Each generation of cancer researchers inspires the next generation—and Drs. Everett and Natalie Vokes are no exception. The father-daughter duo shares a heartfelt conversation about their shared commitment to helping patients with lung cancer, oncology research, and the impact of their Conquer Cancer funding on their careers.
Long before she was a student at Harvard Medical School—or a faculty member at MD Anderson Cancer Center—Natalie Vokes, MD, was attending ASCO Annual Meetings.
For her father, Everett Vokes, MD, FASCO, the meeting was a professional mainstay in a celebrated oncology career that includes serving as ASCO president from 2021–2022.
For Natalie, it meant the start of summer vacation. And now? It’s also a bit of a family reunion.
Today, the ASCO Annual Meeting represents one of her first exposures not only to the importance of her father’s work, but also to the profession she would one day call her own. Not only are Drs. Everett and Natalie Vokes father and daughter, they're also both oncologists, experts in treating lung cancer, and recipients of Conquer Cancer grants and awards. Here, the two discuss their shared experiences as oncologists and the lessons they learn from one another.
CONQUER CANCER: Natalie, tell us a bit about your memories of growing up, watching your dad as a physician and researcher. When did you first realize you wanted to pursue a career in medicine, particularly cancer research and care?
NV: I first became aware of my dad’s career when we started traveling to meetings as a family. But the first—and probably only—meeting that I truly recognized by name was ASCO. It was a defining meeting. It was always at the end of the school year, the beginning of summer. And I always knew from the level of emotion in the house that ASCO was the big meeting we were all excited for. So, of all the meetings I grew up attending as a kid, ASCO was the one I was most excited to go to as an adult. It felt like, “Oh, I finally made it. Now I get to go to ASCO.”
CONQUER CANCER: What was it like to receive grant funding from the same organization that had also supported your father’s research?
NV: It was a huge honor. It was very early in my fellowship when I got my first Conquer Cancer award. I was also fortunate enough to receive a Young Investigator Award. These awards are designed to help young oncologists through the bottlenecks that we hit in training. For me, for example, my YIA came as I was transitioning from fellow to attending during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of the pandemic, the role I was applying for was frozen. But having that kind of recognition and financial support was a huge help in actually pushing things forward for me.
EV: I want to chime in here, because when I was coming up as faculty, although ASCO already existed and was hugely important, these grants did not. And that’s really where philanthropy has made such an impact over the years, particularly the past 20 to 30 years.
CONQUER CANCER: Could you expand on that? How does the world differ for young investigators today compared to what you experienced at the same career stage?
EV: At that point in my career, oncology was still a much smaller field that was still struggling for acceptance into the larger medical community. There were still people who would say, “Why are you going into an oncology fellowship, where all you’ll do is make people lose their hair before they get sicker and die?”
And, of course, that wasn’t true anymore, even then: Certain cancers, such as lymphoma, leukemia, and testicular cancer, were frequently being cured, and progress was still happening in other areas. But it had that reputation, especially in the field of lung cancer. There was still very little evidence that medical oncology made a difference at that point.
I was very lucky to end up at an institution that let me pursue head and neck cancer research. I saw how things could move, how chemotherapy could help, how we could build multi-specialty programs. But a lot of that depended on institutional support. We didn’t really have organizations like Conquer Cancer to lend their support. It’s a completely different world now.
CONQUER CANCER: Everett, what did you think or feel when you learned Natalie wanted not only to pursue a career in medicine but specifically oncology?
EV: My wife Tamara and I had been careful—and I hope Natalie perceived it that way—to make room for both our daughters to develop the careers they wanted for themselves. Natalie was very scientifically minded at an early age. She read medical books with great interest, and then there was the atmosphere of our home, where we spoke about medicine. So, I wasn’t surprised, really, that Natalie would pursue a career in science. But that we would end up in the same profession is just wonderful.
CONQUER CANCER: Natalie, could you talk about your dad from a mentorship perspective? Have you leveraged your father as a mentor in any capacity?
NV: Well, I’ve been fortunate to have a number of wonderful mentors, and I have somewhat purposefully made sure to seek out mentors who are not my father, in part because my research focus is different, and also to be sure that I forge my own unique path and to make sure that any successes I achieve I have earned based on my own strengths.
But, of course, there are many different kinds of mentorship. In particular, when I first started my job, I would call my father to discuss clinical situations. And even now, he knows whenever I’m covering the inpatient service because his phone goes off a lot more with me calling to run complicated cases by him. So, I do get very tangible clinical mentorship from him. And he also provides high-level career guidance, not only for me, actually, but even for my friends and colleagues, who sometimes come to me for his advice. So, his mentorship and experience definitely trickled through my community.
EV: And I get advice from Natalie as well. There are rare tumors in lung cancer, and she works at a larger, cancer-focused institution. So, there’s frequently expertise available there on how to treat rare tumors that I might have less experience with. That we can talk about what’s interesting in our field or attend meetings together is really, really rewarding.
NV: One thing that’s been really cool about following in my father’s footsteps is how it’s allowed me to truly understand the impact of his career.
Growing up, I knew he was an oncologist and that he was very successful, but I didn’t really understand what he had accomplished. But then when I was in residency, I rotated with a head and neck surgeon who, when she learned who my father was, said, “Oh, your dad pioneered the use of chemoradiation for the management of head and neck cancers. He changed our field.” It was such an incredible moment, to learn about my father’s impact and actually grasp how meaningful his work had been.
EV: And I’ve had a moment reverse to that. Once, while attending a meeting for the first time, a very well-known oncologist who’d gotten to know Natalie—and was impressed by her—came up to me and asked, “Are you Natalie Vokes’ dad?” And, of course, I proudly said, “Yes.”
Conquer Cancer wishes to thank Dr. Everett Vokes for his recent donations. He is the 2008 recipient of the foundation’s Translational Research Professorship. In 2020, Dr. Natalie Vokes received a Young Investigator Award.
