00:00:00:14 - 00:00:06:16 Dr. Winn I'm Dr. Rob Winn and you're listening to Real Cancer Talk from VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center. 00:00:07:12 - 00:00:37:22 Dr. Winn Thank you, Doctor Vickers, for joining us during this period. I couldn't think of anyone else better, to be able to highlight, during not only this month, but just highlight in general of folks who've made an impact on the field of cancer, particularly folks who've made an impact on young people. I was thinking back, as a surgical oncologist, and thinking about not only the role now, but the roles that you have had over your history. 00:00:37:24 - 00:01:02:16 Dr. Winn And given the fact that this is Black History Month, I wanted to open up with a question. And that is what has the impact of folks like Jack White or, LaSalle Leffall or, you know, Harold Freeman. What has those folks impact had on you in the way your, your career is either gone or the way in which you're thinking about how you want to make an impact in the field of cancer. 00:01:02:18 - 00:01:53:06 Dr. Selwyn Vickers Yeah. Thank you so much, Robert, for that question. I would say, like many things, in America as it relates to black history, most of our lives have been a part of actually achieving our dreams, but overcoming society, perceptions and limitations that have often been placed on us by incomplete narratives. Because of that, the value of actually seeing someone who's gone before you and touching someone who's done what you wanted to do is unbelievably powerful and both energizing and giving you the possibility of hope that you can do something similar. 00:01:53:08 - 00:02:49:02 Dr. Selwyn Vickers Jack White being the first black surgeon to train at Memorial, gives all of us a chance to understand that what is possible once the door is open. And LaSalle Leffall, who also had that experience to train here, even further highlighted the excellence of both achievement and character, that could overcome perceptions and bias. And LaSalle, in so many ways, gave me a chance to touch a man who remarkably, dignified in the capacity that he had as a leader, that one respect of the world of surgeons, as the world of cancer leaders for both his grace, his intellect and his challenge to the world, as in the case of Jack White, 00:02:49:04 - 00:03:16:23 Dr. Selwyn Vickers to understand the disparities in cancer outcomes and care for people of color. So they highlight excellence comes in all shades. They highlight resilience and grit of a level of achievement that often required them to sacrifice much. And they also remind me that if what they did was possible in their time, there is much that I can do in mine. 00:03:17:00 - 00:03:33:20 Dr. Winn Oh, that's fantastic. And it also reminds me that in addition to those giants, that you may even had personal giants within your own family. I was actually wondering if you wouldn't mind talking about your maternal grandmother in the in the impact and the influence that she's had on you in Alabama. 00:03:33:22 - 00:03:57:19 Dr. Selwyn Vickers Yeah, I didn't understand that until over time, but a woman who I got to know as a young kid, largely because she was a school teacher, different than other moms in rural Alabama. She was getting up dressed in her best outfit to go to school to teach. And I followed her at the age of five because I needed something to do. 00:03:57:21 - 00:04:20:16 Dr. Selwyn Vickers And as I grew my own educational pathway in college, I would drive 100 miles back to see my grandmother because of the relationship I had with her. And the same thing for my grandfather, I it was I didn't think about it much then, but they had such an impact on me. I'd come home to college. They lived about 100 miles away. 00:04:20:16 - 00:04:47:10 Dr. Selwyn Vickers I get in the car and I would drive by myself just to go spend time with them and with her, and particularly because what I saw in her was a woman who overcame all odds, who in the seventh grade was told she needed no more education, but had a passion to be a college graduate who had to then go her own journey to a little place called Snow Hill Academy. 00:04:47:10 - 00:05:23:05 Dr. Selwyn Vickers And as I shared with that organization, that that look nothing like Andover or Choate, it was a rural black school where it was the only place where you could get a high school degree for blacks in the South in that part of her state. But then taking that to commit her life to teaching, raising a family and then going ten summers to get her college degree and telling me that even with that, her aspirations had circumstances been different, she says, I would have gotten my PhD. 00:05:23:07 - 00:05:56:01 Dr. Selwyn Vickers But I had daughters and a husband, and there was a limit on what I could do. But my aspirations go further than that. And so she had a tremendous impact on me to believe education was the great equalizer, that it was the thing that independent of her color, it defined her ability to speak cogently and boldly to anybody, no matter who they were, because of what she had learned and the dignity of which she carried herself in her role. 00:05:56:03 - 00:06:05:08 Dr. Winn Thank you for that. You know, I do thinking