LA Venture Podcast: Z Holly Of Good Growth Capital on Biotech, Education and the LA River
On this week's episode of the L.A. Venture podcast, we have the super interesting guest (and person), Krisztina "Z" Holly. Before joining Good Growth Capital, she was vice provost for innovation at USC and the founding executive director for the M.I.T. Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation. She also created the first TED X event and built a nonprofit to support manufacturing in Los Angeles. Her life might be best described as a Mountain Dew commercial.
In this episode, Holly talks about how she hopes to boost innovation in Southern California's universities and in L.A. manufacturing and discusses her new project along the L..A River.
"There is so much research happening in Southern California is like over $3 billion worth of research happening in the top research universities alone, let alone in the hospitals, etc. That in a large part of that is in biotech. And unfortunately, L.A. is seen as a flyover city when it comes to biotech," Holly says. "San Diego and the Bay Area are really strong — but the truth is that we actually in Southern California, we create more patents. [SoCal] universities create as many patents as the Boston area, and way more than the Bay Area."
Holly's project with nonprofit River L.A. enlists city artists to create immersive experiences that flow "through the past, present, and future L.A. River."
"If you think about one, a quarter of all Californians live within an hour drive of the L.A. River," she says. "The whole goal is to integrate design and infrastructure, to connect the communities and the people and the environment along the river. So it's really meant to tap into all the different opportunities for the community around the river."
Click the playhead to hear the full interview, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts to hear more from L.A. Venture.
Correction: An earlier version of this post erroneously stated she is still at USC.
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