Board Meetings

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Rising before dawn, the head of Pfizer Inc’s research lab in San Diego fills her thermos with coffee and follows the headlights of her Honda Element to the foot of 15th Street, where a beach parking lot is already filling up. Catherine Mackey, 50, trudges in her wetsuit across the sand beneath a murky gray sky, a new surfboard under her arm. A handful of surfers are already in the water, hoping to ride the 4-ft breakers to shore—and to network with people like Mackey.

In San Diego’s booming biomedical industry, surfing has become a way to make contacts, get face time with the boss and arrange deals. ‘‘It’s the new golf,’’ said 48-year-old biotech entrepreneur Laura Shawver as she prepared to join Mackey in the chilly water. San Diego’s biotech industry was born near the beach in La Jolla, where a critical mass of world-renowned research institutions are clustered: Salk Institute, Scripps Research Institute and Burnham Institute, along with the University of California, San Diego.

The industry’s passion for surfing is evident at sunrise, when high-powered biotech players equipped with the latest gear begin arriving at a stretch of shoreline known for its good surf. The lawyers, financiers and scientists who attend the predawn gatherings have a name for them: board meetings.‘‘It’s where the best business gets done,’’ said Paul Grayson, who invests in biotech ventures and just filled a position at one of his companies with an executive referred by a surfing pal.

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Shawver, chief executive of Phenomix Corp, a company working on drugs for immune disorders and metabolic diseases, said she took up surfing because it looked beautiful and exciting. She soon discovered its value as an icebreaker as she mingled with other biotech entrepreneurs around town. ‘‘It gives you something to talk about besides work,’’ she said. ‘‘In business, it isn’t really acceptable to say, ‘Seen any good movies lately?’ ’’

Brian Uzzi, a management professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and a former surfer, says the sport tends to build relationships that are strong and lasting. ‘‘You share the joys of the big day and commiserate over bad days,’’ he said. (LAT-WP)

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