Malin Burnham Interview – December 11, 2015
WALSHOK: This is Friday, December 11th. This is Mary Walshok about to begin a conversation with my friend, Malin Burnham.
BURNHAM: Good morning, Mary. Nice to have you here, and I look forward to our conversation.
WALSHOK: I can't remember if we are in round two or round three [laughs].
BURNHAM: I think it's three.
WALSHOK: But what I really want to do in this hour to hour and a half that we have together is pick up where we left off, which was that I've got good information on how you got involved with the Fishman's and the Burnham Institute. I think we are fine there. Where we left off is how the circle of support for the Burnham expanded, and I'd love to have you - if you could, please - retell the story of how you got Doug Manchester onto the board, and then he had an unexpected encounter on an airplane with a man by the name of Denny Sanford.
BURNHAM: Yes.
WALSHOK: And I think a lot of the history of the Torrey Pines Mesa can be understood by those sort of early relationships. Do you see what I mean?
BURNHAM: Mm-hmm.
WALSHOK: That was sort of catalytic in making a lot of other things happen. So why don't we start with Doug arranged for this - for Denny Sanford to join you -
BURNHAM: Mary, it is very interesting, as I look back on my little personal history with some of these projects in San Diego, and I don't take credit for any one of them. I like to be part of a team and part of the effort, but in life sciences, it was very interesting in that I was asked to join the board in year six of the La Jolla Cancer Research Foundation. I did not know anything about cancer, and that's all they were doing. But I looked inside the organization, talked to the people, and I saw something that I knew was unusual, and it happened that to be that at that time, science was done by the scientist in a vacuum. The scientist didn't want his or her neighbor to see what was going on because they may steal their secrets. And when I walked into the laboratories of the La Jolla Cancer Research Foundation, I didn't see any of that. There were no walls. There were no siloes. People were part of the family. It was partnerships. They were all working together, and I felt it. I saw it, but I couldn't explain it. It took me six or seven years to gain, in my vocabulary, the word "collaborative" - "collaboration," and that's really the DNA of the life science world here in San Diego. It is the key to our success. Okay, fast-forward. About ten years ago, I solicited and got Papa Doug Manchester to come on the board of what was then, the Burnham Institute, which was a successor to the La Jolla Cancer Research Foundation. And as serendipity, many times, is our savior, Papa Doug and his wife at the time were on a round-the-world charter trip for the WPO group, which, of course, is the senior YPO group. On this trip, they met a chap by the name of T. Denny Sanford from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. And Denny told them, during that trip, that among other things he had just recently pledged a $400 million gift to the South Dakota Hospital group, which was a large group; probably comparable in size to either Sharp or Scripps here in San Diego. They covered four states, and it was a $400 million pledge. Well, Manchester's ears perked up and he said, "Gee, you are in the health care world." He said, "I'm on the board of a little outfit in San Diego called the Burnham Institute, and we are all in the health science world."
WALSHOK: Yes. Good for him.
BURNHAM: He said, "You know, you ought to come out and see what we're doing." This is one of my examples of serendipity. So about three or four weeks later, it turned out that Papa Doug was having a birthday party, and if I remember correctly, it was his 70th birthday party.
WALSHOK: Papa Doug?
BURNHAM: Could've been his 65th back then.
WALSHOK: Yes, probably.
BURNHAM: He invited Denny Sanford to come out to his birthday party. And Papa Doug arranged a five-person table for dinner and dancing and all that type of thing and the customers, so to speak, were Denny Sanford, Roberta and I, and John Reed and his wife, Muffy. At that time John was our president and CEO and one of the handful of top scientists in the world in biology investigation. And so that's when we met Denny, and it was a social event. But nevertheless, we talked a little bit about business, so to speak, and we invited Denny to come out and take a look at what we were doing. We knew, at that time, that pediatrics was his current interest. So we said, "Well, let's talk about pediatrics. It sounded like that's what you were interested in today," and he said, "Yes." We suggest that he bring one or two people out from South Dakota with him, and we'll have our team there, and we'll talk about pediatrics to start. So that happened maybe a few weeks later, and we got into one of the conference rooms at the institute, and we had John Reed and two or three of his scientists. They got up to the white board and put a lot of words and departments and game plans and what have you, charts, and one thing or another. And after a while, Denny said, "Well, can you write it up?" To me, that was a foot in the door, and, "Well, sure we can write it up." So we put a formal proposal together and that turned out to be a $20 million gift from T. Denny Sanford to start a pediatric center of research within the Burnham Institute. At that time we had 10 or 12 NIH grants on pediatric work, but they weren't consolidated. They weren't grouped together, and we all know that once you do that, you can get there a lot quicker when you have people working closer together.
WALSHOK: But Malin, you realize what an extraordinary story that is because development professionals will say, "Oh, you have to cultivate people. You have to win them over." You're talking about an around-the-world trip, and becoming friends with a board member.
