Name: Allison B Reiss

Title: Associate Professor of Medicine and Head, Inflammation Laboratory

Organisation: NYU Grossman Long Island School of Medicine

Allison B. Reiss, M.D., is an internal medicine physician, educator, and molecular biologist who studies the causes and treatment of inflammatory disorders including Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of cognitive impairment, cardiovascular disease, and rheumatologic disorders. Her research is bench-to-bedside and directed toward finding effective therapies for these disease states.

She received her medical degree from SUNY Downstate and completed Internal Medicine Residency at UMDNJ Rutgers. She is certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine. Dr. Reiss is Head of The Inflammation Laboratory and Associate Professor of Medicine at NYU Grossman Long Island School of Medicine.

She is well-published in medical and scientific journals and has chaired symposia at national and international conferences. Dr. Reiss is Section Editor-in-Chief of Neurology, for the journal Medicine and Specialty Chief Editor of Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias for the journal Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Investigative Medicine. She teaches and mentors medical students, residents, and fellows.

She has received funding from the National Institutes of Health, the American Heart Association, and the Arthritis Foundation. She is currently funded by the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America. Dr. Reiss has a strong passion for community outreach and is dedicated to improving healthcare, especially for older populations.

Thank you to the 2,000 leaders who’ve generously done the 7 Questions on Leadership!

I hope Allison's answers will encourage you in your leadership journey. Enjoy!

Cheers,

Jonno White

1. What have you found most challenging as a leader?

I am fundamentally a person of ideas and my purpose in life is to apply my creative skills to finding treatments and cures for diseases that afflict millions of people like Alzheimer’s disease and cardiovascular disease. As the leader of a research initiative that has the potential to affect millions of people with Alzheimer’s disease and their loved ones, I feel every day the responsibility not to let them down and it weighs upon me.

I make myself very accessible to the public and I receive many e-mails, phone calls, and messages from desperate and frightened families asking for hope and guidance and I want to help them all. I am very aware of the passage of time and the ticking clock and so there is great urgency in the need for a breakthrough.

Some incredibly generous donors sponsor my lab’s work and I make sure that every penny received goes toward the purchase of supplies for our studies and salary for the technical personnel who perform the experiments.

2. How did you become a leader? Can you please briefly tell the story?

From a very early age, I had an insatiable curiosity about life processes and I read every book in my local library on biology, health and medicine. I wanted to understand the human body and how it works and what happens when things go wrong. I knew that I wanted to become a doctor when I was seven years old, but throughout my youth, I met with a lot of resistance as a female wanting to enter a profession that was then very male-dominated. My parents did not encourage me, but I was very stubborn and determined.

I went to medical school at SUNY Downstate and then completed an Internal Medicine Residency at UMDNJ Rutgers and received a Board Certification in Internal Medicine from the American Board of Internal Medicine. At that point, I deviated from the usual course of going into practice in Internal Medicine or doing a fellowship in a specialty area. Instead, I received an NIH-sponsored fellowship for physicians who wanted to do research and I spent 5 years training in molecular and cell biology at NYU School of Medicine.

This training gave me hands-on experience using the tools of the scientist that I was able to combine with patient-centered medical knowledge. From there, I gradually moved up through academia as an assistant and then an associate professor. At first, I worked under other physician-scientists and then I started to obtain my funding which allowed me to hire technicians and eventually to become an independent investigator with my team.

I benefited from mentorship and guidance from physician researchers who had gone down the path before me. They inspired me, shared their wisdom, and helped me to avoid many pitfalls. Among these are Dr. Bruce N. Cronstein, Dr. Steven E. Carsons, Dr. Joan T. Merrill, and Dr. Jill P. Buyon.

As I became recognized in my field, I was sought out by scholarly journals to review and edit manuscripts and now, as Section Editor-in-Chief of neurology, for the journal Medicine and Specialty Chief Editor of Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias for the journal Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, I oversee the publication of cutting edge work coming out globally.

My role as a member of the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America’s Medical, Scientific & Memory Screening Advisory Board also gives me a platform from which to speak to the public on the importance of making inroads in Alzheimer’s disease. As an educator serving as a Councilor of the American Federation for Medical Research, I can influence the younger generation and encourage the pursuit of research at a time when fewer and fewer physicians are choosing research careers, likely because it is so difficult and not as lucrative as practicing medicine.

3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?

I try not to have too much structure because, for me, it interferes with creativity. I keep meetings to a minimum and limit them to only the ones that are necessary or will move the science forward like lab meetings with my team or collaborators. I do write lists of the tasks I want to complete and prioritize those that have a deadline.

I write these on scraps of paper and find it satisfying to check off the ones that are done. I read voraciously in my field so that I can keep up and have the information in my head to synthesize and use to devise experiments to answer the urgent and most clinically relevant questions. I do not sleep well and some of my best ideas come to me while I am lying awake in the middle of the night listening to the radio (yes, old-fashioned radio!).

I usually write down these ideas so that I don’t forget in the morning and they have been the basis for many illuminating experiments. I sit at my computer thinking and writing for many hours and I tend to get into a flow state and shut out everything around me. I eat breakfast and lunch in front of the screen. I have a small refrigerator and store lots of yogurts and fiber bars in my office so that when I suddenly realize I am hungry, I can grab food quickly.

