International Life Sciences & Biotech Conference

Joel S. Marcus, JD, CPA, is the full-time Executive Chairman and Founder of Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc., a best-in-class, mission-driven life science REIT that pioneered the novel Labspace® niche and created the first-ever REIT uniquely focused on the critically important life science industry with its founding in 1994. Mr. Marcus has strategically positioned at the vanguard and heart of this $5 trillion secularly growing industry and continues to lead the one-of-a-kind, once-in-a-generation company as it celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2024. Over the past three decades, Alexandria has transformed life science real estate from a specialty niche to a compelling mainstream asset class, and today it is the preeminent, largest, and longest-tenured owner, operator, and developer uniquely focused on collaborative life science, agtech, and advanced technology mega campuses in AAA innovation cluster locations. Prior to April 2018, Mr. Marcus served as the company’s Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and President. Mr. Marcus has led the company’s remarkable growth from a startup, with $19 million in Series A capital, into an S&P 500® company with an irreplaceable life science real estate platform that has a total market capitalization of $33.1 billion and a total asset base in North America of 73.5 million square feet as of December 31, 2023. Alexandria, the only publicly traded life science REIT, has generated an outstanding total stockholder return exceeding 1,500% from its IPO in May 1997 through December 31, 2023, significantly outperforming major indices over the same period. Alexandria was named the NAIOP 2019 Developer of the Year, and its 2023 Nareit Investor CARE (Communications and Reporting Excellence) Gold Award represents the company’s eighth Nareit award in recognition of the best in investor communications among REITs. During Mr. Marcus’s over 30 years leading Alexandria, he has built a pioneering company with a differentiated business model and a unique mission ― to create and grow life science ecosystems and clusters that ignite and accelerate the world’s leading innovators in their noble pursuit to advance human health ― that continue to distinguish Alexandria from all other REITs. Guided by Alexandria’s mission, Mr. Marcus established four strategic and integrated verticals encompassing real estate, venture investments, thought leadership, and corporate responsibility that together catalyze life-changing innovation and drive positive change for the benefit of human health and society. In recognition of the company’s outstanding track record, renowned author and business strategist Jim Collins has said, “Alexandria has achieved the three outputs that define a great company: Superior Results, Distinctive Impact, and Lasting Endurance.” Mr. Marcus has accelerated Alexandria’s extraordinary growth through the tremendous execution of its visionary ecosystem-building and cluster development strategy in key locations, including Greater Boston, the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, San Diego, Seattle, Maryland, and Research Triangle. Mr. Marcus also founded and continues to lead Alexandria Venture Investments, the company’s strategic venture capital platform, in 1996. With approximately $1.5 billion under management, Alexandria Venture Investments actively invests in disruptive life science companies as well as promising agrifoodtech and technology companies that are advancing transformative new therapeutic modalities and platforms to meaningfully improve human health. Mr. Marcus introduced the company’s thought leadership vertical in 2011 when he co-founded the renowned Alexandria Summit®. Established to serve as a highly collaborative, neutral platform, the Alexandria Summit convenes a world-class network of visionary stakeholders to explore the most important issues facing human health and leverage its powerful collective voice to contribute tangible solutions that help drive the discovery and development of novel cost-effective therapies and impact policy to accelerate innovation to better manage disease. Additionally, Mr. Marcus spearheads Alexandria’s corporate social responsibility pillars, which aim to develop and implement long-term, scalable solutions to some of society’s most pressing challenges, including disease and other threats to human health, hunger and food insecurity, deficiencies in support services for the military and their families, addiction, disparities in educational opportunities, mental health, and homelessness. In the face of the devastating opioid epidemic in 2017, Mr. Marcus and Alexandria partnered with Verily, an Alphabet company, to pioneer OneFifteen, a personalized, non-profit data-driven healthcare ecosystem dedicated to addiction recovery, in Dayton, Ohio — a city with one of the highest per capita overdose death rates in the nation that year. Alexandria designed and developed a state-of-the-art campus with a unique full continuum of care, including medication-assisted treatment, residential housing, peer support, and job placement. Since opening in 2019, OneFifteen has treated over 7,500 patients afflicted by opioid addiction and other substance abuse disorders, and this mission-critical program continues to have a meaningful and positive impact on the lives of thousands of people and the broader community. Mr. Marcus has also been deeply engaged with several highly impactful local and national non-profit organizations for many years, including through his service on the board of directors of the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, Emily Krzyzewski Center, National Medal of Honor Museum, Navy SEAL Foundation, Office of Strategic Services Society, and TOPGUN Association. Mr. Marcus’s significant philanthropic contributions have been widely recognized, including being honored by the 9/11 Memorial & Museum for Distinction in Civic Engagement and Renewal. Prior to co-founding Alexandria, Mr. Marcus had an extensive legal career specializing in corporate finance and capital markets, venture capital, and mergers and acquisitions. During that time, he acquired expertise in the biopharmaceutical industry and was one of the principal architects of Kirin-Amgen, Inc., the trailblazing joint venture established in 1984. He was also a practicing certified public accountant and tax manager with Arthur Young & Co., where he focused on the financing and taxation of REITs. Mr. Marcus serves on the board of directors of Applied Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: APLT) and Intra-Cellular Therapies, Inc. (NASDAQ: ITCI). He was named one of Real Estate Forum’s 2017 Best Bosses in commercial real estate and was previously a recipient of the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year Award (Los Angeles – Real Estate). Mr. Marcus received his undergraduate and Juris Doctor degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles.