David Galas: Founding Chief Academic Officer and Chancellor of the Keck Graduate Institute
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Hello and welcome to the future of higher education. I'm David Feingold, your host for the podcast, and I'm here today with my good friend and colleague, Dr. David Gallus, who is the founding chief academic officer and chancellor for the Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences, the seventh and newest of the Claremont Colleges.

Today, David is Principal Scientist at the Pacific Northwest Research Institute in Seattle. I had the great pleasure to work with David and the founding of the Keck Graduate Institute when it was just getting going after the year 2000. And we both worked closely with Hank Riggs, who was the founding president and visionary who created KGI, who unfortunately passed away in 2015 and so can't join us for this conversation.

David, it's great to be with you today. You too, David. David, could you start out by telling us a little about your background and education? Where did you grow up? Where did you go to school? Right. Well, I grew up all around the world. My father was in the Air Force and

So I lived in many places in the U.S., but I also had some of my formative years living, going to school in England. But then when we came back to the U.S., I've always been interested in science, and I began studying

Thinking about what I was going to do and where I was going to go. So chemistry and physics was my first love. And I actually was an undergraduate in physics at the University of California at Berkeley. And then I continued and got a master's and a PhD in theoretical physics. But that's

But then I became interested in biology, and most of my research has been in biology. And I've been at a number of institutions, including the University of Southern California, where I was chairman of molecular biology.

And I did a postdoc and was research faculty at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. So I have an eclectic background. Nice location. And David, it's not many people who make the, not many folks who make the transition from theoretical physics to biology. So what was it that prompted you to make that change? And when did it occur in your education?

Well, so let me first dispute that. There are a number of people who've gone from theoretical physics into biology, many of whom, when I began to make that transition, I went to visit and ask questions about. Wally Gilbert, Max Delbruck,

And many other physicists somehow got interested in biology. I actually began getting interested in biology just when I started my graduate work in theoretical physics, and that was mostly due to a wonderful...

biology professor at Berkeley whose class I took and began to learn what it was all about. And I actually began my research after I got my PhD in physics. I worked in some laboratories of a number of people that I knew and got to know.

Actually started doing a little experiments in biology. And as they say, the rest is history. So I... So David, one of the interesting... Go ahead. I was...

Yeah, I was going to say one of the interesting career moves you made after obviously having been at some great academic institutions was to move to the Department of Energy during the Human Genome Project. Can you talk about what drew you there and your role there in that obviously highly consequential project?

Yes, yes, indeed. Well, I became very interested in the idea of the Genome Project by talking to a number of my colleagues around the country back in the mid-80s.

And it became clear that that was something that could be done. And I got asked to chair a committee to look at and make recommendations to the

of the Department of Energy called Biological and Environmental Research, which currently then had some funding for the Genome Project. And one thing led to another, and they asked me to lead that section. And that was a real challenge.

because not only was the genome project under that component, but there was an awful lot of other biology that was related to, and there was also the climate change segment was under that.

And that was a real experience for me because of the science, because of the complexity of that. But also, I mean, the total budget that was under the control of my directorate there was about $500 million a year.

And so I learned a lot about how such things work. And I also learned a lot about how government works. I'm sure plenty of stories there. So when in that sequence did you first meet Hank Riggs and how did that come about? Well, after the Department of Energy, I co-founded a biotech company in Seattle called

and was working as the president of that company. And one day, I got a call from someone I'd never met named Hank Riggs.

And that was very interesting. And he explained to me his vision about starting a new institution and related a little bit about his history, which is also very, very interesting. And he was clearly a consequential educator, having...

most recently then been the president of Harvey Mudd College, but had also secured a $50 million grant from the Keck Foundation to

to carry out this vision. And he invited me to come down to Claremont and help him do this. I was intrigued and didn't immediately agree to do that, but I certainly was intrigued and began thinking about it. He came up to Seattle to visit, and we spent a lot of time together and talked.

The long and short of it is he convinced me that this idea he had about applied life sciences and as an educational objective was something that was actually worth doing. And since I had both been a...

a basic scientist as well as running a biotech company and doing science therein, I understood the need for people who knew

about how to commercialize biotechnology as well as those who knew how to actually create the science and technology. And so I was quite intrigued and finally agreed that this was something I was quite interested in helping him do.

