THE GETTY
NEXTGEN 10
CHEF LUDO
PHILANTHROPY, ART, & CULTURE
LOS ANGELES
FALL 2016
4TH ANNUAL
THE DOCTOR IS ALL IN
BILLIONAIRE INVENTOR, SURGEON, AND VISIONARY
PATRICK SOON-SHIONG LAUNCHES HIS “MOONSHOT”
MISSION TO CONQUER CANCER BY 2020
“THE DUALITY OF EFFECTIVE PHILANTHROPY”
BY RACHEL LEVIN
Visionaries
C-Suite /’si- sɥit/ (noun, adj.):
1. A combination of all C-level executives, or officers with “chief” titles, such as CEO, CFO, etc.;
2. The senior executive HQ in a business organization;
3. A title bestowed to the collective of leaders driving economic, policy, and social change.
FALL 2016 - VOL. 8 NO. 4
PHILANTHROPY, ART, & CULTURE EDITION
OPINION
48
50
EMBRACING DUALITY SPEAKING YOUTH TO POWER
By Rachel Levin
Fundamental
By Henry Elkus
Helena
56Robert K. Ross
The California Endowment CEO on
the biggest healthcare crisis facing
America today
60Calvin L. Lyons
The newly formed Boys & Girls Clubs
of Metro LA will provide services to
more than 8,000 at-risk and
under-served South LA children
70Patrick Soon-Shiong
Los Angeles’ wealthiest citizen is fully invested in the city as he
strives to reinvent the healthcare system and conquer cancer
58Tara Roth
A pillar in the Los Angeles philanthropic
community, Roth leads the Goldhirsh
Foundation while pushing the
LA2050 project to new heights
64
Kelly Sawyer Patricof and
Norah Weinstein
Baby2Baby helps tens of thousands of
children thanks to the duo’s dynamic
leadership and celebrity network
66Jon Rose
This former pro surfer has provided fresh
water to more than 7 million people in
need around the globe through his charity,
Waves for Water
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C S Q . C O M / FA L L 2 0 1 6 - Q 4
62Andy Bales
At the head of Union Rescue Mission,
Rev. Andy Bales will stop at nothing
- including a debilitating disease - to
combat homelessness
67Timothy Potts
Director of the J. Paul Getty Museum
on managing the transition into the
modern age of art
154
Closing Bell
National Able Network’s Grace
Powers is getting veterans and
seniors back to work
EDITOR’S NOTE PHIL A NTHROP Y, A RT, & CULT URE
C-SUITE QUARTERLY
Editor’s Note
CSQ ONLINE
Read our print publication every quarter,
but stay in the loop continually through
CSQ’s Online Presence. Supplement your
knowledge on the region’s most successful
people and companies with:
OUR COMMUNITY
OUR CULTURE
T
here is a diversity of cultures,
interests, and lifestyles in Los
Angeles that unites us with the
world at large in a way that no other
city can. Never stale, always looking
forward, LA is not merely the entertainment capital of the world. It is
a magnet for inspired people of all
industries who think differently and
want to change the world. Thinking
boldly is the first step. Acting boldly
is what separates visionaries from
the rest of us.
Giving back is an evergreen topic
because it involves a constant flow of
intention and energy (i.e., the generation of success) for the purpose
of living comfortably enough to have
resources (time, money, mentorship)
to contribute to those less fortunate.
From the local to the regional to the
national to the global community,
we are connected by our shared goals
to either lend a hand or have a hand
in solving important issues, whether
that’s helping the family down the
street that just lost their home to a
fire, or curing cancer.
This edition we introduce you to
some leaders who are shaping the
city, and society, with their bold
actions. On the foundational side,
California Endowment CEO Dr.
Robert Ross (p. 56) and Goldhirsh
Foundation President Tara Roth (p.
58) are addressing health and civic
issues with big-picture perspective.
Nonprofit CEOs Andy Bales (Union
Rescue Mission, p. 62) and Calvin L.
