Marin Economic Forum’s new CEO boasts life sciences experience
By Richard Halstead
Life sciences and biotech have taken center stage of late in Marin, and there’s a new leader aiming to attract new business.
Steve Lockett, formerly an associate director in venture catalyst unit at the University of California, Davis, has taken the reins at the Marin Economic Forum from Robert Eyler, who will continue to serve as the forum’s chief economist.
Eyler, who was the forum’s founding CEO, stepped back into the role after Neil Stone stepped down in November 2011, after just six months on the job. The forum, a nonprofit created by a public-private partnership in 2010, is designed to foster local economic growth.
“Steve is a great candidate,” Eyler said. “He comes from UC Davis and North Carolina where he has had some exposure to biotech and the economic development around biotech and life sciences businesses. He has had direct experience in moving technology off of university campuses, which is a big part of spinning biotech businesses out of science. His hiring aligns with our strategy to push for more life sciences businesses to come to Marin County and the North Bay.”
Lockett said the UC Davis venture catalyst unit assisted researchers who were interested in creating new companies based on technology they had developed at the university. The start-ups would license the intellectual property from UC Davis.
“My role was to work with the economic development entities and people in the city of Davis and Sacramento to let them know what technologies were coming out of the university and what kind of entrepreneurial ecosystem would best support those start-ups,” Lockett said.
Before joining UC Davis in October 2013, Lockett worked for Virginia Tech Intellectual Properties, an affiliated corporation of Virginia Polytechnic Institute, helping to license technologies developed at that university.
Marin Economic Forum’s $400,000-a-year budget is funded by the county of Marin, contributions from businesses and individuals, and revenue generated from economic reports prepared by the forum. The county of Marin provides matching funds up to $150,000 per year. Founding sponsors, who contribute a minimum of $10,000 a year, include Autodesk, Bank of America, Kaiser Permanente, Marin General Hospital, Whole Foods Markets, the city of Novato and the county of Marin.
Marin Economic Forum is re-evaluating the industries that it targets for development. Since its inception, the forum has focused on developing nine categories of business: real estate and construction; multimedia; business services; finance and insurance; restaurants and tourism; health services; agriculture; nonprofit/philanthropy; and arts and crafts.
The new draft list is made up of: speciality services and logistics for agriculture; specialty manufacturing; food and beverage; life sciences; environmental sciences; mobile technology; tourism; health care; residential care; college and universities; and nonprofits focused on education. Most notably, multimedia has fallen off the list.
“It’s sort of a nod to the idea that we tried and it didn’t work,” Eyler said. “We’re better off focusing on life sciences businesses in terms of tech frontier.”
Due to the location of the Buck Institute for Age Research in Novato and the rapid growth of San Rafael-based BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc., biotech has become the county’s budding economic rose.
BioMarin moved its headquarters to downtown San Rafael in 2012 and in 2013 it purchased the San Rafael Corporate Center for $116.5 million. It is building a three-story, 85,000-square-foot research and development facility at 791 Lincoln Ave. In April, BioMarin was already the county’s largest for-profit employer with more than 1,300 employees, and company officials were predicting they would make an additional 400 hires this year.
There are more than a dozen biotech companies with operations in Marin, including at least three in Novato alone: Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical, Raptor Pharmaceutical Corp and Cytograft Tissue Engineering.
The Marin Economic Forum has teamed with the city of Novato, the Buck Institute and other regional organizations to form the North Bay Life Sciences Alliance to promote further biotech development in the North Bay.
“We’re very glad to be a partner in that,” Lockett said. “I’m very impressed with the growth of the life sciences industry in Marin County.”
Nevertheless, Lockett said, “The majority of the economy in this county is made up of small businesses. As an organization, we need to look at what we can do to help them moving forward.”
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