 Hello. Just waiting for a few more people to hop on to our event. My name is Sue Pepin and I serve as the director of health and clinical partnerships at Arizona State University. Welcome to all of you to the fourth and final of our biomedical innovation series. Our topic today is creating innovation ecosystems to drive knowledge-led inclusive economic development. I want to thank the Arizona Biomedical Research Center for sponsoring the series and for ASU Knowledge Enterprise for the work in fostering innovation through research and discovery. The structure today will include a few remarks by Tom Osha. If you have questions, please at any time put them into the question chat and we will try to get to them toward the end of our hour together. So it's my great pleasure to introduce our speaker today, Thomas Osha. Tom is the senior vice president of innovation and economic development at Wexford Science and Technology. In this role, he guides Wexford's implementation of its knowledge community strategy across its portfolio, working with Wexford's partners, including universities, research institutions, entrepreneurs and innovators, growth companies and economic development stakeholders globally, and position Wexford's innovation district developments as critical hubs in the regional innovation ecosystem. He currently also serves as the founding board chairman of the Global Institute for Innovation Districts, a global nonprofit organization working toward the growth and advancement of innovation districts. He's a member of the Leadership Council of the Brookings Institute and co-author of the recently released paper, The Evolution of Innovation Districts, a new geography of global innovation, along with Julie Wagner and Bruce Katz. Thomas served as an advisor to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on global innovation and has acted as an innovation advisor to global affairs Canada, helping Canadian companies successfully expand their operations into the United States and assisting US companies in developing Canadian partnerships and markets. Previously, he served as an executive vice president and chief of staff at Broad Wing Inc, a telecommunications provider, where he provided executive leadership in the areas of corporate strategy mergers and acquisitions. Prior to that, he served as special assistant to the United States Senator Richard Lugar, providing advice on foreign policy issues. He's also provided advice to the Reagan administration and developed a research methodology that has become a standard at Credit Congressional Quarterly Magazine. So with that introduction, I'm going to turn it over to you, Tom, for a few comments about. Well, thank you so much, Sue. It's certainly a pleasure to be here. I wish I was there in person, but virtual have to do for today. I know that we were black on Fridays at ASU, so I've got my sparky shirt on ready to go. So those of you who may not know, Wexford science and technology is a developer, but kind of a unique sort of developer in that we only do one thing and that is the innovation of innovation districts at scale. And we only do it with universities, academic medical centers and major research institutions. And what this really means for us is, when you think about innovation, while we're developers, it's never about buildings. It's always about people and ideas. And so when we look at creating an innovation district, what we call knowledge communities, such as what we're creating on the Phoenix biomedical campus, we look at what that really means for anchor institutions. What does it enable ASU or the University of Arizona or NAU or TGen to be able to accomplish in terms of growing the research and the commercialization, creating experiential learning opportunities for students bringing corporations closer for engagement and sponsored research. Maybe it's impacting the community and improving the human condition or shrinking popular disparities and health outcomes within neighborhoods. And so that's one way that we look at impact is how it really impacts the anchors. The second is what it means for the region. What does it mean to have an innovation district? How does that impact gross regional product, job opportunities, capital investment. And the third and in many ways, one of the really most important ones is how does it engage a community, right? How does it create pathways to jobs, not just for those who may have a terminal degree or an MD, but those who maybe you're coming out of high school or maybe have an associate's degree? What does it mean to create meaningful middle skill jobs and have them be open to members of all communities? What does it mean to create a sense of place for innovation? Not a walled kind of campus, but a porous, open, inclusive environment that serves as much for the people of the adjoining neighborhoods as it does for the tenants of the buildings. And how do these innovation environments magnify and amplify investments so that they really, particularly in today's world, as we move out of this COVID induced recession, how does that they really become elements, if you will, of economic recovery. That does bring in much of the work that we do as well at the Global Institute. In fact, Julie Wagner and I wrote a paper now that's become, I think, a bit of the standard for economic recovery. It's been adopted in Australia, Israel, Colombia and parts of it. I am told they're going to be introduced in the US in the next Congress as a bill to really focus these environments, these innovation districts like the Phoenix Biomedical Campus and even broader within Phoenix as environments where investment really can be amplified to the benefit of all. We continue to work through what this means. Wexford has 15 of these projects around the country with universities that are the peers of NAU or U of A or ASU, and look forward to continuing to grow. We have one building, that building has a certificate of occupancy. We're working on finishing out the ASU space right now. The stay tuned for a grand opening that will probably be sometime in the later part of January next year, but that's just the start. We're continuing to envision continuing not only to develop buildings but to integrate those into what's happening on Roosevelt Row, what's happening in other parts of the campus and in activate that entire part of the downtown area. So that's probably enough of an introduction, Sue, and I'll cease there and