And so I did agree to join him as kind of the co-founder. And I was to handle the academic components, the...

the curriculum, the hiring of the faculty, and just generally putting together the academic pieces where Hank was going to be the president, be the leader. We were going to work together as partners and start this institution. So shortly after that, I went down to Claremont

And David, how did Hank first happen to be put in touch with you? Did you have a mutual contact or acquaintance that sort of made the match? No. Hank, well, it's a good question. He somehow found out about me. I think he started looking around for...

Yeah, he talked to a number of people, and he never really told me who he talked to, but he said he had heard about me, and he liked the fact that I had my background both in academics and in biotech.

Right. And, and David, Hank, as you mentioned, it was a, he was a very persuasive character, but, but he, but it was also an interesting vision. Here he was creating a life science institute, but his background was as an engineer. He'd raised the first billion dollar campaign when he was at Stanford. He'd run Harvey Mudd College, but he didn't,

seemed to be a natural person to launch a life science Institute. Did he share what was it that was prompting this vision and had led him to get the $50 million from the Keck foundation? Yes. Well, that was, um, as you said, that was around, uh, uh, the, uh, 1998 and, uh, and then two 2000 in that era. And that, um,

In the previous couple of decades, it had become clear to people like Hank that biotechnology was going to be a major force in society as well as provide a wide range of new

opportunities and technologies as well as impact society. And I think so that so in talking to Hank about that, I think that vision or that realization of how important

the biological sciences were in both the economy and the potential impact on society through health and medicine, that really inspired him. And I think that became something that he could articulate that. He just had then...

and was able to convince Robert Day at the Keck Foundation that

this was something worth doing because this was going to enable or help enable the real impact that biotechnology would have. And simply the academic and basic science component was important, but not enough. I think that was his...

That was his realization, which was really interesting. And because he had, as you said, I mean, he had gone, not only was he an engineer, but he was, I mean, Harvard Business School was in his background as well. And he understood the difference between engineering

the creation of technologies and the commercialization very well. So he was, yeah, I thought his vision was really an exciting one because I had as a biotech

CEO, and I had realized that people that understood both sides of the picture, the commercialization as well as the basic science, were incredibly valuable and also very rare. So he convinced me right away that that was a good thing to do.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, as I recall the vision he talked about, you know, we have all of these PhD scientists who have the depth there. We have MBAs who don't necessarily know a lot about the science and we need the people who can bridge between the two.

run these projects, integrate it, you know, help to create these new startups. And, and, you know, I think that, that, that vision has largely been borne out. Um, as you came on board with that initial pot of money and the vision, um,

how much of the rest of how to do this had been worked out or was that still pretty much a blank slate? So, for example, had it already been determined it would be graduate as opposed to undergraduate since most of the Claremont colleges to that time had been at the undergraduate level? Right. Yeah, it had... Hank had...

Hank had thought it was really important for it to be a graduate institution, and I agreed with that, with my experience as well. So we talked about that at the beginning. So it was Hank's idea to make it a graduate institution. I agreed, and so that's where we began.

And as you were trying to put together this model, and Hank was, did you have any other institutions in mind that you looked at? Not necessarily in the life sciences, but creating startups in higher ed is pretty rare, right? And so the Claremont Colleges hadn't done one since the 1960s with Pitzer College. And so I know part of Hank's vision was to add one to that and keep that legacy of colleges going.

Were models or things you had in mind that helped to guide the building of KGI? Well, no, in short. I didn't really – I couldn't think of any real models. Of course, every college, every institution that has started –

at a beginning. And so there were things about starting an institution that were well-worn. But no, I really didn't have an idea. However, I have to say the idea of starting something new like this

It was just really exciting because for the very reason that it had never been done before. And I knew a lot about graduate education in the sciences.

and how that worked and how important that was going to be. And I wanted the Keck Graduate Institute to have a lot of basic science, both in its curriculum, but also that the faculty would also do research to some extent.

And so there was no real model, but the components that were going to have to emerge were kind of clear.

And I've had the pleasure for the podcast to talk with Rick Miller, the founding president of the Olin College of Engineering. And he drew a lot from Hank Riggs. Hank mentioned the Olin College, actually. That was one of his models.

