UCSF leader dedicated to people ‘deeply moved’ by mentoring award

By Eric Brooks

To lead one mentee is plenty of work in itself.

To have dozens at UC San Francisco and beyond is something else entirely. That’s the mark Christina Mangurian, MD, MAS, has left on countless lives – and no one knows that better than Lucy Ogbu-Nwobodo, MD, MS, MAS.

”Christina is beyond amazing,” said Ogbu-Nwobodo, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry in the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, associate program director of the UCSF Adult Psychiatry Residency Training Program, director of the UCSF Post Baccalaureate and Outreach Programs, and medical director of the UCSF Alliance Health Project.

Ogbu-Nwobodo first joined UCSF two years ago as both a full-time faculty member and part of the Public Psychiatry Fellowship, which Mangurian herself co-founded. While she had “known about Christina for many years” before coming to UCSF, Ogbu-Nwobodo’s experience working up close and personal with her exceeded those expectations.

“She makes you feel like she has all the time in the world for you,” Ogbu-Nwobodo said. “It’s a really special gift that she has.”

When she completed the fellowship, Mangurian recruited Ogbu-Nwobodo to join the core faculty, where she’s now associate program director. Today, the two continue their work together, including publishing a new perspective in the New England Journal of Medicine about the impact of a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the Constitution’s protections for abortion on marginalized groups with mental illness. They’re also working to expand mental health services for disadvantaged communities through partnerships with leadership in several Bay Area counties and a new partnership with the California Department of State Hospitals.

Building relationships

Ogbu-Nwobodo’s story is one of many just like it.

That’s why Mangurian was recently recognized with the Harold S. Luft Award for Mentoring in Health Services and Health Policy Research.

“It’s about your relationship with someone, and that you’re standing with them to help guide them to achieve their goals,” Mangurian said. “I’ve had a lot of different kinds of mentees. Some want to do research. Some want to be clinician leaders. Some want to be educators. It’s my job to help them find out what fills their cup and help them get there.”

Mangurian, a native of Maryland, first came to UCSF in 1997 shortly after graduating with a degree in biology from Reed College in Portland, Oregon. She started as a research assistant at the Institute for Health Policy Studies, hired by Lisa Bero, PhD – ironically the first person to ever receive the Harold S. Luft Award in 2009. In 1999, Mangurian started medical school at UCSF.

“I’m somebody that likes to keep my doors open,” she said of the choice to enroll at UCSF. “I felt like I could do a lot of different things as a physician, taking care of patients, doing research, teach, and even making a film if I wanted to.”

While she’s not yet made that film (her husband is actually a documentary filmmaker), she’s produced a career worthy of the big screen.

Mangurian has grown into a national leader in health services research focusing on improving medical care for people with serious mental illness. As a Latina physician scientist, she has also mobilized first-hand experience to understand opportunity gaps in academic medicine for historically excluded faculty. In fact, she has become nationally recognized for her research and leadership in promoting equity among faculty in academic medicine.

Mangurian is currently vice dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs in the UCSF School of Medicine, professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and holds the Lynne and Marc Benioff Endowed Chair in Psychiatry. She’s also core faculty at the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations and affiliate faculty in the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies.

‘Means the world to me’

It’s not just titles that have made Mangurian who she is.

She’s also the founder of multiple programs at UCSF.

That extensive list at UCSF includes WARM Hearts, the Public Psychiatry Fellowship and the Mid-Career Faculty Development Program.

“She’s someone who’s really good at developing and sustaining impactful programs,” Ogbu-Nwobodo said. “I’ve never met someone who’s as prolific as she is in thinking things through and creating ways to keep those things going. She starts them and she also sustains them for the long run.”

Mangurian also led the Well-being Program of the UCSF Employee Coping and Resiliency Program during the COVID-19 pandemic (Cope 2.0 will be launching later this year) and recently became founding director of the ARCHES Program, a career development program focused on historically excluded research faculty. Her mentorship for numerous students, trainees and faculty also has garnered numerous awards like the UCSF Chancellor Award for the Advancement of Women, the UCSF Academic Senate Distinction in Mentoring Award and the American Psychiatric Association’s 2024 Assembly Award for Excellence in Service and Advocacy.

“It doesn’t feel like work to me,” Mangurian said. “Mentoring is something that I love. Helping others is one of the most meaningful parts of my job. I am very deeply moved by receiving this award.”

As if it wasn’t already obvious to her and others in her orbit, Mangurian knows she “likes to build things,” including mentor-mentee relationships in and around UCSF.

“To me, mentoring is more of an art than a science,” she said. “In an ideal mentor-mentee relationship, there’s something that clicks and works in the chemistry of the relationship.”

That same chemistry clicked for both her and Ogbu-Nwobodo.

“She’s more than a mentor,” Ogbu-Nwobodo said. “She’s a sponsor. She’s a role model. She’s someone that is a trailblazer in our field. In so many ways, she has positively impacted my career and personal life. When you think about academic space and health care systems, they haven’t always been designed for women and people of color. You don’t always see someone like that at the level Christina has gotten to. She creates opportunities for people.”

Mangurian is the latest in a long line of model mentors to receive the award.

Past winners of the award include Margot Kushel, MD, (2018) professor and director of the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations, and Dean Schillinger, MD, (2016) professor of medicine and former chief of the UCSF Division of General Internal Medicine at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital.

About the Harold S. Luft Award for Mentoring in Health Services and Health Policy Research

Harold (Hal) Luft, PhD joined the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies and UCSF in 1978, becoming associate director in 1986, acting director in 1993 and later director in 1995. His legacy of leadership and service includes the training and mentoring of future health services research and health policy leaders.

About UCSF Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

The UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute are among the nation's foremost resources in the fields of child, adolescent, adult, and geriatric mental health. Together they constitute one of the largest departments in the UCSF School of Medicine and the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, focused on delivering world-class patient care, conducting groundbreaking research, teaching the next generation of behavioral health leaders, and fostering diversity, health equity, and community.

UCSF Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences conducts its clinical, educational, and research efforts at a variety of locations in Northern California, including the UCSF Nancy Friend Pritzker Psychiatry Building; UCSF Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital; UCSF Medical Centers at Parnassus Heights, Mission Bay, and Mount Zion; UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland; Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center; the San Francisco VA Health Care System; UCSF Fresno; and numerous community-based sites around the San Francisco Bay Area.

About the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences

The UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, established by the extraordinary generosity of Joan and Sanford I. "Sandy" Weill, brings together world-class researchers with top-ranked physicians to solve some of the most complex challenges in the human brain.

The UCSF Weill Institute leverages UCSF’s unrivaled bench-to-bedside excellence in the neurosciences. It unites three UCSF departments—Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Neurology, and Neurological Surgery—that are highly esteemed for both patient care and research, as well as the Neuroscience Graduate Program, a cross-disciplinary alliance of nearly 100 UCSF faculty members from 15 basic-science departments, as well as the UCSF Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, a multidisciplinary research center focused on finding effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and other neurodegenerative disorders.

About UCSF

The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is exclusively focused on the health sciences and is dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. UCSF Health, which serves as UCSF’s primary academic medical center, includes top-ranked specialty hospitals and other clinical programs, and has affiliations throughout the Bay Area.