let you ask your first question. I want to build on that and you talked about that Wexford has 15 communities. Can you give us, can you give us a narrative of one that's farther down the line, so to speak, than ASU that you would highlight as a real success or tell us about one of them. Sure. So I've said if you've seen one innovation district, you've seen one innovation district. In fact, in some ways, they're like wine, right? Each region is different. Each knowledge community draws from the intellectual capital, the innovation, the infrastructure, the university. They pull from the proximate geographic advantages of their region, and they mix all of that together into a unique kind of environment. But let me describe one. And what I'll describe is what's called U-City and that's in Philadelphia. Currently, we've developed over 2 million square feet and are simultaneously building another million square feet right now. It is actually the basis of it is Market Street in Philadelphia from about 34th to 38th Street. So this is on the west side of the Skookle River, an area known as West Philadelphia. It was an area that was exceptionally depressed. So while it features the campus of the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel, one of the problems was back in the 80s, it was a very depressed area, disenfranchised, riddled with crime. And so it was necessary to be able to redevelop this environment both for the safety and security of its residents, but also to bring jobs and opportunity to that area, right? And to kind of revitalize an area of the city that had been much forgotten. So owing to the great work of Judith Rodin when she was the president of the University of Pennsylvania, carried on by their current president, John Fry, the president of Drexel, Children's Hospital, the Wistar Institute, University of the Sciences, all kind of came together and they really created what was called the Science Center. The Science Center was kind of that third place. It wasn't a campus, right? So it wasn't Penn, it wasn't Drexel, it wasn't a hospital system, so it wasn't Penn Presby or it wasn't Children's Hospital. It was a place where innovators could kind of, could come. A safe harbor where they could come, work on innovations, integrate with companies, launch new businesses. And it's been exceptionally successful. Most recently, some of the successes come specifically in cell and gene therapy. And so Dr. James Wilson, who many see as one of the real fathers of cell and gene therapy, had a wonderful lab, but it was on Penn's campus. And deep in Penn's campus where he was kind of unknown. You really didn't see him, you know, Wilson and his postdocs would come, go into their lab, think brilliant thoughts, create brilliant things, get in their car and go home. And it really wasn't producing the kinds of impacts that Penn wanted it to. And so we worked with Penn to bring Dr. Wilson off of the Penn campus, put him in one of the knowledge community buildings right there on Market Street, so that now you'd see Wilson, you'd see him in the beer garden, you'd see him at the events, you'd run into him or his postdocs in the corner bakery on the ground floor of one of the buildings or you'd see them at the at the Hunan Grill. And so all of a sudden now, he became accessible. That accessibility led John Crowley, the CEO of Amicus Pharmaceuticals to decide he needed to move. His R&D out of New Jersey and put it in 3675 Market Street right next door to James Wilson in his labs. And so he took a large footprint in that building to bring Amicus and all of their R&D there. By being there, all of a sudden startups wanted to be near Amicus and wanted to be near Wilson. And so Cabelletta and Century and a number of others have now sprouted up in that same facility. And so Drexel brought a school of computing and informatics together because certainly a lot of cell and gene therapy is also big data science. So the School of Informatics came, well that attracted a number of digital companies to locate the building and the building also features then a ground floor called the Quorum, which is wide open space. It's open to members of the community. It has free Wi-Fi. They can come in and they can just lounge in the area, use the Wi-Fi, have meetings, even if they're not tenants of the building. And so that building is only part of seven different buildings that are right there in a tight geography features public plazas, Drexel's School of Medicine buildings going up. We built with Drexel a school for the community. It's a K through 8 school called the Science Leadership Academy of Philadelphia. It's a public school that replaces one that had been taken away back in the late 80s. We replaced some of the street grid, the more opportunistically integrate what's happening there at U-City into the neighborhoods of Powelton Village and off of Lancaster Avenue. There's a number of elements that we brought together. I'll end by saying what we've also put in that building is programmatic activity that is exceptionally inclusive. So one of the challenges to growing cell and gene therapy is making sure you have enough pipeline of workers, right? And then there can be bench technicians who can, who can pipette and set up experiments. Well, to do that, you have to have students who have an interest, right, in STEM disciplines and in life sciences. And in a way, for that interest to take hold, particularly in, in inner school city kids who may not be exposed to these kinds of things, you have to demystify the environment. You have to create a whole series of programs to demystify U-City, to bring children in to these buildings so they would understand that the people who look like them and live where they live have meaningful important jobs, created a whole series of programs to expose them to careers in life sciences and created what's called firsthand a program that actually is part of the curriculum of middle and high school students in some of the, the challenge schools of West Philadelphia. And they come in as part of their program. They put on their goggles, they put on their lab code and scientists from the companies in across the U-City platform will come in then and teach courses. They come to summer camps, and in a lot of ways it gets the students interested to either continue their education past high school to get that two year certification, but to consider a job in the, in the life sciences in