Lyons (Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro
LA; p. 60) are immersed in the dayto-day mission of helping the most
underserved populations of Los
Angeles.
Social entrepreneurs are the new
wave of changemakers, and leadership from Baby2Baby (Norah
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„„ Expanded C-Suite Advisory
„„ Insights from the NextGen 10
„„ CSQ&As with LA’s business leaders
„„ Food, drink, travel, and culture
„„ Connect with our social platforms:
/CSQMag
linkedin/in/CSuiteMedia
@CSQPublisher
@CSQMag
With Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong in front of a whiteboard
of complex calculations at NantWorks HQ in Culver City.
Weinstein and Kelly Sawyer Patricof,
p. 64) and Waves for Water (Jon Rose,
p. 66) offer insight on inspiration and
mobilization of their respective visions. Our first Philanthropy, Art,
& Culture NextGen 10 list (p. 54)
includes some ahead-of-the-curve
thinkers you will be hearing more
from in the future. Now entering his
fifth year as director of the J. Paul
Getty Museum, Timothy Potts (p. 67)
discusses LA’s cultural cachet from
his vantage point.
If you need more evidence of
the region’s philanthropic depth,
dig into our 4th Annual List of 100
Philanthropies You Should Know,
colloquially known as our PHIL 100
(p. 77). We received more than 1,000
nominations from the CSQ community, with more than 40 organizations making their debut on the list.
Finally, our cover feature, Dr.
Patrick Soon-Shiong (p. 70), defies
categorization. A true Renaissance
Man (surgeon, inventor, researcher,
C S Q . C O M / FA L L 2 0 1 6 - Q 4
billionaire), he is fully invested in the
city (Los Angeles Times, LA Lakers,
Martin Luther King, Jr. Community
Hospital) while he tackles a problem
of global significance – the scourge
of cancer. Our visit to the NantWorks
campus in Culver City was a brief
glimpse into the full-on assault that
the good doctor is waging against a
disease that is expected to claim another half million lives this year.
No matter what goals you hold
close to you for the future, here’s
hoping some of the ambitious people
and inspiring organizations featured
herein will move you to achieve the
change you want to see in the world.
Cheers!
David Wurth
P HI LA N TH RO PY, ART, & CULT U RE PATR I CK SO O N- SHI O NG
MOONSHOT
MAN ON A MISSION
[CULVER CITY]
BY JASON DEAN
As the wealthiest
person in Los Angeles
(and the smartest
person in the room),
Patrick Soon-Shiong is
fully invested in the local
community via private,
public, and philanthropic
verticals. And his ideas
for advancing health care
and conquering cancer
have pivotal implications
for humanity.
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H
earing Patrick Soon-Shiong
describe his vision for the future of health care is nothing
short of mesmerizing. In a measured
tone as soothing as it is authoritative,
he explains how he intends to centralize
the various tentacles of the healthcare
octopus – from physicians and research
institutions to insurance and pharmaceutical companies – into one highly coordinated system operating in the cloud,
providing individualized patient treatment based on real-time information.
And while he’s orchestrating all that, he
plans on obliterating cancer.
Understated charisma and easy smile
notwithstanding, Soon-Shiong wins you
over with sheer brainpower. He doesn’t
ramble; he’s used to speaking extemporaneously with encyclopedic purpose,
navigating double-helix roadmaps of
complex jargon with surgical precision.
Keeping up with his steady flow of concepts, you come away vastly impressed,
and your belief in his ability to execute is
bolstered by his impressive track record.
“Cancer, if you think about it, is like
a virus,” he says, making the concept
C S Q . C O M / FA L L 2 0 1 6 - Q 4
seem elementary and graspable. “And
if we can actually overcome that using
your body’s own immune system, we
can change the course of cancer.”
A native South African whose parents
emigrated from China during WWII,
Soon-Shiong met his future wife,
Michele Chan, an actress in South Africa.
