Speaker 1: Dan doctor Off is a former Deputy Mayor of New
Speaker 1: York City and a former CEO of Bloomberg. I came
Speaker 1: to know Dan reasonably well a few years ago when
Speaker 1: he created Target a l S, which was designed to
Speaker 1: raise funding to help cure A l S, a disease
Speaker 1: which killed his father and his uncle. Recently, sadly, Dan
Speaker 1: was also diagnosed with a l S. I sat down
Speaker 1: with Dan at Bloomberg recently and talked about his life, philanthropy,
Speaker 1: and his desire to now do what he can help
Speaker 1: cure a l S. Dan recently, about a year ago,
Speaker 1: you were diagnosed with a l S, which is a
Speaker 1: very sad tragic disease. What was your reaction when you
Speaker 1: heard about this. Well, I was actually shocked, despite the
Speaker 1: fact that my father and uncle died of the disease,
Speaker 1: and I didn't expect it at all. Um. I really
Speaker 1: hadn't felt many symptoms. Um. But I went away on
Speaker 1: a trip to Iceland with my wife, and I had
Speaker 1: breathing problems and I couldn't climb rocks. I got exhausted
Speaker 1: climbing hills, which is really weird because I was in
Speaker 1: pretty good shape, and so I decided to go see
Speaker 1: a doctor not thinking it was a l S, and
Speaker 1: he noticed my muscles twitching and brought in the head
Speaker 1: of neurology um at the hospital that I went to,
Speaker 1: and he almost immediately declared I probably had a L
Speaker 1: S given my family history. So then I reached out
Speaker 1: to other doctors who I knew in the A L
Speaker 1: S field, and they basically confirmed it with a series
Speaker 1: of tests. But your father who died of a LS
Speaker 1: and your uncle who died of LS, they had a
Speaker 1: gene which is kind of an A L S gene.
Speaker 1: You had earlier been tested for that gene years ago
Speaker 1: and we were told you didn't have it. No, I
Speaker 1: had never been tested. I never wanted to be tested
Speaker 1: because I didn't want to have to tell my kids
Speaker 1: if I tested positive. So everyone sort of assumed I
Speaker 1: had a LS based on my results and my family history.
Speaker 1: But when the genetic testing came back, I did not
Speaker 1: have the same genetic mutation that my dad and my uncle,
Speaker 1: and by the way, their first cousin had, so it's
Speaker 1: throughout my family. But I didn't have the gene, which
Speaker 1: has happened like A five times in history. So for
Speaker 1: people who were not familiar with a l S. It
Speaker 1: first became well known to the public when lou Garic,
Speaker 1: the famous baseball player, contracted it and died relatively quickly thereafter.
Speaker 1: He was in his thirties. I believe at the time
Speaker 1: since that time, since the nineteen thirties, have we made
Speaker 1: that much progress in diagnosing or treating a LS. So
Speaker 1: there had been virtually no progress for a hundred and
Speaker 1: forty years from the time it was discovered in eighteen seventy.
Speaker 1: My uncle died in two thousand and ten, and in
Speaker 1: two thousand and ten I decided, you know, look in
Speaker 1: my family, it's hereditary. My dad had died in two
Speaker 1: thousand and two. I gotta do something, and so I
Speaker 1: hired a team of scientists to understand why there was
Speaker 1: so little progress made in the disease, and we came
Speaker 1: up with a set of theories and created an organization
Speaker 1: around those theories. Um that included, you know, funding of consortia,
Speaker 1: funding of core scientific resources that anyone in the world
Speaker 1: could draw on, bringing in biotech and pharma into the process,
Speaker 1: and there's been an explosion of progress over the last
Speaker 1: ten years. I'm really proud that Data Organization Target a
Speaker 1: LS has has played a major role in catalyzing the
Speaker 1: product dress. Now, when you were told recently you have
Speaker 1: about a year ago a LS, you didn't say I'm
Speaker 1: now gonna just take life very easy. You decided you're
Speaker 1: gonna go raise another two fifty million dollars for target
Speaker 1: a LS. Why did you say you wanted to put
Speaker 1: the energy and effort into that, knowing it probably really
Speaker 1: wouldn't help you. Because first of all, this affects my family. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, even though I don't have the same genetic
Speaker 1: mutation that my dad and uncle did, I may have
Speaker 1: another genetic mutation that has not been discovered yet. UM,
Speaker 1: and my cousins, my brothers might have a l S.
