Whitehead Institute celebrates contributions of three distinguished Board members

As part of the Whitehead Institute Board of Directors’ strategy for continuing renewal, three highly regarded Board members will leave those roles this July. Each has made significant contributions to the organization’s ongoing capacity to conduct cutting-edge biomedical research and to train future scientific leaders.

Susan Hockfield

The year 2020 was a dynamic one for Whitehead Institute governance: Ruth Lehmann became director and president; Sarah Keohane Williamson became chair of the Board; and President Emerita of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Susan Hockfield joined the Board, giving Whitehead Institute the benefit of her vast experience as a researcher, educator, and university leader. She brought to that role a clear understanding of Whitehead Institute’s mission and capacities; and an extraordinary commitment to biological discovery and translation, rooted in her deep scientific knowledge and technical expertise.

Hockfield’s direct contributions to Whitehead Institute actually began in 2019, when she chaired the search committee that selected Lehmann as the new director. During her Board tenure, she served on the Leadership Advisory Committee and chaired the Nominating Committee — where she helped recruit three respected business leaders to the Board: philanthropist, investor, and biotech founder Michael Chambers; Terry McGuire, a leader of early-stage investing in medical and information technology companies; and investment firm executive Raja Bobbili.

Though she has had opportunities to engage with myriad scientific and academic organizations, Hockfield felt a particular affinity with Whitehead Institute. “Whitehead gathers a small set of outstanding biologists to work in a culture that fosters collaboration and scientific excellence. At the same, it is closely linked to the broad array of scientific, engineering, and humanistic expertise of MIT,” she explains. “That environment reflects the organization’s founding purpose — advancing biological research to improve human health — and has empowered Whitehead Members to make pioneering discoveries in multiple fields.”

Although Hockfield has contributed to Whitehead Institute’s growth and development in many ways, she feels most proud of her role leading the 2019 director search. “Ruth Lehmann is a brilliant developmental and cellular biologist and a great leader of scientists,” Hockfield observes. “In addition, having launched her career in the 1980’s at Whitehead and MIT’s biology department, she already understood the Whitehead culture and had been colleagues with several current Members.

“The excitement that greeted Ruth’s return was a particularly rewarding conclusion to the search,” Hockfield recalls. “And since then, she has guided Whitehead Institute in directions that will take it — and science at large — into avenues of biological research that will transform medicine.”    

Philip Sharp

A Board member since 2005, Sharp is a luminary of biomedical research: An Institute Professor and Professor of Biology Emeritus at MIT, he received both the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and the U.S. National Medal of Science; and he has founded several highly successful biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies.

“I first agreed to join the Board because Whitehead Institute had long demonstrated a commitment to excellence and innovation in its faculty’s research and to training the next generation of scientists,” Sharp recalls. “In 2005, that commitment had — among many other achievements — helped to drive the human genome project, which has provided foundational knowledge in myriad areas of biological research.

“I wanted to help ensure Whitehead’s continuing ability to push biology forward in exciting and meaningful ways,” he says. And, in the course of his 19 years on the Board, his contributions were multifarious: He chaired the Leadership Advisory, Nominating, and Compensation committees. He provided wise counsel to both researchers and administrators. He also served on the committee that selected Lehmann as director.

Sharp himself is most proud of two informal roles he’s filled. The first: “I’ve contributed to sustaining and strengthening the bridge between MIT and Whitehead, which has proven to be a mutually beneficial connection. Just one example: Whitehead scientists have excelled in the creation of disease models in mice — which has been very important for understanding cancer and genetic diseases — and MIT has done an extraordinary job of leveraging and amplifying those advances.”

The second: his role in establishing the endowed David Baltimore Chair in Biomedical Research at Whitehead Institute. “This is the single effort I am most proud of,” Sharp observes. “On the personal side, I have enormous respect for David Baltimore and am grateful for the impact he had on my career and the careers of many colleagues. On the institutional side, the Chair’s endowment fund will perpetually enable Whitehead researchers to explore new, boundary-crossing ideas that can lead to important discoveries. I believe that, long-term, the Baltimore Chair will have a transformational impact.

Indeed, Sharp is as enthusiastic as ever about the future for Whitehead Institute and biomedical research more broadly. “This is an extraordinary time in biomedical research, with many opportunities being created at the intersection of novel genomic approaches and new technologies that enhance our understanding of cellular structure and function. I’m especially excited about Whitehead’s growing capacity to apply data science and artificial intelligence to foundational biological research.”

Mark Lapman

Since 2008, the Board has benefited from the deep acumen Lapman gained during a highly successful 44-year career providing investment management and guidance — first to corporate and public organizations and foundations, then to individuals and families. During his 16 years on the Board, he has served on the Audit and Risk, Development, Finance, and Investment committees, and chaired the Compensation Committee.

But his engagement with Whitehead has always been motivated by his desire to help advance its pioneering science. “From the outset, I was taken with the variety of exploration taking place and the breadth of interest in biology and biomedicine. Whitehead’s researchers are not constrained by any singular focus — except the pursuit of excellence and innovation,” Lapman says. “I was also struck by how much talent has been brought together in a relatively small organization. And in the years since, I’ve continued to be amazed by the faculty’s ability to create new knowledge and develop important scientific tools.”

He also continues to be both intrigued and impressed by the Whitehead culture. “I immediately felt the sense of collegiality, collaboration, and mutual support was palpable,” he recalls. “And this is still the case today: There’s a certain warmth in the building, a sense of community in which individuals demonstrate the mixture of hard work, curiosity, ambition, and hope that drives the best researchers.

“It’s often difficult to find that kind of environment in larger academic and business institutions,” Lapman suggests. “That’s one of the reasons I prize Whitehead.”

In considering his accomplishments as a Board member, Lapman points first to his work to continue strengthening Whitehead’s finance-related strategies. “As Development Committee Chair I helped expand and enhance the fundraising team and pushed for them to build the donor pipeline in a concerted way. And with the Audit and Risk Committee, I’ve successfully advocated for continuing enhancement of the organization’s cybersecurity.”

But Lapman is most proud of his work on the Investment Committee, on which he’s served throughout his Board tenure. “My self-assigned role has been to contribute ‘contrarian inputs’,” he explains. “For example, I’ve advocated for less ‘alternative’ investment and have consistently argued for more use of index funds and much less active investment management.

“Overall, it’s a great committee filled with fantastic people, and it’s been very rewarding. In fact, that’s exactly how I’d sum up my whole experience at Whitehead Institute.”