Anne Crowe, assistant director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, dies at 48

Anne Glenister Crowe, assistant director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, died of cancer Oct. 2 at her home in Sunnyvale, California. She was 48.

As the center’s chief administrator, Crowe oversaw finance, grant administration, human resources and facilities. In 2014, she received the School of Medicine’s Spirit Award, given to staff members who demonstrate outstanding performance, dedication and positive attitude on the job. In an interview about the award, she referred to her job as “the perfect combination of a really interesting and diverse set of duties in a forward-thinking, scientific environment, working with brilliant people.”

Before coming to Stanford in 2007, Crowe held a similar position in the engineering department at UC-Berkeley. She earned a bachelor’s degree from UC-Santa Barbara and an MBA from the University of San Francisco.

“Anne Crowe loved working for Stanford,” said David Magnus, PhD, the center’s director and the Thomas A. Raffin Professor in Medicine and Biomedical Ethics. “She was completely dedicated to serving the mission of the medical center in any way she could. Her commitment and unwavering support for faculty and staff, and her willingness to tackle any challenge, no matter how great or small, made her a beloved figure.”

“She was the center of our family,” said her sister-in-law, Julia Glenister. “She was the only sister, and nearly the youngest.” Crowe was the chief planner of holiday gatherings, and also the champion of family heritage. “She loved the fact that she was a Glenister — there are very few in the United States,” Glenister said. “She went to a Glenister family reunion in England of about 100 people, and was very proud of that.”

Crowe also toured Australia, where her parents were from, and traveled throughout Europe and the Caribbean. “She was our big globetrotter,” Glenister said. In June, Crowe was quite ill and had made the decision to enter hospice care. But first, she and her husband, Roderic Crowe, traveled to Tahiti, staying in a hotel at the end of a pier. “It was one of her bucket-list destinations,” she said.

In addition to her husband, Crowe is survived by her mother, Jill Glenister; her father, John Glenister; her stepmother, Lisa Glenister; and her brothers, Peter, Chris, Rodney, David, Mark and Brian Glenister.

A service for Crowe will be held at 10 a.m. Oct. 16 in Memorial Church on the Stanford University campus. The service is open to members of the university community.