Peter Traber, gone too soon

"It's good for the organization to have permanent leadership to move forward." Peter Traber said those words in March, just after the "interim" was dropped from his title as interim CEO of the University of Pennsylvania Health System. And we couldn't agree more. That is why it's all the more disheartening and disappointing that only four months later, Traber abruptly left the position he seemed poised to tackle. University President Judith Rodin appointed Traber to replace the beleaguered William Kelley as the Health System confronted mounting budget deficits approaching $300 million. Traber made a commitment -- indeed, he said he relished the opportunity -- to see the system through its remediation strategy. His personal manner and sense of purpose buoyed the morale of a staff that had suffered under Kelley. In that light, his decision to leave -- albeit for untold fortunes and professional opportunities at pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline -- was irresponsible. We don't know what other motivations led Traber to pack up his office in the Penn Tower Hotel. He was a shoo-in to be named dean of the Medical School, a position he had on an interim basis, and the Health System's finances were improving under his watch. But those forces could not have been so great as to lead him to sacrifice his personal credibility by abandoning a job he had sought for so long and held for so short a time

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