmond-Hellmann reiterated her belief that everyone should feel connected to the overall mission and know what is expected of them to contribute to UCSF’s success. She said she is listening and learning from the many members of the UCSF community and understands that everyone needs to find meaning in what they do. After a town hall meeting, Desmond-Hellmann received feedback from the UCSF community asking her to add education to her list of top priorities. She did. She also said that it is important to recognize and reward individual accomplishments.

Related Links:

Biography of Susan Desmond-Hellmann
New Release, Aug. 5, 2009

Susan Desmond-Hellmann named UC San Francisco chancellor
News Release, May 7, 2009