Upcoming SWOG Leadership (and Other) Transitions

March 1st – just 30 days from today – will be a day of multiple transitions for SWOG. It’s the first day of a new grant cycle for our core NCI National Clinical Trials Network (NCTN) support grants, and that new grant cycle has a number of associated leadership and administrative changes for the group. 

The good news is we have been planning for these changes for many months, and we are planning for calm waters.

The biggest change is one we’ve worked on for almost two years now – SWOG Cancer Research Network will have new group chairs: Drs. Primo N. Lara, Jr., and Dawn L. Hershman. 

Drs. Lara and Hershman will jointly lead the group as equal partners, and I will officially “term out” of my role as group chair.

Concurrent with the change of group leadership will be a change in the administrative home of our Network Operations Center (NOC). The NOC grant, held since 2013 at my home institution of Oregon Health and Science University, will formally move to the University of California – Davis, Dr. Lara’s home institution.

The core NCTN grant supporting our Statistics and Data Management Center (SDMC) will remain where it currently is, at the Fred Hutch Cancer Center, and Dr. Michael LeBlanc will remain SWOG group statistician.

In addition to the group chair role(s), several other group-wide leadership positions will turn over as well. Drs. Lara and Hershman will formally thank our outgoing leaders and welcome our incoming principals at our spring meeting’s plenary session. Today I simply want to let you know about some leadership changes that, at this late January date, we can reasonably term imminent.

Our vice chair of translational medicine (TM) since 2013, Dr. Lee Ellis, will step down from that role, and Dr. Jimmy Rae (our long-time executive officer for TM), will become our new TM vice chair.

We’ll also welcome several new executive officers (EOs). 

• Dr. Raymond Osarogiagbon holds our newest EO position – executive officer for community site engagement, a role he’s served in since mid-2025.
• Dr. Chris Ryan will step down as an executive officer, and we’ll split his broad research portfolio between two EOs.
  • Dr. Neeraj Agarwal (who chaired our S1216 trial in prostate cancer) will be our executive officer for research in genitourinary cancers and in early therapeutics and rare cancers.
  • Dr. Hagen Kennecke (now chair of our publications committee) will become our executive officer for research in gastrointestinal cancers and melanoma.
• Dr. Susan O’Brien is stepping down from her role as executive officer for leukemia, lymphoma, and myeloma research.
  • Dr. Alex Herrera (who chaired our landmark S1826 Hodgkin lymphoma trial) will step into this role of executive officer for research on liquid cancers.

Dr. Catherine Tangen, deputy director of our SDMC, has long served as statistical lead and a PI on our NCORP Research Base grant. With the next NCORP grant cycle, Dr. Joseph Unger will replace Dr. Tangen in that role.

The new chairs have created a brand new leadership position, which is particularly exciting to me: the role of chief medical officer (CMO). Drs. Lara and Hershman have asked me to stay on as SWOG’s inaugural CMO, and I’m thrilled I’ll be able to continue serving SWOG in this capacity.

The CMO will provide additional clinical oversight and support in SWOG operational and administrative functions. In helping oversee general daily operations, the CMO will free up our group chairs to focus on SWOG’s highest-level strategic objectives.

With the March 1st move of the SWOG NOC from OHSU to UC – Davis, several SWOG staff now based at OHSU will move to UC – Davis, while others will move to The Hope Foundation.

Either way, after March 1, emails to SWOG staff with an @ohsu.edu domain (except me!) are likely to end up in the digital equivalent of the dead letter office. Those staff will broadcast their future email addresses when they have them (soon!), but if possible, when you correspond with SWOG administration, try to use email addresses that specify a function or office rather than an individual, such as these. 

• federal payments: FedSitePayments@swog.org
• federal awards: FedGrants@swog.org
• non-federal payments or awards: finance@thehopefoundation.org
• National Coverage Analysis (NCA) or general funding questions: funding@swog.org
• SWOG CTP non-federal studies:
  • general queries: ctp@swog.org
  • funding: funding@swogctp.org
• publications: pubs@swog.org

 For many SWOG member sites, the primary impact of the change in the NOC’s home will be a need to establish a new NCTN financial agreement with UC Davis. If your site has an agreement now in place with OHSU, SWOG staff will soon reach out to your financial staff with details on how to effect this change. 

As I’ve mentioned, at our spring group meeting we’ll learn more about these transitions and about our new leadership team. It’s abundantly clear to me, though, that they’re well poised to guide SWOG into its next era of success!

SWOG Publications Correspondence: Please use pubs@swog.org
Per Policy 24, please send all correspondence related to SWOG publications to the list address pubs@swog.org rather than sending to an individual email address.