hotspot for global health. Biotech executives I talked with seem to think Faris has helped communicate their work to these important civic players.
“He’s really been the consummate ambassador for the industry,” said John Harris, the CEO of Seattle-based NeuroVista, a member of the WBBA board of directors.
On the administrative side, the WBBA appears to be in slightly stronger shape than it was four years ago. When Faris took the job in February 2005, the association had a staff of seven, a $1 million annual budget and a membership of about 400 biotech companies, research institutions, and companies that serve biotech, like developers, law firms, and accounting firms. Under Faris, the budget has grown to about $1.5 million, and the membership has climbed to 456 at last count, he says. Faris also has a flair for events, having pulled off quite a few lively ones, including his swan song on Dec. 15, a fireside chat with biotech pioneers Bruce Carter, Bruce Montgomery, and H. Stewart Parker.
Some of the big news events in local biotech certainly made Faris’s job more difficult. The region’s biggest company, Bothell, WA-based Icos, was carved up and shed more than 350 local jobs in early 2007 when it was acquired by Eli Lilly. Another leader, Seattle-based Corixa, was sold to GlaxoSmithKline and shut down. Not one company during Faris’s run introduced a smash hit drug or device that changed the standards of medicine, like Seattle-based Immunex did for rheumatoid arthritis with etanercept (Enbrel) in 1998. No one now can make a persuasive case that biotech has created the kind of job growth that many civic boosters, including Faris, promised in 2005 during the debate over whether to support the Life Sciences Discovery Fund.
The biggest positive break, Faris says, came in the summer of 2006 when billionaire investor Warren Buffett agreed to give away his fortune to the Seattle-based Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It means the foundation will be able to greatly amplify its efforts to wipe out major global health scourges, like HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis. Faris hoped to seize a little of this momentum with a new WBBA slogan aimed at the general public: “Together, We Can Provide Better Health To People Everywhere.”
When asked whether he’s leaving behind any unfinished business, Faris pointed to science education. He recalled a meeting that he attended at Leroy Hood‘s house, early in his tenure, with Nobel Laureate Lee Hartwell, Ed Lazowska, and Mike Riley, the late superintendent of Bellevue Public Schools. They talked about K-12 science education as the key to shaping the future of life sciences in the Northwest, and doing more to spark excitement among children.
“We dipped our toe in the water, but there is a lot more the community and the WBBA could do,” Faris says.
One idea he mentioned is to organize “the world’s largest science experiment.” This would involve 10,000 to 20,000 children in grades 5-8, in Queensland, Australia and the Seattle area to collect data on water quality and temperature and feed the data points to researchers in both places. It’s one way to get the public involved in the generally mysterious stuff that goes on in labs.
“I’d like to see us do this every year,” Faris says. The measurement of progress would come in surveys that show more kids say they like science, they’re good at science, or they can imagine a career in science, he says.
While Faris isn’t going to work full-time anymore, and he is going to step down from a number of his nonprofit boards, he said he wants to stay active. He is going to spend more time with his wife and do some traveling, but he doesn’t want to say his goodbyes yet to his business contacts. He says he’ll take on individual projects where he can “do something useful.” He said a high-school classmate retired eight years ago, and remarked that he spent 330 days in the past year on the golf course.
“That’s not me,” Faris says. “I don’t golf, and I don’t watch daytime TV.”