And the really surprising thing there was that, I mean, they had another foundation that was dedicated to bioengineering that really was behind them as well. And so that was an interesting thing.

potential metaphor, but, uh,

And they actually came a few years after KGI, but they got Hank on the board to help in the guiding of that. But one of the things that's common to the two, which I thought was interesting, is that, you know, Olin chose to locate right next to Babson and Wellesley because it was very focused and specialized, but was able to draw from them. That was particularly important in their case because they were undergraduate. And so, you know,

being small in that way, they were able to leverage the liberal arts and the business and entrepreneurship. For KGI, how important do you think was it being part of the Claremont Consortium in terms of those early years? Were there benefits from that? Were there challenges posed by that in terms of creating this new institution within this seven college consortium? Well, I think there were both advantages and challenges, yes.

The advantages were that the overall, the Claremont colleges have a really high quality and very high standards when it comes to educational efforts. And they also had a number of people

who were very versed in various aspects of what we wanted to do. There weren't any, I don't think there were any PhD biologists in the group. There must have been one or two somewhere, but I didn't meet any of them right away.

And there were, in Harvey Mudd, there was a lot of, there were a lot of good scientists and very good science educators. And that was, that was useful. And the Claremont Graduate University was a, also had some of the,

since they were part of the colleges and they were the only other graduate institution, they were the only other institution that had any graduate activities, actually. So that was an advantage and was useful to talk to some of those people. The disadvantages had to do with things like their ability

there was some resentment of the foundation of the KGI. And that some of it was kind of inchoate and some of it was focused on things like Hank and I discussed and decided that the idea of tenure was not a good idea.

and that one could handle the things that tenure was supposed to do in other ways. And

I still believe that, but that was anathema in the Claremont Colleges. As the chief academic officer, I went to several of the colleges and spoke to their faculty about this problem.

I experienced... Still have the scars to show for it? In some cases, that was pretty tough. They were not uniformly. There were a few people who really understood that and were willing to see how it worked.

and others that were absolutely outraged and thought this was the craziest and most awful thing they'd ever heard. So those were challenges, but actually those were not much in the way of challenges. It just

The only thing that it really did, it really had little effect on us whether or not we were resented because we could do what we wanted to do. But what it did do in some cases was to dampen our ability to collaborate effectively with some of those colleges. And one of the, you know, the logics was, yeah. I was going to say that as I understood it,

Yeah, go ahead. Sorry. Just that it wasn't just that tenure, you can debate its merits, but that particularly with a startup institution in a field that was changing so rapidly, where it was difficult to predict what it was going to look like even a decade ahead, that it was hard to imagine doing hiring on tenure in that context. And so I think there was a good logic for why, as you're starting this up,

in the same way when you're starting a biotech startup, right? You've got to have the flexibility there to adapt as you learn and the technology evolves. Right, right. Yeah, and it... So I actually...

and argued, not very effectively in most cases, but I argued with the other faculty that in fact they have a contract with their institutions, but they have never, most cases they've never bothered to write it down, so they really don't know what it is.

And wouldn't it be better just to draw up contracts that described exactly what the college, what the institution owed these faculty members and what they owed the institution and

I think that appealed to some people, but to most, that fell on deaf ears. David, can you share a little about, you touched on the fact of trying to do bridge builders and an interdisciplinary approach without a lot of models to be able to look at. What were some of the core elements as you put together what the KGI curriculum and education would look like?

Right. Well, since we were, the life sciences were the core science, but the management, the understanding of some of the key aspects of how a business is run and how commercialization takes place,

were the other components. And so that was where we started. What do we need to bring in? So how much do the people who are on the business side, how much science do they really need to know?

and how much of the business components and management do the science promulgators, creators need to know. And I think it became really clear as we began to, or as I started thinking about the curriculum, was that

The number of things that it was useful for people to know was a very long list. And in some cases, that made it very, very difficult to put together a curriculum because the list was a little too long.

And so we were challenged, as I think you well know, with the idea of how do you bring these things together in effective ways? What kind of activities, what kind of curriculum would make sense? Obviously, you have to have some courses,

But the idea that it had to be just courses, I think, became clear to me. And my idea was that actually one of my early ideas about this is let's figure out how to set up activities that would mimic some of the things that people would have to do

Now, in a biotech company, for example, how do you manage a project? How to manage a project is the...

is the subject of a lot of business school management courses. But here, what we really meant is, are there any special aspects to the life sciences component or the life science feature of these kinds of projects? And indeed,

Indeed, there were. They had to do with things like patents. They had to do with things like ethics and the interface with medicine, health and healthcare and medicine. And yeah, so there's so many. Once you begin to think about what actually goes on,

in a biotech company, it became clear that there were both a lot of opportunities to pull together

um, activities as part of the, uh, learning experience that were in fact, uh, interdisciplinary in a, in the broadest sense. And, uh, um, that would be, uh, really useful, but that also there were enormous challenges, um, to, um,

fitting this into a curriculum in a way that made sense so it could be carried out and that it could be done. And then actually there were challenges on the other side of that coin that had to do with how for the business perspective

the people that were learning the management, the finance, the patents and so forth. And if we can do that with the people that were being educated in science, how much science and how do you –

How do you take what could be viewed as MBA-like students and how do you teach them enough science so that it was useful on the one hand and that it wouldn't completely swamp their capabilities in both time and background to deal with it?

