Developer and Penny Pritzker-backed venture promote female entrepreneurs in life sciences
James Gillespie remembered the time he was at a meeting of life sciences entrepreneurs in San Francisco. A female head of a company confided that she often delegated her second-in-command, a male, to handle a ritual of the trade, the “pitch meeting” for impressing venture capitalists.
The male subordinate “doesn’t have to face the questions and challenges I do,” Gillespie recalled the executive saying. It crystallized in his mind an ingrained, continuing bias against support for women-led firms. For Gillespie, a scholar in business management and data, that equates not only to sexism but lost opportunity. Citing data from Crunchbase, Gillespie noted that women-owned firms get less than 3% of venture capital. “You can’t say men have 97% of the good ideas,” he said.
For Michelle Hoffmann, who has advised startups in life sciences and health care and has a doctorate in molecular neuroscience, the message gets driven home to her during meetings in which she’s the only woman there. It can amount to an oppressive atmosphere. “When there’s nobody in the room who looks like you, you start to wonder, ‘Why am I here?’” she said.
Gillespie and Hoffmann are among those who have joined forces to change minds and improve outcomes in biotech and medical research, areas whose importance in our lives has been shown by the pandemic and the rush to develop vaccines. Gillespie is executive director of the Prysm Institute, a Chicagobased accelerator in life sciences. Hoffmann is senior vice president of “deep tech” at Chicago’s P33, which has set out to be a catalyst for innovation that helps the region’s economy.
They are cooperating to get more women to successfully launch companies in the life sciences. They aim to find entrepreneurs and get them where they want to be, with the right contacts for funds and mentoring.
This is no trifle. Prysm is a division of Sterling Bay, a real estate developer that has seized on life sciences as a source of tenants. The name P33 refers to Chicago’s Century of Progress exhibition in 1933, which showed innovations of the time and the city’s role in delivering them. The “P” is said to stand for “purpose, people, plans and progress,” but you’ll be forgiven if you think it stands for nothing other than “Pritzker.” Business leader and former U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker is a co-chair and major force behind this nonprofit.
Working mostly from their own spaces in a business world that’s still remote, Gillespie and Hoffmann are connecting founders to local money and advice, often by involving the incubators 1871 and Matter, or the economic promoters at World Business Chicago. They can be reached through the Prysm and P33 websites.
“Because of the pandemic, the life sciences have really been thrust into the forefront,” said Suzet McKinney, former CEO of the Illinois Medical District and now a principal at Sterling Bay. “However,
I will tell you that the life sciences had great momentum prior to COVID-19.”
The developer converted a building at 2430 N. Halsted St., formerly a part of Lurie’s Children’s Hospital, to accommodate labs and shared workspaces that appeal to life sciences startups. The 120,000-square-foot building is more than half leased, and the response is such that Sterling Bay wants its first building in the Lincoln Yards megasite to also specialize in life sciences, maybe businesses that have outgrown incubator space. At 320,000 square feet, the building is planned on the southern end of Lincoln Yards.
It’s really about creating a “knowledge community,” a cluster that will foster growth, McKinney said. “If a company comes to us small, we’re good with that. We love the opportunity to have a company . . . grow with us.”
Gender equity is one goal, but another for Prysm and P33 is to put the Chicago area on more venture capitalists’ radar. There has been progress the past few years, but Chicago still pretty much is viewed as a flyover country when it comes to tech investments. An analysis by Pitchbook and the National Venture Capital Association put the 2020 deal volume in Chicago at $2.8 billion, up 21.5% from 2019. But the deals in Boston were $16.9 billion, up 47.6%. In San Francisco, $61.5 billion, up 18.8%. “We’re off by quite some order of magnitude,” Hoffmann said.
Changing that won’t happen overnight, but Gillespie and Hoffmann figure the tools are in place to do better, starting with the large employers that are tech innovators and the knowhow at the universities. Chicago also is adding hubs for medical research, biotech and related fields. The planned medical research center at the former Michael Reese Hospital site and development in the Illinois Medical District come to mind. These “knowledge communities” need to be synced.