I keep an open door policy and my office is located right next to the lab so that any team member can stop by any time to ask questions or review strategy. We have formal lab meetings about once per month and I monitor the progress of each project to see what is needed to publish. I put together the framework for each paper.

I also publish many review articles and case reports spanning a variety of topics and this way I can give students a chance at authorship. In the evenings, I may do a bit more work, but I try to relax by watching TV or reading fiction. I usually go to bed by about 11:30 PM.

4. What's a recent leadership lesson you've learned for the first time or been reminded of?

Colleagues, friends, and mentors are invaluable and merit appreciation and gratitude every day. I am very aware that it truly does “take a village” to make progress. Nothing gets done in a vacuum. The reason that my vision can move into the real world and be explored in living systems is that I have highly skilled and dedicated people standing at my side.

My current post-doctoral fellow Dr. Ankita Srivastava, is an incredible woman who connects the lightbulb of ideas to the electric circuit of the technical team. She is my right hand and also brings her perceptions and interpretations to our studies. She has a bright future ahead as a scientist in her own right. Before Ankita, I had 3 other incredible post-docs, Dr. Kamran Anwar, Dr. Iryna Voloshyna, and Dr. Lora Kasselman, who have all gone on to successful careers.

The gap between the departure of Lora and the arrival of Ankita was very difficult as I tried to be both the lead scientist and my post-doc! I also value my incredible technicians Heather Renna, Maryann Johnson, Saba Ahmed, and Samantha Vasalani, all of whom believe in our mission to save lives and improve health, and each of whom brings unique skill sets to the lab.

Heather has been with me the longest and she is organized methodical and incredibly efficient, so I rely on her to keep track of many intricacies. Maryann is exploring new ways to extract key molecules from blood samples so that we can do our studies in living people using non-invasive technology and Saba continues to work behind the scenes while attending medical school.

Samantha has just joined us and has been able to jump right into experiments on the effect of hormonal manipulations on nerve cell function. Also, I will never forget my very first technician, Nahel Awadallah, who is now an award-winning faculty member in biology at Nash Community College.

We learned and grew together in those early days. Of course, the clinicians and scientists who bring their expertise to our multi-disciplinary team have my unending gratitude. Dr. Joshua De Leon, Dr. Aaron Pinkhasov, Dr. Aaron Katz, Dr. Mark Stecker, Dr. Morgan Peltier and Dr. Irving Gomolin are dedicated professionals of integrity who are committed to our work and I am honored to call them my friends. All are treasures.

5. What's one book that has had a profound impact on your leadership so far? Can you please briefly tell the story of how that book impacted your leadership?

I am a big reader of classic science fiction with its egalitarian perspective and insights into human behavior. However, the biggest influence on my leadership stems from the example set by Captain James T. Kirk in the original Star Trek TV series. I will add that the source material was the TV show, but the episodes were compiled into a series of books by James Blish – all of which I own and have read over and over.

Captain Kirk is inspiring because he is commanding but fair and respectful. He listened to his people and worked collaboratively. He was honorable and trustworthy and gave credit where it was due. He admitted when he was wrong and changed course as needed. He was flexible and adapted to many situations and he had a sense of humor.

6. If you could only give one piece of advice to a young leader, what would you say to them?

Remain idealistic. Do not compromise your integrity. There will be a lot of outside pressure to please others, but you must stay true to your vision and be honest in all your dealings. Listen to the data and fit your narrative to the data. Never twist the data to fit the story you want it to tell.

7. What is one meaningful story that comes to mind from your time as a leader, so far?

About 15 years ago, I realized that the hypothesis that excess accumulation of the amyloid beta protein in the brain was not the cause of Alzheimer’s disease. An unbelievable amount of time, money, and energy had gone into affirming belief in the amyloid hypothesis, and animal studies showed over and over again that getting rid of amyloid could fix neurodegeneration.

A lot of researchers built their careers on this premise and very few of them even falsified data. All of my work led me to believe that while amyloid may contribute to brain damage in Alzheimer’s disease, it is not the whole answer. If you clear the amyloid, it is like sweeping up the debris around a crumbling building while the building continues to fall.

I could not get funding to pursue my theories so I concentrated on my cardiovascular work, but never gave up hope that I could return to Alzheimer’s research. Then, in 2014, Dr. Mark Stecker, our Chair of Neurology at that time, showed belief in my ideas and helped me to get in touch with Bert E. Brodsky, founder of the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America (AFA) and Charles J. Fuschillo Jr., AFA president and CEO.

They were visionaries who recognized the lack of progress in the field and they funded and continue to fund my research this has allowed me to lead my team down a unique path despite all of the prevailing views. NYU Grossman Long Island School of Medicine has provided a lab environment and a collegial atmosphere where clinicians and scientists can come together to explore bioenergetic deficits in Alzheimer’s disease in models that are purely human-based to discover new treatments.

Without autonomy and a supportive setting, this type of innovation would not be possible. It is more important now than ever as the approval of immunotherapies against amyloid for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease patients has led to marginal results and has been fraught with controversy.

I do not dismiss anti-amyloid therapy, but I think it cannot stand alone. It may have a place in a multifaceted personalized treatment approach that takes into account the different aspects of this complex disease and I am hopeful that my group can be involved in developing this effective treatment regimen.