Bert Lubin

Born in New York City’s Bronx in 1939, Lubin moved to Pennsylvania at age 7 and grew up in the town of Bellevue, just outside Pittsburgh. There, he worked at George’s Fruit Market owned by his parents, who did not attend high school. As the first in his family to graduate college and one of four in his high school class to attend college, Lubin soon earned a bachelor’s degree from Washington & Jefferson College in Washington, Pa., and a medical degree from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine before a pediatric residency at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. After Lubin was drafted, he served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam at a provincial health program before returning to the States for a hematology/oncology fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital. Later, he returned to Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania, directing its hematology laboratory while teaching as an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1973, Lubin joined Children’s Hospital Oakland as chief of hematology and oncology, starting its CHORI research program. In 2009, Lubin became the hospital’s president and CEO, and the first pediatrician to lead a children’s hospital in the state. His leadership outside hospital doors helped forge its later tie with the University of California San Francisco.