This might more appropriately be titled “Vaccine Chronicles,” as the hunt for an open appointment for a COVID-19 vaccine has consumed my family for two months.
Vaccine hesitancy remains a challenge among a segment of the African American community — individuals in my immediate family included — based on the Tuskegee Experiment and America’s past history of racism within its health care system.
But another segment of the African American community has frantically grasped, with the rest of the world, for this lifeline that promises a return to some normalcy.
Every day, my family texts and emails about which members are eligible in the vaccine’s phased rollout.
Every day, we’ve shared with each other the latest distribution venue offered by the state, Cook County or city of Chicago.
Every day, there is the surfing of designated websites and calling of phone numbers, each of us armed with every family member’s pertinent information, as we fight through the busy phone lines and constant online response of “No Appointments Available.”
Phase 1A, of course, began Dec. 15, 2020, encompassing health care workers, nursing homes and longterm care facilities.
Phase 1B, targeting those 65 and older, non-health care residential settings, and front-line essential workers, opened Jan. 25.
Phase 1B Plus opened statewide Feb. 25 — targeting individuals with underlying health conditions. But in Chicago, the larger population with underlying health conditions, and non-front-line essential workers, won’t be looped in until Phase 1C opens March 29.
Like so many families nationwide, mine was pummeled by the invisible and highly contagious coronavirus outbreak, declared a pandemic on March 11, 2020.
Our 94-year-old matriarch, my mother, has essentially been a shut-in, the pandemic dictating limited contact with her seven children, and no contact at all with grandchildren who are potential asymptomatic spreaders.
My millennial son in Texas caught COVID in July, triggering three weeks of hell for his father and I, who could only worry and pray in Chicago with his grandparents, aunts and uncles. As with most COVID victims his age, he came through unscathed.
Four months later, another family member caught COVID, their descent into inability to breathe, hospitalization and ultimately being placed on a ventilator, sending our family into a traumatized tailspin. They survived.
Another family member in that person’s home also caught COVID, causing again a collective holding of breath. They weathered the illness without hospitalization.
A third family member who caught COVID via this cohort also ended up hospitalized, was successfully treated and came home.
Traumatized by this COVID-19 journey, getting our family vaccinated has been priority one since December, though akin to searching for a needle in a haystack.
One sibling, a doctor, got theirs in Phase 1A.
Phase 1B looped in Mom; myself as caregiver for a medically fragile son; a family member who is caregiver for another disabled relative; and two siblings who are front-line essential workers. Like many in Chicago, Cook County and statewide, we began searching for appointments immediately.
Day after day, no appointments on the list of city vaccine sites expanding over time.
Week after week, no appointments on the growing list of Cook County vaccine sites.
No appointments through Walgreens, Osco or other national pharmacies.
Until, finally, the web surfing, phone calling and putting family names on lists paid off.
Mom and I and one essential worker sibling were blessed to get appointments at Mount Sinai Hospital — one of four hospitals on the city’s list. The other essential worker sibling was blessed to get one at Rush University Medical Center.
The family member who is also a caregiver was blessed to get one at North Riverside Health Center in suburban North Riverside.
Another sibling got one through a Loretto Hospital pop-up vaccine event for all ages held at Amundsen Park on the West Side on Saturday — where my special-needs son, who resides between my home and his father’s home in West Side Austin, also got vaccinated.
We have a sibling with underlying conditions who initially did not trust the vaccine but has come around. We continue web surfing for that last appointment.
One of my siblings, and one other family member, have no interest in a vaccine whatsoever.
So be it. For those still searching, don’t give up. It took weeks of web surfing and phone calls for our family to get this far.
The question I get most: Side effects? They’ve run the gamut.
Mom, who we were most worried about, experienced none at all. Me? My arm was beyond sore that night and the next day, with accompanying fatigue and cold symptoms diminishing over four days. A sibling’s arm was so painful the next day they couldn’t move, chills and severe fatigue gluing her to the couch. The symptoms diminished over two days.
As I visited Mom this weekend, the two of us sitting in her living room watching Mass on TV, eating and laughing — maskless, per CDC guidelines — I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the stress of the hunt for an appointment and the minimal side effects were all worth it.