So there were a lot of challenges in thinking about this curriculum, as you well know, because you were involved in it after a while. But the initial thought was that we— I remember when Hank— Sorry, go ahead. You remember— No.

I was saying, I remember when Hank came to see me, I was on the faculty at USC and said, you know, would you be interested in coming up and teaching to our first class? And so I did that as, you know, as an adjunct professor, you know, in my field of designing high performance organizations, little knowing that

his hidden agenda was to then hire me to build the business and ethics side of that curriculum, which like you was a great opportunity and the students really sold it. I remember a couple of the elements that were really distinctive about the education that sort of speak to the point you were mentioning. What first was that idea where just when these students arrived, we would throw them in on the deep end in teams

with relatively little guidance to learn as much as they could about one of those early biotech startups and the technology it was based on. And so I think that was a nice example of that kind of simulation you're describing. Yeah, yeah. No, there were... No, I think actually designing or the least...

of that first curriculum was really exciting and interesting. And I think, I think,

I think you were well aware when, as we, as I began to hire the faculty, one of the first things we, they, they quickly realized they were going to have to do was help me design this curriculum and putting, hiring somebody usually involves telling them what they're going to do. And so I,

You could only do that up to a point, and the rest you said, and then you're going to have to make it up. You're going to have to figure it out. So, David, say a little more about what you were looking for in hiring the faculty, because as you say, this wasn't an easy sell necessarily. You were hiring people who were often early in their careers, though some were more experienced. You weren't offering tenure. It was an institution that even though it had $50 million, it was

nobody was quite sure whether this would work or not. And, you know, you were asking them to do research as well as to build this curriculum and teach. So it was a lot from people who were used to, you know, more traditional higher ed, you know, here's your lab and you can, you can do your own thing. So, so who did you look for and what was the, what was sort of the, the, the way you went about building this founding faculty? Yes. Let me,

I will answer that question, but let me just add right at the beginning that I remember you mentioned the $50 million. And right at the beginning, I think that was one of the first conversations I had with Hank.

It was my view, which I expressed to Hank, and he eventually came to realize that $50 million was not nearly enough. So we're going to start a new institution, entirely new institution on $50 million. But Hank initially really thought that was plenty.

But then I think he came to realize that, yeah, maybe, maybe not. And it was going to depend on just how ambitious we were. Yeah.

Well, as to your question about the faculty, I think there's no one answer to the question of what kind of faculty we're looking for because I was looking for people with disabilities.

with a variety of backgrounds because we had to bring together people with a variety of backgrounds and have them work together. So one of the things I looked for in talking to people was people that I thought actually could work together and could work with me.

And that is a completely different axis than looking at their academic or teaching or scientific credentials. But on the other hand, I did want to have a faculty that had some scientific, that had some real scientific weight that they could use.

Because at the time, this field, applied life science was not just applying life science. It was applying things that were emerging constantly and opportunities that were being presented constantly.

to people and institutions in a very dynamic way. And things were changing in the science very, very quickly so that I wanted faculty who were appreciative of that and who ideally were actually on the front and could, and I do remember

The first thing I looked for was someone who had actually had some, I was looking, well, actually, when I arrived in Claremont, Hank had, unbeknownst to me by then, he had advertised for faculty.

He had put out an ad, and so he had a list of applications and a pile of applications. So one of the first things he said to me was, hey, here's the stack of applications. See if there are any good ones here. Yeah.

So he gave you a head start. He'd already done some prospect. So that was a really interesting year of meeting, talking to. And so one of the first people I hired or the first person I hired was Greg Dewey.

And the thing that appealed to me about Greg, and Greg was one of those people that I found in the stack of applications, and Greg had actually been a department chairman.

