Was Dr. Ohene-Frempong also your entry into the field of hemoglobin disorders?
Yes, he was instrumental in that decision. My time with him inspired me to continue growing my knowledge base and deepened my excitement about the field of hemoglobin disorders. With his guidance, I opted to do my training at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), which is where he trained, where many of my future mentors had trained, and where I spent a good portion of my career.
It was while I was at CHOP that my excitement about the lab truly took hold. As a physician in the laboratory, I saw that discoveries made in the lab had an enormous potential to make an impact on patients’ lives. So, when I continued my training at CHOP, I was working with other investigators who were making seminal observations in the laboratory about the pathophysiology of sickle cell disease and looking at new molecular tools to be able to characterize new forms of beta thalassemia, which is another inherited blood disorder caused by mutations in the same gene as sickle cell disease.
After fellowship I further honed my skills in the laboratory, working with Randolph Wall, PhD, at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) and learned so much from his graduate students and postdocs. I appreciated the support I received from Stephen Feig, MD, my division chief, that allowed me to get a stronger foothold in the lab. The culture of scientific discovery at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and in the clinical programs were so nurturing
Throughout your career, I’m sure you’ve had opportunities to mentor younger hematologists in training. What advice do you share with them as they start their careers?
I strongly recommend that they focus first on their craft, whether in the lab or at the bedside, and taking themselves, their careers, and their skills seriously. When I entered medicine, there were so many things that I wanted to do to change the world immediately; I advise younger trainees to stay focused. Later in their careers, they can expand, but at least early on, becoming excellent in one area will allow them to be more effective in the long run. I also strongly encourage them to find mentors as they begin to take on more and more interests and projects. It’s the challenge of harnessing their excitement and energy at the beginning of their careers – it certainly inspires me!
One of the opportunities that I was able to take advantage of while I was a junior faculty member was receiving funding through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Minority Medical Faculty Development Program, which gave me a four-year period of financial support and protected research time. Eventually, that program spawned the ASH-Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program (AMFDP), which was renamed and expanded in honor of Harold Amos, PhD, who was the first African-American to chair a department at Harvard Medical School.
Knowing that I benefited personally early in my career from having a lab mentor and other career mentors through that program, I became a strong advocate in support of initiatives like the ASH-AMFDP and Minority Medical Student Awards Program. I’ve worked with many students in my laboratory or acted as mentor for their clinical research or for career development, largely because I know that I benefited from having those relationships and guidance. I’m happy to pay it forward.