BURNHAM: Yes.
WALSHOK: A birthday celebration where people really hit it off and liked one another.
BURNHAM: Yes. Yes.
WALSHOK: A single visit and presentation.
BURNHAM: Yes.
WALSHOK: A proposal and a check.
BURNHAM: And a check. Exactly.
WALSHOK: There must have been something magical because that man has become one of your best friends and one of the most important supporters of science and medical research in San Diego. So can you say a little bit more about how that evolved?
BURNHAM: Yes. I think, at that time, Denny was looking beyond Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
WALSHOK: He was ready, you would say.
BURNHAM: He was ready, yes - another timing event.
WALSHOK: Serendipity.
BURNHAM: Yes, serendipity event. You know, he never said this, but as I look back on his life, Sioux Falls is not a big enough environment for someone like Denny Sanford, though it is a great place. I have been there several times. And they love him there, and that is his official legal home. And he has done many marvelous follow-on supports for not only the hospital but other things in the Dakotas and so on and so forth, but San Diego gives him another outlet. To the extent that he buys a home in La Jolla on the beachfront.
WALSHOK: I know.
BURNHAM: Because you don't have an ocean beachfront in Sioux Falls.
WALSHOK: That's right.
BURNHAM: Or many places in the country. And he used to be a -he's not active anymore, but he was into sailboat racing - maybe 20 years ago. So again, he's used to the water and that type of thing, and so it's a different environment for him. By the way, his home in La Jolla is one of either four or five that he has, like in Scottsdale and in the Colorado mountains and, of course, Sioux Falls, and I'm missing one somewhere.
WALSHOK: Yes.
BURNHAM: But nevertheless, yes, it's what I call kind of a stepping stone.
WALSHOK: You talked about that in an earlier interview, and you also talked about how you and Roberta were at a point in life when you decided you were ready, when you set up the foundation, and I just think it is interesting. I am a sociologist, so I apologize for being analytical. But I think it is very interesting how people have a certain readiness in life to explore new horizons and resources, and that's what we captured with Denny.
BURNHAM: Well, yes, and you remind me that it was another one of those turning points and pivots in my life in that Roberta and I set up - to be formal about it and disciplined about it - we set up our own private foundation back in 1980 or '81 because we were thinking long term and wanted to pace ourselves and discipline ourselves and so on and so forth. So as a matter of fact in 1981 that led me to write a letter to my 5 managers that were in the Burnham Real Estate Company that owned small pieces of the company - but I had the majority of it. And I told them that, "In the next five years, perhaps by the end of 1986, that if all went well, I would like to sell this company to you folks." I did not make any promises. I did not give a price or a formula. I just wanted to alert them that there was this possibility, and if all worked well, that would be what I would like to do. Part of that reasoning was because of our private foundation that we had set up earlier, and we knew what I wanted to do in the future, long term. So at the end of 1986 - by the way, I was hard at work in Perth, Western Australia, helping Dennis Conner win the America's Cup.
WALSHOK: I remember that.
BURNHAM: And which actually happened on the 4th of February in 1987. But Roberta and I were down in Australia for four and a half months during that period of time. But in any event, by the end of December, we sold the company to my five managers, and that point I converted full-time out of the business world into the nonprofit world.
WALSHOK: And your pivot towards science, I think, was also very interesting because, as I recall, you said to me, if I had met you in the '60s or '70s, you may not have expected that to happen. So after Denny got involved with the Burnham Institute - and I am trying to think of dates - but again, the historians will get the dates right - two things happened in San Diego that I thought were very important. One was the effort by a group of San Diegans to help Bob Klein -
BURNHAM: Yes, exactly.
WALSHOK: - get the stem cell initiative.
BURNHAM: That is the next step in this history.
WALSHOK: Right. And I, as a citizen and a philanthropist, contributed to that effort, and I have interviewed Larry Goldstein and a number of people. I would really like your take on that period and how it coalesced the community or -
BURNHAM: Well, Mary, that was another one of these serendipity steps - I guess my life is filled with them when you get right down to it. I did not know Bob Klein. But I knew of the effort that he was putting into writing a bond issue for the state of California that went on the ballot statewide, if I recall, about nine years ago now, for the voters to approve a $3 billion bond issue to be used entirely for stem cell research. I only knew Bob by reputation. But I got a telephone call from him one day. He obviously had been going through his real estate rolodex because that was his profession, and he must have been wondering who he might call in San Diego that's in the real estate world and that could help him do this? And somehow, he matched me up with his thoughts, and that was the phone call that I got and -
WALSHOK: So he made a cold call to you?
BURNHAM: Yes, a cold call.
WALSHOK: Oh, that is interesting. Okay.
