By MARTY LEVINE

Some influences on School of Dental Medicine Dean Marnie Oakley have been as clear as her older brother’s decision to attend Pitt on a football scholarship. Some are less obvious, such as the connection between her talent for sketching and her dental practice. Others have had to be pointed out to her, such as the link between her stint in the Navy and her method of leadership in the dental school.

But they all started in the little town of Mountain Top, Pa., south of Wilkes Barre in Luzerne County, where she was born and raised, Oakley told the June 18 Staff Council Coffee & Conversation event. These in-person events showcase Pitt leaders and their unique stories and motivations.

She describes her birthplace as a “really tiny town … so small and rural we heated our house with wood. So I grew a lot of respect for hard work.”

Her brother’s football scholarship had the family driving back and forth to see him play in the old Pitt Stadium on campus. When the sciences drew her interest in high school, Pitt became her goal for dentistry — the medical field she chose partly for its life-and-career balance, and partly because she had a talent for drawing.

“Something that’s really important to me and very fulfilling is doing things with my hands. … I can draw something good enough to frame, and really I love that.” Because drawing is a detail-oriented skill, “I thought, wow, if you can really balance medicine and healthcare and service to your community with this artistic side, wouldn’t that be great?”

She met her husband at Pitt and, after a stint in the Navy, they moved to his hometown of Bethel Park and have lived there for 32 years, with two kids now grown.

“You’ve heard before and it’s true,” she told the audience, “Pittsburghers don’t leave Pittsburgh. They don’t even leave their suburbs.”

They both joined a practice that had been in his family for two generations, but Oakley immediately felt drawn to teach in the dental school part-time. “It just kind of morphed into one of those, again, unexpected, unplanned events in your life that you think, what a blessing to have found a career that I was not looking for. Before I knew it I was full time.”

One thing for which she has become known: bringing her two golden retrievers, Steve and Teddy, both certified service dogs, to the school. She had learned the value of service dogs when her daughter had a serious, acute illness during her own time at Pitt.

“One of the best days that she would always find in her recovery was when the therapy dog had come to the unit,” Oakley said. “Steve and I would then volunteer at Children’s Hospital’s rehab unit, and that was the real purpose of him being a therapy dog.”

But Steve as a beginning therapy dog needed extra time and training, so she started bringing him to her office. “I would bring him to work and hide him under my desk and then bring him to the rehab unit in the afternoon, and when I did that, of course, the students would see him and they’re like, ‘What is that? Well, we need therapy too.’ ”

Now, she teaches with Steve and Teddy. “When I lecture they run around the auditorium. People have treats in different areas, just kind of staged, but they really enjoy their time there. It’s really great for them.”

Not only did she find her parents influential — her father’s dedication to work, her mother running a small business in that small town while raising kids — she still finds her fellow veterans inspirational.

“I worked at a Marine Corps air station for three years and those pilots went on training missions every day, and didn’t always come home. … We’ve learned an awful lot about veterans and PTSD and what they really, truly deal with, so that’s so inspiring to me … I was doing their dentistry for them while they were doing these things.”

Asked how her military time shaped her, Oakley said that it had not been obvious to her until someone else noticed, but the way she organizes and evaluates those who work under her shows a marked influence from the Navy: “It definitely is part of my structure and it must come out. I don’t realize when it does, but it must.”

She credits her leadership style in part to the dental school dean who originally hired her, Thomas W. Braun: “He was a very talented and insightful leader. He made a point of sitting five 10, 15 minutes with almost everyone in our whole organization. … He’s picking up on things. He’s reading the room. He’s trying to see where opportunities exist in the organization and at the same time he’s just listening. He’s really a great, compassionate, kind listener.”

While it is “human nature to avoid conflict,” she acknowledges, as a leader she knows “it’s not productive, not only for the organization, but it’s not productive for us as humans.” Instead of having private, emotional reactions to conflict, “we can discuss that professionally and I can tell you how I feel and I can invite you certainly first to tell me how you feel about that, to get to the resolution.

“Good leaders, it’s not about us,” she added. “If we’re really, truly going to be a good leader it’s never about you personally, it’s about who you’re leading and who you’re trying to inspire. I hope that, after my time, or when people reflect on my time, that they see that this is a time where we have been more collaborative. I truly believe in the strength of collaboration …

“We’re in healthcare, so we can truly change lives. We can change the lives of our students, of our employees, of our faculty and our staff and of our patients. I really, truly hope that some of the demonstration of the work and the product that we’ll have in my time as dean will show that we couldn’t have done that without strong collaborations.”

Marty Levine is a staff writer for the University Times. Reach him at martyl@pitt.edu or 412-758-4859.

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