And since I had also been a department chairman, I know what you learn as department chairmen. And I thought, if Greg has learned this, he's a faculty member that I would like to start with. And Greg was also a good scientist. And he was doing really interesting science in an area that was a little different from anything that...

um uh was common in those days he he was a he was a chemist he was interested in mathematics as well and uh and there were a variety of uh of his cross disciplines as well as his experience uh in uh

academic administration, which was very appealing. And then when Greg came out and talked and we met, it was clear that he was somebody I could work with, and that proved to be the case.

And I continued on those lines, but I didn't find many people that had any real academic administration experience. Greg was the first and probably the only one who had enough experience in doing things professionally.

in the, excuse me, in the administrative side that I thought would be useful for useful experience for KGI. But, but there are a lot of, a lot of, and obviously as you mentioned earlier, obviously I needed to hire a number of people with experience, not, not just, you know,

junior faculty starting out. You can't start a new institution with just junior faculty, but we did need a lot of people who were of that frame of mind that is coming in and

realizing what they were to do was to start something and start their own research as well. And a number of people then appealed to me as faculty members for usually for very different reasons.

And so and then we ended up with the faculty that you knew well. And David, one of the, you know, initially, as with the other Claremont colleges, the institute had been given 10 acres on which to build its campus. But to get going, it had purchased an existing set of buildings, which eventually became its home. Was the decision to stay there?

there and to buy those buildings rather than to build? Was that driven by the realization that $50 million doesn't go as far as you thought it was going to be a lot less expensive that way? Or was it simply the practical reality of getting started? Well, it was a bit of both. And yeah, I think...

having to build the buildings that were needed. I mean, we needed laboratories for one thing, which is much more expensive than classrooms and offices. And that was, that was, I think we could have easily blown the whole 50 million on a few buildings and been very, been very restrictive.

But Hank and I started looking around. Hank had come across the place which is their home now. And so I do remember going through it and realizing that those buildings could be easily modified and adapted into things that we really needed. And we could do it not only...

less expensively, but we could do it quickly. And I think quickly was also really important. The idea of actually starting such an institution, I was beginning to hire faculty and

We needed a place. We needed to begin to, as we put together this curriculum, or as I started thinking about the curriculum, it was clearly we were going to need some laboratory courses. We were going to need some places for people to carry out, the faculty to carry out the research, and probably for students to carry out various kinds of projects and

And so starting from scratch, building buildings was simply not, it wouldn't be possible to meet our own time schedule to do it that way. So off we went. Another thing I should mention. David. Yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead.

Well, I was going to say, I was going to change the subject a little bit. That's fine. I was thinking about, you know, prior to this call the other day, I was starting to think about what do I remember about KGI? And I did remember, in fact, that one of the early things that –

was important was Hank had pulled together an advisory committee and there were some really

good people on that advisory committee. And it was them that we, we used them to bounce off the ideas, uh, the practical as well as the conceptual ideas about, uh, what KGI would become. And so I was able to, uh,

to bounce off of, oh, I'm trying to remember his name, Frank, oh, he was a president of Cornell, Frank? Frank Rhodes. Frank Rhodes, thank you.

It's coming back. Yeah, Frank Rhodes was on that advisory committee, for example, and he was the quality... I think a number of prominent... He was the quality... That quality of person was people that Hank had been able to convince to come on and give us advice. And so...

I was able to do such things as talk to Frank Rhodes about this is what I had in mind. What do you think?

Yeah, I think two of the things that seemed to be really crucial in those early days was having a really first class advisory board and then also building up a board of trustees of some real leaders from the industry that would be hiring the future graduates and also providing opportunities there. And they obviously provided not just financial support, but also real guidance and ensuring that

what we were educating for was going to fit the needs of industry, right? Well, actually, I don't think that worked quite that way. I think the representing industry, I think to some extent you're right. To some extent they reminded us from time to time

Oh, yeah, this is necessary. But most of the things we knew pretty well. And so the in fact, occasionally, I think people in the industry say,

since the industry probably had gaps as well in its ability to marshal people that knew enough of the science and the business together. They were lacking those people, and sometimes in the leadership, but most often in the lower ranks.

lower ranks of employees. And sometimes the people that end up on boards of directors actually are not close enough to what actually happens in the biotech companies to be able to provide the kind of guidance that you've described.

Yeah. And of course, one of the challenges of building something really new is the job ads out there. None of them said we are looking to hire an MBS grad, which is what we call the degree, right? They were looking to hire PhDs or masters in science or MBAs. And we were creating something new to fill that gap.