biotechnology where they might not have thought of one previously. It's quite a narrative. There's a lot going on and it isn't all just Wexford. I mean, it's great partners and Drexel, the city of Philadelphia, Ben Franklin partnership. There's a lot of people who all pull together to make this. And hence with all of those components coming together really elevated community. So much on what you've already brought up in your in your paper, the evolution of innovation districts, you talk about the importance of inclusion within these urban districts and you started to talk about I wonder if you would talk to us more about the steps that can be taken to really drive that. So, when we wrote the evolution. So, the evolution of innovation districts was actually a follow up to a paper that Bruce and Julie wrote, called the rise of innovation districts. And we wrote evolution five years later and we wanted to see what had really changed right to the rise of innovation districts kind of named and framed what they were, they laid out these, these physically, you know, identifiable hyper connected places that featured university research, entrepreneurial activity, corporate engagement. And, and so we'd seen how they had evolved and one of the things that we could seen across the world was really this need for these to be more inclusive, and that a number of districts were starting to recognize, particularly life sciences districts that fully 25 to 40% of the jobs don't require a four year degree. And so if you have these jobs not requiring a four year degree, how do you create the training programs to be able to include others in those jobs. Lab Force that CEI is doing that will be bringing to the Wexford building right there on the Phoenix biomedical campus is a perfect example of that, of one of those kinds of programs and so what we were really finding was, we do a lot of work in West Baltimore, West Philadelphia, south side of Chicago, Lambert's Point and off of Virginia, over town in Miami, and these are traditionally proud, yet often disenfranchised, many times minority communities that have been cut off from access to traditional jobs. And so, as we've brought the knowledge communities into these environments, we've paid particularly attention to how do you include right how are we able to create programs that like recently a few weeks ago in Baltimore we held a program it seems really simple, but it's trick or treating for kids, right, you can imagine West Baltimore on the corners that used to feature drug activity, there are no safe places to trick or treat. And so what we've done is we bring students in from the three schools that happen to be around the what's called the University of Maryland we bring them into trick or treat the building, they go through the building, they're able to meet people, right, who have their background as well, they're able to see what a what a laboratory looks like they're able to hear about what these kinds of companies do and while this year trick or treating was a little different they couldn't go up into the offices and the labs, they were still able to come into the building and appropriately social distance and our large conference center and still do a bit of trick or treating but it demystifies the environment, so that the next time they walk past the building, or their parent walks past the building, they know what goes on inside and that building is seen as a contributor to the fabric of the environment. We have a parking garage down the street from it that had some open bays on the ground floor and so we decided one of them needed to be a community center, there was no community center in West Baltimore, this gave us an opportunity to to let the community envision a space they needed it to be and there's times I walk by in the morning you'll see the lady sewing circle there at 10 o'clock in the morning at four o'clock in the afternoon you'll see a number of young children and they're doing homework or going through an after school program and and the success of that program the success of what they were able to create in that space, got the city council to then give them enough money to buy a building that was there in the community and now have a much larger center and so in some ways we see ourselves maybe as a catalyst there is a is a cedar of these kinds of environments. In Miami, it's working with Lindsay Hopkins which happens to be technical vocational school right next door to be able to create internships with many of the companies next door and what's called converge Miami. In West Philadelphia, it's also plugging into the West Philadelphia skills initiative which is actually a program that has does everything from landscaping to laundry. Many times it's the hardest core, most unemployable many of them are coming out of incarceration, but it teaches us kinds of job skills that prevents recidivism and enables again the opportunities that we kind of create by aggregating this density of uses and companies and activity to be able to be a real generator of jobs for many and so that that's one way that we've kind of looked at it is how can you create this environment for inclusion. The other way is how can you use the various companies that happen to be within these environments to be able to create opportunities for that both increased economic mobility, as well as solve problems. And so one of the, one of the good examples is an example out of Boston was, there's a number of companies there, one company in particular and I'm sorry was out of Miami. We ran a hackathon for for companies in Miami they all came together, and one of the winning ones had created an app for the phone. And the app was around finding the cheapest prescription price for a drug within the neighborhoods of little Havana and over town and some of the inner city neighborhoods of Miami, because the problem could be that you would leave your house, and you would go a mile down the street, and you'd be able to pick up a prescription that might cost $60. Had you known to go a quarter mile the other direction, you might be able to pick that prescription up for $12. And so that information hadn't always been available to people and so one of the winning companies had created this app on a phone into which somebody could plug their address and the prescription, and it would survey all of the pharmacies within a certain radius and be able to give them the right price and so it's