Speaker 1: So it's very personal for me. But the other thing is,
Speaker 1: and most people don't recognize this, one in four hundred
Speaker 1: people who are alive today will die of ALS if
Speaker 1: we don't come up with treatments. And so target ALS
Speaker 1: has been amazingly successful over the last ten years, and
Speaker 1: I thought there was nothing more important that I could
Speaker 1: do than to scale up target ALS and hopefully see
Speaker 1: real treatments that saved people's lives within the next five
Speaker 1: to ten years. And hopefully we'll be at a point
Speaker 1: within ten years that we can see a day when
Speaker 1: everybody's lives get extended and saved. A number of years ago,
Speaker 1: there was so called ice bucket Challenge and where I
Speaker 1: think people were having water dumped on their heads and uh,
Speaker 1: it was designed to raise money for a LS. I
Speaker 1: think it did raise a fair amount of money, over
Speaker 1: a hundred million dollars, but that was not for research.
Speaker 1: That was for care of those who already have a
Speaker 1: l S. Is that right. Some of it went to research,
Speaker 1: but most of it went to patient care, which is important.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a devastating disease. UM. You know
Speaker 1: what happens in a LS is the signals that get
Speaker 1: sent from the brain to the muscles to move die
Speaker 1: and when that happens, people get paralyzed, and it's just
Speaker 1: a progressive disease where you lose more and more control UM.
Speaker 1: So patient care is really important. We have to always
Speaker 1: find the right balance between patient care and research because
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, the thing that is
Speaker 1: going to save the lives of those one in four
Speaker 1: people UM is treatments, and we need a lot of
Speaker 1: effort to actually come up with effective treatments. Now today
Speaker 1: we still do not know what causes a LS. Is
Speaker 1: it a genetic thing completely or is it environmental or
Speaker 1: is there some combination. What do we really know about
Speaker 1: what causes a LS? Well, there are certain genetic causes
Speaker 1: that we know our respond table for a l S,
Speaker 1: but that's only about ten of the cases. The other
Speaker 1: we don't really know. We know now what the biological
Speaker 1: pathways are UM, so we have a much better understanding
Speaker 1: of the science and that is leading to UM potential treatments,
Speaker 1: But the really understanding the cause, I think we're still
Speaker 1: got a long way to go. We to talk about
Speaker 1: a little bit more about a l S in a moment.
Speaker 1: Let me talk about your background. Where are you from?
Speaker 1: I grew up in Birmingham, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, Okay.
Speaker 1: And your father was My father was a lawyer who
Speaker 1: became the chief judge of the Michigan Court of Appeal.
Speaker 1: And at what age did he contract a LS? Sixty
Speaker 1: six years old. My mother, who was a psychologist, had
Speaker 1: just died of a rare net cancer at sixty four,
Speaker 1: and literally within weeks of her dying, he started to
Speaker 1: show symptoms UM that would later be diagnosed as a
Speaker 1: l S. He started a limp. Basically, you weren't what
Speaker 1: age now and that today I'm sixty four, so about
Speaker 1: the same age your father, A little bit a little
Speaker 1: bit less. Where'd you go to college Harvard? And what
Speaker 1: did you study there? And what did you want to be?
Speaker 1: I didn't know what I wanted to be. I studied government, um,
Speaker 1: because I didn't know anything better. Um. But my biggest
Speaker 1: achievement in college was meeting my wife freshman year. We've
Speaker 1: now been dating or married forty five years, so that
Speaker 1: was my biggest achievement. Achievement. So after college? Who went
Speaker 1: to law school at the Universit Chicago? Before I did that,
Speaker 1: I was a political pollster for a firm called Market
Speaker 1: Opinion Research, and I'd be flying all over the country
Speaker 1: as a twenty two year old advising candidates. And the
Speaker 1: fact that they listened to me discouraged me so much
Speaker 1: that I decided to go to law school. The fact
Speaker 1: that they were listening to a year olds exactly, all right,
Speaker 1: she went to law school the universe Chicago. And what
Speaker 1: did you do after you graduated? Um? I went to
Speaker 1: work for Lehman Brothers. So you were an investment banker?
