Alumni Profile: Dineo Khabele’94

When Dineo Khabele’94 began her training in the mid-1990s, she was one of the few Black women in her medical school class. But she distinguished herself even more for the paths she chose: first into gynecologic oncology, a surgical field long dominated by men, and later into research, where women of color were, and remain, dramatically underrepresented.

The challenges didn’t deter her. If anything, they compelled her.

“I’ve always been drawn to places where I could help solve hard problems,” says Dr. Khabele, chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. When she decided to focus on ovarian cancer, patients with latestage disease typically lived about a year. “We barely even used the word ‘cancer’ because the prognosis was so grim. There was a sense that little could be done,” she says. “But I saw an opportunity to ask questions and to investigate new strategies to improve outcomes.”

Today, Dr. Khabele is the Mitchell and Elaine Yanow Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the first Black physician to head a clinical department at the medical school. She is nationally recognized for her contributions as a gynecologic oncologist, physician-scientist, and advocate for women’s health and health equity. Her research is helping to unravel mechanisms of chemotherapy resistance in ovarian cancer and design new, targeted treatments.

The fundamental question driving Dr. Khabele’s work is how to better predict which patients will respond to which therapies. “Under the microscope, cancers may look nearly identical, but they behave very differently,” she says. “Being able to distinguish between them and understand which ones will respond to treatment is essential. I want to be able to intervene earlier and give patients the right therapy from the start. That’s how we move from a one-size-fits-all approach to true precision care.”

Cultural and Family Influences

Dr. Khabele’s path to medicine began in southern Africa, shaped by a childhood enriched by diverse cultural influences and a strong family legacy of education, activism, and social justice. Born in Zambia to a South African father and an African American mother, she spent her early childhood in Lesotho, a small, mountainous country encircled by South Africa, where both parents taught at the national university.

Her father, a science educator who had previously worked for UNESCO, and her mother, a sociologist and former Peace Corps volunteer, fostered an intellectually rich, globally minded household. Dinner table conversations ranged from politics to public health, and their home brimmed with books, spirited debate, and a sense of purpose. “It was a very international, intellectual environment,” she says.

In 1979, when she was in seventh grade, Dr. Khabele’s father received a Fulbright appointment at Rutgers University, and her mother began graduate studies at the University of Chicago. She and her siblings stayed with their maternal grandparents in Austin, Texas, where she enrolled at St. Stephen’s Episcopal School, a progressive boarding school her aunt had helped integrate years earlier.

“We were dropped off, and I never left,” Dr. Khabele says with a laugh, referring to her new start in the United States. Her parents later returned to South Africa following Nelson Mandela’s release from prison in 1990, when her father, who had been forced into exile during the apartheid era, accepted a position with the new post-apartheid government.

At St. Stephen’s, Dr. Khabele immersed herself in literature, writing her senior thesis on South African journalist and novelist Peter Abrahams, whose work illuminated the injustices of apartheid. She also found inspiration in authors like Toni Morrison and Alice Walker, whose portrayals of Black women resonated deeply.

The strength and resolve she admired in those writers’ voices mirrored qualities she had long seen in the women who raised her. Her mother and grandmother were formidable role models, their paths shaped by activism, leadership, and service. Her grandmother, Bertha Sadler Means, was a pioneering educator and civic leader in Austin. A former teacher and school administrator, she became CEO of a local cab company and continued working until the age of 90. She died in 2021, two months shy of her 101st birthday.

Dr. Khabele’s mother, Joan Means Khabele, left a powerful mark on Austin’s civil rights history. At age 15, she had defied segregation laws by diving into the whites-only Barton Springs Pool—an act of protest that helped spark a series of “swim-ins” and ultimately led to the pool’s desegregation. In 2024, the city renamed the Barton Springs Bathhouse in her honor.

Columbia Years

Dr. Khabele arrived at Columbia College in 1985, intending to study English or politics. Several of her advisers at St. Stephen’s had attended Columbia or Barnard, and she applied early decision.

On campus, she joined the National Black Women’s Health Project and volunteered with Columbia Student Health, offering peer counseling to students being treated for sexually transmitted infections. The AIDS epidemic, then surging in New York City, left a deep impression. “We saw people dying alone in hospital rooms,” she says. “It was devastating, and the urgency of the moment solidified my decision to pursue medicine.”

She completed her premed requirements alongside her political science major and took a year off before medical school to continue her work at Columbia Student Health. At VP&S, she found guidance and support from faculty mentors like Hilda Hutcherson, MD, Columbia’s first Black woman in the obstetrics and gynecology residency program and an early champion of diversity in medicine.

“Even as a first-year student, Dineo carried herself with calm confidence,” Dr. Hutcherson recalls. “Many students I advised wrestled with self-doubt, especially in an environment where their presence was sometimes questioned. But Dineo knew she belonged.”

What first drew Dr. Khabele to OB/GYN was its connection to community health. During clinical rotations, the choice became more personal. “I saw surgical residents who looked like me,” she said. “And I thought, maybe I could do that.”