Another core element of the model, David, was that we did borrow and adapt from Harvey Mudd was the idea of the capstone project. And that was interesting, right, in terms of bringing together all of the elements of what students were learning in a final project, but also as a revenue stream, right? Because like at Harvey Mudd, we were asking the companies to pay for everything.

the delivery of a project, whether it's a product or an analysis that would be of real value to them. So is that something in terms of the learnings from Harvey Mudd and the early model that you think worked well? I think that worked well, but I must say I don't remember taking that from Harvey Mudd.

In retrospect, I see that Harvey Mudd did a similar thing, and that may have been one of the first... I may have heard that first from them, but I just don't remember that. I thought that was just a terrific idea, and I do remember...

advocating that with the faculty and then with Hank and the board of directors. I was assuming with Hank having led Harvey Mudd for 10 years that that was part of what he brought with him when he came over was knowing that that worked well. Not that I recall, but he was certainly supportive. I

I remember, in fact, talking to the faculty

and the board, there was a lot of pushback about how could that possibly work from the board side saying, well, how are you going to get companies to pay for a bunch of wet behind the ears students to do something that is going to be useful to them?

And, and from the faculty saying, well, you know, the students are going to be able to do a number of things.

But there's a question about whether or not their level of expertise can be matched properly to the right projects that would either lead them to learn a lot or to actually be useful.

So, and in fact, no, I think that was one of the cool ideas that we had. And...

I think it actually did work enormously, and I do remember a number of cases where it didn't work so well. Like any experiment, there are going to be ones that work and ones that don't as well, right?

Right from the outset, David, one of the parts of the model that you were heavily involved with was actually creating spin-out companies from KGI. That happened early in its development. Can you say a little bit about, you know, was that something that you saw as separate from the educational enterprise, integrated to it? Yeah.

Well, I think the concept of being able to spin out a company from KGI was certainly agreeable in several ways. One is it would be a terrific educational vehicle.

On the one hand, it could lead to revenues downstream, which was also very attractive to us at that time. And the idea of giving faculty members the opportunities to work

take technologies that were emerging from their laboratories and applying them was very much in the spirit of what we were trying to do. So, yeah, that was a really important component conceptually. But, you know, as you well know, actually having it happen is –

That requires a lot of convergence. And, yes. So, and then, of course, we went through with the –

entrepreneurship course that started out, I think Bob Curry and I gave for a while. That was kind of practice for exactly those kinds of things, saying, look, if you have this technology or these patents, how are you going to actually make a company?

And I know you guys through your networks were able to bring in lots of real world examples of things that had both worked and not for the students to learn from. Yes. Yeah. That was, that was fun. I do remember. Yeah. I fondly remember some of those, some of those course sessions, lectures and so forth. And yeah,

I know I had from Darwin Molecular in Seattle, I had experience with not only starting a company, but moving through the process of trying to get to a

And I remember giving a lecture about some of the basic genetics we had done, particularly on the bone density project, which was, by the way, two years ago, FDA approved. A long and winding road, but it got there. Yeah. Yeah.

But I do remember giving that lecture and explaining how the basic science ground through to and how we were thinking about it and what we did and all of those, all of the ins and outs. And then...

Two years ago, getting a call from one of our first-year students. I don't know whether I told you about this. One of our first-year students, Mark Dobler, who was at Amgen. Yep, I remember Mark and Gene well. And Mark sent me a message saying when that FDA approval came in,

He said, I remember your lecture about the basic science here. And by the way,

I was the manager for this project at Amgen. Wow. So it really does come full circle. And, of course, that was also a different form of success because Mark and Gene, who were two members of our first class, ended up getting married. So not just good jobs at Amgen, but a nice bringing together of people. Yes, indeed.

How did you and Hank think about how you would judge whether this experiment was a success? What were the measures you were thinking about for KGI in weighing this experiment? That's a great question. And of course,

We thought about that, and I think most of our initial ideas were not good about how to do that. But I think ultimately we ended up deciding that if we produced classes of students,

who were hired by industry and were successful in what they did, we would know that we'd done the right thing. That was one aspect. But then as time goes on, there's all these things you've mentioned. Every one of those is a potential measure, right? You could say, well, yeah,

Spin out companies, that's a possible measure. The hiring of our students, that's another. The faculty research that leads to licensable technologies, that's also useful.

