Many people wouldn’t see a direct line between working on John Deere tractors in rural Washington State and working on a DNA repair enzyme that functions to prevent cancer in humans.

But that’s the unlikely trajectory of Payton Utzman BS’22 who after graduating from the School of Biological Sciences headed off to join Nabla Bio at a 15,000-square-foot state-of-the-art wet laboratory and co-working space for high-potential biotech and life science ventures at Harvard University.

“We are a small team of nine scientists,” says Utzman, “working to synthesize therapeutic antibodies that are designed by artificial intelligence. It has been an amazing experience so far learning so many new skills and applying my undergraduate research experience in such a useful way.”

Payton Utzman BS'22

"The elegant and candid relationship between the structure of a protein and its corresponding function resembled my understanding of how metal parts assembled into an engine can produce incredible amounts of power."

Granted, it wasn’t a just a bounce from the spring seat of a John Deere tractor in Pullman, WA to Boston. But Utzman’s mechanically-oriented mind found a formidably gratifying corollary in biochemistry and structural biology in the Horvath lab. “I spent my childhood weekends helping my father and grandfather maintain various tractors and machinery. By the time I graduated high school, I was a self-taught mechanic, having restored an old pickup and rebuilding the engine through the guidance of a manual,” he remembers. “When I was exposed to the microscopic world of proteins, I was amazed by the enzymatic function of these biological machines. The elegant and candid relationship between the structure of a protein and its corresponding function resembled my understanding of how metal parts assembled into an engine can produce incredible amounts of power. I was then intrigued to learn more about the world of proteins and motivated to join Dr. Horvath’s research team in learning a protein mechanistically functions to repair DNA.”

In addition to making discoveries in DNA repair, the Horvath Lab, headed up by principal investigator and SBS Associate Professor Martin Horvath, applies structural methods and biochemistry to make discoveries in Chronic Neuropathic Pain that may lead to the use of non-opioid drugs. For the DNA repair project the lab studies the atomic resolution structure of MutY, [a human gene that encodes a DNA glycosylase], to understand how this enzyme recognizes and removes Adenine in OG:A base pairs.”

Says Utzman, “to better understand the mechanism of MutY, we are interested in learning about the evolution of this enzyme over millions of years. This led us to studying MutY enzymes from microbes at The Lost City Hydrothermal Field, a site similar to conditions in which life may have been conceived on Earth.” Samples from the Lost City have been collected by another SBS professor William “Billy” Brazelton, a unique partnership with marine biology and the unique mineral structures at the bottom of the Mid-Atlantic.

From these samples containing MutY-encoding genes, Utzman and his colleagues were excited to locate microbes that survive off of energy created from a geochemical reaction involving rocks and water, one of the discoveries that would lead to a better understanding of the nature of cancer.

“One of the most valuable assets of the University of Utah is the large amount of cutting-edge research occurring on campus,” says Utzman of his four years in Utah and his seven semesters as a teaching assistant. “I am so thankful for the research opportunities given to me by the U which have paved the way for me to actually have an impact on treating disease and impacting lives.”

Video on Payton Utzman’s 2020 research - “A Structural Analysis of the LC MutY Metagenome”.

Since exchanging leather work gloves in rural America for the rubber-gloved hands of the science researcher, Utzman has learned how to think critically and solve difficult problems. “I am passionate about getting kids interested in science and showing the amazing problems we can solve by blending scientific disciplines with creativity.”

Pursuant to that interest, Utzman worked together with other dedicated STEM students at the U to found the student-led STEM Tutoring program at the U to provide free tutoring to high school students in the greater Salt Lake City area. Not surprisingly, Utzman believes that the future of medicine is molecular. And while his professional ambition is to continue studying the function of proteins to one day help develop therapeutics to treat disease, he is also driven to outreach–-both in elevating the uninitiated to the scientific method (and critical thinking) and in science communication for the public.

The U graduate is quick to reference Dr. Anthony Fauci, the physician-scientist and immunologist serving as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Chief Medical Advisor to the President. During the past three years the young scientist saw Fauci as the country’s undisputed spirit guide through the coronavirus pandemic. “His perseverance to help people and communicate scientific truth is inspiring,” says Utzman who finds the short-statured but brilliant (and reportedly fit) octogenarian as his “hero.”

For Utzman, the greatest advice he can give up-and-coming scientists at the U and elsewhere, is to learn how to learn. “The pandemic was a difficult time for all of us, and it was devastating that the virus affected so many lives. I think one of the biggest take-aways from the pandemic was the importance of scientific research and clear communication with the public. My advice for other students would be to learn how to read and to understand research publications.”

