The San Diego Blood Bank came to a turning point in 2013 when it started a search for a new chief executive officer, and that happened to be the same time that David Wellis, a scientist with an entrepreneurial career in biotechnology, was also ready for a change.
At first, it seemed an unlikely match. The blood bank, established in 1950, was widely recognized for providing blood to meet health needs across San Diego, Orange and Los Angeles counties. Wellis, who was contacted by a head hunter to consider the job, had built a career largely behind the scenes helping found and develop bioscience companies that often relied on a key product – blood.
What they had in common was a commitment to helping people, and to developing new ways to utilize blood and its components for life science research.
“This was an opportunity to change an industry and how we think of ourselves,” said Wellis. The time had come to move beyond thinking of the product as a “bag of blood” and to use it as a key material for research. Today, “this is not your typical not-for-profit,” Wellis said. The Blood Bank also can be considered a biologics manufacturer, with a workforce of about 310 employees and about the same number of volunteers, operating with a $48 million annual budget.
Wellis, 56, grew up in Yorba Linda and he remembers having a fascination with biology as early as the first grade. His mother saved a picture of him drawing a person and labeling all of the parts. By the time he graduated from high school, Wellies was on a high-level academic path. He earned a B.S. degree in Biological Sciences from the University of California Irvine and a Ph.D. in neuroscience and cell biology from Emory University.
For a scientist with those credentials, a common career path is to go into research and teaching and Willis did postdoctoral work at Tufts University and UC Berkeley. He decided he could have a greater impact by moving to the commercial side of research. His work took him to the East Coast and San Francisco, and in 2002 he helped found the biotech company GenVault Corp. in Carlsbad. He spent over eight years as head of business development and then as CEO until the company was sold in 2011. He had the experience of taking his previous company public.
Not long after, he received that fateful call from a recruiter about the opportunity at the blood bank. He recalled that he and the blood bank board shared a philosophy that “life sciences are always working toward someday improving the human condition.”
As a sign of the changing business model, he noted that when he came to the Blood Bank, 100 percent of the revenue came from blood sales. Today, 15 percent of revenue comes from “non-traditional,” higher margin blood services such as cell therapies and biologics.
Wellis has discovered that he especially enjoys his role as the public face of the Blood Bank and the exposure it has given him to the community, including players for the San Diego Padres and now Los Angeles Chargers. “It’s completely motivating,” he said, “to meet so many new pockets of the community.”
The Blood Bank is one of the non-profits supported by Sage Executive Group, a peer advisory group for CEOs, and Wellis is a member of Sage’s Centurion forum.