Bold vision realized

After a historic three terms, Board of Trustees Chair Jamo Rubin passes the leadership baton

After weeks of discussions and negotiations, Jamo Rubin, M.D., was face-to-face with Larry Schlesinger, M.D. It was late 2016 and Dr. Rubin and wife Stacey had flown to Columbus to try to convince Dr. Schlesinger, then at The Ohio State University College of Medicine, and his wife Judy to move to San Antonio.

It had been a long year for Dr. Rubin. He’d become Chairman of the Texas Biomed Board of Trustees amid a leadership change that spring. His first order of business – even before the national search that ultimately landed Dr. Schlesinger as President & CEO – was to set up a makeshift office in a campus conference room and begin taking stock of where the Institute was and where it should be heading. He was committed to plotting a course for success. For nearly a year, he analyzed finances and facilities and consulted with board members, Institute leaders and team members.

Dr. Rubin, an anesthesiologist-turned-entrepreneur, repeatedly found himself dogged by a key question throughout those months: Why weren’t more global companies, stakeholders and philanthropists clamoring to work with Texas Biomed? No place like it exists in the realm of U.S. biomedical research, with its combination of high containment labs, a national primate center and an independent, nonprofit structure.

“I just couldn’t understand it – it blew my mind,” Dr. Rubin says. “With the right resources, I knew we could run circles around everybody. So a vision began to form. The one thing missing was the right partner at the top.”

Dr. Schlesinger was not an obvious choice, Dr. Rubin acknowledges.

“Larry didn’t have the profile on paper – he’d never been in business and I knew we needed to begin operating more like one,” he says. “He was an academic running a big research institute in a gigantic, bureaucratic facility.”

But that night in Ohio over dinner, Dr. Schlesinger, a physician-scientist and prolific scholar specializing in tuberculosis and lung biology, talked about what Texas Biomed could and should be. The Institute would need to prioritize its strengths in infectious disease research. It must establish an applied science unit to develop and move solutions from the lab bench to patients’ bedsides. After all, Dr. Schlesinger told Dr. Rubin, it’s a matter of when – not if – the next pandemic will strike. A place like Texas Biomed should be a global leader for infectious disease preparedness and response.

Dr. Schlesinger agreed to the job with a key stipulation: that Dr. Rubin serve another term as Chair so they could partner with the Board and Institute on a bold new course for Texas Biomed.

Dr. Rubin would eventually end up extending into a third term and serve a full eight years as Chair. He led the Board through the unprecedented COVID-19 crisis and has also seen a key part of his vision realized: international companies such as Pfizer, Regeneron, Gilead and Moderna eager to partner with Texas Biomed on lifesaving therapies and vaccines.

This summer, Dr. Rubin steps down and becomes Vice Chair as Craig Boyan, President of grocery giant H-E-B, the state’s largest private employer, assumes the Chair position.

“I have so much respect for Jamo’s unwavering commitment to Texas Biomed, which made him stay on knowing we had so much more to accomplish,” Dr. Schlesinger says. “He didn’t want to allow any of the momentum to stall. This is what he does – he uses his skills to help move organizations to the next level.”

With Boyan’s professional track record of overseeing explosive statewide and international business growth and Dr. Rubin’s medical background and entrepreneurial mindset, the Board is in great hands, Dr. Schlesinger says.

Boyan joked that he’s ready to “carry Jamo’s bags” and continue leading the Board through its next growth phase.

“I am honored to be Jamo’s successor and I’m proud of what he has accomplished,” he says. “He has helped strengthen Texas Biomed by bringing in great talent and empowering the Board in new and innovative ways. I will do my best to carry on his legacy.”

The Institute is about midway through the Strategic Plan that the Board approved in 2018 and launched the following year. Under the plan, by 2030 Texas Biomed will have – among other things – doubled the number of faculty and strategically redesigned the campus for modern, multidisciplinary science and innovation.

In just the last seven years, the Institute has already seen recruitment of 20 faculty; significant expansion of its scientific pursuits; tripling of its annual revenues; the diversification of its funding portfolio; the construction of key capital projects, buildings and infrastructure; and the growth of a new Applied Science and Innovation unit that’s expanding contract research and commercialization.

The plan incorporates much of the early conversations between Dr. Rubin and Dr. Schlesinger about the Institute prioritizing infectious disease work while building a more nimble, entrepreneurial culture.

Looking back, the timing of Texas Biomed’s repositioning and the creation of the Strategic Plan right before the COVID-19 pandemic hit proved to be remarkable foresight and underscored the Institute’s potential for global impact, Dr. Rubin says.

He says he will never forget the intense mobilization that began in March 2020. As Texas Biomed scientists and labs began working around the clock, the Board quickly put out an appeal to help underwrite early vaccine development work. In just over one week, $5 million was raised from trustees, longtime Institute supporters and other area foundations and donors.

Less than a year later, as lockdowns persisted and schools remained virtual, Dr. Rubin took part as a volunteer physician at a massive vaccine clinic at the downtown Alamodome.

“I’ll never be able to explain the surreal sense of pride I experienced,” he says. “There I was, sitting underneath a handwritten ‘Pfizer’ sign, giving the vaccine that Texas Biomed literally helped bring to market. Then fast-forward to today and we are known as one of the most nimble infectious disease research organizations in the world. So that vision I saw before Larry came? Here it is. It happened. This is exactly what we said we were wanting to build.”