Speaker 1: And how long did you do that three years? And
Speaker 1: then you went into the calling of private equity right
Speaker 1: to the firm that became partners. Okay, and so you
Speaker 1: did that for how many years? Fourteen? All right? So
Speaker 1: how did you become close to or get to know
Speaker 1: Mike Bloomberg. It's it's actually a funny story. So back,
Speaker 1: I was sitting in the stands of the World Cup
Speaker 1: semi final game out at the Meadowlands in New Jersey,
Speaker 1: was Italy versus Bulgaria. A friend literally dragged me um
Speaker 1: to the game. I didn't want to go. It was
Speaker 1: like a hundred degrees. We took the bus. It took forever,
Speaker 1: but I walked into the stadium that day and I
Speaker 1: thought it was the most amazing sporting event I had
Speaker 1: ever seen. Um. Everyone was painted in Bulgarian and Italian colors. Um,
Speaker 1: you couldn't sit down. So I was standing there through
Speaker 1: the match thinking to myself, Um, you could play this
Speaker 1: game in New York with any two countries in the
Speaker 1: world and it would feel exactly the same. And then
Speaker 1: I started thinking about the Olympics, which had always been
Speaker 1: a fan of, and saying, why has the most international
Speaker 1: city in the world never hosted the most international event.
Speaker 1: And I left the stadium that day with this vague
Speaker 1: notion that New York got to host the Olympics. And
Speaker 1: so I built a plan with advisors about how New
Speaker 1: York could host the Olympics, and eventually I showed it
Speaker 1: to Mike Bloomberg. When he was running the company, he
Speaker 1: wasn't contemplating running for mayor. He gave some money, he
Speaker 1: went on the board UM, and then when he shockingly
Speaker 1: won to be mayor, he asked me to join him
Speaker 1: in City Hall. And what did you do at City Hall?
Speaker 1: For Mike Bloomberg? In the city so, I was responsible
Speaker 1: for everything economic and financial. So my title was Deputy
Speaker 1: Mayor for Economic Development and rebuilding. First task was rebuilding
Speaker 1: the World Trade Center site. But then we really rethought
Speaker 1: the future of New York physically and financially UM by
Speaker 1: having a five borough economic development strategy. Now, after serving
Speaker 1: as Deputy Mayor of New York for development and other
Speaker 1: projects dealing with economic development, you left after how many years?
Speaker 1: I was there for six years and then Mike. One day,
Speaker 1: Mike Bloomberg, we sat in this bullpen in City Hall.
Speaker 1: It's an open space, UM, and I sat basically behind him.
Speaker 1: One day, he wheeled around and he UM said, Uh,
Speaker 1: what would you think about going over and running Bloomberg?
Speaker 1: And I said to him, what are you talking about? UM,
Speaker 1: in the six years that we have sat here together,
Speaker 1: we have discussed the company for one hour total, and
Speaker 1: he said, no, I think you'd be really good. UM.
Speaker 1: I'd never run a big company before. UM. I didn't
Speaker 1: know anything about Bloomberg. When I was in private ectuity,
Speaker 1: I was a light user of Bloomberg. I knew one
Speaker 1: person at the company and he said, no, I think
Speaker 1: you'd be really good. So I said, okay, I'll think
Speaker 1: about it. So I came back the next day said okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do it. I'm not going to do it
Speaker 1: for the same salary I was getting paid in government,
Speaker 1: which was one dollar UM. And I started UM about
Speaker 1: six weeks later, and after it was announced publicly that
Speaker 1: I was going to go run Bloomberg. UM, I said
Speaker 1: to Mike, Okay, I'm doing it. What do you want
Speaker 1: me to do? UM? He said, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: haven't been there for six years. You go figure it out.
Speaker 1: And I did so. How many years did you run
Speaker 1: bloom Seven? Seven years? And the company grew pretty nicely
Speaker 1: during that period. Yeah, I mean we as soon as
Speaker 1: I got there the financial crisis happened, UM, but we
Speaker 1: grew from I think five point four billion in revenues
Speaker 1: UM to nine in the seven years that I was there.
Speaker 1: After Mike finished his third term as mayor, he came
Speaker 1: back and being resumed the position of being Shio. You
Speaker 1: left the company and you still another company called Sidewalk Labs.
