My Career Development and the Academy of Cancer Experts

Academy Cancer Experts (ACE) program was developed to foster the next generation of cancer care experts in Japan. It started through the cooperative efforts of three sister institutions, The MD Cancer Center, School of Medicine, and St. International Hospital. The goal of ACE is to build the premier international collaborative program to help health care professionals and researchers develop and implement multidisciplinary care for cancer patients and conduct cancer research. ACE Oncology Leadership School is the core component of ACE, and offers educational training and research programs to develop the leadership skills of health care providers and researchers in Japan, and to establish and promote multidisciplinary clinical and translational research in Japan. Multidisciplinary Clinical and Translational Research Workshop is the core offering of the ACE Oncology Leadership School. It is an innovative workshop that helps participants develop the leadership skills that are necessary for individual career development in academic oncology. The Workshop incorporates the concepts of core values, mission and vision, and mentorship and teaches team alignment skills, interpersonal communication skills, and conflict management skills. To date, five workshops have been held, with 62 participants from various professions and medical specialties. It has evolved to adjust its contents to meet the specific and unique needs of participants in Japan and neighboring Asian countries. From this experience, the members of the ACE Oncology Leadership School have started an educational series called the Career Development Seminar to more widely distribute the concepts taught in the Workshop. Five seminars have been offered and more than 300 participants have joined the seminar. This article summarize the activities of ACE in Japan over the last nine years and its achievements through my personal experience as a member and one of the co-leaders of the program.


Introduction
Academy of Cancer Experts (ACE) is a program developed through the cooperative efforts of three sister institutions, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Keio University School of Medicine, and St. Lukeʼ s International Hospital to develop the next generation of cancer care experts in Japan. The goal of ACE is to draw on the excellence and enthusiasm of our faculty members (mentors) and participants (mentees) to build the premier international collaborative program to help health care professionals and researchers develop and implement multidisciplinary care for cancer 202 Whatʼs New from Juntendo University, Tokyo patients and conduct cancer research.
The ACE Oncology Leadership School is the core offering of ACE, and it offers educational training and research programs to develop the leadership skills of health care providers and researchers and to establish and promote multidisciplinary clinical and translational research in Japan. Itʼ s core program called Multidisciplinary Clinical and Translational Research Workshop is an innovative workshop that helps participants develop the leadership skills that are necessary for individual career development in academic oncology.
To date, five workshops have been held, with 62 participants from various professions and medical specialties such as physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and research scientists. This program provides practical knowledge and skills around individual career development, and with time, it has also evolved to adjust its contents to meet the specific and unique needs of participants in Japan and neighboring Asian countries. The program has influenced and resulted in many young researchers going to the United States as research fellows or post docs etc., as well as develop their career in Japan.
ACE members have also launched a national seminar series called "ACE Career Development Seminar", wishing to spread what they have learned from this program. There have been five such seminars targeting general medical professionals, with an outstanding reputation of providing unique contents.

ACE Oncology Leadership School
ACE consists of three major components as shown in Figure-1 ACE Oncology Leadership School aims to develop leaders in academic oncology who can skillfully translate findings from basic medical science to clinical medicine and who adhere to the highest ethical standards. For this purpose, the members of ACE all go through a common educational program named the Multidisciplinary Clinical and Translational Research Workshop, which will be described in detail in the following section.
Through the past yearsʼ activity of ACE Oncology Leadership School, the members of the School have established the mission and vision of ACE Oncology Leadership School as follows, Vision: By continually developing and supporting our oncology professionals, we will create a positive feedback loop between patients and the medical personnel who treat them, leading to advancements in research and patient care that brings hope to all patients, their families and caregivers (Figure-2).

Figure-1
The structure of ACE ACE is composed of three components, the oncology leadership school, international investigator initiated clinical trial development, and international multidisciplinary translational/clinical research development. The core component of the activity is the oncology leadership school.
Mission: To realize our vision, we will host innovative educational and professional development programs to allow all medical and research professionals realize their own unique visions in their fields. We will also cultivate highly ethical international academic oncology leaders through multidisciplinary collaboration. These vision and mission form the bases of the current activities of the ACE Oncology Leadership School as described in the following sections (

Multidisciplinary Clinical and Translational Research Workshop
The Multidisciplinary Clinical and Translational Research Workshop was launched in 2008, as the core activity of ACE. This Workshop helps participants develop the leadership skills including effective team management skills, that are necessary for individual career development in academic oncology. The leaders that the school aims to foster are those who can translate findings from basic medical science to clinical medicine, will be the next generation of professional leaders in oncology, as well as highly ethical academic leaders. To achieve this goal, ACE does not just import what is taught in the United States but rather tailors the content to best match the culture of academic medicine in Japan.
The Workshop especially emphasizes the following three concepts: establishing a core valuesbased mission and vision, developing highly ethical leaders for high-performing teams, and fostering a culture of mentorship.
Five workshops have been held to date and have been attended by 62 participants from various institutes and a variety of professions and medical specialties. Through the Multidisciplinary Clinical and Translational Research Workshop, as well as through other programs, ACE has played a major role in establishing the concept of career development for both early-career and late-career medical professionals in Japan. Our hope is that in the near future, graduates of the Workshop will lead the academic oncology field in Japan and become global leaders establishing and promoting clinical and translational research.

