The CEO Roundtable on Cancer Inc. honored Jean Becker, Ken Lee and Phil Porter, three leaders dedicated to cancer prevention and to speeding cancer research, with the 2018 Dr. Charles A. Sanders Life Sciences Award in recognition of their extraordinary collaboration with the CEO Roundtable on Cancer’s Life Sciences Consortium and its Project Data Sphere, LLC.
Jean Becker has served as Chief of Staff to the founder of the CEO Roundtable on Cancer, 41st President George H. W. Bush, since 1994, supervising his offices in both Houston and Kennebunkport, Maine, and overseeing the opening of the George Bush Presidential Library Center in 1997. Previously, Ms. Becker served as deputy press secretary to first lady Barbara Bush from 1989 to 1992 and helped the late Mrs. Bush with the editing and research for her books, Barbara Bush, A Memoir and Reflections. A former journalist with USA Today, she serves on the boards of Points of Light, The George Bush Library Foundation, and the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, and is an ad hoc member of the advisory boards of The George Bush Presidential Library and The George Bush School of Government and Public Service. Ms. Becker also served for 10 years on the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.
“In addition to serving as a bedrock for both Barbara and me during and after our time in the White House, Jean’s devotion to the CEO Roundtable on Cancer has propelled the organization forward. We would not be where we are today without her,” said President Bush.
Ken Lee is pro bono Chief Financial Officer of the CEO Roundtable on Cancer and Project Data Sphere. He has over 35 years of experience counseling management teams, boards of directors and investors of technology-based companies worldwide. He is General Partner of Hatteras Venture Partners, LLC, a venture capital fund focusing on life science companies, which he joined in 2003, and is on the board of directors of several biotech companies. Previously, he spent 29 years with Ernst & Young, where he was Managing Director of the firm’s health sciences corporate finance group. Mr. Lee received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Lenoir-Rhyne College and an MBA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“Ken’s forward-thinking and sage advice have enabled the CEO Roundtable on Cancer to attract financial resources and support our growth through a start-up phase, into an organization that is delivering on the vision outlined by President Bush to attack cancer with initiatives that are ‘bold and venturesome,’” said Chris Viehbacher, former CEO Roundtable on CancerChairman.
Phil Porter is pro bono Special Counsel to the CEO Roundtable on Cancer and Project Data Sphere, and is Senior Counsel at Hogan Lovells US LLP, a leading global legal practice, where he was a partner. Over a distinguished legal career, Mr. Porter was at the vanguard of software license deals in the early 1980s, when most people had only a vague idea about computers and no clue about software. A few years later, he was negotiating ownership of inventions made during clinical trials at a time when contracts did not address ownership. In the early days of the World Wide Web, Mr. Porter was writing website development agreements and auditing client websites for compliance with rapidly developing laws.
“Phil has been a vital counselor and senior advisor to the CEO Roundtable on Cancer and its Project Data Sphere independent subsidiary as the board identified our strategic goals and the important intellectual property and legal infrastructure work that needed to be established to advance our work on behalf of all cancer patients,” said Robert A. Bradway, Chairman of the Board of the CEO Roundtable on Cancer
“Cancer research calls upon us to marshal every resource: scientific, financial and political, and the leadership of Jean, Ken and Phil has enabled the CEO Roundtable on Cancer to identify and implement initiatives like The CEO Cancer Gold Standard and Project Data Sphere, which powerfully impact the prevention and treatment of cancer,” said Martin J. Murphy, chief executive officer of the CEO Roundtable on Cancer.
“The Charlie” award was created in honor of Dr. Charles A. Sanders, former chairman and CEO of Glaxo Wellcome, who previously served as the Chairman of Project HOPE, Chairman of the Foundation for the NIH, and director general of Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Sanders has been a driving force behind the innovation leading to improved drug development and has helped chart the course for health education and medical research in the United States and around the globe.
The Project Data Sphere® cancer research platform (www.ProjectDataSphere.org) was launched April 2014 as an independent initiative of the CEO Roundtable on Cancer, Inc.’s Life Sciences Consortium. The Project Data Sphere cancer research platform contains 183 cancer clinical trial datasets representing more than 141,000 patient lives that are freely available to the world’s researchers. Data from the Project Data Sphere platform has generated 18 peer-accepted manuscripts in high-profile journals, with additional publications on press and in progress. The analytical and data visualization tools donated by SAS freely embedded in the Project Data Sphere platform further facilitate these analyses, making the Project Data Sphere platform a digital library-laboratory.