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Could you share your personal journey to MassBio - what motivated you?
I am celebrating 16 years at MassBio this month. Sometimes I feel like I blinked and suddenly we're here. There’s a picture the team gave me as a gift for my 15th anniversary. It's a series of images showing the Longfellow Bridge, looking over Cambridge and Kendall Square into Boston. This first one is from the 1980s.
Back then, you see the Volpe Center, maybe a few MIT buildings, and a whole lot of parking lots. You won’t see any empty parking lots now. The second image is from 2022, it's amazing to see how much the area has grown and changed.
Before I came to MassBio I was a practicing attorney—not in the industry. The previous CEO, Bob Coughlin, was looking to hire an attorney to negotiate our purchasing consortium agreements, which we now call the Edge Program. That's how I started.
I was a bit apprehensive. I wasn't familiar with biotechnology or what this industry was doing for patients and for Massachusetts. But when I met Bob, he shared his personal story—his son has cystic fibrosis. He wasn't just leading MassBio to grow the industry; he was a fierce patient advocate for his son.
He told me, "You have to come work here. You want to be part of this industry. It's changing people's lives, and it's really starting to grow here."
So I took the leap, and I’m now going into my third year as CEO. What I've loved about it is that we're an incredibly nimble trade association. We've built so many substantive programs just from conversations. We offer best-in-class resources including cost-saving initiatives, business partnerships, mentorship, networking opportunities, and industry advocacy, but most importantly, we listen. We listen to the needs of our 1,700 members, and we're really good at being responsive in a short timeframe.
For example, our entrepreneurial accelerator program, MassBioDrive, came from conversations with members. So did the Hub Conference Center—we realized that real estate is incredibly expensive in Kendall Square, and small companies wanted to invest in lab space rather than conference rooms.
Another example is our workforce training center, Bioversity. Members told us they needed help building a more robust and diverse workforce. So we created programs to address that. All these initiatives came from ideas sparked by our members, and we figured out how to navigate and execute them quickly.
Every day brings something new. We represent 1,700 member companies, and we're sitting in the most innovative square mile on the planet. Just walking around this campus, there are probably 50 to 70 companies. If you grab a coffee at Area Four, you're likely to run into CEOs of biotech companies, investors, executives from big pharma, lab scientists—you name it.
Massachusetts is such an important hub for life sciences, what makes it so special?
There are several factors. First and foremost, it's the collaboration. We have so many key stakeholders here. We have over 1,000 biotech companies in Massachusetts, with 250 just in Cambridge. Eighteen of the top 20 biopharma companies have a physical presence here, and many are continuing to grow and invest. Companies like Lilly, which expanded here and included their Gateway Labs to facilitate partnerships between pharma and biotech; EMD, which moved into the Seaport; BMS, Sanofi, Takeda, Novo Nordisk—the list goes on.
And our academic institutions are critical—we have 120 academic institutions, training our workforce and contributing to the ecosystem. They've created more than 500 companies in the last 10 years. Then there are our world-class hospitals which are conducting over 6,000 clinical trials, with another 3,300 in the pipeline.
Add to that our investor community—over 380 funds and 500 venture capital or private equity firms. All the players necessary for a successful ecosystem are right here.
But what truly sets us apart is our culture of collaboration. We work together—industry, government, academia—all aligned towards common goals. The Life Sciences Initiative in 2008 was a prime example. Our partners in government invested $1 billion over 10 years into the industry, leading to significant growth. This was recapitalized in 2018 and we are working with our partners in government to further extend government support for this industry now.
Clusters around the country and the world come here and ask how to replicate what we have. Many have the components, but the level of collaboration here is unique. A practical example of this was the establishment of ARPA-H, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. The Biden Administration awarded the Investor Catalyst Hub to Cambridge. Of the $800 million in grants that have gone out through the program, $285 million has come to Massachusetts-based organizations.
That's impressive. So take an emerging biotech company - what are some of the benefits of joining MassBio?
First, you'd want to apply for the MassBioDrive program, our entrepreneurial accelerator program. It's an incredible eight-week program designed to support CEOs and scientific founders. We provide business acumen training, help with pitch decks, and connect you with curated mentors. We run two cohorts per year, and we're even launching another version in South Carolina.
Next, our Edge Program would help you be strategic with your funding by offsetting costs associated with getting your company up and running. Then there's our Align Summit, our partnering and investor conference, which brings together our investor community and early-stage companies. We also have our Pharma Day program, facilitating partnerships between biotech companies and big pharma.
Being part of MassBio puts you right in the middle of a vibrant ecosystem.
That leads us to the Vision 2030 —very exciting and ambitious with its four impact pillars. Can you talk us through the main goals and long-term strategy?
I'd love to. Our 2030 Strategic Plan is our roadmap to maintain and extend Massachusetts' leadership in the life sciences and, most importantly, to accelerate innovation to patients. The four impact pillars are:
- Innovation and Business: Supporting the growth and scaling of biotech companies.
- Economic Development: Ensuring the industry continues to contribute significantly to the state's economy.
- Policy: Advocating for policies that support the industry.
- Patients: The core of everything we do—improving patient lives.
We identified 6 key opportunity areas where we can have impact over the next five years. These include scaling innovators, expanding the investor community, recruiting and retaining talent, expanding TechBio (the intersection of technology and biology), building on biomanufacturing, and radiating value and impact.
Across four roadmap catalysts, we have 12 priority initiatives—concrete ways that MassBio can act. For instance, we're focused on scaling innovators by cultivating a network of CEOs, founders, and CXOs to support early-stage companies. We're also working on expanding our investor community by educating would-be investors on the industry to ensure we have more best-in-class investors supporting innovation.
Looking ahead to 2025, what’s the roadmap going to look like in action?
We're looking to grow the MassBioDrive program, possibly adding an AI-focused cohort. We'll expand our Align Summit, broadening our investor community and we're also reaching out to other life science trade organizations to include companies from places like South Carolina, Maryland, and Ohio.
Our Bioversity workforce training center is another focus. In our first year, we've trained 65 people from diverse backgrounds, many from neighborhoods around where the center is located. We're planning to open a second location in Lowell in 2025, focusing on manufacturing and serving communities in Lowell, Lawrence, and Haverhill.
We're committed to ensuring that the industry reflects the diversity of the population. Our graduates from the workforce training center have more than doubled their income after completing the eight-week certificate program, and we're excited to continue expanding these opportunities.
Your position at MassBio gives you a unique view of what’s happening in one of the most innovative spaces in the world. So what do you see as the most important trends and developments for 2025 and beyond?
Massachusetts companies are doing incredible things in the cell and gene therapy space. We've seen breakthroughs from companies like Vertex, transforming lives in the cystic fibrosis and sickle cell communities. We're also seeing exciting developments in mental health treatments, like the recent announcement by BMS for schizophrenia.
AI and machine learning are going to be transformative, potentially revolutionary. We're poised to become a world leader in biomanufacturing as companies want their biomanufacturing near their R&D and in close proximity to their patients, and Massachusetts offers that.
