Top Stories:
1. NanoString update
Previous articles: PSBJ article & PSBJ article
2. MOD Pizza sells
Eater article
3. Aquarium to open
Seattle Times article
Video
4. Discrimination lawsuit
Geekwire article
5. Costco raising fees
Seattle Times article
About guest co-host Kathy Surace-Smith - former SVP, Human Resources & Legal Affairs, NanoString:
Kathy has over 35 years of experience working in high-growth private and public companies in US and Europe including over 20 yrs working in life sciences industry. She was the board chair for Fred Hutch and now remains a member of the board. She is a member of the UW Medicine advisory board, a trustee of Columbia University and an advisory board member and former co-chair for the Behavioral Health Catalyst – which seeks to improve investments and polices in Washington State’s behavioral health system.
Host Rachel Horgan:
Rachel is an independent event producer, emcee and entrepreneur. She worked for the Business Journal for 5 years as their Director of Events interviewing business leaders on stage before launching the weekly podcast. She earned her communication degree from the University of San Diego.
Contact:
Email: info@theweeklyseattle.com
Instagram: @theweeklyseattle
Website: www.theweeklyseattle.com
I'm Rachel Horgan. Join me each episode as I sit down with a guest co-host covering the latest business stories in the Seattle area. We'll read the news so you don't have to. This is The Weekly. Okay, hey everybody! So if you remember our very first episode, those OG fans of ours, The Weekly, I just made that up. You'll know Alex Halverson. He was a business reporter for the Puget Sound Business Journal at the time. And he just got a job at Seattle Times. So he's a business reporter over at Seattle Times. I wanted to give him a shout out. He was so instrumental in getting this podcast up with his advice and kind of just encouraging me to do this. So shout out to him and I do. I will have him back on November in November. So that'll be fun. How much we share about some behind the scenes. I'm going to have to talk to my legal counsel here on the air and see what I can and can't share. But who I have here today with me is Kathy Sarace Smith. She's a former senior vice president of Human Resources and Legal Affairs for Nanostring Technologies and currently serves on the board of the Fred Hutch Cancer Center. Hello. Hello, Rachel. How are you doing? How are you doing? Good. I'm excited. This is my first podcast ever. So I'm rare to go. Awesome. And we're here back at the World Trade Center Seattle. Shout out to Allison Scott for letting us use this space. Beautiful view, beautiful day today. So we're appreciative of that. We met, I moderated a panel of the women who lead in law, I believe it was. And every time I moderated a panel, I always want my panelists to share your stories and kind of like stuff they shouldn't talk about. And you know who is hard to get people to talk about things they shouldn't? Lawyers. Lawyers. So I remember that panel very specifically because I was like, can you guys share like maybe a little bit more? So we'll see what we can get out of you today. Yeah, it's a professional virtue. I think. Good at your job. Let's do a little bit about you. You have over 35 years of experience working in high growth private and public companies in the US and Europe, including over 20 years working in life sciences specifically. You were the board chair for Fred Hutch and now a current member on the board. You're a member of the UW Medicine Advisory Board and a trustee of Columbia University, as well as an advisory board member and former court co-chair for the behavioral health catalyst, which seeks to improve investments and policies in Washington state's behavioral health system. Does that sound right? That sounds right. And we're going to get a little bit more into what you're currently doing. I know. But when you look at your history in your LinkedIn, you have a long history of working both in the legal system, but also specifically in life sciences. So why are you passionate about that? Yeah, I have, you know, it's now closer to 40 years of experience. Half of that in life sciences, as a lawyer, as an in-house general counsel and other functions as well. But I was drawn to life sciences 20 years ago by the mission by the concept that we can either through medical devices. I was at a company called Sonosite and Bothell, which was acquired by Fujifilm for 10 years and now I'm administering for 11 years, which is a life sciences research company, either through, you know, actually selling and developing medical devices used on patients or through the research, we could save lives. We can improve treatments. And that's such a powerful mission, such a powerful calling to get up every day and work with a team of people to do that. So that's what I became passionate about. And, you know, although I showed up every day as a lawyer and a general counsel, I also got to work with teams across the company and learn the business and, you know, help in various ways. So that's why I'm passionate about law because enabled me to find the things that I think I could focus on that were important to me. I love it. Well, I'm glad you're in the industry. Okay, we've got five stories for you