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Baltimore’s reputation for life sciences innovation largely rests on the people, products and capital from its biggest research universities
Even with the resources of institutions like the University of Maryland (UM) BioPark, the city’s biotech boosters spent years trying to clear a hurdle they said stifled the sector’s development: a lack of wet lab space and related facilities where scientists and spinouts could actually work.
Come January 2025, more of this space will open up in West Baltimore, just across Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard from downtown, when UM BioPark launches the first phase of 4MLK.
Boasting 250,000 square feet of wet lab facilities, flex offices and conference amenities, the building is just the latest part of a long-term vision of several leaders across academia and the private sector.
None of it would be possible without UM BioPark Executive Director Jane Shaab, a Baltimore native who sees this kind of development — one that attracts both local startups and foreign companies — as crucial to the region’s opportunity-rich future.
“We are doing this project to create a first-rate scientific environment and to bring companies, quality companies, into Baltimore City .. that really will work and grow here in the city, and help the university grow and learn,” said Shaab, who also serves as the University of Maryland, Baltimore’s (UMB) associate vice president for economic development.
Shaab’s current roles are the culmination of a multidecade career at the intersection of tech, higher education, urban planning and economic development. She’s spent almost two decades with UMB, following stints with employers like The Rouse Company — putting her in Columbia back when the firm was building it into a planned community — and the Greater Baltimore Technology Council, which she led for several years.
The lifelong Baltimore champion discussed this career, her day-to-day, management philosophy and more in an interview with Technical.ly
This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.
Do you see a thread between anything you did in your youth and where you are now?
The overriding theme has been a love for Baltimore. I’m going to take you back a long time to when I was an undergraduate student at a Catholic women’s college called Rosemont College in Rosemont, Pennsylvania: My yearbook picture is me in a very [at that time] fashionable tweed suit, with a suitcase in my hand, going home to Baltimore. And that was the tagline, so, always I identified strongly with my city, with my place here.
I think that laid the thread for even all the way up to today. I like using this benefit and sort of gift I’ve been given, and then I get to meet and get to know — not just shake your hand or exchange LinkedIns with you, but I get to know so many people.
So what’s my job? My job is taking that and connecting those people for outcomes that benefit both sides of that meet-up. That’s what I love.
What are your day-to-day responsibilities?
My typical day is a million different connections. My job here is to oversee the University of Maryland BioPark. So that means the physical development of the park through the Research Park Corporation [the nonprofit UMB created in 2003 to oversee the BioPark’s work; Shaab is its senior vice president]. But when a company comes here — and this has been our goal, objective and commitment from the beginning — the company comes to this project because there is some value for that company at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. Our job is to make those connections real and never let them go, because nothing’s static, right?
So a company walks in the door and they think they’re going to do this, and they embark on doing that, but they change. The team changes. Maybe the CEO or the CSO change. And what they need from us, and what they need from community, is constantly changing. So [the job is] staying in contact with those tenants.
How many people report to you, and what’s your relationship with them like?
I have one person reporting directly to me. That is [Nora Finn], director of tenant services and operations. She does a lot of the hands-on programs and events, and interaction at a programmatic level with the tenants who are here. She also oversees the physical maintenance of the UM BioPark. Nora does a great job. We take pride in how we look over here and keeping it that way.
So not a lot of reports, and I like that. I think you make a choice. I love people but I don’t want to manage people. I want to work with people and learn from people. It’s a blessing if you’re a good manager. I hope I’m a good manager, but it’s on a very limited scale.
Throughout your career, you saw a lot of transitions in tech and related pipelines in Baltimore. What drew you to working in this corner of the industry in the first place?
That’s where the economic development of this town was, continues to be and will be in the future. We’re a tech-driven community, we’re a tech-driven city. Our self-realization of that has continued to expand. We’re getting to understand that.
If you read all of what was put together for the [EDA Tech Hub bid], we know who we are and we’re beginning to really claim our potential. We are a world-class tech center, there’s nothing to grow into — we are it! We don’t have the recognition, and we never have, but good lord!
What advice do you have for anyone who sees a career like yours as one to emulate?
First of all, come see me. I love talking to people who are, particularly, at different stages of their career. What little bit an outside viewpoint could bring to their progress? Always happy for that, but also, boy, does that juice me when people come and talk to me, because that’s what my life is all about. So I love that.
The advice I give each person will be different. I mean, honestly, you want to know the person you’re talking to, and you want to understand, “Why is that person talking to me?” Then, with the best of luck, you have some information to share with that person that really has a little meaning. Lord knows, among my three girls and all their friends and their different stages of life — and then you carry it out to all the young entrepreneurs and all the old entrepreneurs — it’s all about the core of the current conversation, and really trying to talk with each other.
This article references the University of Maryland BioPark, a Technical.ly client. That relationship financially supports our independent journalism and had no impact on this report.