Anne H. Cross, MD

2024 Dean’s Impact Award Recipient

Anne H. Cross, MD, is an incredibly capable and compassionate physician, an impactful and prolific scientist, and a dedicated and supportive mentor. By numbers and statistics alone, Cross is a leading mentor of students, trainees and faculty at WashU Medicine. Of the 36 individuals whom Cross has formally mentored, recent mentees now find themselves in prestigious residency programs, as academic medical faculty, and as vice-presidents and medical directors of pharmaceutical companies. One could create a similarly impressive list of the grants, papers, patents and patient care innovations achieved by these mentees, which are owed in large part to the mentorship they received from Cross. These would all be impressive compilations, but they would largely miss the point of why she is an exceptional mentor. Her mentorship impact is not measured in R01s or promotions. Cross is known as the type of mentor who cares deeply about the critical formation of those she mentors, be that formation clinical or scientific. She seeks not only to impart her knowledge to those she mentors, but also the wisdom she has accumulated across her career. To her mentees, she is not just a mentor, but also a sponsor who advocates for those she trains to have a better deal or an easier road than the one she traversed.