about, 00:06:05:10 - 00:06:24:19 Dr. Winn And how do you figure things out? And the question has always been for me, there were so many pathways for you to go down in medicine. You could have been an oncologist. You could have been radiation, why surgery? And why were you were focused on, and particularly in pancreatic and these things like that? 00:06:24:21 - 00:07:01:00 Dr. Selwyn Vickers Yeah, you know, a lot of that for an individual. I had the fortune to have a uncle who was a physician, and that was very rare. He was the first physician to graduate from his small college of Stillman in Alabama. So I was very blessed to have someone I could touch and gain the passion, but also realize that because of DNA, I had the intellect to do what seemed to be impossible to me, that I could be a doctor because I knew him and he could tell me, you're smart enough to do this. 00:07:01:02 - 00:07:23:15 Dr. Selwyn Vickers Didn't that was a bit out of my reach or my mindset. I knew I could be a teacher because I'd seen that, and but I didn't know that I really could be a doctor because of the journey of getting there. He helped me understand that I was all possible. The surgery thing was one of those things that I actually tried to avoid. 00:07:23:17 - 00:07:59:00 Dr. Selwyn Vickers I at the time that I did my rotations, one of my goals, Robert, was to leave that rotation with those faculty members asking me, had you thought about being a pediatrician? Had you thought about being a psychiatrist? So I wanted to be agnostic when I started a rotation. And delve in to the degree that I could eventually see myself doing that rotation. Surgery was one that was very hard for me to do in some ways, and very easy in others. 00:07:59:02 - 00:08:37:11 Dr. Selwyn Vickers It was easy because it was always outcomes driven, and there was always a goal of getting someone out or getting in the O.R. and fixing something. That was easy. What was hard was that I didn't see the relation ships that I wanted to build with patients, often in surgery because it was episodic. And not until I had finished my surgery rotation, I had an older black man who had peripheral vascular disease, had gotten a fairly complex bypass procedure to save his foot, but he had an a chronic large toe, big toe. 00:08:37:13 - 00:09:12:22 Dr. Selwyn Vickers And my job as the as the intern or sub eye on the service was at 4:30, I would go by, wake him up, allow him to get a chance to get a cigarette in his mouth because I was going to debride his foot. No lidocaine, no numbing. It was dead tissue. I was taken off and he would, you know, wince in pain as I cleaned it up and got dead tissue removed so that when my attending would come by at 5:30, I would have had that done. 00:09:12:24 - 00:09:34:12 Dr. Selwyn Vickers And I did that for probably 4 or 5 weeks until he got discharged. And I was off the service doing medicine. And I got this call from one of the surgery attendings and said, you need to come with surgery clinic. And I'm like, I'm not on surgery anymore. And the nurse came in on the phone and said, there's a patient here who won't leave until he sees you. 00:09:34:14 - 00:09:54:11 Dr. Selwyn Vickers So I go down to that surgery clinic and there's this old man sitting there and says, I wanted to see my doctor, and that was me. He wouldn't go in until I came to see him because his foot was healed and the pain I put him through, he knew I didn't intend, but he knew I did it for his good. 00:09:54:13 - 00:10:10:15 Dr. Selwyn Vickers And after I did that, I that that gave me the sense that I could do surgery and still build the relationships with my patients that I wanted to have and have a career and a passion of an area that I that fit me as a person. 00:10:10:18 - 00:10:31:19 Dr. Winn I want to talk about your new position. I mean, you've done I mean, an amazing things when you were at Michigan, I mean, Minnesota, you did amazing things with UAB. What this opportunity, what excites you and what are the opportunities that you sort of see of not only moving Memorial Sloan, but really having an impact that our for you? 00:10:31:21 - 00:11:05:00 Dr. Selwyn Vickers Yeah. I I think, you know, it's a unique opportunity. It was a hard decision. I've, you know, I've had two really difficult emotional decisions. When I left home, and, arguably I should say three when I first left to go to Baltimore, to Hopkins. And I stayed there 16 years, Baltimore had become a home, and I accepted a job for about a week to stay as a faculty member and then decided to leave. 00:11:05:06 - 00:11:33:09 Dr. Selwyn Vickers And that was an emotional, and really challenging experience for at least the first two years going back to Alabama. And that part of Alabama was was only something I'd visited. I hadn't lived in Birmingham. And so it was new and had no ties to UAB at all. And I was fortunate. I was blessed to have a great experience, to hopefully have an impact in the organization. 