interesting you can have social impact, in addition to economic mobility and we never forget that we're here because of the neighborhoods, and we're in the neighborhoods that have a generous flavor to these buildings they the days of universities kind of being behind their ivory walls and and being walled off or over and you look at the moves that that President Crow has made at ASU. You look at what's happened up at NAU under a Dr Chang and you certainly look at what the University of Arizona has done both in in Tucson and in Phoenix. You see this kind of desire to be a part of the community and then certainly what's happening at Maricopa Community College and places like CEI and lab boards are getting right down to meeting the community where the communities at and training them for the jobs that are coming in this kind of next decade of technology. Some wonderful stories of what's going on. To follow up on that you also talk about in the paper, how innovation districts are the physical manifestations of really a changing time where inherent characteristics of a city enable heightened connectivity and knowledge exchange. Talk about both the place based strengths and challenges of doing this work successfully on any campus but potentially comment on in Phoenix. Sure, so it's a great question. In a number of ways we've seen over the last, let's say 10 years, a real change in this right and so it used to be that when one was looking at creating a science park or research park they were looking suburban. Okay, let's go out where land is is infinite and not very costly. And we have lots of it. And so you look at the research triangle park that was held up is really one of the standards for many years, and you look at research triangle that's 2000 acres maybe even more of two story buildings, set back 100 feet from the street, many of them behind fences, right, no walkability. No, it's a park. And so if you want to get a cup of coffee, you want to get lunch, you want to have a pint after work, you get in a car and you go someplace. The buildings are all set great distances from one another so what you have is this environment that's homogeneous, disaggregated automotive dependent, and really not collaborative. There are great companies in RTP. This isn't a judgment against the companies. So now you fast forward to to really a few years ago when Wexford, and a couple of others began to see that really what this could be is is urban and and bringing these closer, not to the institutions, and also closer to the cities and so you started to see Philadelphia, which is urban, St. Louis in the central West End Miami, next to its medical district, Winston Salem, a third tier city, using the abandoned factory and warehouses of RJ Reynolds which just sat right there next to downtown and and being able now to create density, walkability and bike ability, transit connection in some cases, and really being able to create this environment that brought amenities as well. So it both leveraged amenities of the existing urban fabric now I have some more I can walk to go grab a bite to go have a drink to go meet somebody but then also bringing additional amenities, parks, public plazas, integrating those perhaps into existing fabrics and frameworks. And so it really brought a different environment because it now started to blend housing, hotel, retail, right fitness and other amenities in with the research and the development of the corporate activity and so really people began to brand that the live work play learn environment. So you gotta think about now what's happening particularly think about the the Phoenix biomedical campus, you are sitting right in downtown Phoenix. You're only a few blocks off of Central Avenue and the light rail, right, there's a reason why we purposely put our building that the first building which is 850 North Fifth Street, while we put that one on the north end of the site and not the south end, because there's an extra Roosevelt row. Now we can leverage the, the excitement of first Fridays when we get back to excitement around first Fridays, the opportunity of the coffee shops and the bars and the restaurants and the, and the art and the activation of Roosevelt row and that that proximity also to the Evans neighborhoods. So you have a good walk ability, you have a good grid structure, where we're going to slow down fifth street enough it's going to become a real pedestrian way, right and that's, and then that will connect into the next buildings that we do. So you do have this live work play learn we call it discover keel environment as well and if you look at the demographics of Millennials and Generation Z. They're looking for you know these kinds of environments they don't want in many cases a car car ownership among, you know, 2018 25 year olds is a historic lows is as is the holding of driver's licenses in general. So this kind of highly activated environment becomes really important, and this is activated environment because of its density allows you to apply capital imply events, and be able to amplify those greatly not just if I were going to put a new amenity in the research triangle park. It sits way you know it sits 1520 minutes from everybody else. Nobody can share in that if I'm going to put a new plaza in or if I'm going to do something unique. Visha, which is one of the top 10 restaurants court in USA today, we put it in St. Louis right there in Cortex. It's become a destination for everybody, not just the tenants, not just the central west end which is which is the area it's in, but people come from all around for it. If I would have put that out in, in, in creve core or further out, you know what it's it's disaggregated from everything else that's going on. So this is kind of leveraging potential, you're going to see that even more, particularly because what that's going to be able to do. This is maybe a little bit of a sneak preview of the next paper that Julie Wagner and Bruce Katz and I are working on that that might be called something like the imperative of innovation districts that is going to be able to enable you to support a lot more minority businesses as well. To be able to be in this urban fabric to be able to create all sorts of accelerators and opportunities for black and brown and Latino acts and and first nations and indigenous peoples kind of businesses, that kind of inclusion really requires some density. And the other element of that is, when