March 21, 2024
This article originally appeared in AABB News, a benefit of AABB membership. Join AABB today to read the rest of this month’s issue.
In honor of Women’s History Month, AABB News is pleased to spotlight Kim-Anh Nguyen, MD, PhD, president and CEO of the Blood Bank of Hawaii. Nguyen took time to chat with AABB News about her journey as a female leader in blood banking and discussed her fulfilling career path, how she led her team through the Hawaii wildfires and the most challenging decision of her career. She shares nine leadership lessons below.
“My family was very fortunate. My mom worked for an American company, and their executives could choose one employee to evacuate, so my family was chosen and airlifted out of Vietnam,” Nguyen recalled. “It was certainly a traumatic event for the whole family, and it partly made me who I am today.”
Nguyen noted her childhood as a refugee in the U.S. taught her the importance of social programs and community outreach, as her family relied on the help of the community, people, churches, social services and government programs for a long period after the war.
“It’s amazing how many people and programs reached out to help families like mine,” she said. “Ambition and hard work are important, but most people don’t realize that social community, programs and organizations play a role in their individual success just as much as the Protestant work ethic and gumption.”
Today, Kim-Anh Nguyen, MD, PhD, is the president and chief executive officer of Blood Bank of Hawaii, where she oversees all aspects of the facility’s operations and brings her expertise of both the medical and business sides of operations to blood banking. Nguyen, who has been at the organization’s helm since 2013, is passionate about helping others and giving back to her community through her work.
“In my role, I realize that we’re stewards of the blood supply, but our community’s blood supply isn’t solely at Blood Bank of Hawaii. Our supply comes from the people in our community walking around every day. We have the opportunity to take care of that blood supply and make a difference,” she said. “Looking back on my childhood, I never would have guessed that my current career comes full circle.”
Nguyen knew she wanted to pursue a career in medicine at an early age. Her father was a blue-collar worker and her mother worked as a secretary, but her fascination with the human body led her down a different career path. She became the first physician in her family.
“I was always curious about how things worked as a kid,” Nguyen recalled. “I wanted to help people, but I also went into medicine to become a researcher. I almost became a pediatrician, but I felt working in the lab was the closest fi t between medicine and science, so I started this journey to become a scientist.”
Nguyen moved to California and completed her clinical pathology residency at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). During her residency, she discovered the blood banking field directly connected her to people, in contrast to specialties such as microbiology, hematology and many other laboratory-focused areas of medicine.
“In the other labs areas, we fi nd answers and make diagnoses, but in blood banking, we’re not only finding the answer; we’re also fixing the problem through treatment,” she said. “Blood saves people’s lives, and that’s what drew me to transfusion medicine and blood banking. And by being in San Francisco, the hotbed of HIV-transfusion transmitted infections back then, I saw how I could marry my love of helping people and treating patients with science. So, I moved on to a subspecialty in transfusion medicine.”
Nguyen’s first job in the field was equally divided between research and blood center operations. However, after several years, she discovered she preferred spending most of her time on the operations side. To that end, the next pivot in her journey required her to close the door on academia and a full-time research career to embark on a new path as medical director of Vitalant in San Francisco.
“That was one of the hardest decisions I had to make, but once I made that decision in 2003, I have not looked back,” she said. Nguyen held the position as the medical director for 10 years before she pivoted again in 2013 when an unexpected CEO opportunity became available at Blood Bank of Hawaii. “I had never been to Hawaii; not even for vacation. I initially wasn’t interested, but several of my colleagues encouraged me to explore it, and I eventually accepted the position.”
When reflecting on her leadership journey, Nguyen noted the most rewarding aspect of her career is seeing a vision become a pathway and encouraging others to come along on the journey to fulfill the vision together. The journey for leaders is personal, she pointed out.
“Once we get to the end of the journey, and before we go into the next journey, I realize that I’ve changed and grown just as much as the organization and my team,” Nguyen stated. “Leaders make change happen. They envision change, and they bring others along to execute change. The one who changes and grows the most during that journey is the leader.”
Last August, devastating and deadly wildfires swept through Maui, Hawaii, causing extensive damage to the island, mass evacuations, and massive casualties and injuries. As the sole provider of all the hospitals in Hawaii, Nguyen and her team at Blood Bank of Hawaii sprang into action when they heard about the wildfires. They contacted the primary hospital in Maui and offered to transport blood by plane that night.
“We had just hosted a blood drive in Maui right before the disaster. The hospital staff wasn't sure if they needed the blood supply, but we packed the blood box anyway and got it ready to go,” she said. “By the next morning, patients had come into the hospitals, and there was a need for blood. The hospital called us back with a request, but the blood was already on the plane there.”
