Priscilla Chan and Her Multi-Billion Dollar Quest to End Disease

Ten years ago, Dr. Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg vowed to aim almost all of their billions at a singular goal: “to cure, prevent and manage all disease by the end of this century.”

Dr. Chan recently visited the Core Memory podcast studio to discuss CZI, aka the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the organization that she and her husband built to pursue this massive undertaking. To date, the couple has put $7 billion toward a broad range of scientific programs and has backed bio-tech centers across the U.S. They’re funding some of the most cutting-edge work on trying to understand how the human body functions at the cellular level and placing some of the riskiest, boldest bets in bio-tech.

CZI has not operated without controversy. Over the past few weeks, Dr. Chan has faced criticism for dialing back funding on some of the organization’s education and political programs in favor of going Full Science.

We get into this a bit on the show, although, I will Full Confess to being less into telling people how to spend their money than others appear to be.

Mostly, we discuss Dr. Chan’s dramatic life story and the work CZI is doing to push bio-tech forward. Recently, for example, the organization backed a new program aimed at trying to cure children struck with genetic rare diseases. CZI has also just put out a new AI-based model that gives us a better understanding of how cells work.

Since we’ve recently become a sci-tech and tennis publication, we get into Dr. Chan’s tennis career as well. Enjoy!

This podcast was made possible by the fine people at E1 Ventures, who also support science and human progress through their investments.