Joel Marcus Biography and Net Worth

Joel S. Marcus, JD, CPA, is Executive Chairman and Founder of Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. (NYSE:ARE), the urban office REIT that pioneered life science real estate from a specialty niche to a core asset class and today is the preeminent and longest-tenured owner, operator, and developer uniquely focused on collaborative life science, agtech, and technology campuses in AAA innovation cluster locations. Prior to serving as the company's full-time Executive Chairman, Mr. Marcus served as Chief Executive Officer from March 1997 to April 2018 and as Chairman from May 2007 to April 2018. Since co-founding the company in 1994 as a garage startup with $19 million in Series A capital, he led Alexandria to its inclusion as an S&P 500 company, which has a total market capitalization of $36.3 billion and a total shareholder return exceeding 2,000% as of June 30, 2021. Mr. Marcus continues to guide the company and be responsible for its outstanding reputation in the real estate and life science industries. Alexandria was named the NAIOP 2019 Developer of the Year and is the six-time and current recipient of the Nareit Gold Investor CARE (Communications and Reporting Excellence) Award.

Under Mr. Marcus's leadership and through Alexandria's critical role at the vanguard and heart of the life science and agtech ecosystems, the mission-driven company is building the future of life-changing innovation and driving positive change for the benefit of society. Mr. Marcus has steered Alexandria's extraordinary growth through the tremendous execution of its visionary cluster campus strategy as informed by Harvard Business Professor Michael Porter's cluster theory. Utilizing this theory as the basis for its proven cluster model that identified and brings together the four critical components necessary for life science companies to thrive — location, innovation, talent, and capital — Mr. Marcus led pivotal shifts from single assets to amenitized cluster campuses to today's mega campuses consisting of more than 1 million RSF in urban and suburban locations. Extending the company's impact beyond its essential Labspace® real estate, Mr. Marcus established three additional and complementary vertical platforms to enhance its holistic business model encompassing real estate, venture investments, thought leadership, and corporate responsibility. Through the company's differentiated cluster-building approach, which leverages these cohesive platforms and its mega campus strategy, Alexandria catalyzes the vibrant life science ecosystems it has created and cultivated in key locations, including Greater Boston, the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, San Diego, Seattle, Maryland, and Research Triangle, to accelerate the translation of scientific discoveries into new treatments and cures.

During Mr. Marcus's 27 years at Alexandria as a pioneer, entrepreneur, executive, and venture capitalist, he has helped form, build, and nurture a broad range of life science and agtech companies. Mr. Marcus founded and continues to lead Alexandria Venture Investments, the company's strategic venture capital platform. Since its inception in 1996, it has invested in promising seed-, early-, and growth-stage companies and been an integral component of the company's multifaceted business model. As a testament to Alexandria's position at the cutting edge of innovation at the earliest stages, Alexandria Venture Investments has been recognized by Silicon Valley Bank as the #1 most active biopharma corporate investor by new deal volume for four consecutive years and by AgFunder as one of the five most active U.S. agrifoodtech investors in 2020. With approximately $2 billion under management, Alexandria Venture Investments continues to invest in many of the most transformative companies accelerating breakthroughs in immunology, neuroscience, cell and gene therapies, single-cell genomics, epigenetics, synthetic biology, in silico drug discovery, precision farming, crop protection, and other cutting-edge areas. Mr. Marcus represents Alexandria on the boards of the publicly traded Applied Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:APLT), Frequency Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:FREQ), Intra-Cellular Therapies, Inc. (NASDAQ:ITCI), and MeiraGTx Holdings plc (NASDAQ:MGTX).

A trusted and collaborative partner within the life science industry, Mr. Marcus was one of the principal architects of Kirin-Amgen, Inc., the trailblazing biotech joint venture established in 1984 to fund the global development and commercialization of EPO (Epogen), and later G-CSF (Neupogen) — two blockbuster recombinant DNA products that have meaningfully benefited countless chronic kidney disease and cancer patients. Mr. Marcus introduced Alexandria's thought leadership vertical in 2011 when he co-founded the Alexandria Summit®. Established to serve as a highly collaborative, neutral platform, the Alexandria Summit convenes a diverse group of visionary stakeholders to explore critical fields in healthcare and the crucial role of medical innovation in the advancement of human health and leverages its powerful collective voice to foster impactful collaborations and shape policy. Over the last decade, the Alexandria Summit has helped stimulate novel approaches to disease that improve patient outcomes, drive the discovery and development of novel and cost-effective therapies, impact policy to advance innovation that saves lives and manages and cures disease, and address the urgent need to transform our healthcare system.

Mr. Marcus also leads Alexandria's far-reaching social responsibility platform, which aim to develop and implement disruptive and scalable solutions to society's most urgent challenges, including disease and other challenges to human health, hunger and food insecurity, deficiencies in support services for the military, the opioid epidemic, educational disparities, and the homelessness crisis. To reverse the trajectory of the opioid epidemic, Mr. Marcus and Alexandria partnered with Verily to pioneer OneFifteen, an innovative, non-profit data-driven recovery ecosystem providing the full continuum of evidence-based care to help people live healthy, addiction-free lives. This meaningful endeavor was featured as the cover story in the January/February 2021 issue of REIT Magazine. He has also been deeply engaged with a number of highly impactful local and national non-profit organizations for many years, including serving on the board of directors of the Emily Krzyzewski Center, which paves a path to long-term success in higher education and beyond for academically focused, low-income K–12 students, and the Navy SEAL Foundation, which provides vital support and care for the Naval Special Warfare community and their families. Mr. Marcus also serves on the boards of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH), the National Medal of Honor Museum, the Navy SEAL Foundation, the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, and the 9/11 Memorial & Museum. His significant philanthropic contributions have been widely recognized, and in March 2020, Mr. Marcus and Alexandria received the prestigious Navy SEAL Foundation Patriot Award for their tireless dedication to, and embodiment of, the values that epitomize the SEAL community.

Mr. Marcus was named one of Real Estate Forum's 2017 Best Bosses in commercial real estate and was a recipient of the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year Award (Los Angeles – Real Estate). He earned his undergraduate and Juris Doctor degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles.