ALUMNI PROFILES
Dr. Jess de Jesus Keeps on Moving on BY JESSICA CANLAS
JESS DE JESUS ·
PHARMD ’90
Jess de Jesus, PharmD ’90, never thought he’d leave Chicago. It was January 1991, and de Jesus hadn’t been out of pharmacy school for even a year. He was working as a pharmacist at Illinois Masonic Medical Center and as a clinical pharmacist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital on the weekends. A pharmacy school friend had moved out to Arizona with his wife and encouraged him to consider a position there. “I didn’t want to leave. My whole family was in Chicago,” he recalls. “But you know what January in Chicago is like.” De Jesus had lived in Chicago his entire life, surrounded by family members in the healthcare field. His father, grandfather, and aunt were dentists. It made sense to pursue pre-med as an undergrad at Loyola University, but he quickly realized medicine wasn’t for him. Luckily, a new career path entered his radar when another aunt, a nurse, helped him get a job at St. Mary of Nazareth Hospital. Shortly after that, de Jesus took advantage of an opening in the pharmacy there and found it to be a good fit. “Pharmacy was never in my mind until I started working there,” he says. “But I really enjoyed it. I thought it would make a good career.” De Jesus worked as a technician there for seven years. “By the time I graduated [from UIC], I knew hospital pharmacy practice inside and out.” While interviewing for the position in Arizona, the balmy 70-degree weather proved to be persuasive. He and his wife settled in the Phoenix-Scottsdale area as de Jesus accepted a clinical pharmacy position at Banner Health. After leaving the company for a few years to take a position as director of pharmacy and, eventually, director of clinical operations at a local home-infusion company, de Jesus realized his “passion was working
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in hospitals,” so he returned to Banner, moving up the ranks to director of pharmacy for two of Banner’s regional medical centers, all while earning his master’s in business administration and healthcare management. By 2005, when the University of Miami came knocking, much of his family had relocated to Arizona from Chicago, and he and his wife had grown to a family of five with three daughters. “I didn’t really want to move to Florida,” he recalls. “But my wife always wanted to live near the ocean,” de Jesus explains. “Not to mention, they were offering free tuition for my kids.” Of course, five years later, when it came time for his oldest daughter to apply for college, she had no interest in attending the University of Miami. At the same time, de Jesus was being urged to return to Phoenix by a close friend and colleague, so back to Arizona for de Jesus and his family. He became associate vice president of pharmacy services for HonorHealth, where he stayed for five years until he received another opportunity to move back east. By then, De Jesus had begun to long for the diversity and unique hustle-bustle of more urban environments. “I realized that I missed being in academics. That was a big thing for me.” So it was off to Boston, where de Jesus became vice president and chief pharmacy officer at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a research and academic medical center that serves as a teaching hospital for Harvard Medical School. De Jesus describes his time in Boston as “phenomenal.” However, by the following year, some close family members back in Arizona became ill, and the separation and travel proved challenging. Fortunately, by the end of 2017, de Jesus had landed a position as chief pharmacy