Embedded now in the next chapter of his life, Utzman has secured an excellent foundation. The Beta Theta Pi was a two-time Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) Scholar, an SBS Research Scholar in 2021 and recipient of the Continuing Student School Scholarship in 2020. Additionally, he was lead author of a paper published in the University of Utah Undergraduate Research Journal.

Though far from the farm fields outside Pullman, Washington, the grease monkey in Utzman apparently is forever. He says that despite long days at the bench studying that “elegant and candid relationship between the structure of a protein structure and its corresponding function” he can still become absorbed by those other metal parts, the ones in trucks and motorcycles that coalesce so intricately–those other machines that can kick out a lot of power, but on the level of a combustion engine.

And this just in from Beantown: Payton Utzman is working on yet another engine–training for the Boston Marathon.

At age 81, Dr. Fauci–known to “kill it” on the treadmill at the gym–would be proud.

Dr. Horn graduated from the School of Biological Sciences in August 2021. He was a member of Professor Dave Carrier’s Evolutionary Biomechanics Lab. His dissertation, which he defended last year, was titled: “The Social Dependency Hypothesis: An Evolutionary Perspective on Health and Longevity.”

USAF, C-17 Globemaster

I joined the Air Force as an 18-year-old cadet. I came to the U as part of a program that would allow me to later return to the Air Force Academy to teach.

In my doctoral studies, I wanted to understand the relationships between our evolved propensity to form intense fraternal bonds in the face of stress and our abilities to maintain health and performance amidst difficult circumstances.

I was home when I saw the first few hours of the evacuation of Afghanistan on the news. My only thought was that I needed to get over there as fast as possible to help. I was one of the last of eight C-17 crews to deploy from Travis Air Force Base, California.

After landing in Qatar, we were immediately alerted to fly a floor-load of refugees to Germany. It was a seven-hour flight, and the aircraft was full of Afghan evacuees, including many children. I was amazed at their patience and positive attitudes despite the horrible circumstances. A few days later, my crew and I evacuated some of the last military personnel from Kabul, Afghanistan, on the final day of Operation Allies Refuge.

Operation Allies Refuge

It was a seven-hour flight, and the aircraft was full of Afghan evacuees, including many children.

My studies helped me contextualize the experience. The famed “fight or flight” stress response is good for running away from predators in the jungle but not helpful for keeping your crew safe in combat. My research shows there’s another stress response that helps us bond and maintain our composure during extreme stress and threat; this response has yet to be fully characterized.

This operation included some of the most challenging missions of my career, and I couldn’t have done it without the bond with my team. I am humbled to have participated in the largest noncombatant evacuation in history and excited to further that experience by applying my lessons learned to science.

By Alex Horn, originally published at of biology.utah.edu.

Randy Rasmussen & Denise Dearing

BioFire Diagnostics began when three college friends came together on the University of Utah campus to collaborate and build a transformative company.

Many of today’s most successful companies were created by groups of friends: Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard started Hewlett-Packard in a garage in Palo Alto, California; Bill Gates and Paul Allen, childhood friends from Lakewood, Washington co-founded Microsoft; and Larry Page, Sergey Brin, part of the same PhD cohort at Stanford University founded Google.

The University of Utah has its own version of this story: BioFire Diagnostics began with a group of three college friends who came together on the University of Utah campus to collaborate and build a transformative company.

The precursor to BioFire Diagnostics, Idaho Technology, Inc., was founded in 1991 by three U alumni: Carl Wittwer (Residency, ’88, Pathology), Kirk Ririe, BS’05, Chemistry, and Randy Rasmussen, PhD’98, Biology. Their unique backgrounds and experience perfectly complemented one another—Ririe was a chemist and engineer, Randy with a molecular and cellular biology background, and Wittwer a medical professional.

BioFire started small, with the trio working on prototypes of PCR machines which included hair dryers taped to fluorescent tubes. But the they set their sights higher to lead the molecular diagnostic industry, and BioFire’s product development has since evolved to include sophisticated diagnostic tools including Film Array®, a proprietary molecular diagnostics system that uses PCR and melt-curve analysis and simultaneously tests for multiple infectious agents in a single panel in the short time of about an hour.

From its humble beginnings in the corner of Ririe’s parent’ business, to their current location in University of Utah Research Park, BioFire has always had a simple, yet tremendously impactful, mission: “To help make the world a healthier place.”

Randy Rasmussen

"I urge students to explore their passion. A degree in the STEM field will open doors to many opportunities."

