Randy Scott on BioLogos Beginnings

At BioLogos we continually marvel at gifts God has given to people in our community. Take Dr. Randy Scott, for example. An able leader and dedicated Christ follower, Randy is a serial entrepreneur. He has founded a series of highly successful companies including Genomic Health, which produces a diagnostic test that has guided the personalized treatment of over 1 million cancer patients.

Randy is proof that to succeed in business you don’t have to push people around; rather success comes when you genuinely love and care for the people that work for you.

We are grateful to have benefited from Randy’s wisdom and leadership during the early years of BioLogos, when he served as the first Chairman of the Board. In this video, Randy tells how he got involved in BioLogos at the very beginning. Thank you, Randy, for the many ways you have made BioLogos what it is today!

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

In the 1990s, we [Randy’s company Incyte] were involved in a commercial version of the Human Genome Project, of discovering new genes and making them available broadly to pharmaceutical companies for research. And through that we had one of the largest DNA sequencing capacities in the world along with the Human Genome Project and some other commercial companies. And at one point Francis Collins approached us about the potential to work together, which eventually we did some sequencing for the Human Genome Project. Through that I met and got to know Francis, and we shared our faith stories. Around that time was when his book came out, which I think for all scientists who are Christians was just a fabulous coming out of Christians that believed in Christ and yet believed that science and evolution was an appropriate way to look at God’s creation and could inform us more about God and creation and theology.

And so Francis called me at one point and said, “Randy, given you’re in the field and in the industry and you understand…, we’re looking for people who could come on the Board of BioLogos and help to guide us. And you know, I didn’t say yes right away because I knew I’d better go talk to my wife first, because starting companies kind of consumes a lot of time and energy, and I had actually never served on any other boards. So I always felt like when you start a company, you were all in, that you put 100% of your effort into that. But this was the one thing that kind of bridged all the parts of my life – faith and science together. And I felt like it was very important for the future of the Christian community, that we embrace an open approach to understanding science and what it means to really study God’s creation.

I felt like it was very important for the future of the Christian community, that we embrace an open approach to understanding science and what it means to really study God’s creation.

And so somewhat begrudgingly she said, “Yes, I know you’re going to do it anyway, so, so let’s do it.” I got back to Francis and he said, “Oh, that’s fantastic, but by the way, I’m leaving to go to the NIH [National Institutes of Health], and so I’m going to have to leave, but a welcome to the Board.” So that made it exciting, but also we were sad to see Francis leave. But it was a great opportunity to get involved in BioLogos in the very early days and to help influence the direction to really open up a kind of an open, authentic dialogue within the Christian community about what it means to embrace science as a part of God’s creation.