They got married before moving to the
U.S. and have made Los Angeles their
home since 1980. Soon-Shiong studied
at UCLA and joined the UCLA Medical
School in 1983 as a transplant surgeon,
performing the West Coast’s first successful pancreas transplant in 1987. “I
came up through the world of immunology,” he recalls. “The unusual course
was I also was doing pancreatic cancer
surgery.” He eventually combined his
expertise in transplantation, immunology, and cancer, training under Don
Morton, who developed the first melanoma vaccine.
Soon-Shiong left UCLA in 1993 (he
would return in 2009 to lead UCLA’s
Wireless Health Institute) to form a
diabetes and cancer biotech firm, and
a few years later founded American
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C S Q . C O M / FA L L 2 0 1 6 - Q 4
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Photo cour tesy of the NBA / Getty Images
P HI LA N TH RO PY, ART, & CULT U RE PATR I CK SO O N- SHI O NG
PATRICK SOON-SHIONG
CEO, NantWorks
AGE 64
BIRTHPLACE Port Elizabeth, South Africa
RESIDENCE Brentwood
EDUCATION University of Witwatersrand
(MBBCh.); University of British Columbia (MSc);
research awards from the American College
of Surgeons, the Royal College of Physicians
and Surgeons of Canada, and the American
Association of Academic Surgery. Surgical training
initiated at University of California, Los Angeles
(UCLA). Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons
(Canada) and a Fellow of the American College
of Surgeons.
FAMILY Wife Michele Chan; one son, one
daughter
MENTORS Donald Lee Morton, M.D.; Haile T.
Debas, M.D.
PATENTS HELD > 115
LAST BOOK READ David and Goliath by
Malcolm Gladwell
FAVORITE ARTIST Burt Bacharach
NANTWORKS
FOUNDED 2011
HQ Culver City
EMPLOYEES ~ 2,000
SUBSIDIARIES NantHealth (NASDAQ: NH),
NantOmics, NantCell, NantCloud, NantPharma,
NantTronics, NantMobile, NantBioScience,
NantStudio, NantKwest (NASDAQ: NK)
Pharmaceutical Partners, which was
acquired by Fresenius in 2008. SoonShiong also founded Abraxis BioScience,
maker of his cancer drug, Abraxane, and
sold that company to Celgene in 2010.
Together, the deals netted Soon-Shiong
more than $7.6B.
CSQ visited with the 64-year-old
doc-trepreneur at the Culver City
headquarters of Nantworks, a cloistered
campus filled with natural light, common spaces, high-tech equipment and
some security precautions. Tucked into
30 acres, the nondescript exterior belies
the concerted effort being expended in
the name of Soon-Shiong’s celebrated
Cancer Moonshot 2020, “to subdue cancer by the start of the next decade.”
Having just flown in from London the
day before, Soon-Shiong was crisp and
lucidly engaged. His dapper appearance, svelte frame, and salt-and-pepper
hair that sweeps to the side as if parted
by a light breeze all convey a vitality of
someone decades younger. While the
conversation touched on various aspects
of his career and interests, the benevolent doctor, who calls himself “the CEO
of the patient,” seems most comfortable
when thoroughly diagnosing a problem
and prescribing his remedy.
A Deeper Level of Understanding
There is not a person reading this who
has not been touched in some way –
either personally or through a friend or
loved one – by cancer. There are more
than 100 types that can affect humans.
Excluding nonmelanoma skin cancers,
the organs most susceptible to attack are the breast, lung, and prostate.
Evidence of this vexing and enigmatic
disease dates back thousands of years;
the American Cancer Society estimates
that more than 1.6 million new cancer
cases will be diagnosed in 2016 and well
over half a million people will die from
cancer-related illnesses.
In spite of the sobering statistics,
today there is a deeper understanding
than ever of how the disease functions.
Soon-Shiong believes we are poised to
enter an age when cancer is identified as
a manageable, chronic condition rather
than a death sentence – a monumental
shift in human history.