BURNHAM: He told me what he was doing and I said, "Yes, Bob, I've heard about what you're doing, and I'm very interested." "Well," he says, "we need to talk," and I said, "Sure." I believe the next step was that he came to San Diego and we talked about it and we hit it off personality-wise and otherwise and we liked each other's style and one thing or another. So I agreed to help him, and I guess I probably volunteered to take the lead in San Diego as his deputy, so on and so forth. So it finally got to the point where it was timely to finish drafting the bond issue and building a team of supporters. I was one of his vice chairmen - or whatever my title might've been at that time - with the bond issue. And so, now, it's the Burnham Institute. That name was changed in year 20, and now we are in year 39, going on to 40. So I was probably chairman of the board at that time when Bob came to me.
WALSHOK: I think you were.
BURNHAM: I have been on the board continuously all these years. As of the last six or seven, as an honorary trustee. Nonprofit institutions generally stay away from anything to do with politics and anything to do with a public vote, taking sides or that type of thing. That is just what the nonprofit world is better equipped to do, or not do. But in this case, I got to be fairly passionate about the need and the fact that it was good for our citizens. It was good for the world, and it was good for our economy, and so on and so forth. I was chairman of the board of the Burnham Institute at that time, and at the right time, once it was on the ballot - once it was qualified to be on the ballot for the next election - I went to our board, and I persuaded them to go public and endorse Proposition Number 71. I'll never forget that number. And as it turned out, we were the first nonprofit medical institution of any kind in the state of California to publically endorse.
WALSHOK: That is interesting.
BURNHAM: And ultimately we were the only ones in San Diego that went public and endorsed it.
WALSHOK: No kidding.
BURNHAM: Nobody else wanted to get involved because we just don't get involved. But because I was so attached to it and helping Bob and sort of agreeing to manage the San Diego effort and so on and so forth that is what happened. And of course, it was passed.
WALSHOK: Now, did you pull anybody into a coalition at that time? Or did you primarily champion it through the Burnham Institute?
BURNHAM: The latter. We did not have a San Diego committee. I was on his statewide committee.
WALSHOK: I've got it. Yes.
BURNHAM: I had an authority, so to speak, to represent the action here in San Diego, and they had a lot of individual calls and that type of thing and -
WALSHOK: Because once it was passed, there was a San Diego committee that sought to locate the headquarters of the institute.
BURNHAM: California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, otherwise known as CIRM - C-I-R-M. Yes, the next move, after it was passed, was, "Where are you going to put the -?" We had the forum, CIRM, and then where are the headquarters going to be?
WALSHOK: Right.
BURNHAM: We immediately put our San Diego hat in the arena, and, of course, so did the San Francisco Bay Area, the Silicon Valley group, and Brook Byers who was already a friend of mine in the venture capital world in Palo Alto, who chaired their effort to locate in their area. And I, more or less, chaired our area, if I recall correctly, in representing that. And Brook is a long-time friend, and he's got a great sense of humor. Anyway, the final meeting of the CIRM was in Fresno, I guess, symbolically, halfway between north and south and not the easiest place to get to have a meeting, but nevertheless, a group of us went up here. We had a good contingent that went up to an almost all-day meeting, and I told Brook, to begin with, "Look, you guys have more money up here than we have in the San Diego area, so if you want to buy it, just go buy it. We won't contest you." And so we had a lot of laughs over that. But anyway, we made our presentations and one thing or another, and we came in second, which was no surprise, but at least we made the effort, and so on and so forth.
WALSHOK: I want to probe a little bit. Were you the public face for a lot of people that were energizing this? Or did you recruit people to this effort? I know you played a leadership role…
BURNHAM: Yes. Well, we didn't have a formal committee here in San Diego.
WALSHOK: Aha - okay.
BURNHAM: But we had an informal group including Duane Roth of CONNECT and other leaders at UCSD - I don't now recall all the names, but it was informal. We knew it was going to be short term. (CIRM is an organization by itself, and they elected their own trustees, and that was all part of the bill - who would appoint these people and so on and so forth.) And so we knew, once the decision was made on the location, then we would disband because that's the only reason we came.
WALSHOK: Right. Okay. So it was an ad hoc group?
BURNHAM: Yes - more or less ad hoc.
WALSHOK: And if my memory is correct, I think Ivor Royston -
BURNHAM: Was part of it.
WALSHOK: - was part of it.
BURNHAM: Yes.
WALSHOK: And some of you flew up on his plane to that meeting.
BURNHAM: Well, I do recall we were in a private plane, and I would say six or eight of us, anyway, flew up together for that day meeting - or mostly all-day meeting.
WALSHOK: I want to stay with stem cells and CIRM because it's so big now on the Torrey Pines Mesa.
BURNHAM: Also, was the second event with Denny Sanford supporting something, the next thing in San Diego.
WALSHOK: Okay. You mean that effort to get the headquarters here?
BURNHAM: No. No.
