Mike Rode Continues Stowers Legacy at the Center for Practical Bioethics
By Trudi Galblum, MPS
Marketing, Communications, and Grant Writing
Board Member Profile: Mike Rode
Jim and Virginia Stowers, courtesy of the Stowers InstituteYou could say that Mike Rode’s path to Kansas City and the Center for Practical Bioethics began decades before he was born. That it began with James E. Stowers and his wife, Virginia Glascock, a nurse anesthetist, whom he married in 1954.
Jim Stowers seriously considered following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, who were both physicians – and Jim did complete three years of coursework to become a doctor. After serving as a fighter pilot in World War II, he decided to pursue a business career. Jim is on record as joking that Virginia refused to marry a doctor. He founded the money management firm Twentieth Century (later to become American Century Investments) in an apartment in downtown Kansas City in 1958.
Virginia was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1993. This experience, along with Jim’s earlier 1987 prostate cancer
diagnosis, led the couple in 1994 to found the Stowers Institute for Medical Research based in Kansas City, Missouri. Their illnesses also influenced Virginia’s decade of service on the Center for Practical Bioethics’ Board of Directors, from 1997 to 2007.
“The Stowers decided to donate 99% of their net worth while living,” said Mike, “making the Stowers Institute the controlling owner of American Century. Since 2000, American Century has generated more than $2 billion in dividend payments to the institute in support of research to understand the mechanisms behind health and disease, including cancer, Alzheimer’s cardiac disease, and birth defects.”
Deciding on Kansas City
Mike grew up on Staten Island, New York, with his mother, an executive assistant, and father, a Green Beret who worked on Wall Street before becoming a psychiatric nurse at age 40.
After graduating from Marist University in Poughkeepsie, NY, in 2003, with a Bachelor’s Degree in Finance, Mike lived in Manhattan where he worked for several investment banks. American Century was his biggest client in the Midwest territory that he covered.
“As a salesperson, you often develop strong relationships with your clients and can get a sense of the true culture of their firm and how happy people are to work there. My clients at American Century were not only great people but they were immensely proud of their unique relationship with the Stowers Institute and the “Prosper with a Purpose” ethos.”
Mike joined American Century in 2018, as Vice President and Senior Investment Director, where, as a spokesman for the company’s capabilities, he is a frequent commentator on CNBC, Bloomberg, Fox Business and similar outlets. He also works on asset allocation with institutional investors, including pensions, endowments and foundations.
“The Stowers relationship was one of the reasons I decided to come to Kansas City,” said Mike. “We’re in business at American Century to help clients achieve their goals. The opportunity to give back and help find cures for diseases like cancer and diabetes was a huge part of why I took this job.”
An employee from American Century has served on the Center for Practical Bioethics Board of Directors ever since Virginia’s time. When Mike was invited to fill that spot in 2024, he wondered why he didn’t know anything about bioethics and read several books about it.
“I had never put together how ethics questions can factor into decisions that are made in hospital rooms,” he said. “After meeting with James Stowe, the Center’s CEO, and Ryan Pferdehirt, its lead clinical ethicist, I was committed. Ryan’s stories about what happens when he does an ethics consultation made me not want to pass up the opportunity to learn and to serve in a way that I could add value to the organization.”
Understanding the Need for Bioethics
Mike believes that upheavals in the healthcare industry combined with massive demographic shifts in the country will boost the need for the services the Center provides for many years to come.
“As my parents age,” he said, “when difficult healthcare questions arise, I’m going to want to be able to call someone like Ryan at the Center to help guide the decision-making process.”
“The challenge for the Center going forward,” he continued, “is to keep people’s eyes from glazing over when they hear the word bioethics. The term is a mouthful.”
Mike compares talking about bioethics to investment. “If I use jargon like returns on invested capital and EBITDA margins, the layman is not going to understand any of that. But if I tell you about a company’s profitability and show you how it’s changing lives, that will resonate.”
Similarly, he says, when the Center tells real-life stories about ethics consultations – what happens when a trained consultant meets with everyone involved in a difficult case, reviews the documentation, and applies ethical decision-making principles to make recommendations – you realize why the need for clinical ethics is so important.
Mike and his wife Leigh, an interior designer, live in Prairie Village, with their two Brussels Griffon dogs and four-year old daughter Bauer. He serves on the Board of Directors Finance Committee at the Center and for enjoyment plays ice hockey, paints in oils, and goes to the movies.