“The cancer cell is an amazing thing,”
says Soon-Shiong. “I call it the greatest
hijacker of all time. It can hijack every
element inside your body and [use] the
human biological system...to its own
advantage to either cause itself to grow,
cause itself not to die, or cause the immune system to be tricked and go to
sleep,” he explains.
Harnessing
genomics
merely
scratches the surface. Soon-Shiong
recalls the knee-jerk euphoria when
the human genome was sequenced in
2003. “Everybody celebrated and said,
‘We’re going to cure cancer.’ Actually,
we realized you need to go down to the
proteomics and the peptidomics and the
immunomics and the metabolomics….”
Soon-Shiong has shifted back into full
scientific mode.
When posed with the question of
whether it was even feasible to aggregate
and analyze such a vast array of information down to the molecular level, a
wide grin flashes across Soon-Shiong’s
face. “We could, if we put our attention
to it.” Not missing a beat, he adds, “Not
only we could, we did.”
In 2005, Soon-Shiong forged ahead
with the first phase of his plan to disrupt health care. He traveled to Bern,
Switzerland, site of the Large Hadron
Collider, to connect supercomputers
around the world. Setting up operations
on the National LambdaRail, where
Higgs boson (the God particle) was identified, Soon-Shiong had an epiphany:
What if he could harness this energy
to create fiber a hundred times, even
a thousand times, faster and identify
God’s particle in every human being,
every day, in real time? “If I said those
words,” admits Soon-Shiong, “people
would think I’m unrealistic. So rather
SOON-SHIONG TIMELINE
July 29, 1952
Patrick Soon-Shiong
born in Port Elizabeth,
South Africa
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1975 Earns his
medical degree at age
23 from the University
of Witwatersrand
1980 Moves to Los
Angeles
1983 Joins UCLA
Medical School as
assistant professor,
training under Donald
Morton, developer
of the first melanoma
vaccine
C S Q . C O M / FA L L 2 0 1 6 - Q 4
1985 Performs first
full pancreas transplant
on the West Coast
1993 Develops an
experimental treatment
for Type 1 diabetes;
performs the world’s
first encapsulated
human-to-human and
pig-to-human islet
transplants
C-SUITE QUARTERLY
than explain it, there was an opportunity
to just do it. So I set about to build a fiber
infrastructure linked to a supercomputing platform at a speed and scale that did
not exist in the nation.”
Having built the fiber infrastructure,
the next priority was artificial intelligence and developing a supercomputer capable of “almost unfathomable
numbers of calculations in real time.” A
machine vision team developed pattern
recognition technology. In September
2011 Soon-Shiong launched NantWorks,
the culmination of his sweeping vision
to merge health care, commerce, technology, and digital entertainment, while
developing new cancer therapies using
semiconductors and supercomputing.
Today, Nantworks operates as the
parent organization to a family of companies. NantHealth, which went public
clinical scientists, regulatory scientists
– working together” in the name of
QUantum, Integrative, Lifelong, Trial, or
QUILT. The program aims to complete
randomized clinical trials with cancer at
all stages of the disease in up to 20 tumor types in as many as 20,000 patients
by the year 2020.
In reaching this goal, Soon-Shiong
feels strongly that access to real-time information will position local community
oncologists as best-suited to administer
treatment. “I think the idea that all
wisdom lies within certain ivory towers
and ask[ing] a patient dying of cancer
to travel to different spots [around the
world] is now obsolete.”
Origin of a Moonshot
In late 2014, Vice President Joe Biden’s
son Beau Biden was battling brain can-
A newspaper, I think, is an opportunity to
create glue amongst the community.
in June 2016 and is creating a software
and medical records system for doctors,
and hospitals), is the largest and most
sweeping. Others include NantOmics
(precision medicine), NantCell (immunology), and NantCloud (knowledge
storage and transmission), as well as
NantTronics, NantShield, NantMobile,
NantBioScience, and NantStudio. In July
2015 the largest biotech IPO ever was
made for NantKwest, a cancer drugmaker focused on the natural killer cell,
found in the immune system.
