Sanford-Burnham’s CEO Sees Incredible Opportunity in Move to Roche
worst is now behind them,” and he doesn’t anticipate any further cutbacks. “Now is a good opportunity to bring in a new leader and to provide some stability and to move the team forward,” Reed said.
As for leadership at the Sanford-Burnham, Reed voiced his confidence in Kristiina Vuori, a Finnish cancer researcher who joined the institute in 1992 and who is now president and director of the institute’s cancer center. Vuori told me she and Reed were recruited at the same time by Reed’s predecessor, Erkki Ruoslahti, who also was educated in Finland.
Even though he named Vuori as president three years ago, when he separated the duties of the institute’s CEO and president, Reed said what’s happening is not a planned leadership transition. “We were preparing for this, but there was not a formal plan in place,” he explained.
Kristiina Vuroi
When I asked if the board had formed a CEO search committee, Vuori said the board is finalizing their plan on how to proceed. Vuori, who has been overseeing development of the institute’s next 10-year plan, said that also would be coming before the board’s next meeting in March.
“It’s a bittersweet departure,” Vuori said. “John’s departure is definitely a loss. But hopefully it’s a win at the same time. It’s a kudo for the institute that he’s taking such a prestigious position, and I do hope that we all keep those connections…” Reed agreed, saying, “I suspect we’ll find some new opportunities between Roche and the Sanford-Burnham.”
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
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