Susan Solomon.

A life well lived inspires others to aspire. Our friend and mentor Susan L. Solomon crammed several lifetimes of exploration into her 71 years. Susan’s early life was filled with music: her mother was a pianist and her father the co-founder of Vanguard Records, known for supporting new and evolving music styles. As a teenager, she embarked on her first life journey, immersing herself in the 1960s San Francisco music/flower-power scene, where she knew luminaries such as Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead. Driven by the principle of taking chances and plunging into previously uncharted domains, she then rose to prominence as a lawyer and business leader, where she was known for perpetually re-drawing perceived limits of innovation. As a young lawyer, she was particularly proud of the pro bono work she did in women’s rights, which directly led to the hiring of female firefighters in New York City. Susan’s life would change forever in 1992, when her son Ben was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at the age of 9. After learning that the treatment for diabetes had largely not changed since the 1920s and helplessly watching her third grader inject himself with insulin multiple times a day, she decided to take action. Upon immersing herself in the science of the time, she surmised that stem cell science held incredible potential—not just to tackle the disease that plagued her son and family, but also for many other diseases without a therapeutic option. As a fierce parent-patient advocate, she then embarked upon a decade-long journey that would draw upon the skills acquired in her various careers and circuitous life path and stitch them together with her love for family, leading her to co-found the New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF), the mission of which was to harness the power of stem cell science to accelerate the development of new and innovative treatments for patients in need. To those who reasonably questioned whether a lawyer/business executive could succeed in bringing stem cell therapies to patients where others had failed, she simply said, “why not?” (although she often used more colorful language when confronted with a challenge that others deemed intractable). This was the fundamental essence of Susan, an unstoppable and unflappable force of nature that stem cell research will forever be grateful to have gained as an ally and champion. But it wasn’t easy. The origin of NYSCF took place during troubled times. Many of us vividly remember the Bush administration’s moratorium on the use of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research except for a handful of pre-established lines (1996 Dickey Wicker amendment, 2001 Bush moratorium). Rather than an obstacle, Susan saw this as an opportunity to rise above politics and do what was right for science and the millions of patients who, like Ben, faced a lifetime of illness. “This was a battle that very few people were willing to take on. It took courage, an indefatigable spirit, but Susan was one of the first and the best among them,” said one of her close friends at a memorial service honoring Susan that was recently held at Rockefeller University (hyperlink to memorial here—https://nyscf.org/events/susan-memorial/). Susan first taught herself everything there was to learn about stem cells and their therapeutic promise. She had an incredible skill for communicating a strong vision for change that resonated well beyond its roots in New York City. She found a way to inspire young scientists to work in this field and partnered with philanthropists to raise over $400M to power their work. Money was not all of it; we all became part of a visionary community of scientists that Susan brought together, year after year, to weave our stories and ideas, to influence and be influenced, emerging not only stronger but full of intention. The intention to be part of Susan’s mission, that of using stem cell research as the tool to better humankind and find cures to disease. Susan founded NYSCF in 2005 at her kitchen table in her apartment in Manhattan. Paraphrasing her own words, these were the years when her own family members would wake up to find all kinds of strangers sitting at their kitchen table before they even had their first cup of coffee! Susan may not have been a scientist, but she had a clear scientific vision for what the field needed. In 2008, barely a year after Yamanaka’s discovery of induced pluripotent stem cells, Susan and colleagues decided to create a bank of iPSCs that was meant to grow into a representation of the world’s populations. She recognized that inclusion of diverse patient samples was going to be important for the development of new medicines. She also recognized the need for high-throughput, automated generation and engineering of human stem cell lines, which today sits at the core of NYSCFs innovations and is an unprecedented resource that academia and industry routinely rely on to propel their science to greater impact. As NYSCF grew, Susan quickly realized that a program with such large ambition needed a fundamentally different infrastructure to succeed; one that would allow scientists to go beyond the limits of academia and simply “follow the science” without thinking about whether traditional granting institutes would fund it. The NYSCF Research Institute was born. Initially a one-room laboratory to derive stem cells from patients with diabetes, the Institute became the largest independent stem cell laboratory in the US and now includes programs in Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and age-related macular degeneration, among others. Community was at the heart of Susan’s vision. Hers was a never-ending quest to bring together scientists with diverse expertise from cross-disciplinary fields into one boiling cauldron because she knew that this was how new ideas and surprising discoveries could be made. Susan wanted to change not only science but also its practitioners—scientists. Acutely aware of the underrepresentation of women and minorities in STEM fields, in 2014, Susan launched the NYSCF Initiative on Women in Science and Engineering (iWISE) with a goal of identifying actionable steps to improve diversity in STEM fields. Some of us were fortunate enough to be part of a small group of women that she convened around a busy table at the NYSCF headquarters. Susan asked about the obstacles that precluded women from being more recognized in our field, from holding more leadership positions, and from being a bigger part of the trajectory of science. Stories were told, many heard before. But Susan had a plan, one that called for action and a huge dose of self-accountability to be part of change. Susan took a no-nonsense approach and famously stated that rather than wait for a prince on a white horse to lead us to success, we should actually go find our own horse! This effort was part of a global set of initiatives started by Susan through NYSCF that led the way on issues related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. NYSCF began offering programs for elementary, high school, and college students from underprivileged communities. Other initiatives, such as the Druckenmiller postdoctoral fellowships, were intended to inspire scientists to stay in the stem cell field. NYSCF’s Early Career Investigator Awards program, funded in collaboration with the Robertson Foundation, was conceived by Susan to make sure that the most promising early-stage investigators could pursue high-risk but potentially impactful stem cell science unencumbered by funding limitations. Susan was a true student of all aspects of the stem cell science ecosystem, and she routinely devised and implemented new strategies to address insufficiency. Under Susan’s leadership, that dream that started at her kitchen table, NYSCF, is now an organization with 114 full time scientists, engineers, and staff that occupy a 42,000 square-foot research institute in the heart of Manhattan. Without doubt, NYSCF has become a vibrant and enormously impactful global engine for stem cell science. In 2017, Susan was diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer; yet not even that could slow her down. Up until the very end, she ensured that the baton had safely passed to new leadership and that the NYSCF’s mission would not only be continued but that the foundation she had built and loved would thrive in the future. To recognize Susan’s outsized impact, the NYSCF Board of Directors recently decided to name the NYSCF Research Institute in Manhattan the “Susan L. Solomon Center for Precision Medicine”. True to form, when Susan learned of this decision a few days before her passing, she was very touched, but she also quickly wanted to know who was going to pay for it (as research buildings and institutes are frequently named in honor of significant donations). This was Susan, pragmatically thinking about the future of stem cell research even as she was soon to take leave of us mere mortals. It is often said that the power of a true leader, a teacher, a mentor, is best demonstrated by the legacy of mentees and the change that they will bring about in the future once they are set on the right path. So, to the next generations, go out there, find your inner Susan, and make the world a better place. We thank the many friends and colleagues who spoke at Susan’s memorial. Their words provided inspiration for the narrative we included here. We would also like to thank David McKeon and Lydia Boisi from the NYSCF for their invaluable editorial support during the writing of this obituary.