you don't have density, you have seven hour retail right there for breakfast it's there for launch. Everybody goes away, where you do have density you do have housing within a seven or 10 minute walk, then you have 17 hour retail right you have an activated environment that that goes beyond just the time that people are there sitting in their offices. So let's go further on that activated environment and talk about sort of the cross institution relationships as we've been talking about unlike research parks innovation districts embrace attributes of density and proximity to really allow and facilitate collaborative, you know, open innovation. So infrastructure like the Wexford Center is critical. It's not enough to simply put people near each other or in a building together. Can you describe and talk to us about the social networking strategies or social engineering that's needed to facilitate effective communication and collaboration across the various stakeholders institutions and sectors. So that sounds exactly like a question by somebody who has seen researchers sitting in their office do diligently doing research and yes so if left to their own devices, people will tend to stay in their offices stay in their labs head down doing work absolutely. And so it does take some curation right some intervention to get to get them out of those offices. But once you start getting them out, then a whole lot of interesting things happen. One of the things that is most important to our whole platform is programmatic activity. Right. So, both design of the buildings for accidental and serendipitous collisions, as well as design of the buildings for intentional programmatic activity in common spaces and public So one of the things and you've seen a lot of this I think one of the first studies was done by I want to say Bell Labs and in the early 70s as 74. It really looked at collaboration and how collaboration falls off. Right. Distance of corridor office to office floor to floor building the building and if you need to be more than about a 10 minute walk, then you might you might as well get on an airplane fly somewhere. Right. So that that really kind of how people look at it. And so this ability to have this strong density is important, but then bringing people out of these labs bringing people from these various environments and bringing them together allows you now to take A different approach to innovation. So, so in a lot of cases people thought innovation was somebody in their laboratory, right with some postdocs around them, looking for that discovery. What we're really finding more these days is more of a Wolfpack mentality. It's not one person working on a discovery. Right. It might be a data scientist that might be an epidemiologist. It could be an anthropologist. Maybe there's a tinkerer involved. Maybe there's an English major, right. It's this ability to bring multiple perspectives and diverse viewpoints on to a problem. So that requires an environment that has art and music and science right all together and so designing the floors in such a way that people are kind of forced to bump into one another around coffee pots, common kitchens on stairwells, those kinds of environments work, work well. I think of a building actually in Atlanta, Georgia that's on the on the what's called technology square just off the Georgia Tech campus. The building features a 17 story spiral staircase is one of the most interesting things you've ever seen. It goes up the building, and on each floor, there's a little almost like a little plaza. You come up the spiral staircase, here's a plaza. Each floor's plaza is entirely different and becomes the gap. Some have swing sets, you know, other have bean bags, some have have artificial turf and putting greens. Others have just apple crate boxes. Each one's unique and starts to become a gathering point, right. And so that's common stairwells a gathering point, and then you start gathering and bumping into different people in this building it's a huge building. As you come down that stairwell so that becomes kind of interesting. We created in Winston Salem Bailey Park, we created a park that tied together five buildings, and that park has become the front lawn for the community. Movies at midnight. It hosts the film festival called the river run film festival holds one of only two road road cycling events in the United States is sanctioned by UCI. That's the start finish line to it's really become the community's front lawn. At the same time, then we run all sorts of other programming that pulls people out of their offices, one of the ones we ran was called merge, and it brought together two different viewpoints. So one day I was at one of the merges, and that one happened to be taking a look at the largest organ in the body from two different viewpoints. Yeah, obviously that's the skin right. And so what they had was a dermatologist right so you have a dermatologist from Wake Forest Baptist Health, who had invited all of her dermatology clients or colleagues everybody works with. So there's about 200 people, right, and you can add to dermatology thought leaders folks all coming here they are. Now, who else deals with skin a lot as an open canvas tattoo artist. Right so here's a tattoo artist, and he brought all of his friends and his clients and his colleagues. So you can imagine the mix of those two groups of people who probably would never under other circumstances run into one another, but they got to talking about things. And the next thing you know a new idea is his come up. And I remember one day we ran a program called unwind it was just a wine program in Norfolk, Virginia. And, and there were three people that had kind of come together. One of them happened to be the audio engineer for Elton John. And so this was the guy that set up all the Elton John concerts engineered all the audio, and he was talking to the chief scientific officer of NATO. And he was talking to one of the world's greatest researchers and bioelectrics. And what three of them were talking about was the use of acoustical waves to heal back issues. And, and, and the guy who is not a scientist as you can imagine, was talking about how he discovered this, because his back always heard, you know, your is a is a roadie, right. And he would always stand in front of the biggest speaker during soundcheck, because it made his back feel better to feel that big bass booming out. And this