Dr. Hutcherson was especially pleased when Dr. Khabele pursued a specialty that includes surgical training. “Back then—and even now—people would say that women didn’t belong in surgical fields,” she says. “I wanted women to know they could do surgery, they could do OB/GYN, and they could succeed.”

After completing her residency at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, Dr. Khabele began a fellowship in gynecologic oncology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. It was the era of the Human Genome Project, launched in 1990 with the ambitious goal of sequencing the entire human genome. Drawn in by the momentum of genomic science, she joined a lab focused on tumor gene expression.

She went on to serve on the faculty at Meharry Medical College and later moved to Vanderbilt University, where she directed gynecologic oncology translational research. In 2017, she joined the University of Kansas School of Medicine, continuing her research investigating chemotherapy resistance in ovarian cancer, an inquiry that continues to shape her work today.

From Silence to Strategy

Ovarian cancer remains the most lethal gynecologic malignancy, largely because it is typically diagnosed at advanced stages. An estimated 60% to 70% of cases are found after the disease has progressed, when symptoms—often vague or easily overlooked— have gone unrecognized. According to the American Cancer Society, in 2025 an estimated 20,890 women in the United States will be diagnosed, and more than half will die from the disease. Still, there has been progress. Advances in genetic testing, Dr. Khabele at graduation from medical school in 1994 expanded treatment options, and prevention strategies have improved survival. “Now, we have patients living more than 10 years, even with stage 3 or 4 disease,” says Dr. Khabele. “We’ve come a long way. The changes are incremental but meaningful.”

Improving outcomes for patients is at the core of Dr. Khabele’s research. Her lab is exploring how to manipulate gene expression, especially BRCA1, a gene whose mutations are paradoxically linked to both increased ovarian cancer risk and better chemotherapy response. She has studied how to make BRCA-negative tumors behave more like BRCA-positive ones and investigated drug combinations, including histone deacetylase inhibitors and PARP inhibitors, to improve outcomes in chemotherapy-resistant ovarian cancers. Her team is also studying immunotherapy—treatments that harness the body’s immune system to fight cancer— which she believes holds promise for gynecologic malignancies.

Understanding why some cancers don’t respond to treatment is critical, she says; about 80% of ovarian cancers are sensitive to initial chemotherapy, while 20% are not. “That’s where the science needs to go—toward unraveling what makes those cancers different.”

Risk-Reducing Strategies

Prevention is also a key element in her broader efforts to reduce mortality from gynecologic cancer. With no reliable early detection tools for ovarian cancer, reducing risk is essential.

One promising approach is opportunistic salpingectomy—the removal of fallopian tubes during unrelated pelvic surgeries—a strategy based on evidence that many high-grade serous ovarian cancers originate in the tubes. Other risk-reduction efforts include genetic testing for BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations, which helps identify high-risk individuals, and wider use of oral contraceptives, which are linked to lower ovarian cancer risk.

She is also addressing the growing challenge of endometrial cancer, which is rising in both incidence and mortality. The increase is particularly concerning in younger women and in Black women, who face a disproportionate burden from the disease. “We’re seeing more cases in younger patients, and too often symptoms are misattributed or overlooked,” she says. “That can lead to delayed diagnoses and worse outcomes.”

Equity in Action

For Dr. Khabele, improving outcomes goes hand in hand with advancing equity. At WashU, she has supported clinics for pregnant women with substance use disorders, partnered with church leaders to deliver mobile health services such as mammograms and blood pressure screenings, and launched initiatives to support clinician well-being.

“She likes to say, ‘We have to do hard better,’” says Jeannie Kelly’09, division chief for Maternal-Fetal Medicine at WashU Medicine. “She leads with clarity and compassion. One of the reasons I took on a leadership role myself is because I trust her completely.”

That leadership was evident from the start. Dr. Khabele took on her role in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, in a city still grappling with the protests against police violence in its suburb of Ferguson and an ongoing national reckoning on racial justice. She arrived with a message of transparency and action—issuing a departmental statement on racism that underscored the medical field’s historical harms and her commitment to equity. She later created an Office of Professional Development and Wellness, bringing in coaches and thought leaders to promote clinician wellbeing and purpose. “She doesn’t shy away from hard conversations,” says Dr. Kelly. “She goes straight into the fire and brings people with her—not by force, but by conviction.”

Clinician, Scientist, Educator

Dr. Khabele views leadership, patient care, and scientific discovery as inseparable parts of her calling. Despite the demands of her administrative role, she still sees patients, runs a lab, and teaches on rounds. “It’s the integration of these roles that makes each one better,” she says.

She believes physician-scientists play a critical part in advancing medicine by translating discoveries into care, and care back into discovery. “Every time I remove a tumor in the OR, I think about how that sample might help us understand something new,” she says. “Every time I sit with a patient facing a recurrence, I think about how we can do better.”

Dr. Khabele is candid about the stress and uncertainty facing academic medicine—especially in a political climate that threatens federal research budgets. Still, she remains undeterred. “Every era has its challenges,” she says. “During the AIDS crisis, people asked, ‘Why would you go into medicine now?’ When HMOs came in, they said it was the worst time to be a doctor. There’s never a perfect time. You just do the work—until the winds change.”