Due to its great success, BioFire was purchased by BioMerieux in 2013. Under the leadership of Dr. Randy Rasmussen, who currently serves as CEO, the company grew from 250 employees, in 2012, to over 1,400 employees in 2017. Their new, built-to-spec, 30,000 square foot building in Research Park, “allows visitors to see the research, development and manufacturing underway while simultaneously integrating the beauty of the foothills, says Denise Dearing, Chair of the Biology Department while on a recent tour of the building. “It’s stunning.”

Later this year, BioFire will have sold its 10,000th instrument—an astounding figure when considering there are only 6,000 hospitals in the U.S.

Born in Lansing, Michigan as the son of a horticulture professor at Michigan State University, Rasmussen has always had a passion for science. With family ties in Utah, Rasmussen began his education in biology at Utah State University and later spent time working with the U medical heart transplant team. From there, his passion for science led him to pursue a PhD in molecular and cellular biology at the U. While there he worked in Sandy Parkinson‘s lab which transformed him during his first year of core classes.

Rasmussen relates how in one year he went from “knowing nothing to knowing a lot.” It was a dramatic life transformation which exposed him to many new ares in biology.

At BioFire, going from scientist to CEO was a unique transition. Rasmussen expressed, “It was initially difficult to start off from a focus of research and development, to being primarily focused on the day-to-day of building a business. The other unique transition was, “Giving up control over the small, but important details that I oversaw, to fully trusting those you work with to get the job done.” Rasmussen shares that most of the leadership team has been with BioFire for over 15 years. This longevity shows the tremendous trust and loyalty of the BioFire team.

Rasmussen is tremendously appreciative of his time at the University of Utah where he met nt only his future business partners, but also his wife Heather Ross, BS’88, communication. Kirk Ririe introduced Randy to Heather—now married, they reside near the U and have a son Aidan, who currently studies economics at Wesleyan University.

Today, Rasmussen has a passion for Utah and the mountains where he enjoys skiing, biking and hiking. Continuing his connection to the U, he notes that many of BioFire’s talented employees are U graduates.

Reflecting on his life and career, Randy Rasmussen has some advice for current student at the U. He urges them to explore their passion, and explains that a degree in the STEM field will open doors to many opportunities. He believes that students should take classes in business to complement their technical background and should participate in internships to gain additional experience and perspective.

This story originally appeared in 2017 in the debut issue of OUR DNA.

George Seifert

The Winningest coach in San Francisco 49er’s History.

George Seifert began his professional coaching career in 1977 as a defensive assistant to head coach Bill Walsh. After nine years and three Super Bowl championships with Walsh, Seifert was appointed Head Coach of the San Francisco 49ers in 1989

They were big shoes to fill for the unassuming defensive specialist and defensive backfield coach standing on the sidelines wearing his signature windbreaker and poker face, and not everyone thought he was up to it. “My wife told me, ‘George don’t screw it up,’” Seifert has reported, “so I did everything I could not to screw it up.”

Coach Seifert “was every bit the innovator on the defensive side of the ball as Bill Walsh was on the offensive side of the ball,” said Matt Maiocco of Comcast SportsNet on the occasion of Seifert’s induction into the 49ers Hall of Fame in 2014. “He kept that ship steady.”

The Bay Area native always loved football and, while attending San Francisco Polytechnic High School, conveniently opposite Kezar Stadium, Seifert’s football coach was quick to get him and his teammates, ostensibly as ushers, to see as much of the 49ers games as possible. “I don’t remember doing much ushering,” Seifert confesses. “It was just a way to get a free pass.”

Little did he know then that someday he would be first an assistant coach and then the head coach of his hometown team accompanying the 49ers to no less than five Super Bowl wins.

The early days.

Crossroads of the West

None of this was to happen until after college, however. The Friday before he enrolled in Cal Poly Tech, the University of Utah offered him a football scholarship, filling in for a last-minute cancellation.

He took it. The freshman guard and linebacker found himself on a bus headed for Salt Lake City, the “crossroads of the west.”

“I woke up on the bus,” says the self-described city boy, “when we were passing over the salt flats with the sun coming up and I thought “My god, what did I get myself into?’” By the time the Greyhound rolled up the hill in the foothills of the Wasatch Front, he was relieved as the city and campus were situated in a beautiful almost feral setting.

In 1964 the Utah Utes beat West Virginia 32-6 in the Liberty Bowl, the first bowl game to be held indoors. Seifert says he wasn’t much of a football player, but that he made a better coach, and it had to do with his time at the U. Following graduation, he entered a master’s program in physical education and was a graduate assistant for the football program.

“I was always into football,” he says, but “I loved the teaching aspect of it.”  At age 25, he was hired by Westminster College to reboot its football program, and he clearly had found his bliss. From there he followed U Coach Ray Nagel to the University of Iowa.