is back right. These people would never meet under other circumstances so you have this intentional line of programmatic activity that seeks to bring people out. And then finally we run what we call our innovation network which is an intentional thing where we make connections. Microsoft was in in St. Louis, and was doing some incredible stuff and wanted to meet some other universities and so we were able to do and to Miami, and to Brown and to other places, and so that they could meet specific scientists, doing things that they were interested in. So there's a lot of that I think that already happens. I know that there's collaborations that that are happening between NAU and and UA and ASU at the PI level. What we do then is we curate an environment that brings in entrepreneurs brings in artists brings in companies thought leaders, the business and government officials, and mixes all of that is kind of a hub of innovation. Well, and you've talked about the importance of the physical space to have people bump into each other but also to want to convene and slow down for a moment outside of their, you know, little spaces, and also the programming necessary. How important is it for, you know, buildings, you develop to have an ethos to rally around so that researchers the cities the companies rally. You mean like a differentiation, a differentiation of purpose. So, so it's interesting. That's one of them. That's kind of one of the debates that that see that seems to occur across the world is do do you create a comparative differentiation. It is so narrow, like we're going to do cell and gene therapy, like you would like like I described in Philadelphia, or are you more broad based like what you might see in Cortex and St. Louis where you'll see research and food science you'll see Uber doing the research and where is there doing research enterprise Renekar aeons doing research in insurance and national geospatial agency. So a real broad range, what everyone is doing is innovative stuff, but maybe in an entirely dissimilar set. And so I think one of the things that one of the things that is important is probably less the differentiated science, although not everybody can be a bioscience campus right so you say there's lots of bioscience going on and lots of people have bioscience areas. So what makes your special watching to be in Phoenix versus being in in San Diego or Austin, Texas or Cambridge or someone else and so you do set that kind of differentiation that is important to be able to line up your intellectual capital, your infrastructure the assets that make that unique, but then kind of having a purpose in terms of commercialization, we're looking to improve the human condition by bringing things out of the laboratory and putting them into the hands of a man, right and so those kinds of environments are important so you look at somewhere like, when you look at somewhere like Phoenix, or, you know, in Phoenix, you guys are looking at how can we, right, therapeutic genomics, what are we able to do in a whole broad range of environments but they're all around really impacting people, right how do we impact people, how do we shrink disparities, how do we measure population outcomes, how do we have a, you know, some inclusive impacts. So, so that is kind of a purpose driven environment. I look at somewhere like Cleveland where, you know, in Cleveland it has a manufacturing base, but it has a lot of industrial design so they focus on usability, right and and how do we test, right, whether things are tolerable, usable, right, acceptable and so they kind of have a different purpose into, into what they do. I think it's important to rally around these environments, which is also why our inclusion comes in as even more important is by being inclusive you're really, it's about everybody sharing in the opportunity, right and everybody being able to to economic mobility the beauty of it is it impacts everybody. Right, and so I think it's important to tough question I'm struggling with it a bit. Just because I've, I've, we've turned it over in so many places. This, I will tell you, the United States is way ahead of the rest of the world. Interesting. I, when I look at what's going on in, in, in Bershava, in Israel and Sheffield in the UK, and that nobody is where, where the US is in terms of thinking through kind of inclusion curation and these kinds of pathways. I'm going to say I'm not surprised we're ahead. I've got some really excellent questions from our participants one from one of our professors at ASU. It's getting kind of specific about Phoenix while ASU has been number one in innovation for several years now. Phoenix startup community is often called, you know, a young market. Where do you think Wexford will need to emphasize or what to create a vibrant knowledge community downtown and also given how distributed expertise is across the valley that Wexford downtown will be able to create the critical mass like more established cities such as Philly, Baltimore, Miami. Wow. That's a great question. Let me let me let me answer that in two parts. Okay, so, so one is your right ASU number one in innovation six years in a row, right has a great reputation. Entrepreneurial community. Yeah. So one of the advanced and I think one of those one of the advantages. ASU is innovation in a lot of cases has been inward facing right innovations as an institution, right that make ASU a better ASU a bigger quality kind of next generation research university. I was, I was chatting with with Michelle before we got on that I was speaking with the provost at another university. I was describing ASU testing and my daughter, who's who's a first year at ASU is going to be tested Monday for she gets on a plane to come home for Thanksgiving. And he went, Why are those guys always ahead of everybody else they always make it look so easy. And those kinds of innovations are one of the reasons why ASU is where it is now this opportunity to really reinvigorate the biomedical campus allows that innovation now to also be outward facing. And so one of the advantages I think and I and, and I know that this is in I don't want to put words in his mouth but I know this isn't Dave craters thinking as the leader of the leader of the biomedical campus is how does this environment become the front door. And for three great universities, right ASU, NAU and U of a a great private research institution in T Gen, and a wonderful