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Mary Anne Koda-Kimble, PharmD, Dean, School of Pharmacy
Mary Anne Koda-Kimble reflects on growing up as a Japanese American and daughter of rice farmers in a small rural town. Koda-Kimble earned a PharmD degree from UCSF in 1969, and joined the UCSF School of Pharmacy faculty in 1970. She developed a passion for the field of clinical pharmacy, which the school pioneered, and set out to become the field's best practitioner. Koda-Kimble is now dean of the school, which she says thrives on collaboration. She explains that one of her leadership roles is to foster a climate of caring.
Voices: Mary Anne Koda-Kimble
Mary Anne Koda-Kimble: I was born in 1946, which was the year World War II ended. I am of Japanese American descent. We were the only Japanese family in that very small town – the population of about 1,200.
My family were farmers; they were rice farmers.
And the children I played with were children of itinerant laborers, who came in for rice harvests. These were children who were poor whites, Mexicans, African Americans and southern Italians. Actually, as I look back on it, it was a very rich childhood.
My parents were interned during World War II. When they returned, much of their property had been sold. So it was left to them to actually rebuild in the area. But there was no bitterness from that experience. I never experienced it. They always talked about camp and the whole approach to raising us in that environment was one of assimilation.
I would call my life very lucky. During the time I was going to school, UCSF was a place that was very aware of the issues at the time. The tradition then was the pharmacist was not to interfere with the physician-patient relationship. A drug prescription was not labeled with the name of the drug. So you couldn’t tell the patient the name of the drug – what it was used for. All you could say is, “Take one tablet two times a day.” That was it.
And the faculty created an experiment. And created this idea of clinical pharmacy – a pharmacist who would be an expert in how drugs were used to promote the best and safest use of drugs.
Now this was an idea: They had no idea whether it would work, but it caught my attention. I all of a sudden developed a passion for the field. I had a purpose in life, and my goal all of a sudden in a very naïve way was to become the best clinical pharmacist. So UCSF was the inventor of the concept of clinical pharmacy. And I was so fortunate to be a part of that.
As we move into a new era and I’m the dean now, the way we work is through collaboration. We believe that pulling scientists together from different fields will create breakthroughs and new ways of thinking about science. So, examples of this include a burgeoning collaboration in Vietnam and in China. Collaboration is absolutely a theme in the School of Pharmacy. We could not survive without it, and we thrive through collaboration.
Caring is really core in this place. In order for that to happen, the leader has to be a caring person. So I do my best to care for myself so that I, in turn, can be caring.
Recently, I’ve gone back to gardening. My mother says it’s the farming roots inside of me. I’ve always wanted a garden where I could pick a bouquet of flowers – not have to go to a flower shop. So now, I am a pretty avid gardener. I can come back quite refreshed with a new perspective, an open heart and open mind.
No change can occur without leadership. And what I say to my students, what I say to a lot of people: Leadership is not a title. We all have control over something. And there is always a better way to do things. So when we see that things need to change or need to be advanced, it is our responsibility – our responsibility to move things forward.