Adam Torres and Ala Santos discuss Octane’s Medical Innovation Forum.
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Show Notes:
Listen to Octane’s Medical Innovation Forum coverage. In this episode, Adam Torres interviews Ala Santos, CEO & Board Member at Polonium Foundation, explore Octane’s Medical Innovation Forum.
Watch Full Interview:
About Ala Santos
Ala Santos is an accomplished healthcare innovation leader with nearly two decades of product developemnt and strategy advisory experience spanning cancer, cardiomyopathies and infectious diseases research. She operates on the interface of science, entrepreneurship and business; practicing compassionate leadership across academic, startup, VCs and Fortune 100 environments.
About Polonium Foundation
Polonium Foundation is an independent non-profit NGO. They are turning Polish brain drain into brain circulation by unlocking the potential of Polish research diaspora. The founders of the Polonium Foundation, spent the past few years organizing the Science: Polish Perspectives (SPP) Conference: an annual popular-science event where outstanding young Polish students and scientists showcase their research. The enormous potential of the community that has grown around those meetings is evident.
They are connecting Polish researchers of all disciplines, working in academia and industry, all around the world. And creating a community that fosters collaboration, exchange of ideas, sharing of knowledge. They believe that by doing so, we can turn Poland’s brain drain into brain circulation.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest on the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today I’m in Irvine, California at the Medical Innovation Forum, powered by Octane, and my guest today is Ala Santos.
Ala, welcome to the show. Hi Adam, great to be here. All right, so you thought you were going to get away from me. I know I saw you at the cardiovascular forum by Octane as well, and I finally got you on the show, so thank you for coming on. This is exciting, I’m very glad to be here. All right, so what brings you here today, what brings you to the forum?
For me, this is great networking venue. This is a place to meet awesome people and also great innovation. And new companies get a little bit of a headstart and knowledge of what’s happening in the medtech. What’s been one of your favorite parts of the conference so far? I do love the pitches of the Octane Portfolio companies, which you’re making me miss right now for recording of this interview.
You’re welcome. But you, come on, you’d rather be with me or with, no, I’m just going, well, well, well, no, let’s see where the conversation goes. But the interviews with you is also, I guess, fun. So it’s, so other than the interview with me, what’s one of your favorite parts of the conference just in general? So, as I mentioned, like the pitches are great.
Of the Octane portfolio companies. I do like panels as well. I love the discussions mostly for exposing really good, thoughtful and insightful people that you can then, and this very casual environment of the Octane conference meet at the networking after the speaker part, the sessions are ended, the networking that’s going to happen.
After the end of the day, that’s going to be the chance to talk to all those folks and follow up with the questions too. Now, I know I met you at the last Octane event. Have you come to a bunch of Octane events in the past? Because this is only my second one, so I feel like I’m kind of a newbie, but I always get a lot of value.
It’s so amazing, the people I meet. Huh. It’s also my second event. Oh, so we’re tied. Okay. Pretty much. I was introduced to Octane through Bill Corpoo, who is the CEO of it. And he invited me to the cardiovascular and I’m like, Oh, wow. Okay. I was really starstruck at the cardiovascular forum. And I realized, you know, this is not only for Long Beach or this is entire Orange County, but entire Southern California.
That’s the Where the environment of innovators is happening. So it’s one of those hubs. Now is your, are you out of California? Out of your No, I live in California currently, but I’m pretty new. We moved in here a little bit over a year ago. So oscillating between San Diego and LA. And this is the hotspot for it.
Talk a little bit more about your work and what you do. Okay. So I have kind of like two versions of me. One is Only two? Go ahead. I have more. I have more, but Maybe more, but two main ones. I’m interviewing you. One day you interview me. Go ahead. Yeah. So the one that you’ll probably find on my LinkedIn profile is that I’m the CEO of Polonium Foundation, which is the nonprofit that’s connecting the scientific diaspora, those experts, expats.
So people that are Technically a brain drain to their home country. And then they come in and are brain gain to the U S or other countries that, you know, receive a whole bunch of talent because of the environment that they have research and innovation. But then we are turning the brain drain and to bring circulation.
And that benefits also the country that receives the brain gain with internationalization of companies, ideas. Academic efforts. All of that is much better when it’s exchange and collaborative. And so how are you helping the expats and how are you helping the companies? How are you bridging that gap? So I didn’t tell you about my second We’ll get into that one.
First, I want to know the first one though. Let’s get into that one first. First, then we’ll get into the second. Okay. It is going to be kind of relevant, you know, by training, I’m a scientist, biochemist, molecular, molecular biologist as well. PhD trained. I actually came here to this country to get my education for a PhD program at the university of Chicago.
Then I worked. At a fortune 100 company for quite a bit. I was also engaged in venture capital and multiple startups and consulting and advising role, which I’m doing until now, but I’m just an example of how mobile the diaspora can be and how much breadth of experiences we can have, if say Poland has an idea.