Speaker 1: What was that? That was a company I formed with
Speaker 1: Larry Page and Google became alphabet UM that was focused
Speaker 1: on urban innovation. And what we wanted to do was
Speaker 1: built up the most innovative place in the world. But
Speaker 1: also by focusing on building a place, UM developed ideas
Speaker 1: urban innovation ideas that could UM dramatically transform UM the cities.
Speaker 1: So you're running that company, and then when you got
Speaker 1: the news that you had a LS, you decided, I'm
Speaker 1: out of this. I'm gonna go throw myself to target
Speaker 1: A LS. Is that right, basically? And I still over
Speaker 1: on the board of a couple of the companies that
Speaker 1: we created, But yeah, my focus was definitely on a
Speaker 1: l S. And you know, I also wanted to spend
Speaker 1: much more time with my family with friends, travel, UM,
Speaker 1: do things that I had always wanted to do, and UM,
Speaker 1: it's actually worked out amazingly. Well, you've been around young
Speaker 1: people for much of your career as well, and you've
Speaker 1: hired many young people at Bloomberg New York City sidewalk Labs.
Speaker 1: Somebody says I want to be a person has an
Speaker 1: impact on society. What would you recommend that somebody do
Speaker 1: to train themselves and to work their way up to
Speaker 1: be somebody that's impactful on society. Well, I think the
Speaker 1: first thing, you've got to believe in something that you
Speaker 1: really care about. You know, I've been fortunate that over
Speaker 1: the course of my career, I've come up with things
Speaker 1: that have mattered to me. UM, and I've pursued them. Um.
Speaker 1: You know the best advice I ever got, UM was
Speaker 1: from Mike Bloomberg, and he said to me at one point,
Speaker 1: he said, and UM, show me somebody who's never lost,
Speaker 1: and I'll show you a loser. UM. And I believe
Speaker 1: that that if you believe in something, go after it.
Speaker 1: Take risk. Obviously they should be smart risks, but they
Speaker 1: should be around things that you really care about. So
Speaker 1: you would see your legacy as being actually target als
Speaker 1: and helping to moderate the impact of the LS, if
Speaker 1: not curing it. That's my final legacy. I'm proud of
Speaker 1: some of the other stuff that I've done as well, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, the transformation of New York after nine eleven.
Speaker 1: I'm also incredibly proud of a lot of the companies
Speaker 1: we created, it Sidewalk, I'm proud of the Chad. I'm
Speaker 1: proud of a lot. But I feel like i've I've
Speaker 1: I've done a lot. How do you think New York
Speaker 1: City is doing today? Mike Bloomberg is no longer mayor.
Speaker 1: There's been mayor after him, and now we have new
Speaker 1: Mayor Eric Adams in New York. Um, it's New York
Speaker 1: as as safe as it was when you were in
Speaker 1: the government, It's not as safe as it was. Crime
Speaker 1: is clearly rising. I mean, it's not back to the
Speaker 1: dark old days of you know, pre Juliani in the
Speaker 1: not early nineties. But we've got to be careful because
Speaker 1: safety is a foundation of everything. And so I know
Speaker 1: the current mayor is committed to reducing crime. Um, but
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to be incredibly aggressive in making sure
Speaker 1: that crime does not in you involved any longer in
Speaker 1: New York City matters or your advice. Theyor and governor
Speaker 1: actually asked me to co chair a panel or a
Speaker 1: task force on reviving the commercial districts throughout the city.
Speaker 1: So I've been in the middle of that well that
Speaker 1: later this fall will produce the report that hopefully, you know,
Speaker 1: will be pretty um inspiring here and in other places.
Speaker 1: One of the other projects you conceived of is the Shed,
Speaker 1: and you were for a while the chairman of it
Speaker 1: for a long time. You got it off the ground.
Speaker 1: What is the Shed? We want to put a cultural
Speaker 1: institution on the far west side of Manhattan. And so
Speaker 1: what we decided to do was create a new kind
Speaker 1: of cultural institution that would be remarkably adaptable. Um. The
Speaker 1: spaces could be adapted to anything. Um. They could accommodate
Speaker 1: virtually all forms of artistic expression. UM. There's many different
Speaker 1: venues in it. The building literally moves back and forth.
Speaker 1: It is so flexible. It's sort of an architectural marvel. Um.
