Influential Woman · Clinical Medical Research Laboratory

Kim Anoe

Director, Laboratory Operations, Retired, ICON plc, Specialty Laboratory

Portland, OR

Certifications · Degrees · Memberships

Degree Bachelor's in Biology Cert Bachelor's in Biology

Her Story

About Kim

I started my career with a bachelor's in biology, wanting to go into forensic lab work. However, many local crime labs required becoming a sworn peace officer and carrying a weapon, which wasn't the path I wanted. So in 1974, I joined a premier, prominent government forensic laboratory, where I worked until 1993 with a small interruption when my girls were little. During that time, we went from very elementary blood analysis of forensic evidence to experiencing and being part of the implementation of DNA analysis of forensic evidence, including the whole Kelly Frye process of getting it introduced into the courtroom and accepted as a way of analyzing evidence and presenting it to the court. When we moved, I transitioned to the medical setting, working at OHSU from 1993 until 2006 as the technical supervisor in their lab, where we were doing a lot of inherited molecular disease testing. In 2006, I went to Kaiser, where they wanted to start a molecular lab but were not doing molecular testing at that point. I became their first molecular technical specialist, and we worked with several different departments - chemistry, microbiology, toxicology - to put some tests online and bring that kind of testing into the laboratory. In 2010, I joined Molecular MD, which was doing testing for some prominent chronic myelogenous leukemia doctors up at OHSU, including Dr. Druker. We were developing testing to help monitor patients' responses to the various drugs being developed for CML. We were acquired by Icon Laboratories in 2019, and our work continued the same as we were considered a specialty lab for Icon, bringing that side of testing into their testing repertoire. I retired in July of 2022 after about 48 years in the field.

Her Interview

Ten minutes with Kim

01What do you attribute your success to?

I think having very strong support from my own family has been essential to helping me be successful, because you can't have personal success without having some support along the way. I also feel very grateful for my professional mentors. The person to whom I was assigned when I had my first forensic job was very kind in the way that they showed me the ropes and helped me develop my own potential there. When I moved from forensics to the medical side, the director of that laboratory was very approachable and very wanting to help people learn, and it was just a very great learning environment. I'm friends with some of these people still today, and there was a real people-to-people relationship there, which helps all the rest of it hang together. Beyond that, I believe honesty is crucial - if you are not honest about what's going on, especially when you're in the learning curve and you've made an error, you need to fess up to that immediately, because the ramifications and ripples that go out from that are something you cannot recover from, and sometimes the business cannot recover from that. You also have to have a work ethic that allows you to work hard, and then understand that to be a good employee, you have to find that personal balance between what you do at work and what you do in your own private time, because that balance also helps you become the best employee that you can be.

02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?

I would say to follow what their heart would like to do, and work hard to get the educational credentials that they need to enter that field. Then don't be afraid to enter something and maybe work hard at it and use it as a stepping stone. You can't always go from getting a degree to stepping into what you feel might be your ideal position. There probably will be some times in your life where you have to work through things and toward things in order to make that journey happen. And in that process, you may find that, oh, I want to go this way instead of that way, even though I thought that's where I was going. So I think just being open to what you learn as you go along, and listening to others, and sharing what you know. It's a very dynamic situation, and there's always great people around you.

03What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?

Honesty is the first one. If you are not honest about what's going on, either when you're in the learning curve and you've made an error, you need to fess up to that immediately, because those ramifications and the ripples that go out from that are something you cannot recover from. Sometimes the business cannot recover from that. So you have to be honest, and you have to have a work ethic that allows you to work hard, and then also understand that to be a good employee, you also then have to find that personal balance between what you do at work and what you do in your own private time, because that balance also helps you become the best employee that you can be.

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