The Unsung Community Heroes Who Make Biotech Thrive

Every thriving biotech hub can trace its origins to one or two outstanding scientific institutions. But every thriving region can also trace some of its success back to community leaders.

These are people who attend boring night meetings. They aren’t household names. They’re fine with that.

These people were especially common in America after World War II. They laid down the physical infrastructure and social norms for those of us who came next.

One of these people in Seattle, where I live, was named Jim Ellis.

Ellis died six years ago at age 98. He was a named partner at one of Seattle’s top law firms, Preston Gates & Ellis. He worked with William Gates Sr., Bill’s dad. The firm today is known as K&L Gates.

But that’s not why we remember Jim Ellis.

When he was a up-and-coming lawyer, Lake Washington, a freshwater jewel linked to Puget Sound and the Pacific, was full of sewage. People at the time said the water was like “split pea soup.” Various government fiefdoms and unrestrained private land developers contributed to it. It was a mess. Fingers were pointed.

Ellis got involved. Behind the scenes, he brought his energy and creativity to the task of herding the necessary cats to clean it up.

But there was more. The Seattle region was growing beyond its natural resource-based economy – logging, fishing, the seaport. Boeing was emerging. Newcomers were coming. The region needed to think about how to manage the growth intelligently.

Highways needed to be expanded. Parks, trails, public swimming pools and youth centers needed to be built and upgraded. It was going to cost money. Ellis mobilized community support for a series of bond initiatives in the 1950s and 1960s that were collectively known as “Forward Thrust.”

All of this was happening in tension with the natural splendor of the Cascades. Millions of acres of forest needed to be preserved for wildlife habitat, for outdoor recreation, for clean air and water, and to preserve natural beauty. The competing interests between economic growth and environmental preservation needed to be held in balance.

Ellis thought about common interests, the common good. By the early 1990s, he put it all together with his greatest achievement — the Mountains to Sound Greenway. It’s 1.5 million acres of preserved land between Ellensburg, on the east side of the Cascades, stretching to Seattle in the west.

I first saw it as a 21-year-old kid from Wisconsin. It was Memorial Day weekend of 1997. I was excited to start a summer reporting internship at one of the nation’s great regional newspapers – The Seattle Times. I had driven my rusty Pontiac 2,000 miles across the Great Plains, long stretches of Montana, and the arid Columbia River basin.

Then came the mountains. They were covered in Evergreen trees. Alpine lakes shimmered.

From Snoqualmie Pass to Seattle, for 50 miles, it kept going. No strip malls or tacky billboards. People lived in the suburbs east of Seattle, the foothills of the Cascades. But the trees were everywhere, swallowing you up. Nature felt big. Individual people felt small.

This seemed like a great place to live, to explore, to build a career.

For years, I knew nothing about the history of the Mountains to Sound Greenway. Maybe a decade ago, I learned for the first time about Jim Ellis. There was no statue to the man. When he died, I looked for more information, but there wasn’t much. Recently, I found this touching tribute published in 2021 by the Trust for Public Lands.

It’s hard to imagine what Ellis was up against in his day. Think of the vision and tenacity it must have taken with all the federal, state, and private landowning interests. A lot of people with different viewpoints needed to rally around a shared vision.

Ellis wasn’t in it for money or ego. He never ran for public office.  

One secret to his success was his philosophy on how to spend his time. He spoke of a one-third/one-third/one-third way of life. One-third was for professional work, one-third for family, and one-third for community.

Where did this philosophy and drive come from? It’s hard to say for sure. But Ellis’ brother died in World War II in 1945. That, according to the Trust for Public Lands, lit a fire in him to honor his brother’s memory. I also have a hunch that the community work, and the family time, helped energize him and make him even more effective professionally. It could have been a virtuous cycle.

Ellis was on my mind last weekend, when I took a small group of biotech people on a hike up Mailbox Peak. It’s a 4,800-foot peak near North Bend, smack in the middle of the Mountains to Sound Greenway.

Around Noon, there were about 20 people on the summit when my small group arrived. Most were in their 20s and 30s. The skies were sunny and clear. You could see snow-capped peaks more than 100 miles away.

Two young people we met on the hike happened to be from the biotech community. A postdoc on my team, Aleena Arakaki, wasn’t surprised. It’s part of what draws young scientists to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center – the chance to occasionally get away, to clear the head, get a little exercise, maybe get a beer afterwards with lab friends and colleagues.

Seattle’s biotech community exists because of decades of public investment in science at the University of Washington and Fred Hutch. But it also thrives today because we have such amazing quality of life in the Northwest that continually attracts people from around the world.

For that, we can thank unsung heroes like Jim Ellis.

This also makes me wonder: Who are the people doing similar things in Boston, San Francisco, San Diego, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Chicago, Raleigh-Durham, New York, New Jersey and elsewhere?

Who laid down the critical scaffolding that made it possible for those regions to thrive?

Who’s continuing this work today?

There are people out there doing this hard and thankless work to strengthen our communities. Let’s show a little respect. Maybe get involved personally. It’s meaningful work, and it can be lasting work.