Speaker 1: And I'm really proud of it now. Perhaps the most
Speaker 1: famous person who had a LS was Luke Garrick, where
Speaker 1: some people still call it glu Garrick's disease. But another
Speaker 1: famous person had it with Stephen Hawking, and he lived
Speaker 1: for some thirty plus years with it. How do you
Speaker 1: explain that sometimes people can live for thirty years plus.
Speaker 1: A couple of people live beyond ten years. One of
Speaker 1: the decisions that I'm going to face, because my major
Speaker 1: symptom is respiratory and that's why people ultimately die, is
Speaker 1: to get a tracheostomy um, which means that you can't
Speaker 1: breathe independently. You also can't eat, and you also generally
Speaker 1: cannot talk, so you communicate by looking and spelling out
Speaker 1: words on a computer screen. And you know a lot
Speaker 1: of people I don't want to live that way. UM,
Speaker 1: I think I probably would. UM. I want to see
Speaker 1: my grandchildren grow up. UM. I still think I could
Speaker 1: be engaged in things. Again, that's sort of my optimistic nature,
Speaker 1: that it's not just about believing there's a cure, um,
Speaker 1: but it's sometimes about believing that the better of too
Speaker 1: bad alternatives UM is something worth doing. So you know it,
Speaker 1: faced with that choice, I think that's what I would do,
Speaker 1: And you know I'll need a lot of help, but
Speaker 1: fortunately I can afford it. The word progressive is a
Speaker 1: word used for a l S and other diseases as well.
Speaker 1: Progressive is a euphanism for it's never going to get better,
Speaker 1: it's going to get worse. So progressive in the case
Speaker 1: of a l S means you're going to die much
Speaker 1: sooner than you would otherwise die absence some sort of
Speaker 1: miracle progress, which I don't really expect for of a
Speaker 1: l S. Patients die within three to five years. Many
Speaker 1: people when they face death and the certainty of death,
Speaker 1: and everybody's going to die at some point, but people
Speaker 1: generally think it's way down the road or over the horizon.
Speaker 1: You know that within three to five years it's more
Speaker 1: likely than not that you will not be alive. So
Speaker 1: how do you deal with that every day when you
Speaker 1: get up? You Know, the interesting thing is I have
Speaker 1: been in an amazing mood ever since I've been diagnosed.
Speaker 1: I've had maybe one down hour communatively in the last year.
Speaker 1: Um and I've got many theories to try and explain it.
Speaker 1: The biggest one is when I was diagnosed, I stopped
Speaker 1: thinking about the future. It was not something I tried
Speaker 1: to do. I think it was sort of my optimistic
Speaker 1: nature protecting me. And it's not like I'm in denial.
Speaker 1: I know the statistics. I spend lots of time with
Speaker 1: a l S patients. I've lived with it with my father,
Speaker 1: my uncle, my college roommate died of a l s UM.
Speaker 1: So I know what's going to happen. UM. But I
Speaker 1: stopped thinking about the future, and that has been just
Speaker 1: an enormous benefit for me. I have a lot of
Speaker 1: other theories to explain why I've been so unfazed by
Speaker 1: the disease, why I've been so happy. UM. That includes
Speaker 1: I've had a great life. UM. I have a wonderful family,
Speaker 1: I've got great friends. I've done what I wanted career wise. UM.
Speaker 1: I've done outside things like the Shed or the Olympics
Speaker 1: that I wanted to do because I was passionate about them. Um.
Speaker 1: I've had a great life, and obviously I wanted to continue.
Speaker 1: But if it doesn't, I'm grateful for the life that
Speaker 1: I've had. And then you know, I've been bathed in
Speaker 1: sort of like the love and support of so many people.
Speaker 1: When I announced that I had a l s UM,
Speaker 1: I got at thousands of notes, you know, lots of
Speaker 1: people talking about the impact that I've had on their life, etcetera.
Speaker 1: I literally felt like I died and witnessed my funeral.
Speaker 1: But then the last part of it is UM, I
Speaker 1: feel like I've got purpose. UM with target A ls UM,
Speaker 1: I feel like I can contribute to saving people's lives,
Speaker 1: maybe my own, unlikely my kids, my family, but those
Speaker 1: one in four people, and there's nothing more important than that.
Speaker 1: So I feel like I'm on my last mission and
Speaker 1: it gives me a real sense of purpose. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to hear more of my interviews. You can subscribe
Speaker 1: and download my podcast on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen Meann