When asked why biology, Seifert at first did not know what he wanted to major in, but due to the enthusiasm and expertise of his professors during his first year of general ed, he gravitated to zoology. He recalls stepping outside the old (and now raised) Ballif residence hall in his shorts with binoculars on a Saturday, kiting off to do field research while his “kibitzing” buddies, ready to party, chided him. He didn’t care. He loved the fact that he could step outside his dorm, just below Ft. Douglas, and almost instantly be in the mountains and among wildlife. Even in his shorts and with the friendly ridicule of his dorm mates, he was willing to follow his passion.

Super Bowl Victory Parade

The Coach

After working as an assistant at the University of Iowa, the University of Oregon and Stanford University, Seifert was hired as head coach at Cornell University. It was the late 70s, on the cusp of what Seifert calls the Golden Age of Football.

While at Oregon he recalls standing out on the field with coach Jerry Frei when Bill Bowerman dropped in. At the time, Bowerman who was coaching Steve “Pre” Prefontaine—one of the greatest American track stars of all time—walked up with a prototype of a track shoe he’d developed in his kitchen for artificial turf using his waffle iron. The shoe would develop into a Nike standard used not only for football but for virtually every court and field sport. Seifert was there for that little bit of history . . . and what would turn out to be many more.

Following Cornell, in 1977, Seifert returned to Stanford where he first met Bill Walsh destined to become the legendary coach of the 49ers. It wasn’t a straight shot for Seifert, however, to Candlestick Park with Walsh where the 49ers were now playing, even when Walsh moved to the 49ers himself in 1979. The Seiferts stayed on for another year at Palo Alto and were getting ready to move to Green Bay, Wisconsin with an offer to coach the Packers.

“Linda and I were talking up Wisconsin to the kids. Talking about how they would trade sunny California for playing in the snow and making snowmen.” The last minute, he was offered the position as the defense backs coach for the 49ers. “When we told the kids [we were staying] they were so disappointed they went running out of the room, crying.” In 1983 Seifert was promoted to defensive coordinator and in each of the following six seasons he finished in the top ten in fewest points allowed.

photo: Ian Walton/Getty Images

The Faithful

On Seifert’s 49th birthday, the 49ers won Super Bowl XXIII (January 22, 1989), and the following season he was promoted to succeed Walsh as head coach. That was when his wife said that little bit about not screwing it up.

Three superstars later—Joe Montana, Jerry Rice and Steve Young—and the team had won two more Super Bowls, one in 1989 and another in 1994. It was indeed the golden years of football, not just for Siefert, but for the entire sport—and, of course, for the SF fans known as “The Faithful.” Seifert references Bill McPherson, defensive coordinator from 1989 to 1993, as “a man of wisdom” and a senior mentor who built the foundation of Seifert’s pro career.

Not only is Seifert one of only 13 NFL head coaches with more than one Super Bowl victory, but in Super Bowl XXIV he became the first rookie head coach to win the championship since Don McCafferty coached the Baltimore Colts to victory in Super Bowl V.

Seifert still holds the record (98) for franchise wins and also the record for winning percentage (76.6%).

Relaxing at home.

The Retiree

Today, Seifert lives with Linda in Nevada where he has returned to nature through fishing and hunting. Whether it’s hunting duck, deer or elk, he loves getting into the outback where he has made friends with ranchers and gets to dig back into his zoological pre-text to seeing and studying life around him.

It helps to have his trusty companions along with him, Cavalier King Charles spaniels Rusty and Dusty who, he says with affection, are just a couple of awesome “ragamuffins.” He still has a place in the North Bay and a boat near where his two children and four grandchildren live and where he exchanges his fly rod for a deep-sea one.

It bears repeating, though, that the circuitous route from a sort-of usher at Kezar Stadium as a boy to a college football player and biology major at the U and then to the art (and sport) of teaching, was one that not only presented itself to Seifert but was that intrinsic thing he chose to embrace fully. There are many people, many former players and many fans—especially in San Francisco “Faithful”–who are glad he did. To watch the tributes roll in during his recorded induction into the 49ers Hall of Fame is both inspiring and moving. Even Steve Young, who in 2020 (KNBR radio) reflected on his (in)famous tongue lashing of his coach on national television during a home game with Philadelphia after Seifert pulled him from the game, said, “I give George so much credit, for just staring out, straight ahead and letting that wind just go by like nothing.”

The Philosopher

That said, Seifert has said in interviews about everyone he’s coached that “If a player has the sense that you can make them better they will go through the wall for you.” You can see how the teaching and coaching ethic of George Seifert came to the fore as early as his sojourn at the U and how he never wavered from it. (Perhaps even his beloved superstitious behaviors as head coach started there as well?)