today. One is the NanoString update. I am so excited about this. The next one is mod pizza is selling to some other company, another restaurant group. The third story is that there's a new aquarium here in Seattle. Fourth story is about a discrimination case. And the fifth story is about Costco raising their membership fees. So are you ready to get into it? I'm ready. All right. So I put this in here. It doesn't have an article connected to it. Again, I make the rules. So we have to talk about it. If you remember, we covered this in an earlier episode. It's the week of April 29th with James Falzone. If you want to go back and check it out, it's the first story we talk about. And I'm just going to do a recap for you, but NanoString is a Seattle company and they make high powered high tech imaging and research tools, which I will be calling fancy microscopes because that's how my brain can understand this. So basically, and you can jump in and correct me, but this is what I understand happen is that a San Francisco company called 10x genomics, which we'll call 10x. Sue's NanoString saying, Hey, you're using our ideas to make these fancy microscopes. And then because of that legal battle, they, you know, NanoString couldn't sell their products for a while. The legal fees were insane, and it basically causes NanoString to file for bankruptcy this year. And then essentially has to sell to another company to get out of the bankruptcy. A few curious things about the situation is that 10x, that company has only been around for 10 years, whereas NanoString has been around closer to 20. And 10x generates three times the revenue as NanoString. So like, why are you picking on them? And then the other thing is that 10x is filed lawsuits against three other biotech companies. So when we did this episode with James, we were basically like, it sounds like they're being a bit of a bully. So you're here today, you left in May for NanoString. I did. You were the general counsel. Yes. So what take us to that time? Like, what was going on? What was your specific role? I'm sure you were doing it for years. Yeah, I'm happy to do that. I'm going to caution though, that I will be, I will be conscientious about not straying too far into what's happening now and in the future because I'm not there anymore. Sure. I can talk historically about what's on record and certainly I think everything I will say today has been said publicly either in the media or in court, where those are public filings. So you're right. We are in a field, sort of a fancy microscope, but really called spatial biology and think of it as the GPS for biology. It enables you to see molecular activity and tissue samples. Really important if you were trying to figure out biological pathways for certain diseases or for cancer, if you're trying to come up with drugs that might look, it might be impactful because someone has a particular genetic dysfunction. So very, very important scientific research field today. 10x really has engaged in what we regarded as a weaponization of litigation, suing many of its competitors, refusing to give us licenses so we can continue to operate and pay the morality. Our view at the time was that they were really seeking to put us out of business. They almost did, but they didn't succeed and they had had some success in their litigation. And frankly, two of their wins have been reversed by higher courts in Germany and in the unified patent court in Europe. You're right that the litigation costs tens of millions, but what really made it difficult for nanostring to continue to operate without going into bankruptcy was a $30 million judgment in Delaware court last November. And that was something we just couldn't frankly afford. And the thing about bankruptcy, we went into chapter 11, which allows you to restructure your business so you can continue after you come out of bankruptcy or sell your assets to another company, which is what nanostring did. And it also pauses litigation so it gives you a breather. So you can step back, restructure your business, see if anyone's interested in buying. And it turned out to be actually, although a very expensive step, and we can talk more about bankruptcy as its own sort of industry, it did enable us to get that breather to restructure, to fine buyers. And we were sold to Brooker company and through an auction process run by the court. And I think we all feel really good about the way that ended. The assets of the company are now owned by Brooker. They're continuing to operate nanostring in Seattle. They continue to employ 99% of our employees. Our manufacturing operations are still in Bothell headquarters in Seattle. And it looks to be like it has been a really good fit so far. So customers are thrilled because of some of the injunctions that happened in Europe, they were unable to continue to access our products. But once those injunctions were lifted, in fact, there was news today that the one in Germany has been lifted and we can now sell, nanostring can now sell in Germany, our customers are back in business and that is the best, best news of all. So that's kind of the story from my perspective. Did you say that you offered to pay 10x? If it's your license and we requested a license and they refused. And I know that