Here at the KSA, we’re on a journey to understand how best to identify solutions to Kendall’s Greatest Challenges by connecting with our City leaders and the broader Cambridge community.
With the Cambridge City Council election on November 2nd, the Kendall Square Association invites you to hear from 16 candidates along with members of the Kendall community about some of our most pressing societal issues and what motivates us to keep working towards innovative solutions.
Maintaining a Successful Ecosystem for Scientific Development
From the development of brand new vaccines by organizations like Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson and Johnson, to the deployment of testing and management of mass vaccination sites by CIC Health, to the daily processing of thousands of COVID-19 tests from across the region at the Broad Institute to MIT and Harvard, Kendall organizations have been at the forefront of the battle against the COVID-19 pandemic. The need for scientific discovery and development has never been more acute and the role that Kendall Square has to play in that has never been more clear.
We asked our City Council Candidates: How will you ensure that Cambridge remains a successful ecosystem for scientific research and discovery?
Celebrating and Learning from the Kendall-Cambridge Partnership
Kendall organizations are proud to be citizens of Cambridge. The innovation that is practiced and celebrated every day is only possible thanks to the foresight and partnership of Cambridge City leaders.
We asked our City Council Candidates: How can Kendall Square continue to be a positive force for good in the City of Cambridge?
A Kendall Perspective
“When it comes to accelerating scientific research and discovery, it takes more than just individual scientists doing experiments or an entrepreneur with an idea and instead is fueled by a broader ecosystem of industry partners, investors, academics and more to build and scale those experiments into new drugs or therapies and those ideas into companies. In conversations with our LabCentral residents, being in Kendall Square and part of that innovation ecosystem is routinely cited as a critical piece for accelerating their science and company growth. And as we’ve seen from the success of our own residents, maintaining Kendall Square’s unique role will be critical to ensuring it stays a discovery and growth engine for the Massachusetts economy and the broader biotech industry.” – Maggie O’Toole, Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President, LabCentral, Inc.
“Our city’s intellectual power and small size offer immense advantages. Given Kendall Square’s location in Cambridge and the social, environmental, and racial reckoning that marks this moment in time, the innovation community has a tremendous opportunity to engage with Cambridge neighbors and surface new ideas and original ways of thinking about emerging and age-old social problems. Kendall companies and employees can be a powerful force for good in the city of Cambridge, by using their advocacy power and innovation capabilities, and engaging in the life of the city and its residents. By working together, we can be a proud community defined by equity and justice — one that finds uniquely local solutions to big social problems and serves as a model for other cities.” – Geeta Pradhan, President, Cambridge Community Foundation (CCF)
KSA in Action
In Kendall Square, collaboration is not a buzzword, it’s how we work. Our innovative community played an outsized role in addressing the Covid-19 pandemic. We do this by collective information sharing, collaborative problem solving and consistently sharing our progress. Now, as many return to work, KSA is here to welcome, inform, connect, and inspire our community on issues of vital importance for us all.
Spotlighting Community Impact in Kendall
- Sanofi US Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) believes that every individual deserves the right to thrive, to live in a healthy community, and have access to quality education that will foster the next generation of innovators. Now, more than ever, Sanofi tells us that it is critical to exemplify this mission statement in their dynamic Corporate Citizenship.
- As one component of this Social Impact work, Sanofi partners with over 90 organizations in the Greater Cambridge and Boston areas. Their goal is to effect meaningful, lasting, and ecosystem traversing change in the areas of health, STEM, and socioeconomic equity. Sanofi’s partners in this work include:
- The Family Van
- The Dimock Center’s Addiction Recovery Center
- Science Club for Girls
- Just-A-Start
- The Museum of Science
- MassBay Community College
- East End House (for over 30 years)
- Sanofi strives to continue to deploy their combination of philanthropy and substantive employee engagement to actualize equity for all in the communities where we live and work, in 2021 and beyond.