But I think the first two were things like just the success of our students was probably the primary measure. And gauging how the students were successful has got a variety of

components, but seeing them have fruitful careers in the life sciences industries is certainly the main thing. And there, I think, now looking back on it, just the ones that I know about, there's certainly been quite a few that have been very successful.

So in that sense, I think it worked. And the institution, yeah. Well, the big question is, since the life sciences and the life sciences industries are continually changing, the question is, what's going to constitute continuing success? I suppose the success of the students will always be

the major thing, but the other manifestations can be all over the place. And, you know, the institution, as we'd hoped, I think, has been adaptable. They've added a pharmacy school for the biotech industry. They've fostered another startup, the Minerva Project, that's trying a very different model of higher ed in

globally and virtually. And so, so I, it's nice that the entrepreneurialism has, has continued. One big transition for any startup is when the founder leaves. I think many of us were surprised when Hank stepped away as early as he did, you know, in the start of KGI. Can you share anything about, you know, that decision, you know,

And what you knew of it and how it came? Well, I know Hank had talked about, from the very beginning, Hank had talked about giving...

a certain number of years to the project. And I know Gail was, uh, uh, was anxious to, uh, have it not be limitless. Um, so it, it was a surprise to me when he decided to do that, but he did remind me that that's what he talked about from the beginning, uh,

within a couple of years. And I had to agree. And because he had done so much for the institution and for me, and now this was...

This was like his third major career phase. There was Stanford, there was Harvey Mudd, and now KGI. Yeah, and along the way running a company there for a while. So yeah, he had a number of successful chapters. David, just as a final question, when you look back and you think about for other entrepreneurs,

higher ed entrepreneurs out there who are trying to start a new model of higher ed. Um, any lessons you would draw in terms of, you know, you, you guys really, you know, had to make it up as you went along. Um,

That's a perplexing question. What lessons do I draw from the years of doing this? I think one of the first lessons that I would draw and one of the things that I would pass on is that the...

The potential innovations, the creativity that is possible, I think is probably going to exceed anybody who's doing this as an initial assessment. There's an awful lot that can be done.

There's an awful lot that can be done. And so the innovations that go beyond what we know about in the way of educational institutions and their policies

protocols, that there's an awful lot. So, yeah, you can do a lot of different things. So that would be the first lesson. The second one would be, I think, and this is true for any institution, so it's not really novel, but the initial, the people involved initially are going to be the absolute best.

And so I think I was fortunate in hiring the initial faculty, and they were a very heterogeneous group, very heterogeneous and differing in their values.

in their ambitions and their talents, but nonetheless, I think they fit together well and they work together well and they produced an institution that actually

Seemed to work. And were great fun to work with at the same time. And was great fun. Yeah. I guess maybe that's the other lesson, that you can have fun doing this. Have fun along the way.

Absolutely. Well, David, thank you so much for taking so much time. My best to Diane and hope you are doing very well and not too much longer. Look forward to visiting you in Seattle. Good to talk to you, David. Thanks. And it was, I have to say, it was fun thinking back and trying to remember things

the people and what we did. That was a lot of fun. I have to say, I was looking up, by the way, some of the initial board members, the people I first met when Hank brought me down to meet the board.

And, um, uh, I remember a number of people, but I, um, I have to say one of the people that, that I, I, I spent a little time reminiscing about was, um, uh, Jim Weinberg. Oh gosh. Yes. Was the founding chairman of the board who, uh, and, and Jim is, is, uh,

The Weinberg name, of course, goes with Goldman Sachs. But Jim was a remarkable individual, both a really inspirational leader and a smart and very kind and kind.

That was a great chairman to have in that initial board, I have to say. Yeah. As you noted, the $50 million wasn't enough, so having people like Jim on board was important for getting that additional cash. Well, and that's – David, you remind me of one other thing I did want to bring up is the first thing that Hank and I did –

was to start going around Los Angeles and Southern California

and raising money. And that was something I had no experience of doing, certainly for an academic institution. I'd raise money for a biotech. That's a different story. But being with Hank and going from place to place, from person to person,

And being with Hank and asking for money for this institution was a great experience. And

The thing that surprised me an enormous amount was that we were pretty successful. Well, Hank, you may have been new to it, but Hank had a lot of experience with that from Stanford and Harvey Mudd. He did indeed. Definitely something he brought to the table. He was really good at that, and I must say I...

I really appreciated it at the time because I knew how much money we needed. Absolutely. It's been great fun, David. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.