Not one to hold grudges, Seifert’s signature rigid demands on his players coupled with that expressionless face on the sidelines of a hotly-contested game are surface to something deeper. His hard-edged exterior obviously works with his players, but it can be underscored by humility. He knew, for example, when his predecessor retired that it was going to be a tall order, and he was visibly moved when asked about it. Things did not always come easy for him, as when Walsh earlier overlooked him when Walsh left Stanford for the big league.

Seifert seems to know how to take these defeats and even humiliations on the chin, including his untimely resignation from the 49ers in January 1997 when it was clear the team was not going to renew his contract, as well as, two years later, as coach for and de-facto general manager of the Carolina Panthers.

From his home base, split between Nevada and the North Bay, Seifert has watched with gratification as the University of Utah Football Program has expanded and grown into a “new environment.” He’s watched with interest as head coach Kyle Whittingham, despite heavy recruiting from other teams, decided on Siefert’s alma mater. The U’s first time ever at the Rose Bowl this past January, is strong evidence that, in the Pac-12 and nationally, the Utah Utes are a force to be reckoned with.

As for the pandemic, Seifert will tell you he’s become more philosophical during this disruptive time now entering its third year. He is old enough (82) to remember the hard times that this country has seen before, especially military conflicts overseas—the impacts of WWII, the Korean Conflict and Vietnam when there was enormous uncertainty, death and pain. And he’s a biologist and now master teacher enough to know that this too shall pass.

“That’s the beauty of life,” he says, while clearly never underplaying its challenges. Change and even death are part of it.

by David Pace, first published @biology.utah.edu

Fort Worth Botanic Garden

As a boy in growing up in Bountiful, Patrick Newman took a bite of a plant he would never forget.

It tasted just like black licorice, which he loved. “I remember being struck at that moment as an 8-year-old boy thinking, ‘Plants can taste like things — what else can plants do?’” says Newman in an article in the Fort Worth Report. “That sort of set me on a path of inquiry and, as a youth, I devoured science.”

“I came to the UofU to be a doctor, and was content with that decision and path until I took a plant physiology class from Leslie Sieburth,” he says of the plant biologist who studies pathologies in arabadopsis. Currently, with Neil Vickers, she is also Co-Director of what is now the School of Biological Sciences. “That course changed my perspective of biology, refocused my interests, and altered my career path—all of which I am extremely grateful for.”

Following graduation from SBS with a BA in 2003, he joined the Peace Corps, volunteering in the Republic of Azerbaijan teaching science and English. Once he’d located a greenhouse there, he started teaching the students about plants and gardening. Following his stint with the Corps, he returned to the U for graduate school—he has an MPA,’10, from the UofU—and to work at Red Butte Garden.

Patrick Newman

After ten years at Red Butte he became the Executive Director of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, TX. Then, in 2020, he was recruited to lead the merger of the Botanical Research Institute of Texas (BRIT) and the Fort Worth Botanical Garden (FWBG).

As President and CEO of BRIT, one of the largest centers for botanical exploration and discovery in the United States, Newman heads up the executive team of the new organization bringing together BRIT’s fundraising, education, and world-class research capabilities with the Garden’s historically significant grounds, event facilities, and horticultural expertise.

Located in the heart of the Fort Worth Cultural District, just minutes from downtown, BRIT’s combined 120-acre campus offers stunning garden views, exciting exhibits, gift shops, and a café. Visitors can spend the day strolling through the Japanese Garden with its koi-filled pools, sculptured hillsides, crafted stonework and dramatic waterfalls. Nearby, one can visit the iconic Rose Garden, with a terraced ramp featuring paths that wind past colorful flower beds amidst a cascade of water down the center.

The Fort Worth Botanic Garden was established in 1934 and is the oldest major botanic garden in Texas. It contains a collection of more than 2,500 species of plants. Long celebrated for its beautiful tropical, rose, and Japanese gardens, the FWBG is composed of 25 specialty garden spaces, including a tropical conservatory, a public perennial trial garden, and naturalized areas and vistas.

Next door, at the BRIT campus, visitors learn more about botanical research through art galleries, libraries, plant collections and science-related exhibits. An international scientific research and learning center, BRIT has a mission to conserve our natural-world heritage by sharing knowledge of the plant world and helping the public understand the value plants bring to life.