“What you have at Nantworks,”
Soon-Shiong exclaims, “is all the elements – mathematicians, molecular
modelers, software engineers, cell
biologists, immunologists, chemists,
computer scientists, nurses, clinicians,
1996 Forms American
Pharmaceutical Partners
(APP)
2001 APP goes public
in December with an
IPO of $144M and
a valuation in excess
of $1B
cer. Like any concerned parent, Biden
was desperate to do whatever he could
to help his son. So he sought out an
expert. Soon-Shiong was not able to
change the course of events and Biden’s
son succumbed to the disease in May the
following year. In that time, however,
the Vice President and the groundbreaking billionaire surgeon bonded.
After Beau Biden’s funeral, the Vice
President invited Soon-Shiong to the
White House. At the time, Biden was
mulling a run for the presidency. “He
was deeply saddened by the loss of his
son,” recalls Soon-Shiong. “I was happy
to visit and be given the opportunity to
console him during this difficult time.”
“I [had written] a white paper called
the Cancer Moonshot and I handed it
2007 Chan Soon-
Shiong Foundation
pledges $1B to
support healthcare
transformation and
a national health
information resource
2008 Sells APP to
Fresenius in July for
$5.6B
C S Q . C O M / FA L L 2 0 1 6 - Q 4
to him. He had his advisers in the room
and he said, ‘Oh my gosh, Patrick, if I do
run, I’d run on the goal of finding a cure
for this disease.’” The following week,
Biden announced he would not be seeking the presidential nomination but if he
were, his platform would center on curing cancer.
In November 2015, Vice President
Biden paid a quiet visit to the Culver
City campus and was captivated by the
infrastructure built to address the war on
cancer.
In mid-January 2016, Soon-Shiong
announced Cancer Moonshot 2020,
starting the clock on a five-year mission to effectively reclassify cancer as a
chronic disease rather than a potentially
terminal illness. Two weeks later, during his final State of the Union address,
President Obama announced that Biden
would be leading the National Cancer
Moonshot, a $1B initiative aimed at vaccine development, genomic analysis,
and enhanced data sharing. (While
the mission of the National Cancer
Moonshot closely resembles that of
Soon-Shiong’s endeavor, there is no formal connection between the two.)
An Enigmatic Figure?
There are two interests at play when
considering matters that affect humanity on a grand scale: the capitalist brain,
which seeks to capitalize on a specific
opportunity, and the charitable brain,
a selfless entity whose sole purpose is
to direct resources into improving conditions or solving a specific problem.
Soon-Shiong is Mensa-worthy on both
sides. His brilliance as a researcher,
surgeon, professor, and inventor is further amplified by his business savvy.
Not only does he have the ability to see
things in a way no one has before, he
has reaped exponential profits from his
endeavors.
According to Forbes’ Richest People
in America list, Patrick Soon-Shiong’s
net worth stood at $11.9B at the end of
2009 Provides $100M
guaranty underwriting
LA County’s proposal
to reopen King/Drew
Medical Center as
Martin Luther King Jr.
Community Hospital
2009 Donates $100M
to St. John’s Health
Center for a total of
$135M donated to the
facility since 2007
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P HI LA N TH RO PY, ART, & CULT U RE PATR I CK SO O N- SHI O NG
August 2016, making him the richest
Angeleno and the 81st-richest person
in the U.S. (Elon Musk, LA’s secondwealthiest person, came in at $10.7B.)
Yet Soon-Shiong is highly attuned to the
social responsibility that accompanies
such profound success.
In 2010, he and his wife signed onto
The Giving Pledge with fellow billionaires Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren
Buffett, offering a moral commitment to
give the majority of their fortune to philanthropy, either during their lifetime or
upon their death.
Soon-Shiong clearly appreciates his
wealth for the power it gives him – the
power to affect positive change. “I find
giving $100,000 to a researcher really
makes very little impact,” he points out.
