CancerCare Board Member Deborah Dunsire, M.D., president and CEO of Millennium: The Takeda Oncology Company, was featured in a Q&A in the New York Times’ Sunday Business section about her role as a leader and the lessons she’s learned about leadership. The company has more than 1,100 employees at its headquarters in Cambridge, Mass.
“The job of leadership is developing people, and that involves not doing everything for them, but sometimes allowing them to stub their toe. The work may not come in perfectly, but the learning [is] much more effective, and people [feel] empowered to own the outcome in a different way,” noted Dunsire, who schedules regular “walk around time” to meet informally with employees.
“The work of leadership is ensuring that we have the right people within our organization. You do that through actively knowing the people…what they value and believe, how they believe the company can improve and taking action on it,” she said.
This past May, the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association named Dr. Dunsire Woman of the Year for her business leadership and goal of improving the lives of cancer patients.
Millennium: The Takeda Oncology Company is a funder of CancerCare’s Door to Door program, which provides financial grants to multiple myeloma patients to help cover transportation costs to and from their treatment (see July 20 blog post to learn more about the program).