Of needing that sort of expertise, they don’t have an easy access to me. I am not necessarily in all of the networks for the Polish people, all the policymakers and government, but also non government companies. Big companies, but also startups in the innovative ecosystem. So by the fact that I understand the culture of my home country and I have some of the connections in there, I could be very handy, much more handy than a completely external expert because I kind of like touched both worlds, right?
So what we’re doing, we are gathering people like me. I’m just one of many, many and multiple ones are so much more accomplished than me and at so much better positions. To both help their country, but also bring in the wealth of their country to, you know, their current country where they live. So it triggers this exchange of expertise, but also people connections and collaboration, you know, I see that.
And so when you look at like something like the, this Octane event, so Ideally, when you’re here and you’re networking, you’re going to meet, you know, maybe some companies that need that help and maybe also like other contacts to other countries, companies, things like that. Am I off on that? I just want to make sure I understand correctly.
No, not really. Actually, you are, you are very right. This is one of the events that we, we would come and like network and get to know people. We do organize our own events. Which are typically hopped in a top notch world universities. We actually initiated at the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge in the UK.
This is where we started over a decade ago. It was a small scale event that was thought to just, you know, connect all those Polish experts and be, you know, a meeting place for ornithologists. Quantum physicist, a diplomat, and those people came in together and they came in abundance. And then the community that organized it realized like this is a need, not only in UK, but throughout the world, especially in those places that are like so intense in research and innovation.
Yeah. Now for this specific event, I mean, we are coming here to network, but it’s also a great place to observe. So, there are other countries that do their international research and innovation kind of policy, sometimes we call it science policy, too, that they are very good at it. So, for example, Canadian presence, I don’t know if you have noticed Canadian presence at this event, like multiple companies, there are presenters.
I noticed Canadian, you know who else I noticed, that I was surprised, Puerto Rico. I saw quite a few Puerto Rico, actually like five people. I would suggest you dig in why they are here and how come, well, they have their governments where Puerto Rico is also like very tight to us, but Canadian governments and their scientific diplomats that are here in LA are taking really good care.
For networking of their ecosystem with this ecosystem here and sharing the wealth, you know, both monetary and non monetary that can turn into monetary that we call social capital. So that social capital and that exchange of connections and network, that’s extremely valuable to both of the countries, Canada and the U S I must admit that Poland is still learning the skills in here, but kind of in the capacity of the nonprofit CEO.
I’m here and I’m. Sniffing around and seeing, you know, can we, can we match or try to match what Canadian folks are doing and their presence in here and how good it is to both of the ecosystems. Now you mentioned holding events in the UK and otherwise over 10 years ago. I have to ask, I know you only been here a year, but some events on the horizon here.
So what’s the thoughts? For over a decade, we’ve been organized, maybe like two. Right now we are upping up to 50 events or so. The Oxford and Cambridge became annual conference. One year is in Cambridge, the other one in Oxford. So it changes. And then we have whole bunch of events in Europe. So if any of the folks in here are in Europe, we kind of don’t stick to one place all that much.
Although we had event a couple of times in Paris, but we had event in Germany and Berlin and Switzerland and Brussels. There is an event coming up this fall in Milan. Last year we had an event, last fall, we had an event at UC Berkeley and we are kind of eyeballing Harvard MIT region or potentially also going back to Stanford in the next couple of years and also, you know, potentially Southern California at one of the universities.
Well, that sounds good to me because I want to go. Okay. You’re going to me, that’s what I’m saying. Okay. Yes. So, so final question, Alaa, if somebody wants to follow up, they want to learn more about the organization, how do they do that? Well, they can just go online and learn about us from our website, poloniumfoundation.
org. They can, they are very free to reach out to me as well, which is going to end up in my inbox one way or another. There is a contact information on the website too that channels into the main leadership email that, you know, we respond to. If I may, there’s actually really awesome mentorship program that we’re conducting annually as well.
So the cohort for 24, 25 is going to be as much as being matched right now. And that’s like one of the pearls of our activity because we connect those senior people with the more junior people and we have this helpful hand and, you know, help other as you, as you’re climbing, help them climb as well.
So for mentorship program, I would invite everybody to join as well. If they cannot join the events in person, that’s something that you can do virtually and be in touch with that community, you do not have to be Polish to participate in our programs. And most of the programming that we’re doing is either free or with very humble fee for technical reasons.
Yeah. Amazing. So that’s that. Perfect. And for everybody watching at home, just so you know, We’ll put the links to the website into the show notes so you can just click on the link and head right on over. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button.
This is a daily show. Each and every day we’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way on your journey as well. So again, hit that subscribe or follow button. And Ala, again, thank you so much for coming on. Very good having, being here.