I believe other competitors being sued also ask for a license. So this was a David versus Goliath kind of battle and it was unfortunately we came out, unfortunately it came out on the losing end. At the time things hide seems to be turning and obviously Brooker now has acquired as the litigation in addition to the assets but they have deeper pockets and can help continue to fund that fight. And so I'm hoping to see the 30 million dollar judgment in Delaware hoping to see that overturned those, my understanding when I left was we were still waiting on continuing motions with the Delaware court to ask them to invalidate the jury decision in that case. So we'll see what happens there. Yeah. So you mentioned Brooker came in and bought you and then I saw on these articles almost immediately the CEO and CFO from the articles that sounds like they were fired and we were just talking a little bit about like oftentimes when a company acquires another company they already have a CFO so they don't want your CFO. So was that pretty expected? Was that kind of surprising? What was that like? Yeah, there was a small group of executives myself included who we knew that we were not going to continue on that our functions were as you say there were already those functions existing at Brooker and so you know the decision was made to leave. There were no positions for us there anymore. So that's very common and understandable because the new company really wants to install its own management and perhaps have a different way of running the company. Yeah and if you're already a CFO they'd want well you can be a senior director or something you know you're not going to take a lower level position. Exactly and we you know the group of people that worked with us there that remained were just stellar so they are stepping up. I had a successor in the legal department who has stepped up doing a magnificent job so it wasn't like there were too many holes left. So you left in May and I have to ask is there anything that you can share now that you're not working for them maybe something that was left out of the news articles or the way the story was told that you want to kind of correct? Yeah I mean I think in reflecting just my own personal reflections there are probably two things. I think one is we got through it because we hung together as a team because we were resilient and had a lot of grit and that stopped just the management team dealing with the litigation, the bankruptcy. It's the entire company had our backs and that was so important and I was thankful for that. It's a great group of people and secondly you know it really makes you humble. We had been doing well. We are a 20 year old company. We were in public in 2013. We had been in public for 10 years. One point our stock was up to $60. I mean you have those high flying times and you realize how quickly things can change and I think that rate really humbles you and makes you understand that you know you can't always expect things to go up sometimes they go down. But you take the blows as they come you manage them as best you can and I think we ended up in a good outcome and an outcome where all the company's debts will be paid as I understand that process which is still continuing in bankruptcy court. You know shareholders are the ones that lose out in these situations and you know there could be a small payoff for shareholders but we won't know until the bankruptcy process is finished. Yeah Kathy you have such a better attitude about this than I do. I'm just like still mad at them because there's this like amazing company in Seattle and they just took them down. I know. I know well I've had you know they first sued us and I believe it's 20-21 so I've had a lot of years to subsume the anger put it into productivity and move on but yes it isn't it wasn't it still is an infuriating situation and it speaks to some of the foibles and weaknesses of our patent system which we can talk about but some of those patents never should have been issued they were over brought or they were not properly in accordance with the guidelines for patents so so there are some times where the patent office doesn't get it right. Yeah okay so speaking of patents I wanted to get your opinion on this for our last episode we were talking about the you know owning an idea and in terms of the arts you know if you own a choreograph move or a piece of music is that really helpful for the arts community as a whole if only one person has it so I'm curious your thoughts on you know patents in the life sciences realm in general. Do you think it's a good idea that 10x can just own this one way of making these fancy microscopes and you can't or what? Yeah it's interesting because when you get a patent you get a patent on a specific invention and the patent application actually has to you have to show that not only did you invent something you reduced it to practice you can actually make what you invented so you can't patent an idea you patent a very specific method okay so there are various methods of doing spatial biology they got some very broad patents and they also went out and bought patents or licensed patents from other companies or acquired them by buying the companies and then made changes to those patents and used them to