Her Multi-Billion Dollar Quest to End Disease - EP 25 Priscilla Chan

**Ashlee Vance** (0:00)
I am a tennis player. So we have one thing in common, at least, which was that we were both the captains of our tennis team.

**Priscilla Chan** (0:07)
Oh my God, you were?

**Ashlee Vance** (0:08)
Yes, and you were the co-captain, I think?

**Priscilla Chan** (0:10)
I was the co-captain. I played tennis in high school, partially because the tennis coach was my science teacher.

**Ashlee Vance** (0:19)
I saw that.

**Priscilla Chan** (0:20)
And he was like, you have to do that. I was like, I don't know how. And so he's like, I'll teach you, it's no problem. And I was my senior year co-captain with someone who's far better than, I would say co-captain denotes no tennis skill on my part.

**Ashlee Vance** (0:37)
Yeah. Well, I was looking at this because everything I could read, it seemed like you started playing your freshman year. It's a really hard sport to just like pick up.

**Priscilla Chan** (0:46)
It was really hard.
It was really hard. I worked hard at it. I was never that good. I will tell you the lasting legacy of my tennis career is I'm now a mediocre pickleball player.

**Ashlee Vance** (1:01)
Okay. Yes. So the pickleball people are taking over all our courts.

**Priscilla Chan** (1:05)
It's true.

**Ashlee Vance** (1:06)
This is like the side part of my podcast where I hopelessly fight against this because I'm not going to win. Yeah. So the tennis, it didn't stick with you.

**Priscilla Chan** (1:17)
I still played, but the thing, I still do play tennis, but with tennis, you really need someone who's pretty well matched to you or is pickleball like, you're, it's like just giant ping, I'm sorry. I don't know if I'm supposed to say that it's giant ping pong and you can play with your friends and it's a great time. Um, and so I do both.

**Ashlee Vance** (1:35)
Okay. We're going to talk science now.

**Priscilla Chan** (1:37)
Okay.

**Ashlee Vance** (1:51)
Priscilla Chan, most recent title and current title is co-CEO and co-founder of CZI, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. You're a doctor, pediatrician, and obviously, I read an academic all-star throughout your life, so super impressive. As always, this podcast is made possible by the fine people at E1 Ventures. Thank you, E1 Ventures. So you started CZI about a decade ago.

**Priscilla Chan** (2:24)
Yeah, almost. Exactly.

**Ashlee Vance** (2:27)
With huge goals. Yeah.
I don't know if this has always been the same tagline, but supports the science and technology to make it possible to cure, prevent, and manage all disease in the century. Was that from day one?

**Priscilla Chan** (2:44)
That's us. That's from day one.

**Ashlee Vance** (2:45)
So this is a lofty, this is an ambitious goal. Although, in this AI era, I feel like people say things like this quite seriously.

**Priscilla Chan** (2:57)
Yeah. Yeah. It has always been our goal. We want to cure, prevent, or manage all disease. And 10 years ago, almost exactly 10 years from today, Mark and I were deep in talking to scientists, like what's possible, what should we be working on, what's feasible. And we're like, well, can we, we have, we want to set a big, audacious goal. Can we just say we're going to cure all disease? And they were like, well, no. And we're like, well, why not? And they're like, well, okay, but what about all these other things? And like, what is even the pathway to doing that? And we sort of pushed through. And I will tell you, a lot of the scientists that we work with could not keep a straight face. They're like, I have like, I have academic credibility to uphold.

**Ashlee Vance** (3:50)
When you wanted to use this.

**Priscilla Chan** (3:52)
To have that as our tagline. And they're like, and we're like, we had this, we had an announcement, a public announcement. And like, literally, some of the coaching was, well, don't smirk when you're saying it. Yeah. And then what's totally crazy and unbelievable is exactly what you just said. Today, people are like, yeah, and probably not to, people are saying that it's not even going to take the end of our century. We have given ourselves too much runway. And I think that's how we know that we are in just an incredibly exciting moment in science and in medicine. Yeah.

**Ashlee Vance** (4:28)
Yeah. And so is this good or bad? Now everybody's piggybacking on this.

**Priscilla Chan** (4:33)
It's great. You think we're going to do this ourselves? Of course not. We depend on so many others to be able to do this work. It's fantastic.

**Ashlee Vance** (4:41)