Fort Worth Botanic Garden

It would seem to be a perfect job for Newman whose early passion for plant biology coupled with his Master’s Degree in Public Administration has led him to a research institute which serves as a think tank and a catalyst in conservation. Additionally, FWBG | BRIT knows that education is lifelong. “We are dedicated to inspiring nature-lovers of all ages to explore the world around them, discover new interests, and engage their communities in positive change,” reads their website. “… We strive to introduce community members to the wonders of plants and ecology, the importance of conservation and sustainability, and social-emotional learning.”

Newman talks fondly of the friendships he made while at the University of Utah, as well as his avid running career; to date, he has completed 48 marathons in 29 states.

Clearly, however, his passion lies in the world of plants and the broader context of the eco-system that many believe is currently under not only the singular threat of global warming, but the degradation of the planet’s bio-diversity.

“More than ever before,” he says, “the planet needs well-educated and passionate advocates of biodiversity conservation. It also needs an increase of kindness and compassion. The University of Utah and U Biology are the perfect proving ground to develop those attributes in future scholars, doctors, leaders and humanitarians.”

His advice to students? “Take full advantage of all that the U has to offer. And remember that biology is really the study of plants and everything that parasitizes them.”

By David Pace, first published @ biology.utah.edu

April Christofferson

“I love the process of writing,” says April Christofferson, BS’73, “but I write because I’m trying to make a difference.”

The difference this Illinois native is talking about includes many of the most complex and conflicted issues of her adopted home in the American West, including wildlife and public lands management, tribal rights, and development. Most recently her passion as a writer has turned to the issue of more than 6,000 missing and endangered indigenous women in the country, many of them in the West.

Trapped ©2012

This year, the reissue of the first two books of her Judge Annie Peacock Series, Alpha Female and Trapped, by Burns & Lea Books–along with its shopping of them by publisher/agent Story Merchant for a television miniseries based on the characters’ adventures in Yellowstone National Park and beyond—speak to the enduring interest of her literary creations, characterized by deep-dive storytelling that started more than a quarter-century ago.

Growing up in Chicago, Christofferson came to love the West during summers visiting Yellowstone and her grandfather’s ranch in Wyoming, where both parents had been raised, and later her paternal grandparents’ homes in Salt Lake City and Richmond, Utah. But the road she traveled to become a successful writer is a long and winding story in itself.

Edgewater ©1998

In many ways, it starts with Christofferson’s maternal grandfather, Floyd “Doc” Carroll, a rodeo champion and Wyoming state veterinarian who was inducted into the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum’s Hall of Great Westerners in 1998. He was a stunt double for the famous movie cowboy Tom Mix. “My grandpa was such an influence,” says Christofferson. “I knew from when I was a little girl that I was going to live out West and be a vet.”

After receiving her undergraduate degree in biology from the U, Christofferson began a veterinary medicine program at the University of Illinois in Champaign. But after her first year, she realized she truly wanted to be back West.

“Throughout college, I worked at an animal hospital, but I was always upset—they would try not to tell me if someone was bringing in an animal to be euthanized, because I’d do anything I could to persuade them not to” if treatment were at all possible, she recounts in the alumni story by Marcia C. Dibble. “I realized I wasn’t really emotionally cut out to be a vet.”

The Protocol ©2000

Christofferson and her husband, Steve Leach—also a Utah graduate, BS’76, communication—quickly relocated to Coeur d’Alene, where April focused her love of animals on rescuing those in need. She began a series of odd jobs waitressing, loading UPS trucks, and working as a pharmaceutical rep, while determining what else she could channel her passion into next.

A friend began nudging her toward romance writing, telling her anecdotes about others who had made the transition from completely unrelated careers.

“I thought, I don’t have a creative bone in my body, but I had just turned 40, so I sat down and wrote a scene about it—and I just got hooked that day.”

Clinical Trial ©2001

It wasn’t a straight line between getting “hooked” on writing and publishing her first novel. Inspired by her oldest sister, Christofferson attended law school at nearby Gonzaga University in Spokane, where she graduated with a JD in 1983, followed by a stint as counsel at the Seattle-based entertainment company Miramar. But she continued to write, and for her first book, After the Dance, set in the entertainment industry with which she was then intimately familiar, the underlying issue was that of a family dealing with the death of a son from AIDS.

After the novel’s release by a small publisher in 1994, Christofferson swiftly got an agent and quit Miramar to write full time. After the release of her second book, Edgewater, she promptly signed a book deal with national publisher Forge Books.

Her next three novels, The Protocol, Clinical Trial, and Patent to Kill, were all medical thrillers. She centered the plots of the second and third of these thrillers on the abuse of indigenous peoples, a theme first introduced into her work in Edgewater. Her next book, Buffalo Medicine, focused on the slaughter of bison that wander outside the boundaries of Yellowstone.