WALSHOK: No - what happened after? That's what I'd wish you tell us.
BURNHAM: Okay. Okay. So the next part, the next chapter in the Denny Sanford story happens to be around stem cells. Now, bear in mind that, again maybe serendipity, the voters in South Dakota had already said "we will never do stem cell research in the state of South Dakota." So that made another friend of Denny Sanford do what we were doing as far as stem cell research potential here in San Diego. So, first of all, we decided - we being four organizations on the La Jolla Mesa: beside the Burnham Institute, there was Salk and Scripps and UCSD Medical - we decided it was best for us to form our own consortium to take advantage of getting grants from CIRM. And in the bill, $3 billion bill, 10 percent of that money could be used for brick and mortar, and the largest grant that could be made for any one institute location was $50 million.
WALSHOK: Got it.
BURNHAM: $50 million of the $300 potential million available for a brick-and-mortar facility. Well, the largest being $50 million also required, in the bill, a 20 percent philanthropic equity on top of the grant for the brick and mortar from CIRM. We put in an application. We formed the consortium here, the five organizations, and, of course, more recently, three years ago, the La Jolla Institute for Immunology and Immunization came in as our fifth wonderful member. In any event, we put in the application, and Sanford and our consortium put in a $50 million grant request application. And at that point in time, we knew we had to get another $10 million or 20 percent on top of that. So while the grant application was being processed, I went to Denny, and I explained all of this to him, and I said, "Denny, in order to get our $50 million grant, we have got to get $10 million in philanthropic money on top of that. So we would love to put your name on the building as the Sanford Building for our purposes." And he said, "Well, let me think about it." A few days later he came back: "Well, my advisors say for $10 million, I ought to have my name on the entire consortium." Now, this began a poker game and I'm really not a poker player. Nevertheless, I didn't realize, but we were playing poker. So I said to Denny, "No, no, no, Denny, we've already been working with a person, a real person in Los Angeles and who also is interested, and he is prepared to put up $30 million to have his name on the entire consortium, not just the building. But he has got two conditions that we don't know if we want to live with."
WALSHOK: Oh, I think I know who the man was.
BURNHAM: "And so we'll put your name on the entire consortium if you'll put up $30 million." Well, he says, "Let me think about it and get back to you in a few days." So he comes back and says, "Well, my advisors say that that would be okay, but I can't put all the money upfront. I'll put up $10 million upfront and $20 million over the next 20 years." And I said, "No, no, Denny."
WALSHOK: No, that won't work.
BURNHAM: "This is a ten-year deal. The CIRM is only a ten-year proposition. This money's going to be spent in ten years, and we need -" so anyway, another visit to his advisors. He comes back to me, and the history is known. He agreed to put up $30 million - $10 million upfront and $20 million over the first 10 years. And so that was the poker game, and that was the second tranche of Denny Sanford's philanthropy that came into San Diego.
WALSHOK: That's a great story. Are you okay with me staying with your role in triggering other philanthropists? Because from where I sit, that's an extraordinary contribution.
BURNHAM: Yes.
WALSHOK: Or are there others?
BURNHAM: Yes and there's at least one more that ties into all of this.
WALSHOK: Yes.
BURNHAM: One more of those Denny Sanford stories besides others in the community.
WALSHOK: Yes, well, I'd like to keep with Denny and then go on to Conrad and maybe others that I'm not aware of, but what I find so interesting, and we probably should interview Denny - right?
BURNHAM: Yes.
WALSHOK: Because he has made such commitments to the institute that you helped launch, but also, now, to UC San Diego and in addition to CIRM. So anything you feel is comfortable to share would be appreciated because it is amazing.
BURNHAM: Okay. Well, let me explain what I would call, perhaps, the third chapter, the third Denny Sanford chapter. About seven years ago, our development department at the Burnham Institute was putting together a game plan for a $100 million campaign to start building our endowment. Well, we already had a small endowment, but we needed to build it up, and we hadn't even taken this to the board yet because it was in the planning stage. And somehow - I never did figure out how Denny heard about it - but he came forward and says, "Well, gee, that's interesting, and, yes, we really do need to build this up," and so on and so forth.
WALSHOK: Was he on the board?
BURNHAM: No.
WALSHOK: No?
BURNHAM: No. No. He's never been on "the" board. He's only been on the honorary board. We have an honorary board at the Burnham Institute - established during the Burnham Institute name period - of honorary members - those who have contributed $10 million or more.
WALSHOK: Got it.
BURNHAM: So anyway, Denny has not been on the board. That's not his interest in serving on boards. So anyway, he hears about our campaign, and he says that he could be interested in helping us with that campaign. And he said maybe he would make a $50 million matching gift. He was talking about making a matching gift, and we said, "Denny -" I forget exactly why, but we felt that a matching gift at that time was not really part of our game plan, but that we certainly - we didn't dismiss it. But we said, "Denny, we would really like this $50 million gift that you've mentioned, and it would be our proposal, with that kind of a gift, that your name would go on the institute." He did not ask for it.