Nguyen said the natural disaster highlighted the critical need for a continuous blood supply in every community. “We can never anticipate when a disaster happens, so the blood that’s needed to save lives has to be there before the patients come into the hospital,” she emphasized. “The experience also taught us that we’re all one community. Even though we couldn’t go to Maui after the fire because there was no infrastructure, Oahu and other neighboring islands stepped up to the plate.”
When staff at other blood centers heard about the fires, leaders reached out to Nguyen to offer help. She disclosed that the Blood Centers of America donated $52,000 to the Hawaii Community Foundation to help the wildfire victims through its community of blood centers. Our community had no idea that there was a national network of blood centers available to help, but it showed us we are not alone, Nguyen noted.
“We’ve learned that our blood banking community is so much larger than Blood Bank of Hawaii, and we can rally our community to help. People here are responsive and want to give. We just need a way to make the right ask at the right time,” she said. “We’re very fortunate that people came out when we asked for blood donations, and the response was amazing.”
From November 14 through December 31, 2023, Blood Bank of Hawaii partnered with the Hawaii Community Foundation’s Maui Strong Fund to support the short- and long-term needs of those affected most by wildfire devastation and to ensure hospitals’ blood needs were met for the holiday season. For every blood donation, Blood Bank of Hawaii made a financial donation to help the victims. Nguyen said she plans to continue the business model of collaboration with other nonprofits in the future.
“The dual blood drive allowed us to grow a collaborative relationship with the Hawaii Community Foundation, and it gave us a way to better partner with other nonprofits in our community so that people who don't have the means to make a monetary donation can help by donating blood to save lives,” she said.
Nguyen describes herself as an emotional person and an intellectual thinker. She advises women leaders to embrace their emotions instead of denying them.
“I’ve learned that owning my emotions is not an obstacle or weakness. It makes me stronger and helps me connect my head with my heart,” she said. “Leadership is about the head, heart and guts, and we can’t connect the three unless we own every part of it. Leadership truly takes courage—that’s the guts part. Emotions are about the heart and emotional intelligence. And the head is about strategy and creativity. For myself, and other women leaders, the ability to own our emotions and yet connect them with our intellectual capacity, creativity and courage is a great opportunity and strength.”
Although the leadership journey often requires an arduous path and hard work, Nguyen encourages aspiring leaders to take the leap of faith and avoid shying away from seeking out support during difficult seasons. Asking for help ensures you won’t drown, she added.
“Don’t be afraid to jump in, but remember that it’s deep and cold, and you’ll be scared a lot,” she said. “When you’re swimming in the pool, and it’s cold and the waves are rising, it’s more important to be courageous than confident. Because when we encounter a crisis that we’ve never encountered before, confidence is hard to come by. We really must hold on to our courage in these situations, ask for help and accept help when given.”
Many centers in the blood banking community today are facing similar challenges, including staffing shortages, poor donor retention rates and supporting patient and hospital needs with limited resources and blood shortages.
“We have to find ways to communicate our need and appreciation for donors in a fresh, new way and invest in community engagement,” Nguyen said. Regarding workforce challenges, she noted that talent acquisition, retention and development are currently the number one constraint for leaders of blood banking centers.
“This not only affects strategic execution but also our ability to meet day-to-day operations. We must develop creative ways to communicate what we do professionally, so it becomes an attractive career option,” she said. “We need to find novel ways to recruit and train. We can’t wait to bring employees in here. We’ve got to go out there to market, recruit and collaborate within our communities.”
While reflecting on the Blood Bank of Hawaii’s evolution over the past 11 years, Nguyen lauded the center’s growth and impact on the community with excitement and pride.
“Over the past decade, we’ve shown our value to this community with how we can provide new services, blood components, adequate supply, convalescent plasma and disaster response. We’ve been on a continuous journey of improvement and have made so many strides forward,” she said.
In addition, Blood Bank of Hawaii recently broke ground on its new two-story donor headquarters facility in Kapolei, Hawaii. The center will serve as a central hub for training the next generation of health care professionals and have the capacity to hold more blood than its old headquarters. Nguyen added that Blood Bank of Hawaii has established itself as a critical and essential pillar to the community, garnering support from the locals and organizations.
Leaders envision change and then lead the execution of change for the good of the community and the organization, Nguyen added.
“Team BBH has grown from a time when we feared change to being excited by change,” Nguyen stated. “Change is still scary, but we don’t let that stop us. The team that we have now really is unstoppable and can effect change. That is my greatest achievement. As a result, the community believes in our work and will continue to support us. People want to invest in winners, and I think that’s what they see in BBH. We are the little team that could.”
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