25 years at UTHealth

Kevin Dillon MBA, CPA, senior executive vice president and chief operating officer of UTHealth (Photo by UTHealth)

April 15, 1996. A Monday. Tax Day, particularly memorable for a CPA. “Emotional Intelligence” was a bestselling book in the U.S. People were “VCR-ing” the X-Files, and the 100th Boston Marathon was run and won by Kenyan Moses Tanui in a mere couple of hours and change. Oh yeah, and I started working at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth).

Twenty-five years ago today I joined this sister institution of my alma mater, The University of Texas at Austin. The place has grown up around me: In ’96, UTHealth had total revenues of less than $600 million; we’ll likely budget more than $2 billion for the upcoming fiscal year. I’ve had the privilege of working with – and learning from – hundreds of talented, dedicated (and occasionally challenging) people. From that latter group, I must admit, I might have learned the most. After all, “I’ve survived regime change three times,” I tell Sulyn, our three kids, and almost anyone else who will listen.

So, in this opportunity for reflection, what, if anything, is unique about me that has allowed me to weather major sea changes and four different Ship’s captains?

Let’s take a look.

I’ve worked for UTHealth Presidents David Low, Jim Willerson, Larry Kaiser and Giuseppe Colasurdo, medical doctors all. The late Dr. Low gave me a start, the late Dr. Willerson gave me a chance, Dr. Kaiser gave me professional growth and my friend Giuseppe (maddeningly, the first of the four who is actually younger than me, albeit by a mere four months) has given me … well, a lot more than I’ve given him, truth be told.

I did my best for all four of them, and I think I was of help. My friendship with each of them was a serendipitous byproduct of our work together, though you couldn’t find four more different physician-leaders (a neurologist, a cardiologist, a cardiovascular surgeon and a pediatric pulmonologist … all we need is for them to be walking into a bar together).

One was like a great-uncle to me, the next like a second father. The third like a wise and worldly big brother. And, the last, my smarter and more focused Italian-Irish twin, the one my sainted mother would’ve said, “applied himself more.”

(Somewhere in here I should honor my immediate predecessor as COO, Mike McKinney, another M.D., who modeled the role for me. He’s my Godfather in this story.)

I’m kind of a private person, and if you’ve ever ridden on an elevator with me, you’d agree that, yes, I’m also on the shy side (I do, in fact, find my shoes fascinating, thus I study them so often on elevators). So, I’ll get to the reason I’m sharing this message with some of our UTHealth community today: A quarter of a century working at the same institution has given me a certain perspective. And, though I am not retiring (I guess I should’ve started with that; Public Affairs will say I’m “burying the lede”), I can see the end line. So now maybe it’s important to pass down a bit of what I have learned, for those who are coming up next.

1. Mine is almost entirely ego-less toil, especially true of my kind of financial, operational, administrative work. It’s the mortar, not the brick. Let’s just say I’m not the Dad you bring to your fourth-grade class on Career Day. “What, exactly, do you do?” our 18-year-old youngest son, Michael, has asked me repeatedly over the past decade. “I help,” is probably the best, most concise, answer I’ve come up with. My job is ego-less because I essentially do nothing on my own. It’s the ultimate team sport. I’ve worked on teams before teams were cool.
2. I try to seek problems out, before they get worse. There are always problems. I come from two Marine Corps veteran parents (yes, my late Mom as well, one of the original “Battalion of Auxiliary Marines” from just after World War II). My brother-in-law and a nephew/Godson were both Navy aviators. Such people, heroically, “run toward trouble.” I never served and I’m way less brave, but still, there’s something to be said for at least walking toward problems, and trying to make them better, rather than ignoring them or walking away.
3. Education makes all the differences. It’s our first, last and best hope. Life provides opportunities for improvement and distinction. UT Austin did that for me, twice, through both bachelor and master degrees in business. Neither of my parents achieved college degrees. I beat my older brother across the Longhorns’ stage by three months (a fact I never let him forget). Nothing has helped my professional life more than my UT education. 

4. Knowing where you came from matters almost as much as knowing where you’re going. My father’s parents came over on a boat from Ireland at the very end of the 19th century. In fact, I remember first hearing the phrase fin de siècle (end of the century) as a teenager when my Dad read a letter from his mother, describing her own arrival in New York. The Empire State would become both my father’s and his sons’ place of birth. Death, illnesses and misfortune led my father’s family to return to Ireland in the 1930s. Let me write that again: My Dad’s family was so poor, they left America during the Great Depression and moved back to Ireland! Back in the U.S. by the late 1930s, my father became just about the most patriotic, pro-American person I have ever met (serving in both the U.S. Navy in World War II and in the U.S. Marine Corps, in Korea). My Irish-American identity, along with my faith and family, have always helped me know who I was and where I was going.

5. While I hope I have been good for UTHealth, I know it has been very good to my family and me. It has allowed Sulyn and me to help our daughter Reilly graduate from Texas A&M (yes, I lost out to her Aggie mother there) and now watch her flourish in our own School of Public Health. We have a tall middle child, Liam, studying business and playing Division III basketball at Washington University in St. Louis. And younger son Michael is about to set out on his own post-high school path. 

In my final years here at UTHealth, what I really hope to do is help develop future administrative and financial leaders. I’ve been here so long I now have had the luxury of hiring almost every one of my direct reports (it’s all my fault, now). It’s much simpler to note who I didn’t hire or promote into their current administrative/financial leadership role: one Charlie Figari. And he was on the search committee that brought me here, 25 years ago. 

This remarkable team is the contribution to UTHealth of which I am most proud.

I’m told that “listing” is dangerous businesses – in after-dinner speeches or eulogies – because you risk leaving someone out. But after 25 years, I’m ready for some risk: Tramonte, McNiel, Casas, Smith, Stewart, Page, Fernette, Bradley, Yousif, Fatuyi, Adcox, Moore, Butler, Glazier, Pierson, Bien, Touchstone, Moylan, Boye, Whetstone, Nettles … just off the top of my head. All of whom I played at least some role in placing them in their current positions.

What I plan to do over the next few years, assuming fate or karma see me still at 7000 Fannin, is to assist in the development of another class of 15 or so stellar leaders to continue the legacy of excellence set forth by those in those roles now.

So, back where we began: Is there some magic potion or single skill that I might point to that accounts for whatever success I’ve had in 25 years at UTHealth? Of course, I’m not objective. (I’m “not credible,” as Giuseppe often observes, self-deprecatingly, about himself.) But the best I can do is this:

I’ve never been afraid to hire or promote people smarter than me. Or harder working than me. I figured out a long time ago, as a father of three kids, that if I wanted to make most of the choir recitals, basketball games and honor roll assemblies, I’d better have a very capable team around me.

And then let them work. Support them, talk with them, be available to them. But don’t micro-manage them. Give them space. Let them mess up occasionally and not too seriously. That’s about it.

So here’s my offer – if you ever want to talk about your work future, about your professional challenges, heck, about why UT can’t seem to get their college football program to work, send me an email. I’ll call you back. Really.

Take me up on this offer. One of you, I’m pretty sure, will very likely be my successor, someday. And you’ll do the job the best way you know how. But I’m happy to offer some advice.