#103 Sir Jeremy Farrar on How to Spend £16bn for Good (Director, Wellcome Trust)

Big Picture Medicine

How do you spend £16 billion to improve the world’s health?

That is the job of Sir Jeremy Farrar, the Director of the Wellcome Trust. In 1936, British pharmaceutical magnate Sir Henry Wellcome left his fortune to improve the world’s health. Now Sir Jeremy must work out what to do with £16 billion over the next decade — and where to most effectively spend it.

0:00 Intro

0:47 The Third Role of Philanthropy

2:53 Appetite for Risk

5:38 What's Broken in Science Funding

8:16 Generalism vs Specialism

10:12 Why Are You Slow?

14:49 Sexy vs Incremental

17:04 How Much of Your Job Is Not Messing Things Up?

19:35 Metrics for Philanthropy

22:10 Playing the Long Game

23:20 How Do You Know You're Doing a Good Job?

28:05 First Become a King, Then a Philosopher (?)

30:00 Habits That Have Helped In Your Career

31:52 What's It Like Being Famous?

33:28 Book Recommendations

By background he is a medical doctor and researcher, he has been named 12th in Fortune’s list of the world’s 50 greatest leaders, served in the UK’s SAGE group and was knighted in 2019 for his services to Global Health.

I ask him about how he spends that money, how to measure philanthropic impact, problems and opportunities within research funding and just how much of his job is just not messing things up.

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