WALSHOK: No.
BURNHAM: We said that it was -
WALSHOK: You offered it, yes.
BURNHAM: - it would be certainly appropriate that your name would go on that. Anyway, we got to the point where he said, "Okay, I'll make the gift," and he had suggested to people that he really wanted to match it, but it was not officially part of his gift. It was an outright gift, period.
WALSHOK: Okay.
BURNHAM: We got to the point where you put the name - this was a fun little story - and so I had a private conversation with Denny. I said, "Denny, maybe the way we decide whose name goes first, why don't we just flip a coin?" And without taking a breath he said, "Only if we use my two-headed coin."
WALSHOK: [Laughs].
BURNHAM: I am not necessarily a very bright guy, but I figured out right then and there that his name goes first. And I may have an ego, but I'm not going to let it get in the way of a $50 million grant, and so that is what happened. He tells the story a little differently. He and my wife, Roberta, hit it off on the very first day because they have a very similar sense of humor.
WALSHOK: Yes, I remember you telling us that.
BURNHAM: He tells the story this way, and actually, Roberta did say this, but she said it in hindsight, not in foresight, but anyway, Denny tells the story that it was Roberta that made the decision because she said, "Denny, you know how names get shortened, sometimes, to just initials?" She said, "You wouldn't want this known as the B.S. Institute, would you?"
WALSHOK: [Laughs].
BURNHAM: Well, that was proposed after the decision had been made.
WALSHOK: Right. Right. That's a great story.
BURNHAM: Anyway, we get a lot of laughs out of that and so on and so forth. So that was really the next part of the Denny Sanford story with the then Burnham Institute. But there was one more that I would like to throw out at this time because if you look on my history with Denny, it was a series of steps - upward steps. First of all, serendipity - meeting on an airplane with a trustee of the then Burnham Institute, coming to San Diego and giving us our first $20 million grant. And then, going to the next higher step in the order of science is the consortium for stem cell research, a consortium that's never been equaled or duplicated anywhere in the world.
WALSHOK: Wonderful.
BURNHAM: Yes. The next step beyond that is what he did after all of this, where he gave $100 million gift to UCSD to create the first ever stem cell clinic in the world. I look at these as a series of steps upward, and it wouldn't have happened unless you made the first one down here, the foundation. So to me it's really an interesting, fun history to look at it that way.
WALSHOK: Well, I've also interviewed Larry Goldstein, who actually is very humble about how the momentum built. He is extraordinarily appreciative of Bob Klein. He said, when all the scientists were trying to lobby and we were just falling flat on our faces, enter Bob Klein and he knew how to mobilize support.
BURNHAM: Mm-hmm. And they are very close friends.
WALSHOK: He has also described Denny in a similar way, and I think Denny's become good friends with the dean of the medical school, David Brenner. I think both you and Papa Doug should be thanked by many institutions for bringing such an extraordinary person into our realm. But you have also helped draw an old friend of yours, Conrad Prebys, into philanthropy in the science arena. Is that something recent? Or have you and he always shared an interest in science? Or how did that come about?
BURNHAM: Well, I first knew of Conrad in his earlier days in San Diego as a real estate developer, and that was when I was co-founder and chairman of the First National Bank here in San Diego that we started, I believe, in 1982. In the '80s, if I recall correctly, I we did business with Conrad, but I also believe that we financed maybe one or more of his projects, which were much smaller than he's done to date. And then, from a contact - let's say a financial contact - we didn't have any real contacts for a number of years. Socially, yes. Community-wise, yes. But I was never calling on him for any financial contributions in the nonprofit but we stayed knowledgeable with each other. Then, the Burnham Institute was growing up in the world and one thing or another. I went to Conrad at one time and got him interested in a situation that we needed help on if we were going to get the big grant from the NIH. It happened to be that the NIH had put out an RFP for people to start a - well, in our case, we called it a "drug discovery center."
WALSHOK: Right - translational medicine.
BURNHAM: Translational.
WALSHOK: Translational research. Yes.
BURNHAM: But the grant was for four robotic machines that would speed up discoveries.
WALSHOK: Got it.
BURNHAM: And so we got this grant - I think only one of four in the entire country, if I recall correctly - and these machines. I relate back to my high school chemistry when we were dealing with test tubes.
WALSHOK: I know. I know.
BURNHAM: I can remember -
WALSHOK: And microscopes.
BURNHAM: Yes. With the advances since then and these four robotic machines, we are now able to identify over a million chemical compounds per day.
WALSHOK: Oh, my god.
