Roy Stanford ZwahlenROY STANFORD ZWAHLEN grew up an Army brat. At a time when many career military officers studied Russian, Roy's father studied Arabic. As a result, Roy spent most of his formative years in the Middle East in Jordan, Turkey, Kuwait and Syria. Inthis great crossroads of history, civilization, commerce, religion, language and politics, he was exposed to a diversity of cultures that is hard to find in other corners of the world. His educational experience was similarly diverse and unusual. Though taught in American schools abroad, his schools were filled with a mix of local students and the children of diplomats from around the world. His daily exposure to different cultures, languages, ideas and people shaped his experience of life. His periodic returns to the U.S. were both exciting and disorienting. Extracted from a mosaic of celebrated cultures, he encountered the challenging need to navigate subtle and not-so-subtle racial and ethnic barriers and divisions in schools. While the Middle East was no paradise, he found that his America had a ways to go to live up to the ideals taught to him by his veteran father and veteran grandfathers. At Brigham Young University, he experienced another kind of disorientation when he became immersed for the first time in his own majority religious culture. While he shared a faith with this community, he did not find much commonality with his life experiences or his global view of culture and diversity. This was not unusual for Roy; just unexpected and he loved it. He was drawn to the opportunity of multicultural societies found in subjects like political science, economics, and international affairs studying the history of racism, finance of the Ottoman Empire, and the political history of South Asia. After earning his law degree at George Mason School of Law, he specialized in intellectual property, international trade, public health and economic development. He spent the first half of his career conducting think-tank activities representing the biotech industry advising state, national, and international bodies. After advising governments and industry on best-in-class technology innovation and entrepreneurism development economic models and policy for biotech, he decided to roll up his sleeves and build a model from the ground up.As the Chief Strategy Officer for Eshelman Innovation, he's responsible for building and managing strategy, governance, and operations. Read More Read Less