“It may be very important science, but
giving $100 million to a concerted effort where you can bring the best minds
together and actually show outcomes in
quasi-real time – that’s the model that
we want to pursue.”
The Chan Soon-Shiong Foundation,
which the couple founded in 2008, has
embraced a mission of supporting funding research and improved access to
health care and health education in the
Los Angeles area.
“We really wanted to contribute not
only our money, but also our intellect,”
he says. “Unfortunately, tax law says you
can’t do that from a private family foundation.” To satisfy this desire to actively
participate in philanthropic policy, the
Chan Soon-Shiong Institute of Molecular
Medicine was established as a charitable support organization for healthcare
systems.
Soon-Shiong squarely addresses critics who suggest that a doctor who stands
to profit from a specific course of treatment may have a conflict of interest.
After he developed Abraxane, which
essentially uses the protein albumin to
trick the cancer cell into feeding and is
now approved for treatment of breast,
lung, and pancreatic cancer, SoonShiong realized he might have a perception problem. “I was going to have a hard
time [as] CEO of a company trying to sell
this drug…when in fact I’m trying to get
people to use less of the drug in a lower
dose so that you could protect the immune system.” He sold Abraxis shortly
thereafter but still holds the related patents. “My goal is to convince oncologists
He is hoping the Lakers’ generationspanning history of producing iconic
game changers (i.e., Wilt, Kareem,
Magic, Shaquille, Kobe) will yield fresh
results. “I’m saddened by the fact that
the Warriors have become the super
team,” he acknowledges. But there is
hope. “I think this new kid that we have
[No. 2 draft pick Brandon Ingram] could
be the next Kevin Durant,” he predicts.
The cancer cell is an amazing thing. I call it
the greatest hijacker of all time. It can hijack
every element inside your body and [use]
the human biological system...to its own
advantage.
that pursuing maximum tolerated dose
of chemotherapy is a misguided strategy.
In fact, we should be using these drugs
at a dose that would protect our immune
system while perturbing the cancer cell
and then finding ways to activate our
body’s own immune protective system,”
he explains. “This is the change in cancer care we will be pursuing for the next
four years.”
LA Life (and Times)
An avid Lakers fan, Soon-Shiong has
been a fixture at The Staples Center
for decades. He could be spotted chatting with Kobe Bryant (a close friend)
during warmups or rubbing shoulders
with Denzel Washington or will.i.am at
courtside. In 2010, Soon-Shiong purchased Earvin “Magic” Johnson’s stake
in the Lakers, giving him a 4.5% ownership in his favorite team. Otherwise,
Soon-Shiong is 95.5% pure fan, as evidenced by his animated demeanor when
describing the Lakers’ chances for the
2016-17 season.
The Lakers represent an opportunity
to promote positive engagement in the
community. From the affluent to the
downtrodden, courtside to nosebleed,
purple and gold is the great equalizer. “When I worked with Kobe,”
Soon-Shiong says, “one of his greatest
strengths was to inspire young children.”
Basketball is a personal passion to
the extent that Soon-Shiong has a fullsize underground gymnasium at his
Brentwood compound, which he illuminates with natural light via a delivery
system that he co-invented. While he
could easily summon an assortment
of NBAers or Hollywood types to his
private, state-of-the-art facility just by
making a few calls, he favors UCLA’s
Pauley Pavilion, where he drops in a
couple times a week with Nantworks
staff for pickup games.
Growing up in South Africa during
apartheid, Soon-Shiong became sensitized to inequality and injustice at an
early age. Los Angeles circa 2016 is a far
cry from Soweto circa 1976, when race
SOON-SHIONG TIMELINE continued
2010 Takes Giving
Pledge with wife
Michele Chan,
committing half of their
wealth to advancing the
quality of healthcare
- 74 -
2010 Sells Abraxis
BioScience to Celgene
in June for $2.9B
2010 Buys Earvin
“Magic” Johnson’s 4.5%
stake in the Los Angeles
Lakers in October for
an undisclosed amount
2011 Buys Vitality Inc.,
a startup that makes
smart pill caps
C S Q . C O M / FA L L 2 0 1 6 - Q 4
2011 NantWorks
founded in September
2013 Abraxane is
approved by the FDA for
use in treating advanced
pancreatic cancer
riots gripped the predominantly black
section of Johannesburg. But SoonShiong sees the parallels and it can’t
help but factor into his philanthropic
activism.
