Leaving Memorial Sloan Kettering

At the end of March 2025, I left Me­mori­al Sloan Ket­ter­ing Can­cer Cen­ter after serving for over three years as their Chief Di­git­al Of­ficer.

For fairly ob­vi­ous reas­ons, most people tend to not say much, if any­thing, about why they left a place of em­ploy­ment. It’s also true, how­ever, that most people don’t write blogs when they join new places. I did. I was really ex­cited to join MSK. Since then, many people have asked how my ex­per­i­ence was, why I left, and what I plan to do next. So, as a com­puls­ive writer, I feel it’s only re­spons­ible to write this bookend blog post to tie up this chapter…

What was my ex­per­i­en­ce? It’s hard to sum­mar­ize three years mean­ing­fully, and there were def­in­itely ma­jor ups, ma­jor downs, ma­jor changes, and ma­jor sur­prises. But, with the be­ne­fit of hav­ing had six months to let things settle, it’s easy to pull out the top themes.

I loved my time at MSK. The people were fant­ast­ic. MSK it­self is an amaz­ing in­sti­tu­tion, some­thing that I was able to ap­pre­ci­ate and see in ac­tion so many times while there. Be­ing able to con­trib­ute to the MSK mis­sion in a small way was a gift. I learned a ton. It was ab­so­lutely the ad­ven­ture that I hoped it would be go­ing in. And I also had a great time get­ting to know New York City.

Why did I leave? Three primary reas­ons.

  1. Com­ple­tion. My team had car­ried out an enorm­ous amount of high-im­pact change dur­ing the three years I was there. Just to name a few: a com­plete over­haul and up­grade of the data eco­sys­tem, massive gains in in­fra­struc­ture sta­bil­ity, in­cred­ible im­prove­ments in high per­form­ance com­put­ing for sci­ence, cre­ation of an AI strategy to sup­port can­cer re­search and care, and most ob­vi­ously to the rest of MSK, the de­ploy­ment of Epic and sun­set­ting of dozens of aging clin­ic­al ap­plic­a­tions. We had com­pleted the ma­jor­ity of the re­build­ing of the di­git­al fun­da­ment­als at MSK per plan, so, if there was a good time to take a pause, shift lead­er­ship, and ad­just strategy, this was likely it.
  1. Pri­or­it­iz­a­tion. At the same time, it was be­com­ing clear that, to bet­ter carry out its core mis­sions of lead­ing clin­ic­al care and world-class re­search, MSK needed to pri­or­it­ize the im­ple­ment­a­tion of ad­min­is­trat­ive ef­fi­cien­cies. It’s an es­sen­tial busi­ness im­per­at­ive for MSK, but it’s not an area where di­git­al can make a real stra­tegic dif­fer­ence and it’s not my strength.
  1. Health. The com­plex­ity of reg­u­larly com­mut­ing between New York City (for work) and Bo­ston (for fam­ily) was wear­ing on me after years of feel­ing like I was liv­ing on Amtrak. The stress of help­ing to lead a flag­ship health­care or­gan­iz­a­tion in the US med­ic­al sys­tem was con­tinu­ously high and get­ting high­er. And, along the way, I had a close call with my health that re­minded me that we all have lim­ited time on this plan­et. I had been very clear with my or­gan­iz­a­tion when I joined that my pri­or­it­ies are fam­ily and health be­fore work, so I de­cided to stay true to my prin­ciples and to take ded­ic­ated time to fo­cus on re­cov­ery.

It was an am­ic­able and bit­ter­sweet de­par­ture. I am deeply ap­pre­ci­at­ive of the sup­port I got from all of the rest of MSK lead­er­ship once I de­cided to leave. It was in­cred­ibly tempt­ing to stay, but for all those reas­ons, it was also clear it was the right time for me to move on.

What’s next? As I told my team and my col­leagues when I left - my plan on leav­ing was to take at least six months of down­time to step com­pletely away from work and to fo­cus on my health: to catch up on sleep, to ex­er­cise reg­u­larly, to im­prove my nu­tri­tion, and to fo­cus on the plan of health re­cov­ery put to­geth­er by the spe­cial­ists who have been treat­ing me.

And that’s what I’ve done. I’m in much bet­ter shape, and still have work to do.

Among oth­er things “work­like” that I didn’t do after leav­ing MSK, I didn’t blog. Or up­date the swamp that is Linked­In. Just not a pri­or­ity… and in ret­ro­spect, it was good to just let this de­cision settle for a while. Look­ing back and look­ing for­ward, I’m sure today that leav­ing then was the right de­cision for me.

What’s next at this point is an open ques­tion, with many op­tions. That’s a top­ic for a dif­fer­ent note at some point.

Today, I look back very fondly on my time at Me­mori­al Sloan Ket­ter­ing. I am grate­ful to the people who made it pos­sible for me to be a small part of the MSK story. And to the people in MSK’s tech­no­logy or­gan­iz­a­tion (Di­gITs) and every­one else who was a part of our jour­ney: I’m proud of you, of the work you did, of the way you did it, and of what we ac­com­plished dur­ing our time to­geth­er to en­able MSK to im­prove and to carry out its mis­sion for pa­tients.