Patent to Kill ©2005

Following the publication of Buffalo Medicine, she started getting gratifying feedback that helped her see that her work was making that difference she had always hoped it would.

Alpha Female, the first in the series now being shopped for television, revolves around poaching (in this case, of wolves) and addresses the threat to national parks from drilling.

In addition to using her writing as a vehicle for educating readers, Christofferson currently devotes time to Footloose Montana, a grassroots nonprofit she helped found, which is dedicated to protecting all wildlife, including predator species. She presently serves on the advisory board.

Alpha Female ©2009

Now a resident of Bozeman, Montana, where her son  and  one of her two granddaughters live, Christofferson has a full life.  It includes regular visits to the Blackfeet Reservation, where her daughter and other granddaughter live, writing daily in a small but cozy outbuilding, hanging out with her kids/grand daughters and husband, and, of course, entertaining a herd of furry friends, currently featuring five cats and four dogs, including an “all heart” black lab. Always, there are animals nearby, a tribute to her original impulse to be a veterinarian, now turned to animal rescue with her husband, the executive director of an animal shelter in the town of Livingston, north of Yellowstone in the Absaroka Mountains.

Grizzly Justice ©2019

Christofferson’s most recent book Grizzly Justice is about a recently fired ranger who disappears into the backcountry, hell-bent on saving a wounded grizzly bear whose fate is all but certain: euthanasia. Her current project Wolf Killer is more than timely; it feels ripped from the headlines after Montana Governor Greg Gianforte was reported to have trapped and killed a collared Yellowstone wolf who had wandered 10 miles out of the protected space of the park. (Gianforte was given a written warning for failing to take the required trapping course).

Even though she had started drafting the manuscript before the incident, the wolf, who was named “Max,” became a cause celebre. The issue of wolf hunting in Montana and the American West is classic Christofferson fodder for the kinds of stories she excels at rendering.

Generously, she attributes the beginning of those stories in part to her undergraduate years in Salt Lake City. “I’m a big fan of the University of Utah,” says Christofferson, recalling the extra semester she spent after graduation working on the University Health campus, and her senior project in biology, when she had been studying the molting of snakes.

“I was obsessed with snakes,” she says. “I had 20 of them [Coluber constrictor foxii, commonly known as “blue racers”] in an aquarium in the greenhouse. I would go up there, weigh them, record my observations.” One day when she arrived, someone had left the aquarium open, “and there I was lying on the floor of the greenhouse, trying to catch snakes, with my husband helping me,” she says with a laugh.

We will have to wait to see if that story ends up in one of her books.

By David Pace, first published @ biology.utah.edu

This story is an excerpt and update of Marcia C. Dibble’s profile of Ms. Christofferson that appeared in the U’s Continuum, now Utah Magazine, in winter 2007-08.

“My best trait is the ability to hang out with people who are far more capable than I am,” says Charles Sorenson, MD, FACS, in a 2020 interview. “I am not intimidated by working with people who are smarter than I am.”

The former president and CEO of Intermountain Healthcare, the Salt Lake City-based nonprofit regional healthcare system, and by some measurements the largest employer in Utah, must have been “hanging” with some pretty capable and smart people over the years . . . and vice versa. Now Emeritus CEO, the U Biology alumnus, HBA’74, has a long history at Intermountain as a urologic surgeon and physician leader. Today he serves as Founding Director of Intermountain Healthcare Leadership Institute.

Charles Sorenson

The Salt Lake City native attended the University of Utah as a pre-med honors student with designs to go back east for professional school. Once he’d been accepted to Cornell Medical, he quickly learned that his undergraduate education had prepared him as well for graduate work “as Ivy League educations had done for my classmates. I’m particularly grateful for the extraordinary learning experiences I had through the Honors College,” he says.

He remembers his time as a student at what is now the School of Biological Sciences as a place with an “atmosphere of open dialogue, people who challenged my ideas and encouraged me to challenge theirs. Professors who genuinely cared about their students, some of whom became lasting mentors and models of professionalism and personal integrity.”

There were several U professors who were “remarkably engaging and committed.” But the one who had the most long-term influence on Sorenson was Homer R. Warner, MD, PhD former chair of the Dept of Biophysics and Bioengineering. In the honors class Warner taught there were just a handful of students, including Sorenson. “Homer was a brilliant, world-recognized innovator in the emerging field of computers in medicine. I ended up working in his lab for three years while going to school. He was an inspiring model of a dedicated physician scientist and also a leader who cared more about others than himself.” To Sorenson the doctor scientist remained a dear colleague, friend, and mentor until Warner passed away in 2012.

