The Influentials: Baiju Shah

President and CEO, BioEnterprise

Everyone knows Northeast Ohio has one heck of a medical community. However, few know its potential better than Baiju Shah, one of the founders of BioEnterprise, an organization that provides critical support to young bioscience companies. In the last four years, $600 million in new money was invested in 70 Northeast Ohio bioscience firms. More than 80 percent of that money came from outside this region. Those numbers mean we’re gaining a reputation as a bioscience center, and we’re succeeding in an industry with a future. Back in 2002, Shah and his co-founders asked,How do you grow a region? The answer was you pull money into Northeast Ohio and, if you’ve got two top-tier hospitals and a science-minded university, you use that money to commercialize research. Six years later, you rank second in the Midwest in money invested in the biosciences. Shah’s goal? “When people think of Cleveland, the image should be of health care innovation.”