community college, and in what's happening there and so here's this front door now that as an entrepreneur, I can come and locate and be able to get access to maybe even be shepherded to, you know, some large complex, maybe intimidating environments so I think that's one of them. You know that the the advances that have been made in knowledge enterprise right over the last several years and the success that's happening in places like sky song. I think plugging those opportunities and creating programmatic activity that that you know that links sky song and what's happening downtown together, make sure that that the knowledge enterprise and I think there is an innovation lab of knowledge enterprise coming to the downtown building I think that's because that engages entrepreneurs. I think traditionally entrepreneurs haven't really they've looked a little bit farther west and Phoenix and thought everything was there. I think covert is accelerating some trends that were causing people to look at other cities. I think Phoenix is a big beneficiary of that good cost of living, good business climate, wonderful universities, but I can have a different kind of life here, and maybe a life that's a little easier than quarantining and an 800 square foot apartment and so I, I think it's going to get on the radar more. And I think this aggregation of all of these elements now a strong leadership that's that's going to look at them as is a cohesive unit. I think that's one huge, huge key. And then the second key about kind of this creation of critical mass, I think really does come programmatically know how do we bring programs like the venture cat you know the global venture cafe to Phoenix in such a way that, while they're wonderful centers of gravity, right there's centers of gravity and Mesa and Chandler and Tempe and Phoenix and, and, and, you know, even spread across the valley, programmatic activity can be a fabric that leaves all of that over. And so I think having a couple of nodes and particularly a heart of innovation which I look at as being the Phoenix biomedical campus, I guess one of the ways that that we're going to be able to create a little bit more of this is intentionally bringing people together it's going to take time. It's going to take everybody kind of pulling in that same direction, but I sense that there's that desire out there. And related to this another question from our participants one of our Health Future Council members. What success have you had or or these areas had in attracting venture capital investors to the projects. There's a wonderful question some, some people look at money as being the lifeline of entrepreneurism. I tend to say that talent is the cat is the currency of innovation and money follows talent, but it's an excellent question because what it means is, you have to have the right talent in place, and then money will take a look. So Philadelphia is a perfect example, right because James Wilson is in Philadelphia, venture capital firms are coming to Philadelphia to look at what he's doing. And while they're looking at what he's doing, they're looking at what cabaletta is doing they're looking at what sparks doing they're looking at what exact sciences is doing they're looking at others. So, it tends to start slowly, and then the fly wheel kind of goes now Philadelphia has a strong venture capital set Miami started off slow, but Dr. Josh Hare who's one of the most prolific inventors at U.M. was able to get somebody to come down and and Wexford holds symposiums where VCs kind of come in and can see what's going on at a university. VCs started looking at what Josh Hare was doing, then they looked over it at what was happening with just somebody named Manny Medina and what he was doing in telecom and next thing you know this the Miami being the what some people say the northern most country in Latin America started to create then this opportunity for Latin American VCs to come up into look at companies that they could fund, and then that perhaps could create relationships with companies in Latin American so that was an interesting pocket of VCs Sacramento, because of its proximity to San Francisco, there you get VCs and food science that are looking at what's happening at the Mondavi Center and what's happening in some of the other things that they have going on so you get a lot of that going in Phoenix. There's not a lot of VC yet. I do believe that what we're going to start to see is we're going to start to see VCs out of California looking a little bit broader, right there's, there is plenty of VC in California, but there's usually there's not much new money in the California. There's lots of existing money, but new money is kind of looking at some other ideas and some other places, both as a hedge financially for what's going on, as well as they're starting to see that there's a lot of other interesting activity. So I think as people are coming along, they're going to whether it's interesting technologies that Dr. Zenhurst and you know it's coming out of his lab or something that's coming out of TGen. I think you're going to see some VCs start to poke in more particularly since it's again starting to be an aggregated environment that VCs by and large are lazy. They want everything close. That's why they're aggregated in a few places. But if they have something worth going to see, then they're going to make that trip worthwhile. And then once they go somewhere they're going to find a lot of people to see in that in that place as well and we've seen that in quite a quite a bit of places and then and then we'll start to see them decide they're going to start coming two days a week. And then it leads to an office before you know it, you have one or two people in that environment. Yeah, and you talked about have the talent and ideas and where the dollars will follow. What things have you found successful and I'm going to ask specifically what things are is Wexford are you doing to increase the diversity often in these things we're talking about. It's pretty male dominated. And how are we, how are you fostering both women and minorities in these spaces. Sure. So, that's a wonderful, wonderful question. So, in a number of our projects we actually have specific programs, right, women engineers, women entrepreneurs, we run a program in Winston-Salem called Access. There's specifically for minority entrepreneurs in Chicago and a project that we'll be doing with the