“I was a pretty good student,” says Sorenson in a Managed Healthcare interview, “and I wanted to go to medical school because it was the hardest thing I could think of doing, I always felt like doing hard things was good for me, and I always felt like this is what I always wanted to do.” The budding physician also had the example of his own father, a Salt Lake internist and of his mother, a nurse.

Sorenson’s penchant for leaning into “hard things” paid off. After Cornell, he returned to the U for his residency in general surgery and urology. Before his stint as CEO, Sorenson spent 11 years at Intermountain as executive vice president and chief operating officer.

During that time, he played a critical role in making clinical process improvements and developing Intermountain into an integrated delivery system. Beginning in the 90s, healthcare services nationwide were fragmenting and patients were no longer as much at the center of the equation as Sorenson believed they should be. To help remedy that, he teamed up to establish Intermountain Medical Group, an integrated practice of 1,500 physicians and advanced practice clinicians employed by the organization. Sorenson served as founding chair of the group’s board from 1994 to 1998.

Even after being coaxed into a full-time leadership role at Intermountain, Sorenson spent one day each week in surgical practice. That was fine with the board. They didn’t want him to go get an MBA; they wanted someone who understood clinical processes and frontline employees to further the organization’s mission.

Charles Sorenson

That approach was eventually recognized shortly after Sorenson stepped down as CEO when he was awarded the 2017 Distinguished Service Award from the University of Utah’s School of Medicine. The accolade is given to healthcare leaders who’ve made outstanding contributions to the school, the community, and the practice of medicine. At the time Ron Larkin, MD, a retired OB/GYN and former Intermountain trustee, said of Sorenson’s honor, “He has as much integrity as any person I’ve ever met. He’s completely always wanting to do the right thing. He’s got such great intellect and such great judgment. He does do the right thing.”

If it sounds like under the leadership of Sorenson Intermountain has been re-inventing American healthcare as a mission-driven, patient-centered and employee-happy enterprise, that’s because it was, so much so that in 2009 President Barack Obama held the system up, more than once, as a model of quality, low-cost, integrated patient care.

About that acknowledgement from the White House Sorenson said, “While it’s easy for all of us, who know Intermountain so well from the inside, to focus mostly on ways we can still improve, it’s important to step back from time to time and appreciate the progress we’ve made. The president’s comments are a tremendous validation of the extraordinary work of our people in every one of Intermountain’s facilities and services.”
It seems that Charles Sorenson is always deflecting what are arguably his accomplishments back to his loyal front-line workers—in fact to everyone who together makes “hard things” happen well and economically at Intermountain.

It’s called leadership, the execution of it and the training of others in it, something that Sorenson is deeply embedded in now as Director of the Healthcare Leadership Institute. Even the advent of the coronavirus pandemic could not stop him. “We transitioned our program at the … Institute from an intensive on-site two weeks for healthcare leaders to an all-virtual, three-month program. While we look forward to being able to return to our beautiful Institute with in-person programs, virtual sessions have been well received and highly rated by participants—so they’ll always be a component of our program.”

These days Sorenson has had more time to spend with his four adult children and his grandchildren. With his wife Sharee, he has spent time volunteering, including working with refugee families from Central Africa. He has served on the Board of Providence Health, a very large not-for-profit health system based in Seattle, since 2018. He also recently joined MEDI, the largest executive coaching firm in the nation dedicated exclusively to the healthcare industry as an executive coach.

With more time on his hands, he enjoys music, hiking and biking and catching up on his reading. Some recent favorites have included The Second Mountain by David Brooks, Churchill by Andrew Roberts, The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle, Sea Stories by William McRaven, After by Dr. Bruce Greyson, and Facing the Mountain by Daniel James Brown.

In addition to modeling his notion of hanging out with people whom he believes are smarter than he, Charles Sorenson’s advice to students is trenchant as they navigate a world that can be taxing and at times even despairing:

• Have the courage to embrace new ideas­—even if they initially seem to challenge your own ways of thinking. But be careful not to be dragged along by what seems fashionable today but is not based on sound logic or in the best long-term interests of society.
• Never neglect your personal values—always striving to improve and raise those values to higher levels.
• Be very careful about those with whom you spend your time— professionally and personally. We become, for better or for worse, like the people with whom we spend our days.
• Learn to be a “forever learner,” and help others to do the same.
• Be generous and be grateful. You’ll be the greatest beneficiary of the help and thanks you extend to others.
• It is advice from a leader and a coach of health executives that stems from a lifetime of achievement . . .of doing “hard things.”

By David Pace, first published @ biology.utah.edu Photos by Jeffrey D Allred, Desert News