No. 2 Exec at Salk Institute Leaving, Move Follows Retirement of President

Another top executive at the Salk Institute is leaving under circumstances that indicate that the move is not entirely voluntary, the San Diego Union-Tribune is reporting.

Left to right, Irwin Jacobs, chair of Salk
 board; William Brody, president; Marsha
Chandler, executive vice president
Salk photo

She is Marsha Chandler, who was executive vice president and chief operating officer of the La Jolla, Ca., enterprise and who also once served as a director of the $3 billion California stem cell agency.

Gary Robbins reported her departure effective Aug. 31, saying that Salk released a statement that “suggests that Chandler's exit was not voluntary.”

The statement said:

"In order to provide the future Salk president with the greatest flexibility to determine the institute’s ideal executive management structure going forward, the executive committee of the board of trustees and the institute’s leadership have decided to restructure the executive team. Therefore, with respect to this decision, Marsha Chandler will be leaving…”

William Brody, president of Salk, announced last week that he would be leaving at the end of the year.

Robbins wrote,

“Chandler, 70, helped Brody to roughly triple the institute's endowment to $370 million and to help recruit a greater mix of scientists at the Salk, whose basic research has led to drugs to treat cancer, and improved treatments in diabetes, inflammation and obesity.”

Chandler served on the stem cell agency board from 2007 to 2009. She was replaced on the board by Brody, who left the position in 2012. Since then Salk has had no representative on the 29-member panel. Nearly all of the institutions that receive awards from the agency have representatives on the agency board.