Refining Our Focus: Updates on CZI’s Science Work and Policies

Over the past few years, we have focused CZI’s work on scientific research, driving innovation at the intersection of biology and AI. Below is an email to our team from our Chief Operating Officer Marc Malandro sharing more about our focus and updates to our policies:

Hi Team, 

The Leadership Team and I have been reviewing CZI’s programs and practices to ensure that they align with our focus as a science philanthropy as well as the current legal and policy landscape. As a result, we want to reiterate that we made the decision a few years ago to wind down our social advocacy work and have since discontinued that funding, as well as share some new changes we’re making to our hiring and HR practices around diversity.

Over the past few years, we have focused CZI primarily on science research in order to build the leading organization at the intersection of biology and AI. Today, we invest the vast majority of our resources into building Biohubs and supporting research teams to solve complex questions around biology and health. We’re very focused on solving four grand challenges that will give scientists the tools to help cure, prevent, or manage all diseases in the coming decades:

• Building an AI-based virtual cell model to predict and understand cellular behavior
• Developing state-of-the-art imaging systems to observe living cells in action
• Instrumenting tissues to better understand inflammation, a key driver of many diseases
• Engineering and harnessing the immune system for early detection, prevention, and treatment of disease

When CZI was founded, we used to work on a wide range of issues ranging from science and education research to supporting our local communities, and also political and social advocacy. As we’ve focused on science, we’ve wound down our social advocacy funding. This includes our previous work on immigration reform, as well as our racial equity grantmaking as we’ve completed the five-year program we announced in 2020. We haven’t launched new programs in this area for a few years. There are a small number of multi-year grant commitments we made previously that we will still honor, but none of these will support political activism. Looking ahead, we expect CZI’s increasing focus to continue to be pushing the frontiers of biology and AI.

In addition, given the shifting regulatory and legal landscape, we will no longer have a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility team at CZI. The three members of that team have transitioned to new roles and responsibilities. For hiring, we have discontinued our Diverse Slate Practice. Going forward, we will continue to cast a wide net to source top candidates while always selecting the best candidate for the role. 

We remain dedicated to ensuring our work serves everyone, that you feel welcome at CZI, and that you can do the best work of your career here. To support this, we are building a workforce that reflects a broad range of experiences, thoughts, and opinions, supporting employees via our employee resource groups which are open to all to join, and driving effectiveness in our work by rewarding individual initiative, excellence, and hard work. 

We all joined CZI to make a tremendous impact, and I want to thank all of you for your commitment to our work. In order to ensure we are being transparent about these changes, we will also be sharing this update externally later today. If you have questions about these changes, please reach out to your organization’s leaders or your People Business Partner. 

Thank you,

Marc