sue all these companies that is what is really sort of disturbing here that they specifically targeted let's let's get these patents let's study our competitors products get these patents and try to cover their products now they didn't do a great job because we've been able to you know succeed in Europe and hopefully in the US as well in overturning these judgments but there was a pattern of targeting competitors our view is let's compete on the merits let's give scientist options it's better for them to have different spatial biology solutions they can choose from let's not try to knock your smaller competitors out of the market and then dominate that market so one thing that is I will add to these litigation is that nanostring has a counterclaim in one of the litigations in the US and a trial coming up in the fall that is an antitrust claim about their monopolistic behavior yeah so we'll see where that goes with the court the court allowed us to bring that into the litigation and it'll be litigated and we'll see what the decision is in again another Delaware federal court same judge as the last case and that is going to be interesting but we felt so strongly and I know others in this mess feel that same way and many of our customers felt that way and actually issued a letter saying you know this is not the way to do it this is not the way to limit scientist option is not the way we want to see things develop in this market I agree and I'm glad you guys are taking action I didn't know that part so that's awesome so why did you it sounds like you're saying you left because there just wasn't really a place for you yeah yeah and and I've been there 11 years and I you know our CS CEO had been there 14 years so for me it was actually a good transition point yeah and see what after being a general counsel being a lawyer for almost 40 years what's next what do I what do I do next what is next what I don't know it's only been two and a half months I have taken the time I promised myself some time off to enjoy the glorious Seattle summer I have been traveling and I'm back to enjoy the summer and you know in the fall I'll start to have those conversations start to think about it I don't know what I do know is I want to work with people that I enjoy I want to work on something that is really important and mission has a mission associated with it those are non-negotiables the rest is you know I'm open to it whatever comes yeah things that come along I'm very I'm not excluding anything at this point I love it yeah we'll keep an eye on definitely you've earned your time off so so definitely enjoy it thank you I know we spent a lot of time on this one so we're gonna go a little bit faster on these other ones but I'm saying thank you so much for sharing your insights on that I've been dying to know okay so our next story is mod pizza cells in the wake of bankruptcy rumors so basically just days after mod pizza is qualified or allowed to file for bankruptcy a California company comes in and purchases it if you're not familiar mod was actually founded in Seattle by a husband and wife Scott and Ali Spencer in 2008 and then they grew to 500 location chain they were really successful things are going well in fact they were doing so well that they got a hundred sixty million dollar investment from private equity drink every time we talk about private equity just kidding so they expand their location that's the goal was to expand to almost a thousand locations and they're preparing to go public in 2021 so they're even with the pandemic they're thinking things are going well but then Scott the CEO steps down in January store start closing and then this bankruptcy and then they elite restaurant group California company buys it so I couldn't quite figure out what exactly the reason was for them going up and then down I know the article sites that possibly a big part of their experience was dying in experience big part of why they're successful is their experience for dining in people maybe aren't doing that as much I don't know we can speculate but what I want to know from you is you know obviously you've dealt with bankruptcies but how bad does it have to be for a company to file for bankruptcy and what are the requirements I mean how bad did it have to be it was final occasions I feel like it was just closed some but so another example of a great company that was flying high and then as we men talk before the world changes on a dime and I think for them it was a combination of higher labor costs probably and there has been a decrease in people dining out but I know my pizza well went there tons when my kids were younger actually I was there a few weeks ago in the Bellevue location and I give them kudos for building you know they're one of the first to build fast casual dining where you can customize you know the chipotle's of the world and the sweet greens my pizza was there early and they found a market niche so kudos to the Svensens for building that business and I sympathize with them your question at you know it's basically when you can no longer pay your debts when you're in solid to your your debts exceed your assets even if you can say bankruptcy take out a loan or defer some payment you can if someone's willing to lend to you that's the