The Massachusetts Life Sciences Center cuts a high profile these days. Created by the state Legislature in June 2006 to foster research and economic development in the Commonwealth’s substantial life science sector, the center has money to burn, thanks to the Life Sciences Act the Bay State passed last year.
Led Susan Windham-Bannister, a former healthcare policy wonk turned business strategy consultant turned state life sciences czar, the quasi-public agency is charged with dispensing a mix of public and private funding to cultivate the state’s medical device, biotech and pharmaceutical sectors.
But juggling the not-always-mutual interests of those constituencies, along with the political exigencies of a 70-year economic trough and the competing needs of the public and private sectors, is no mean feat.
MASSDEVICE sat down with Windham-Bannister, the woman charged with keeping all those balls in play.
In Part I of the interview, Windham-Bannister — “Dr. Sue” to her colleagues at the center — touches on her Midwestern roots and how she came to be a Bay Stater, exactly how much money the center controls (hint: she ain’t no “The Billion-Dollar Woman”) and how it goes about spending it.
Click here for the second portion of the interview.
MASSDEVICE: Where did you grow up, and how did you wind up leading the Life Sciences Center?
Susan Windham-Bannister: I grew up in the Midwest in St. Louis. I came here to go to Wellesley College and when I finished my undergraduate training, I stayed.
I’ve spent my whole career in life sciences, first on the delivery side in healthcare. I worked in the Kennedy Center and did my graduate work at the Heller School at Brandeis in health policy, spent some years doing health policy work at a big think tank called ABT Associates over in Cambridge, and then went to the [Harvard University] Kennedy School to do a post-doc, looking at incentives and what the change in reimbursement would mean — how would it affect access, not just access to care, but innovation and technology and the use of technology?
Then I spent about six years as an independent consultant before I was asked by ABT Associates to come back and help create a commercial division focused on life sciences. We eventually grew that division into a company we spun out of ABT called ABT Bio-Pharma Solutions.
And when I began to think about what I’d like to do, this opportunity kind of found me, and it really turned out to be a great fit. So here I am.
{IMAGELEFT:http://www.massdevice.com/sites/default/wp-content/uploads/headshots/Patrick_Deval_100x100.jpg}MASSDEVICE: You were given a fairly broad mission. What were your marching orders from Gov. Deval Patrick?
SWB: To the governor’s credit, I wasn’t given marching orders. I was given a sense of his vision and his objectives and his commitment to the importance of life sciences.
What was visionary about this from the governor and the Legislature was the recognition that here was a very important cluster. It’s not a single industry, it’s a very heterogeneous community. So there was a real interest in keeping this cluster healthy and growing and vibrant so that it would continue to be a great economic contributor, but more importantly, so that it would continue to be a contributor to improve quality of life not just for the citizens of the Commonwealth but for the global citizenry.
MASSDEVICE: Do you get tired of being called “The Billion Dollar Woman?”
SWB: It’s not very accurate. This year we got about $15 million.
Our initiative is structured around three tranches. One is a capital fund, $500 million over 10 years, but it’s tied to 20-year bonds, so to the extent that the state issues bonds they then determine what share of the bonding dollars the center will get.
We also have tax incentives, which is not cash, but we’re able to award up to $25 million a year in tax incentives. There are nine different types of incentive, three of which are really targeted squarely at life science companies.
Our third tranche is an investment fund. That’s really our most discretionary pool of money. It’s intended to be a $25 million annual appropriation from the Legislature, but the center was asked to do its part this year, so that $25 million was reduced by $10 million.
So you can see that we’re not working with a billion dollars. That said, we have found some good ways to really creatively leverage those dollars. We believe that life science, even in these tough economic times, continues to be a good place for private capital to land. We have made it our business and part of our business model to really look for every bit of leverage on public tax dollars that we invest at the center.
We’ve committed about $33 million in public dollars and we’ve leveraged $327 million in private dollars. For every public dollar we’ve spent, we’ve looked for at least a one-to-one match.
MASSDEVICE: Thirty-three million dollars is a pretty big chunk of change, especially these days. How do you go about ensuring that it’s well spent?
SWB: We’re really working hard to keep track of what leverage we’re getting on those dollars. We work very closely with a scientific advisory board, and I really believe one of the reasons the center was given latitude was because our governance structure meant that we could only make investments with the approval of our board of directors. We have chosen to involve our scientific advisory board in all of our decisions; it includes top scientists from academia, from our medical centers, and you’ll see two chief scientific officers from industry. It’s a great mix.
We added to that composition members of the investment community. We have four representatives from the top venture capital firms in the state with an almost exclusive focus on life sciences.
We have a group that is looking at good science and good business side-by-side, and it creates, not just a lot of good efficiency, but a lot of good synergy.
MASSDEVICE: How do you make sure that all life science stakeholders get the benefit of this initiative?
SWB: We’re the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, which means bio-informatics, device, diagnostics, pharma, and biotech. We began this initiative by going out and talking to all these various constituencies. We really wanted to understand what a company in informatics needs, versus those in devices, versus those who do tools, versus those who do pharma and biotech.
We also have colleagues on the team who come from industry, so they understand how it works. We’ve really tried to be market-driven, both from our own experiences and in our conversations with the marketplace, to understand where the needs converge and where they diverge and make sure we’re being representative of all of those. We try to be broadly involved.
We’re looking for good ideas, good science and good business opportunities. If a disproportionate share is coming from one part or another, then so be it. That being said, we’re being very inclusive of all parts of the life sciences community, as well as the geographies of the state.
MASSDEVICE: Some have criticized the center’s board for being stuffed with Deval Patrick political donors, or complained that there’s too much money being given to UMass. What do you have to say to the skeptics?
SWB: If you look at the margin by which the governor won the election and you look at the percentage of the population that contributed at some level to the governor’s campaign, statistically it would be a near impossibility for you not to have on your board a fair representation of contributors.
Part of it is just a recognition that this is a very popular governor, in the same way that you would have to look hard to find people who aren’t supportive in some way of the Obama administration. I think it just reflects the distribution and the popularity in terms of a broad base of support for the administration.
Regarding UMass, we at the center and this administration really believe that all members of the academic community and the state should be able to participate in the life sciences. If we’re talking about enhancing life sciences in the state, we can’t just have our private institutions leading the way. If you look at the distribution of those institutions, we would be stuck once again with Boston and Cambridge as the hub.
Click here for the second portion of MassDevice’s interview with Windham-Bannister.