Symposia expands global reach during Aikens tenure

Jim Aiken, 71, was hired in 2003 as CEO and president of the Keystone Symposia on Molecular and Cellular Biology.

Since he started, the Symposia has increased the number of annual conferences it holds by about 50 percent to almost 60 per year. Its also grown its footprint. It used to just hold meetings in North Americas resort towns. It has since expanded them to locations across the globe in an effort to improve science and medicine in developing nations and regions. With an annual budget of $15 million, its one of the largest, if not the largest, nonprofit organization in Summit County.

Aiken grew up in Vermont. He received a bachelors degree in biology from Dartmouth. He earned a doctorate in pharmacology from University of Vermont and completed his post-doc education at Royal College of Surgeons of England.

Hes followed in his fathers footsteps in the fields of public health and art, making him a type of modern Renaissance man. After spending more than three decades as a researcher in the pharmaceutical industry, he found himself drawn to the nonprofit sector. He recently retired from the Symposia, and hes planning to move with his wife to Seattle.

But I managed to catch up with him earlier this week at the Symposia office where he discussed the organizations expansion, making the transition from corporate to nonprofit work and the similarities between art and scientific research.

Describe the transition from the end of your tenure to the new CEO.

Jane Peterson took over as new CEO in April. Ill keep working during the transition, mainly on the international contacts Ive made and to introduce her to our international colleagues. We recently went to Sweden to work on a future conference there. Well probably go to Japan soon.

Describe what the Keystone Symposia on Molecular and Cellular Biology does?

The Keystone Symposia has been around awhile. It started in 1972 in UCLA. It moved here in 1990. At the time it was a subsidiary of the Keystone Center. We became an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 1995. Weve been kind of growing ever since.

The original idea of the Symposia (which comes from the Greek term meaning academic meeting with wine) is for people with ideas to come together and hopefully new knowledge can come from that. And in science, that type of interaction between scientists is extremely important. Not only is it a forum for scientists, but it also lets them talk in a less formal setting. A lot of these are held at ski resorts. You present a formal idea in the morning, and in the afternoon you might ride up a ski lift with a colleague and casually discuss scientific topics.

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Symposia expands global reach during Aikens tenure