Robert Winn, director of VCU Massey Cancer Center
Robert Winn’s childhood aspiration to be the youngest foreman for General Motors didn’t pan out. Winn, the new director of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Massey Cancer Center, considers that a blessing.
The New York native, who assumed his duties in Richmond in December, credits his change of career path to the people in his life who saw something special in him that he didn’t see in himself. That type of encouragement started in preschool.
Born to a teenage mom and raised in a blue-collar family, Winn spent half-days during his youth in a Head Start program. “My mom couldn’t see where I would end up, but she knew I needed a good education,” he says. “My 93-year-old grandma also knew my ticket out was education.”
Winn went on to graduate from the University of Notre Dame, where he credits the Rev. Robert Austgen and the late Rev. Joseph L. Walter, head of the university’s pre-professional studies program, with helping him discover his passion. “If it wasn’t for those two men, I wouldn’t have become a physician, and I really love it,” he says.
He earned his M.D. from the University of Michigan Medical School, where faculty piqued his interest in science and research. “Dr. Francis Collins [now director of the National Institutes of Health] was describing in class what was going on in cystic fibrosis genetically, talking about all the possibilities of how genetics could help us with disease. I got excited about the research, and the light bulb went on,” he says.
He began to realize how research benefits the community at large. “Up until then I had not made that connection,” he says. “Research really does make a difference. This is how you get new drugs and therapies.”
Robert Winn (right) speaks with patient Patricia Cash. (Photo by Ash Daniel)
Winn completed an internship and residency in internal medicine at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center in Chicago and a fellowship in pulmonary medicine and critical care at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver. But it was three federal programs earlier in his life that were life changing, he says. “Head Start was central to any success that I’ve had. It gave me the right stuff to make it.”
Before moving to Richmond, Winn worked with the Head Start program on the West Side of Chicago and hopes to work with a Head Start in Richmond. “Out of 100 kids, maybe two will go to college,” he says. “It’s important for me to reassure parents that we don’t know which of those kids might be the person who discovers the cure for cancer.”
Winn also served as a candy striper at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo, New York, during high school and college. And he participated in the Travelers Summer Research Fellowship Program at Weill Cornell Medicine Medical College in the summer while he was studying at Notre Dame. “All of those in each of their ways was really special,” he says. “I am a big proponent of pipeline programs.”
After completing his fellowship at University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, he stayed on as junior faculty and eventually rose to vice chair of medicine. “That laid my foundation as a cancer center director,” he says.
An expert in lung cancer and community-based health care, Winn served as director of the University of Illinois Cancer Center and as associate vice chancellor of health affairs for community-based practice at the University of Illinois Hospital and Health Sciences System before coming to VCU. In those roles he oversaw the research and clinical activities of 13 federally qualified health centers.
When he talks about advancements in cancer treatment over the years, he gets excited. “Folks diagnosed with lung cancer in 1959 to 1989 were not given options to extend their lives,” he says. “People were not being saved, just treated. In the 2000s, with the rise of molecular therapy, we started making inroads and saving the lives of cancer patients.”
Peter F. Buckley, interim chief executive officer and executive vice president for medical affairs with VCU Health System, found Winn’s ability to bring people together “particularly appealing,” he says. “He’s a very inclusive individual and a superior communicator. He generates excitement and momentum.”
It’s important at a cancer center to have somebody who is “big in their thinking but all-inclusive and collaborative in how they interact with people. That’s extraordinarily powerful,” he adds.
When Winn was interviewing with Massey, he says, there were three things that set the cancer center apart from others. “One is the center’s dedication to community,” he says. “It’s palatable. It felt real and authentic. Also, it has an outstanding faculty and a great administration.”
Having the namesake Massey family involved through their philanthropic efforts was also important to his decision. “It felt like the center was part of the community,” he says.
Winn has heard a lot about Richmond over his lifetime from his grandmother who grew up in Essex County. “We still have family there,” he says. “What I am really excited about is a new chapter in Richmond; the energy in the city and the diversity of the people. Richmond doesn’t keep people out. It wants to bring them in, and that’s exciting.”
One of his goals is to take the center from an NCI-designated status to a comprehensive status, the highest designation a center can attain. Massey Cancer Center has been a designated center since 1975. There are 51 comprehensive centers in the country.
He will also be an asset to the McGuire VA Medical Center. His basic science research, which has been supported by multiple National Institutes of Health and Veterans Affairs Merit awards, focuses on the mechanisms that drive the development and progression of cancer and on the role of stopping cell division in lung cancer.
“We are pleased he has had funding with the VA and will bring his research work to us,” Buckley says. “He will … treat veterans as a pulmonologist at the VA as well.”
Winn succeeds Gordon Ginder, who served as Massey’s director for 22 years before stepping down. “Any success we have at the center isn’t because of Robert Winn,” Winn says. “It’s built on the fact Dr. Ginder has been here 20-plus years, and I could build on that.”
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