“It was a travesty that a patient would
actually be in the emergency room
calling 9-1-1 and dying on the floor,”
he says of King Drew Medical Center,
which earned the nickname “Killer
King” due to a number of similar occurrences. Equally appalling to SoonShiong is the fact that Los Angeles, the
world’s melting pot, remains a chasm
of demographic disparity that stretches
from Beverly Hills to South Central LA.
A year after King / Drew was closed
permanently due to repeated health
and safety infractions, the Chan SoonShiong Foundation gave a $100M guaranty underwriting LA County’s proposal to reopen the facility as the Martin
Luther King, Jr. Community Hospital.
“That’s why a lot of work my wife
and I do [is] in South Central LA and everything I do with [Los Angeles County
Board of Supervisors’] Mark RidleyThomas is reminiscent of the work that
I grew up with. Nelson Mandela was still
in prison when I was an intern in 1977. I
was involved in treating the kids in the
Soweto riots. So I understand very much
the [concept] of oppressed people [and]
trying to help the underdog.”
Speaking of helping the underdog,
in May 2016 Soon-Shiong swooped in
to administer life support to the Los
Angeles Times. In an effort to ward off a
buyout offer from Virginia-based media
monolith Gannett Co., Inc., he invested
$70.5M, making him No. 2 majority owner of the newspaper. The deal
with Times parent company Tribune
Publishing, which shortly thereafter
rebranded itself tronc (short for Tribune
online content), includes an agreement
with NantWorks to license more than
100 technology patents and to produce
video content at NantStudio.
“The LA Times is a national treasure,”
May 2016 Purchases
a 13% stake in the
Los Angeles Times for
$70.5M
he begins eulogistically. “The newspaper industry is clearly dying, and we
need to move on. But the opportunity
is to take this national treasure and use
things like artificial intelligence, like
what Pokémon Go is utilizing for example, and still allow the community
to have something to which they can
rally around. A newspaper, I think, is an
opportunity to create glue amongst the
community.”
Asked about mentors, Soon-Shiong
says he admires those with a particularly solid body of work. “I’m a Burt
Bacharach groupie, I truly am,” he reveals in earnest, before recalibrating his
answer to reflect his professional influences. He mentions Dr. Donald Morton
and Dr. Haile Debas, as well as an unnamed NASA physicist, since passed
away, who spurred his curiosity in the
area of artificial intelligence. Athletes
inspire Soon-Shiong as well; he cites
Kobe Bryant’s dedication to his craft and
Pau Gasol’s compassion as examples.
In a downstairs conference room at
Nantworks, there is a whiteboard with
a drawing of a rocket ship surrounded
by scrawlings and various calculations.
Soon-Shiong created the diagram in
2009 when asked to further explain
his proposed method for modernizing
health care. “The top of that rocket
ship is a thing called predictive modeling, whereby we are able to go through
quantitative information of a patient’s
proteome in real-time, identifying
what we think is going to be best for the
patient.”
Seven years later, having accomplished that goal, the whiteboard is a
visual reminder that before great things
can be executed, they must be envisioned. Now that the clock is ticking on
Cancer Moonshot 2020, it’s crunch time
and Soon-Shiong is in full fast-break
mode.
“Just watch us for the next four years,”
he promises. “2020 is going to be a real
deadline.” 
Photos: Alber t Evangelista
C-SUITE QUARTERLY
Jun 2016
NantHealth IPO nets
$81B at ~$15 / share
C S Q . C O M / FA L L 2 0 1 6 - Q 4
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