BURNHAM: Drug discoveries are going speed up. It is like a needle in a haystack. That is what we are looking for. So we went to Conrad at this time because we knew we needed help, on top of the NIH grant. So Conrad came in and gave us his first gift, which I believe was $10 million, and that became known as the Conrad Prebys Drug Discovery Center.
WALSHOK: Right.
BURNHAM: And it is a very fascinating place to go in and visit and watch these machines and so on and so forth.
WALSHOK: Can I just probe you a little bit because I think I'm correct in terms of timing. Prebys' philanthropy had been primarily in the arts.
BURNHAM: Yes.
WALSHOK: So why were you audacious enough to go to him and -?
BURNHAM: I don't know.
WALSHOK: I mean this is a very different kind of investment opportunity.
BURNHAM: I understand, but I don't let history get in my way.
WALSHOK: Oh, okay. All right.
BURNHAM: I am willing to buck the tide from time to time because -
WALSHOK: Okay. And you knew he had capacity.
BURNHAM: I knew he had capacity, and I had not asked him for anything for a long time. And so I went to him and explained what we were doing and asked him to come out and take a look. And yes, his philanthropy up to that time - well, he was into the zoo. He was into the arts. He was into music - those types of things, but again, not the science world. And so I went to Conrad, and I explained what we were doing. And he came out and took a look and said that he would be willing to give us that $10 million gift.
WALSHOK: But then how many years later before he gave you - what - more than $200 million?
BURNHAM: No, $100 million.
WALSHOK: Or $100 million.
BURNHAM: $100 million.
WALSHOK: So he must have fallen in love with the work and -
BURNHAM: Well, he did. And people have been attracted to the institute and our people starting with the first multi-million dollar gift that we ever had, which came from Donald Bren in the early '90s - well, sometime in the '90s.
WALSHOK: Oh, okay.
BURNHAM: Donald had never done anything in San Diego of any magnitude or any note, but his company, The Irvine Company, had acquired their second set of three high-rise office buildings in Downtown San Diego. So now, The Irvine Company had a presence -
WALSHOK: It had presence, yes.
BURNHAM: - six of our, maybe, ten major Class A buildings. So we went to him because of his increased investment opportunity in San Diego. We went to him and asked if he would endow the president's chair at the Burnham Institute, knowing that he has given many endowments of chairs principally to the UC system - UC Irvine as well as others. I think that, at that time, he had endowed maybe 20. Excuse me. He endowed as many as 50 - I think it's more than that now - as many as 50 chairs, mostly in the UC system. And so we took that as a model and went to him for the president's chair, and he gave us $2.5 million, and that was really our first multi-million-dollar gift.
WALSHOK: Got it.
BURNHAM: From there, we started growing in size.
WALSHOK: Again, stepwise.
BURNHAM: Yes, steps - correct.
WALSHOK: More and more ambitious. So what triggered Conrad's latest gift, which led to the renaming of the institute yet again?
BURNHAM: Well, let me jump back a little bit here.
WALSHOK: It's okay. Yes.
BURNHAM: Our staff has done a very good job over the years of keeping our donors advised. We give them a detailed report once a year as to how their money has been used and how we can attribute some discovery success to that effort. And in some cases, we give them a report maybe twice a year, and we had been doing that for about six years with Conrad. He was very proud of that drug discovery center with the four robotic machines, and he had been to one or two of our galas where he got another uptick on what we were doing and socialized with other donors and things of that nature. And he decided that he wanted to be a bigger part of this. It is interesting. Conrad and Denny made their decisions coming from different positions. In the majority of cases where Denny's given a gift - a large gift - it's something that he, I don't want say invented, but something he thought of the need for and he did his investigation and found an institution or found somebody -
WALSHOK: Yes, he discovers or co-creates, yes, yes.
BURNHAM: -that he could work with and so on and so forth. In fact, just, if you look in this morning's Union-Tribune front section, -
WALSHOK: I have it.
BURNHAM: - there's a full-page ad thanking Denny from the National University for the things that he's done. Denny brought all those ideas to them.
WALSHOK: To Mike, yes.
BURNHAM: And he had tried them at another university, which I won't name.
WALSHOK: Yes.
BURNHAM: It did not take. So anyway, in the majority of his philanthropy, Denny has thought about an idea that isn't being taken care of. And the end result may be substantially different than his initial thought, but nevertheless that's how he got to the point.
WALSHOK: Yes, but it's a very, very interesting - I get it. Yes.
BURNHAM: Now, Conrad is the other way around. As Conrad explains it, it's when the hook is set, and his gut tells him it's the right thing to do.
WALSHOK: So he responds to an opportunity.
BURNHAM: Yes, he does. Now, when his gut says yes, he doesn't say yes verbally, but he's interested.
WALSHOK: Right and then he does his due diligence.
BURNHAM: He does his due diligence, and we bring him an opportunity, and he says, "Well, let me think about it, but I want to come out and visit. Show me what you are going to do and how you're going to use the money," and so on and so forth. So they are different approaches. They are very interesting.