that's the problem there are people come in and look at your business and they'll say I'm sorry this is too risky yeah so yes I'm sure they looked at all the options everyone does now the string did as well people do still regard bankruptcy as a lot the last straw the last step in a process of trying to keep the company going it's never the first but not knowing the details I mean they were able to avoid bankruptcy which I mentioned is a very expensive process and get bought and hopefully the new buyer will be able to keep it going sounds like they've closed a lot of locations in recent months but I wish them all the luck because it's a great company and the other thing they also have another part of their mission was hiring young people who you know may not be traditional education traditionally educated may have had some issues growing up and trying to help them turn around their lives so I always admired that I thought that was a fantastic way to bring those kids into the market and give them jobs so one other question on this I know some people listening own their own company they're building up their own company with goals of selling it and getting acquired at some point what are some things when you're looking at those contracts in those conversations that you think business owners should look out for or maybe there's some things that you should absolutely have in that acquisition conversation what have you seen yeah I mean the agreements are pretty standardized to some extent the lawyers will spend a lot of time on representation so the company being sold will make a series of representations it can be as many as 40 different representations about different aspects of the company you spend a lot of time making sure what you're saying is accurate because if they're not accurate and you find out later they're not accurate you could end up in a lawsuit price obviously is the biggest one yeah but you know it's usually it's a lot of cultural issues like are you aligned on the vision what you know or the thesis for the acquisition why is this buyer buying this company where does this company fit in their vision of going forward or what are they going to do with the company how employees going to be treated which employees going to be retained what do you do with your executive team so there's beyond the agreement itself there's a number of issues outside the agreement that drive a lot of how M&A is done yeah I know we were talking about the Bartels right-aid buying Bartels and we talked about a couple episodes and kind of citing cultural differences yeah it's a huge part of it I agree yeah okay our next story enough bankruptcy let's talk about a fun happy thing which is the new aquarium and we're actually sort of close to it but the new aquarium is opening August 29th they just announced their date it was after a 160 million dollar expansion and it's going to be the region's largest tropical reef ecosystem with sharks and rays and more it's part of the massive waterfront redevelopment we've been talking about here when they tore down the viaduct and they're redoing it all and the rooftop will be a public park that that's what I got from the article I don't have a lot to say this just I think that it's important for people to know that this is happening it created a lot of jobs it's going to be great for tourism I'm excited for the park and getting people down to the waterfront downtown what are your thoughts I'm super excited I love aquariums my husband and I are boaters recreational boaters so when we're out in the San Juan's or anywhere in the future town and we see orcas or we see other wildlife it's such a thrill I mean we're so grateful to live in a place so beautiful so I'm super excited I did read the article and I and there was a video on there which I thought was great everyone should see that video it is a beautiful beautiful building and what I really loved is they actually have the aquarium faces out to the public so anybody can walk by and see this new new exhibit and actually see the fish without going inside and paying for it so there's a public and I thought that is brilliant bringing the museum out and maybe that brings people in right so kudos to whoever designed it and I'm super excited to go and see it yeah but you've got that not don't have a nine to five job glow of the aquariums coming everything is great I know that feeling yeah okay so our next one is the discrimination lawsuit so sorry you know we're going back down the former chief product officer at mozzilla is suing them for discrimination after taking medical leave for cancer treatment he was a former Microsoft Facebook and Twitter executive in the Seattle area he joined mozzilla in 2022 with the understanding that he would be the next CEO he proceeds to get high marks they open up a Seattle area office things seem to be going well but a year later he's diagnosed with cancer and he takes a three month medical leave and then he comes back but while he was on medical leave they assigned a different CEO that current CEO steps down and they assigned a different one which I think is interesting and then when he does come back they demote him and they say if you don't want to take this lower level position then we'll have to talk about a severance package