In May, the BioKansas Board of Directors announced Dennis Ridenour as the organization’s new president and chief executive officer.
With more than 13 years of experience at some of the most prestigious research organizations, most recently at Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City, Mo., Dennis brought an abundance of scientific and business knowledge to BioKansas.
Now, with almost five months under his belt, we reached out to Dennis to get his impression of his first few months and asked him to share his focus and vision for the organization.
What is your vision for the organization?
These first months have been integral in helping me see the importance of all three pillars of our mission: to connect, educate and advocate. I will have a strong focus on connecting the dots within the industry in the state, and providing resources, connections, and mentorship to companies at every stage of the life cycle: from startup to growth to maturity. We will also continue to support the industry by raising awareness of STEM careers and opportunities among high school and college students, and by providing programming and forums for member companies for the professional development of their employees. Finally, moving forward, BioKansas will be much more proactive in engaging the legislature, educating the public and advocating for those measures that are supportive of the industry and our members.
What are your long term goals?
My job for a time will be maximizing the value that organizations get for their membership, and begin to integrate my ideas for additional programming and events that could provide additional value and opportunities for our members. A natural result of providing maximal value for our members will be the continued growth of BioKansas and its impact on the state.
How do you envision growing the organization?
I really want to highlight the value we deliver for member companies, value which can be both tangible and intangible. Many in the industry, and even many of our members, are unaware that BioKansas has discounted purchasing agreements in place with a number of national vendors, including FedEx, Office Depot, VWR, just to name a few. Members have access to these discounted rates, and often, enhanced customer service, at no cost as a benefit of their BioKansas membership. But this is just a small facet of the value companies get from their BioKansas membership. There’s also our efforts in building awareness of the life sciences at the middle school and high school levels, as well as our support of colleges and universities in the state. We’ve been the primary voice of the industry at the state level for several years, and we’re very effective at providing programming that brings together people and companies from all corners of the state and from all different fields within the industry. I plan to grow awareness of how effective we are at these functions, and leverage that into a bigger reach throughout the state and a bigger impact on the industry here in Kansas.
What are your greatest challenges?
As is common for small organizations, I think the biggest challenges so far have been the limited resources available for the organization, particularly when it comes to personnel and funding. The organization consists of me and 2 part time employees. They’ve been integral in helping me to hit the ground running, but we could always use more help. I plan on taking a very personal approach with our membership. I’m hoping to meet with each of our members here in the first few months, and would like to continue to meet with each member annually. With more than 125 members, that’s a tall task, but one that I think is important so we don’t lose sight why we exist.
And obviously, the funding situation could always be better. There’s so much to do and just not enough people and funding to do them all, which does have a direct impact on programming. I’m using the meetings with members to identify which events and offerings provide the most value. But companies engage with BioKansas for different reasons and for different programming, so it’s been challenging to find a consensus.
What ideas do you have for increasing membership?
I’d like to broaden the definition of what we consider a life science company, addressing fields that have been traditionally underrepresented in BioKansas membership. Also, I’d like to get more involved with the early stage and start up community. I think Kansas City has a very strong ecosystem for entrepreneurship, and, through our discounted purchasing programs, we can provide significant tangible value for the cost of a membership of a smaller company.
Related to this, I’d also like to find ways to get more engaged with incubators in the state. We have many incubators already in our membership, but I’m trying to develop a new blanket type of membership that would cover all the companies within an incubator at one rate only charged to the incubator. The incubator could use access to the discounted purchasing programs and the savings for companies as a marketing tool for attracting new tenants, and it would allow us to reach a larger number of companies within the industry.