WALSHOK: Right.
BURNHAM: That is how those two operate. But we got a tipoff that Conrad had made a comment or two that we, our team, interpreted to mean that he might just be ready to make a big, nice, substantial gift. So I would say our team had their ear to the ground, you might say, and that's why he made a $100 million gift without a limited use. In other words, he didn't say, "I want it to go here. I want it to-"
WALSHOK: Right. It wasn't designated. Yes.
BURNHAM: Undesignated. He was giving it to us, and so, of course, immediately, we said, "Conrad, we want your name over the door," and there was no resistance - obviously. So that's how that came about.
WALSHOK: I would like to editorialize for the archive because 25 or 30 years from now somebody will be listening to this conversation. Part of the reason the story of the Burnham Institute and its evolution is so important is that early on you were able to build a philanthropic base of support and not be totally reliant on federal funds and the NIH. There are some other research institutes on the Mesa that were slower to get to that point, and some that aren't there yet and are having a lot of financial challenges in terms of sustaining their commitment to basic research. So it is important to understand that how you design an institution and how you build stakeholders - if you really want to forward science, which is what these archives are about - depends a lot on civic leaders. Right? Civic leaders taking an interest and putting some of their assets into the institution if they've got them to share. So it's a very good story, Malin, and I appreciate your willingness to take the time and your candor because I think the Salk Institute is now on a similar road to balancing public and private investment. But there are many others that are still trying to figure it out.
BURNHAM: Well, I think the way at least my mind worked was that our model for scientific support at the Burnham Institute, dollar-wise, was almost totally dependent on the National Institute of Health.
WALSHOK: I know.
BURNHAM: The federal government. The Salk Institute, when they started, they had the March of Dimes Foundation behind them.
WALSHOK: That's right. They had another source.
BURNHAM: Another story. You look at UCSD. They have got many sources of funding that come in, not just from the NIH. But we were principally limited to the NIH. Now, if you'd look at that model historically, we need about 25 percent of the total budget from private sources, because the NIH funding only comes up to about 75 percent. There are certain sorts of overhead that they will not support. They'll give you a grant for basic research, but we have overhead on top of that. So anyway, we knew early on that we had to raise about 25 percent of our annual needs from private sources. So I think that because other institutions had already had other sources, they weren't as quick to look at the private side.
WALSHOK: Right. That's interesting. That's interesting.
BURNHAM: And so that's -
WALSHOK: So you are now very involved with CONNECT. You're very involved with an initiative to create an innovation center or an innovation museum. You got involved with the Kyoto Symposium. I mean you're all over the innovation economy, and in the 20 more minutes that we've got, could you talk about some of those activities and why you got involved? I think in the case of the Kyoto Symposium, you were the champion for that.
BURNHAM: Well -
WALSHOK: What do you think is the return to the community? Why is it important to do those sorts of things?
BURNHAM: There are a lot of answers to that. First of all, I learned early on in life - in business life - that change is inevitable, and from a business standpoint, to survive I needed to recognize change. That taught me to look for what's going on out there, and that taught me that science was one of those things that is going to be more and more important in San Diego because of our health care work and so on. I graduated as an investment engineer, and the best thing that that taught me was how to analyze, how to analyze situations, how to analyze propositions, how to analyze people. That means that I'm thinking about discovery, somehow. For instance, when I was invited to come on the board of the La Jolla Cancer Research Foundation in year six, there were two board members who had come to me and I said, "Look, I don't know anything about cancer. I have no history. I have no emotion. I have nobody in my family who's had cancer. Why are you asking me?" He said, "Well, La Jolla Cancer Research Foundation is all about La Jolla. All the trustees live in La Jolla, the bankers in La Jolla, the attorneys in La Jolla, and we need to broaden the base. And Malin, you've always been a Central Downtown businessperson in the political world," and so on. "You live in Point Loma. You're an outsider, and that's what we need, to broaden the base." So that's how I got started. Serendipity again, you might say, in that regard. So that was one of the reasons that I decided, after getting involved, that I wanted to get out of the business world - retire from the business world earlier in life rather than later in life.
WALSHOK: Okay.
BURNHAM: As I said earlier in this conversation, I learned to deal with change early in my career. I anticipate change as much as I can. I never argue with change. I look at it, and learned early on - popular world now and the innovation world is pivoting. I learned way before that work -
WALSHOK: You learned how to pivot.
BURNHAM: I learned how to pivot, and partly, that had to do with my sailing, my competitive sailboat racing experience, because when you're out there against a fleet of boats - or even one on a one-on-one basis - you gotta tack from time to time. When and where and how? You got to figure that out, right now. And so -
WALSHOK: Good metaphor.