there's a little bit more in that article about other things that happen but that's kind of the gist so as legal counsel do you think he has a case based on just because it's gonna be a lawyer's answer but you know having worked in companies and seen all kinds of claims I've not litigated a discrimination claim case like this but there's always two sides to every story I mean on these facts alone you know it sounds like a very sad situation and a troublesome situation but I'm I have to believe the company has a different view and a jury will decide this yeah I will say as former chair of the Fred Hudson Cancer Center and as a current member of the board you know there are increasingly more and more people surviving cancer and I was so glad to see that this person had survived and he's doing well and they will continue to have challenges and workplaces have to be prepared to deal with challenges because often the side effects of treatment are pretty serious so it's it's a new another challenge for HR professionals and it has lawyers but it's one that we should take on and and manage just like we manage all all the other individual issues that come up with employees employees are humans and everyone has different needs and different you know potentially different problems that do come into the workplace so it'll be interesting to see they may decide to settle it often these cases do settle but it's hard for me to have an opinion one way or the other from whether he actually has a case or not yeah that makes sense it does kind of bring up for me what's the burden of proving discrimination so like were you fired because you're gay or were you about at your job were you fired because you had cancer or were you not a good fit and had a bad attitude like you know like we don't know so how do you look at those cases is it just a lot of documentation that you were good at your job but then on top of that let's say you were really good at your job you had all these documentations of high marks but it's an at will state so couldn't you be fired just because they don't like your attitude you know can they fire you? Yeah it's an at will state you can be fired for any reason but there is this theory of illegal unlawful termination and so you still have to be careful not to unlawfully terminate somebody so it's complicated but I will say that HR professionals typically will insist and coach people to document document document poor behavior poor poor performance without that a company is is exposed to legal liability if they if they terminate somebody and they also you know often a company will settle and because there's no documentation so it depends if you're you know often people like this you know they you know will will be terminated for poor performance although they'll just be terminate their jobs will be you know disappear and they'll be giving severance so there are different ways that companies sometimes deal with these issues yeah okay our last story is Costco is raising their annual membership fee for the first time since 2017 so just about seven years and that goes into effect September 1st if you're a Costco member listening and as a reminder Costco is is a quad based so that's why we bring it into the fold today it's raising it from $60 to 65 for for memberships and then for the executive membership it's going from 120 to 130 so raising at $5 for most and then $10 for that executive membership I was able to call my mom today she works at Costco in the membership department for 20 years and retired from there so I called her and if she approves of me playing a recording of the conversation I'll play it now I think people love Costco and they will continue to shop at Costco but not only that members have discounts in the warehouse but they also have several discounts outside the warehouse as in services offered so you know I think they'll still save money that's that's my mom's take on it um do you do you have thoughts on this I agree with your mom yeah completely you know it's interesting I came across an article I was published a couple weeks ago that where there was a survey of Washingtonians they were asked what did they think of different big companies in the state and Costco had a 90 percent approval rating so I don't think anybody's giving up their membership for a five dollar differential um I am into Costco in a couple of years because um of work and because weekends are very busy in the Costco's near me so now that I don't have a 95 job I joke that I'm going to be one of those people who shows up at the 10 in the morning spends a couple hours of Costco tasting everything so I've got that on my bucket list for the next couple months I'm going to show up at Costco and just I'm gonna be there see what it's like at 10 in the morning I'm having never on a weekday I've never been there 10 o'clock on a weekday I feel like I'm gonna go in there and you're gonna be wearing like a Kirkland hat a Kirkland sweatshirt and you're just gonna be like hey Susie hey I'm like oh there's that Kathy girl again um cool yeah what else do I have on here yeah I think they're gonna probably wait more years before they increase I think I don't think they'll keep doing so yeah I think the live read the last increase is 2017 so that's a good