Career Development Seminar
The Career Development Seminar series was developed by the members of ACE Oncology Leadership School to more widely distribute the concepts taught in the Multidisciplinary Clinical and Translational Research Workshop and meet the needs of both Japanese medical trainees and mentors for advice and mentorship in career development.
Our thoughts behind the seminars stem from the fact that for young Japanese trainees in medical professions, regardless of their current position or specialty, it has become more and more difficult to find their career path by themselves, and advice and mentorship for career development are important than ever. In particular, trainees need help finding a career that will fulfill their mission and vision as well as make work-life integration possible. They will also need to learn that in the current era, no one individual can provide patient-centered care on his or her own, rather a well-organized, sophisticated team approach is necessary.
The supervisors and mentors are also finding it challenging to advise trainees regarding career development because the training system, as well as the importance of work-life balance are constantly changing. Therefore, understanding the need of mentees is a challenge, especially in the Japanese medical system, where traditional values such as seniority and male predominance are still given high importance.
We believe that leadership skills based on defined individual and team core values, mission, vision, and an adequate mentorship is the key to finding a successful career that meets the current medical needs. However, an opportunity to learn these concepts and skills required for career development are especially scarce in the current Japanese medical education system. Therefore, this kind of seminar targeting not only the mentees but also the mentors is an invaluable opportunity for many of the medical professionals in Japan.
We hope that this seminar will be an effective tool to fulfill the mission and vision of ACE Oncology Leadership School through providing a unique opportunity for academic oncology professionals in Japan to learn the spirit and skills to further their career development. Fortunately, soon after attending the Workshop, I had a good discussion with my supervisor at the graduate school, and he became one of my first mentors. The discussion enabled me to decide on my short-term goals that defined my research projects as a graduate student, and lead to a successful defense of the thesis and three publications at the time of graduation.

The influence of ACE on my career development
The second turn point arose after receiving my PhD degree, while I was finishing my fellowship as a hematologist. I had always been interested in expanding my training opportunities abroad to become an international researcher, but was also determined that this had to be for the purpose of learning something that cannot be learned in Japan. However, most of the grants in Japan that support overseas work required a letter of acceptance from the principle investigator of a research lab. At the time I had difficulty deciding on a specific research topic within malignant hematology, and therefore could not find a research lab to apply to.
Thinking back on my mission and vision made me think that instead of studying on a specific research topic, studying about research methodology could also be something that cannot be fully learned in Japan, and would help fulfill my mission. Hence I decided on taking the time to attend the School of Public Health in the USA to learn epidemiology and statistics needed for clinical research development.
After obtaining my master of public health degree, I had an opportunity to do research on lymphoma in one of the largest cancer centers in the USA. This opportunity came from a good communication with my mentors at the time, and also being proactive about my own interest, things learned from the ACE Workshop.
Often times, your career may go ways that you had not anticipated, or intended. To me, spending time in a rural community hospital as a chief of hematology service upon return to Japan felt like something a little bit off the track of the career path I had imagined, especially since this put my research activities on a halt. However, such an opportunity could be a good chance to look back on your mission and vision.
My experience at this hospital not only increased my clinical ability as a hematologist, but also gave me an opportunity to think about what kind of research could be done at a community hospital, where the patient load is higher than in educational hospitals, in collaboration with an academic institute.
Returning back to the university hospital, I am currently working on establishing my research grounds based on my mission and vision, and using the team alignment, communication, and conflict management skills, learned through participating in the ACE activities.

Conclusion
ACE is a distinctive program in that it has adapted to address the specific needs of oncology professionals in Japan and in neighboring Asian countries that share a common cultural background. Attending the ACE Workshop has greatly influenced my personal career development.
Moreover, I have been fortunate to lead this amazing group together with two other co-leaders of the group in starting the Career Development Seminar, participating in the"Global ACE" , a career development workshop held during the annual Global Academic Programs conference of MDACC, and thereby establishing the role of ACE as a leader in promoting career development, mentorship, and leadership in the Japanese medical environment.
With Juntendo University joining the Tokyo Oncology Consortium, we will strive to continue being the leading group providing Japanese oncology professionals the necessary leadership skills for each individualʼs career development.