BURNHAM: And so one of the reasons that I enjoyed the medical world - the research world - because it was a challenge, and so -
WALSHOK: So you have been associated with wanting to better brand or position San Diego as a hub of good science and innovation. I mean and you've selected certain kinds of projects that you think are going to be really promising for that.
BURNHAM: Yes. Yes. Well, I - it's kind of a cliché - but I decided early on that I wanted to help make the greater San Diego area a better place to live, work, and play. I've been talking about play, and I've been involved in sports. I helped bring the Olympic Training Center here to San Diego. I was a partner in the ownership of the Padres baseball team. I've been a sailor - competitive all my life - so I've got a lot of interest in sports. But also, just living conditions. I think I've done my share, physically and otherwise, of making this a better community to live in. And then, of course, you have the economics, and it was obvious that early on we had a lot of technical excellence in San Diego. Way before I got involved in it. And I've been one of hundreds that I know that have helped build San Diego into the third largest innovation cluster in the country - behind Silicon Valley and the Boston area - and that means in the world. We have that kind of ability and talent right here, so let's make it bigger. So it's my aim to help do that. Also, as I said earlier, I have the ability to change quickly. I have the ability - immediately, when this conversation ends - to get in a conversation about something entire different in 30 seconds. I don't have to prepare for it. That's just the way I think.
WALSHOK: Your cognitive map allows you to be wide-ranging.
BURNHAM: Yes and I love it, but it also is a little detrimental sometimes because once in a while I realize I'm involved in too many nonprofit organizations. I can't keep up with it. Nobody can. There's a limit to what anybody can do, and I exceed that every once in a while.
WALSHOK: As we finally wind down this three hours-plus that we have spent together, including failed recording equipment, is there anything you wish I had asked you or that you think about, knowing, again, that people are going to listen to this? We're interviewing CEOs of companies about their history as entrepreneurs. Maybe I should ask you, do you invest in science or engineering companies or -?
BURNHAM: I only - no, not per se. I do invest in startups and early-stage companies but almost entirely through venture capitalists because they know the world. I don't -
WALSHOK: Right. So you don't tinker in the business?
BURNHAM: No. No, no, I don't tinker at all. Yes, I've got some very good venture capital investments that I've had for years. I mean the people I deal with have multiple funds, but I let them make the decisions because they -
WALSHOK: Right. So your point of engagement with this world about which we've been talking is as a philanthropist and, occasionally, on the public policy.
BURNHAM: Yes.
WALSHOK: Right? An advocacy front.
BURNHAM: Yes. Yes.
WALSHOK: As you described.
BURNHAM: Right.
WALSHOK: So have I missed anything that -?
BURNHAM: Well, not necessarily, but I like to use my brainpower to think and to get other people engaged. Probably one of my best efforts has been to bring other people into organizations and into the effort to help build things. One person can't do it by themselves. We all know that. So many times, I'm not the leader at all of an effort, though it may have been my idea. If we just sort of stop talking about history here for a moment, and think of the future, what am I interested in? There are still things on my docket that we haven't gotten very much off the ground. For instance, we need a new airport in the San Diego region. At the moment, Irwin Jacobs and I have been thinking, almost in secret, about how our next major airport ought to be at the very southwest corner of Camp Pendleton. Well, there are a lot of challenges with that.
WALSHOK: [Inaudible comment].
BURNHAM: But that would be a tri-county airport.
WALSHOK: Yes.
BURNHAM: San Diego County, Riverside County, and Orange County, but more than that, it would be an international airport. And LAX and SFO - San Francisco - are basically at capacity on international flights. We know, and we discovered this at a briefing I had this week at Cal State San Marcos. They have now done their third research report on our future airport needs and they point out the fact that with the population and economic growth in China and India, their airline needs are growing immensely.
WALSHOK: Air travel.
BURNHAM: And so -
WALSHOK: Yes, it's going way up. Yes.
BURNHAM: So the Pacific is getting more attention than the Atlantic. That means we need at least another hub for international flights, and it could be right here. So we're always going to have Lindbergh Field. Anyway, those are the kind of things I -
WALSHOK: Right.
BURNHAM: Okay. Another thing that I think ought to happen, and people are slow to think about it, is that San Diego Harbor really needs a second entrance. I think we need it, but let's determine that engineering-wise and otherwise.
WALSHOK: Interesting.
BURNHAM: And this is not my idea. It's been on the books for 30 years but nobody does anything about it. So those are a couple of things that I think are important, and I'd like to get some energy behind. So we're working it - I like to work on things like that.
WALSHOK: Yes. Yes.
BURNHAM: So -
WALSHOK: Well, I actually think we've done a wonderful job of capturing a story of an institution but also of a person who has contributed, and I thank you very much for your time.
BURNHAM: Well, I appreciate your interest for the archives.
WALSHOK: Yes, yes, no, it's going to be great.
BURNHAM: Good.
END OF INTERVIEW