University of Chicago. We're setting aside space. I apologize for the dogs. We're setting aside space for black entrepreneurs in partnership with a group called Black Tech Mecca and in blue 1427 in Miami, we have programs for minority entrepreneurs in Philadelphia. We run some program firsthand is one of them we run a number of other programs as well. So, we look for partners that we can work with to create these pathways to create this programmatic activity. If it's there, we support financially we give it a place to be if it needs it. If it's not there, we're willing to invest to help create. And then as a company ourselves, we've created a number of internship programs we've tried to be more diverse in our own hiring. We've supported programs in real estate and development and a number of schools that's making it so that there are more minorities are actually choosing real estate development as a career path. So that gives us a better, better talent pool that's going to be coming in the future but we are we're exceptionally committed to this. And I know already been talking to some community groups in Phoenix about making sure that as this project goes along with those kind of opportunities will be there too. Yeah, your dogs are cheering that answer above others because you are to support women and minorities. So you're hearing the UPS messages came. No, they're cheering your answer. We have time for one more question and I kind of want to put you on the spot a little bit and helping a problem that we're struggling with, you know, the Phoenix biomedical campus as it's currently named is undertaking a comprehensive local and national perception because there's a debate on whether or not we are branded appropriately and whether what the name should be, what are your thoughts or what advice can you give us. So, that's a that is a tough one I'm going through a couple of those exercises right now and a couple of other, a couple of other cities, and it's always a balancing act. Right, someone it to be play space to actually have the name Phoenix in it, right, you could, you could see that if you just called it, you know, the innovation campus well that could be anywhere. Right, and so Phoenix does lend a place modifier city of Phoenix has been a great partner in all of this and so that that's important and Phoenix says things that has has great reputation, and so it lends some brand credibility to it. And so medical might be limiting right might decide that we're where we look at where life sciences is going these days that brings in tech that brings in engineering brings in design thinking and so maybe there's a more inclusive modifier than that. So, one of the things that, at least we've kind of looked for it when we do these is, is it authentic to the place. Right as it is it's something that goes to your history goes to to submit your need your unique economic development points. It's descriptive enough that it doesn't sound like it could be sitting anywhere. Right. In, you can get 20 people around the table and there'll be 20 different ideas. So, you know, in a way, what's more important is how you communicate. What that is what's your narrative about whatever you call it whether it's PVC or whether it turns out to be something that branches off of that. How are you communicating that story in such a way that it isn't about the buildings. Right, it's really about the people and ideas that are within those buildings and the impact that that environment creates for others. That's good advice. You know in our last two minutes, Tom. I guess I would say now that you've invested in Phoenix in the Wexford building. What, what is surprised you what have you learned that surprised you or what parting advice do you want to give us. I think one of the, one of the, I don't know that it's been a surprise, I think it's been a confirmation is how in sync everybody is right so so the universities, the community college, the businesses, the city, right, thought leaders, the Flynn Foundation, everybody understands is committed to and is rowing in the same direction. That's not true in a lot of cities, right, a lot of cities there there's all sorts of competing interests there's there's different priorities some some places there's there's zero zero interest in innovation whatsoever. And, you know, no interest in participation in that by minorities and others, where in Phoenix, everybody seems to believe that the Phoenix biomedical campus is important. So, so everybody's pulling in the same direction that cannot be understated because when you're looking at a tier two city, and by tier two I only mean not one of the gateway markets for life sciences. Everybody's got to be pulling in that in that same direction, you've got to take the friction out of the system, you've got to make it easier, because that's one of the arguments it can't just be. It's more affordable, right, we're more affordable and we have fewer taxes and Seattle or San Francisco that's true and that's good, but that's not enough. The environment has to be more creative and more productive. And how do you do that, will you do that by having more inclusion and diversity of thoughts and ideas, you take the friction out of the system and being able to navigate large complex tier one research universities. As an entrepreneur it's wonderful if I can come, and I can use some core labs and facilities, right that that I might never be able to afford and so that becomes important I can make connections right across the valley right with with with other entrepreneurs be they in my space or a different space. So, all of those elements really work together in creating this kind of robust environment we found it in Phoenix it in a way that we're thrilled. And, and we want to fill this building, and we're already designing the next one and are excited by, by the future not only if the biomedical campus, but the future of the city in the valley so I really appreciate this opportunity to nothing else hopefully my passion and excitement for this to come through. Well it certainly comes through Tom, we can't thank you enough for sharing your time with us for talking to us today. Until all the participants thank you so much you know all of these conversations were recorded in our will be available if you happen to have missed one or you want to pass them along. Again, thank you Tom, everyone stay well and appreciate your participation. I appreciate it.