'Startup in a Box' program loses leader to consulting firm

Ken Harrison.

A public-private partnership aimed at growing San Francisco’s biotech ecosystem has lost the leader of a core group of programs for the second time in its 1-1/2 years. Ken Harrison, who was entrepreneurship program manager at the QB3 institute housed at the University of California, San Francisco, took a job last month with L.E.K. Consulting. He had joined BioSF, the organization assembled last year by QB3, the mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development and the San Francisco Center for Economic Development, in January. In his role at QB3, or the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, Harrison oversaw the exploding Startup in a Box and Accelerator programs.