school and others at UT, and some of the companies and entrepreneurs in Austin to get their views on what was going on. I became fascinated with the whole story behind the Dell and how Seton and Central Health were beginning to work together to envision this healthcare-focused innovation zone. They had let me know they were looking for a director, so I threw my hat in the ring.
X: Why did you want to do this job? It seems that you’ve settled into Philadelphia, have a good track record there.
CL: It was a big decision; no, the job is never done. I had and continue to have big visions for what could happen here in Philadelphia. The science center will continue to build that vision here. I’m ready to take a slightly different type of challenge. The idea of starting something new and being in a very entrepreneurial environment really appealed to me. I felt like I was in the right stage of my career. I really felt like I clicked in the conversations that I had; it’s a combination of the opportunity to become part of essentially a startup and to engage with a great group of people in an environment that I felt was very supportive of this type of innovation. Finally, I would say the thing that really appealed to me was there was a very strong sense of community focus around this whole effort, that this needs to have impact on the community.
X: Tell me about the role that public health efforts have in creating an “innovation” district. So it’s not just about “startups” and tech.
CL: What’s different in Austin is that it has an opportunity to start there. Philadelphia perhaps didn’t start at that point. A lot of the activities related to commercialization and innovation as with other centers, like Boston, or in the Bay Area, didn’t necessarily start with, ‘Let’s solve some problems relating to the community as a starting point.’ Now they’re retrofitting that imperative because they’ve learned, if you focus on economic development without the community front-and-center, the risk is you may end up with an economic bubble in the middle, a strong economic center that doesn’t necessarily bring the surrounding community along with it.
Austin has a real opportunity to think about doing this as it emerges in the healthcare space. That is an unusual opportunity and one that attracted me.
X: What lessons have you learned from your efforts in Philadelphia that you can use in Austin?
CL: There are things about what I think might be good areas to explore. They are secondary to the how. To me, the big piece for a project like this is there needs to be involved community engagement. One of my early goals is going to be implementing a strategy for engaging all of those players in a meaningful way as we envision this. We’re not going out with a fully baked cake. We’re going to be engaging people in the process of building this. I think my role in Philadelphia has been helping to engage the 31 shareholders in our organization. Let’s face it, it’s not always easy to bring together a large group. I would love to bring that to Austin. The impression that I’ve gotten from initial conversations is that people in Austin love to collaborate. I feel good about that.
X: What are the main challenges to get