00:11:33:11 - 00:12:05:04 Dr. Selwyn Vickers And went to Minnesota. Had a really good run of running a surgery department and value creating hopefully value for that institution. During my time and then and deciding that probably I'd head back sort of south, but didn't know where that would end up. And it happened to be back at UAB, which arguably most, including myself, thought maybe that that's probably where my career would would end in, in the roles that I had taken on. 00:12:05:06 - 00:12:44:23 Dr. Selwyn Vickers Didn't see this coming, and didn't necessarily expect it or, and it wasn't on the radar necessarily. I certainly still had very fond affiliations with Hopkins, but but Memorial was an unexpected opportunity where there seemed to be a match of both my academic back around as a cancer surgeon, having led, you know, both complex cancer research programs, pancreatic cancer spores as well as cancer disparity, but also had function as a senior leader, who had run major organizations. 00:12:45:00 - 00:13:20:07 Dr. Selwyn Vickers And complex health care systems that in part memorial could benefit from that leadership. So the match seemed to be one that was appropriate. And and fortunately, it worked itself out. And as I arrived at, I think it was timely. The leaders prior to me, Paul Marx, Harold Varmus and Craig Thompson, phenomenal scientists built a an incredible institution that has impeccable, if you would, cancer biology research and great clinical care. 00:13:20:09 - 00:13:53:08 Dr. Selwyn Vickers I think one of the blessings and curses New York, one of the blessings is that you're in a really a resource rich environment, tremendous resources that have been generously given by our benefactors to memorial, to really create a treasure trove of both discovery, translation and clinical trials and clinical care. One of the blessings, one of the curses, is that you can get isolated just doing stuff in New York, right? 00:13:53:08 - 00:14:17:20 Dr. Selwyn Vickers You got, you know, you can go 50 miles in the circle and you got 35 million people and you can get locked in to that being the world. And so I've said, you know, my my broad vision for Memorial is to continually grasp at being the world's authority on cancer and equally continually run after being the cancer center to the world. 00:14:17:22 - 00:14:43:06 Dr. Selwyn Vickers And I clarify that being both geographically and culturally, yes, I I've said to my my constituents, I can go to Harlem and my barber has never heard of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. I can go to Coney Island. And there are people there who've never heard of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Now, I can't drop a dime with that somebody knowing in in East in the upper East Side of New York. 00:14:43:08 - 00:15:07:17 Dr. Selwyn Vickers But the reality, their world is just in the spectrum of what we call New York that don't know us because we've been often seen as exclusive and selected. And so I want to broaden that aperture for the organization, because being stewards of the resources that this organization has been blessed to have, there's a responsibility to have others have access to it. 00:15:07:19 - 00:15:27:06 Dr. Selwyn Vickers And so I think that's the grand opportunity through partnerships, collaborate. Nations can't do it all on their own. We need those partners to help us do it. And we need the ability to have a vision that cast our scope broader than just this area where we are. Even though there is a large population. 00:15:27:08 - 00:15:52:15 Dr. Winn Wow. You know, I, I'm super excited for you. I'm really excited for Memorial Sloan. And, and the people that you'll sort of impact. I know we're coming up on, at the, at the, at the, at our time, but I just want to give you one opportunity. If you have any advice, what's the one piece of advice you would give our young people, in a context of as they are looking forward to their careers and trying to make impact? 00:15:52:18 - 00:15:55:07 Dr. Winn Is there any advice you can give to our young people? 00:15:55:09 - 00:16:25:18 Dr. Selwyn Vickers Yeah, I, I've often shared the story of my my paternal and maternal ancestors. And I, I've written about it in the context of burnout and resilience in my story is not unique. Every person, particularly in this country who's achieved stands on the shoulders and particularly of color, stands on the shoulders of individuals who sacrificed in some significant way. 00:16:25:20 - 00:16:49:10 Dr. Selwyn Vickers And I would challenge all of them as you face hurdles and challenges, the mindfulness to understand that your loved ones can never spell the word burnout. That it wasn't in their vocabulary. They had no ability to even think about it. And in many ways, as our ancestors says, that when we faced that next challenge, I could be no ways time. 00:16:49:12 - 00:17:16:24 Dr. Selwyn Vickers And so I and I would encourage all of the people who are fostering and making their moves or their careers, would be continually be resilient, which really, in the mathematical terms means the ability to take on an obstacle or, or a impediment without having it leave a permanent defect only makes you stronger to move forward as awesome. 00:17:17:01 - 00:17:34:04 Dr. Winn This is the end, of, interview Doctor Vickers. And I just want to thank you so much for your time, and for being with us. And, wish you well. And, and again, I'm really super excited for everything you're going to do.