The latest guest on First Rounders is Ted Love, CEO and president of Global Blood Therapeutics. He was formerly with Onyx Pharmaceuticals (before it was purchased by Amgen) and Nuvelo, among others. He attended Haverford College, where he was elected the first African-American class president, and earned his medical degree from Yale.

Ted is one of the few African-American CEOs in biotech. We talked about how the steep ladder to biotech is made harder to climb when Black, and why he feels Global Blood Therapeutics, in some ways, is a social justice company. We also discussed the social unrest in the United States following the police killing of George Floyd and whether this time it will lead to real change.

Here are links to topics mentioned in the conversation.

The Kimberly Jones video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llci8MVh8J4

The Supreme Court case, Regents of the University of California vs. Bakke.

NY Times review of How to Be an Antiracist.

An article on white supremacists in the police force.

The killing of Rayshard Brooks by Atlanta police.

The Washington Post database on police killings.

Nature Biotechnology’s feature on racial disparities in the biotech industry, for which Ted Love was a lead source.

The podcast itself can be found here.