amount of time that's seven years yeah um one other question so this is Costco but I've also I got an email today about peacock raising their rates from $5.99 to $7.99 obviously Hulu has been raising their rates and I think Amazon Prime's talking about raising their rates or they did if you were on a board of one of these companies that's talking about raising their membership rates what kind of questions would you be asking in this room I think why is the obvious question and I would expect the team to come in with a financial analysis and a customer analysis and a market analysis I mean these things are not done lightly especially streaming services because people drop streaming services all the time and then they they re-up for a month because they want to watch a particular show and then they drop it again so I think there's a lot of price sensitivity around those particularly if someone's subscribing to three or four or five of them I I'm assuming this is a conversation that is had in the boardroom before this happens and there is a rationale but what if the answer is just like we want more money you know do you feel like that's probably happening in some of that I think that probably is not I think there's probably justifications because you don't want to drive customers away you want to keep them so I think there's a delicate balance there yeah I know because I think I would pay two dollars more but if it's a 30 dollar increase you know right I don't think there yeah there's a lot of sensitivity because streaming services always talk about how many customers they have it's a metric they're judged on so I think that they are sensitive to fluctuations in that did you ever watch the movie past documentary on Netflix which one movie past no so basically you can pay I don't remember what it was but a pretty low amount and you can go to as many movies as you want in any theater and it wasn't financially making any sense right but they already started at such a low price that in order to rectify it like they were losing people because they were well we're used to paying 20 dollars you know we don't want to pay a hundred or whatever it was so you can kind of get yourself into a bad situation if you start too low exactly just to get members in exactly and then you how do you sustain that right right yeah right well cool well this went so fast um I want to give you a chance is there anything that you want the audience to know any advice for them anything you want to plug you know I I've been spending a lot of time just thinking about the politics of our country right now and it's it's a tough time um I think in so many ways so I I think I've been guilty of of perhaps strong rhetoric um regarding certain candidates in the race and I just you know I've had a chance to step back and think about that a little bit about how we're talking about each other and to or to each other or not to each other and wanting to sort of step back and try to understand more about how people are thinking about why they support one candidate versus the other in a way that I I will confess I did not have time or energy to do before so I think as we head toward the next few months which are going to be tough months I think for many reasons um I would just say let's all try to tone down the rhetoric and and be a little more empathetic for each other and just hope for the best in November whatever the best is for you uh and and yeah and hopeful the aftermath of the election is also a peaceful transition um and I think that's the main thought I would leave readers with today oh listeners not readers listeners or the readers well thank you so much Kathy for being here and thank you again to the World Trade Center this has been really fun yes this has been great thank you Rachel this has been The Weekly with Production Assistance from Nick Patreon if you liked what you heard rate us and write a review on Apple podcast or Spotify we love listener feedback so if you have any story suggestions comments or complaints email us at info@theweeklyseattle.com make sure to check back next Sunday for the latest local business news we'll see you next time
Top Stories:
1. NanoString update
2. MOD Pizza sells
3. Aquarium to open
4. Discrimination lawsuit
5. Costco raising fees
About guest co-host Kathy Surace-Smith - former SVP, Human Resources & Legal Affairs, NanoString:
Kathy has over 35 years of experience working in high-growth private and public companies in US and Europe including over 20 yrs working in life sciences industry. She was the board chair for Fred Hutch and now remains a member of the board. She is a member of the UW Medicine advisory board, a trustee of Columbia University and an advisory board member and former co-chair for the Behavioral Health Catalyst – which seeks to improve investments and polices in Washington State’s behavioral health system.
Host Rachel Horgan:
Rachel is an independent event producer, emcee and entrepreneur. She worked for the Business Journal for 5 years as their Director of Events interviewing business leaders on stage before launching the weekly podcast. She earned her communication degree from the University of San Diego.
Contact:
Email: info@theweeklyseattle.com
Instagram: @theweeklyseattle
Website: www.theweeklyseattle.com
