Project Boomerang targets highly skilled, former Oklahomans

By Jim Stafford - Business Writer

Sat May 3, 2008

Sooner born and Sooner educated, Scott Rollins built a $3 billion life sciences company based on technology he developed at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation not in Oklahoma but in the state of Connecticut.

Then he came home.

The 44-year-old Moore native returned to Oklahoma in February to become president and chief executive of Selexys Pharmaceuticals, a company that is attempting to commercialize treatments for inflammatory disease based on research developed by Dr. Rodger P. McEver, program chair of the cardiovascular biology research program at OMRF.

Rollins might be the poster boy for a new Oklahoma Department of Commerce initiative called Project Boomerang, which is targeting Oklahoma natives and people with strong state ties to bring their skills back to the Sooner state.

"I have always been looking back to Oklahoma, my family is here, my friends are here, I'm an Oklahoman,” Rollins said this week from his Selexys office at the Presbyterian Health Foundation Research Park. "I never felt like Connecticut was my home.”

The homecoming for Rollins came 17 years after he and two Yale University colleagues founded Cheshire, Conn.-based Alexion Pharmaceuticals. The company was built around an antibody discovered and developed by Rollins that eventually became a Food and Drug Administration approved drug called Soliris.

Soliris won FDA approval in 2007 for use in the treatment of PNH, a rare and life-threatening blood disorder. Alexion eventually became a publicly traded company with its stock traded on the Nasdaq market under the ticker symbol ALXN.

One of three co-founders of Alexion, Rollins decided to move back to Oklahoma once the drug was approved and launched both in Europe and the United States markets. He earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Oklahoma and his Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology at the OU Health Sciences Center in 1990.

Rollins' return and the recent homecoming of Bank2 President Rod Whitson are prime examples of the types of people that Project Boomerang will attempt to lure back to Oklahoma, said Oklahoma Commerce Secretary Natalie Shirley.

‘Our greatest asset'

"As the lead economic development agency in Oklahoma, Commerce is working to find ways to retain and attract a highly skilled workforce,” Shirley said. "We came up with Project Boomerang as a way to capitalize on our greatest asset: our Oklahoma native talent.

"Having a skilled, available workforce is one of the biggest challenges facing businesses across the nation. Through efforts such as Project Boomerang, we believe we can pull Oklahoma from that mix and provide workers ready to help Oklahoma companies grow and prosper.”

Whitson returned to Oklahoma from San Diego where he was president of the Townsend Agency, a marketing and public relations firm for the high tech and life sciences industry.

A Miami, OK, native and Oklahoma State University graduate, Whitson came back to Oklahoma in part because of the "core values” of the people in the state. He said he sees a lot of potential in Project Boomerang.

"I think Baby Boomers are going to work a lot longer to get to a place where the cost of living is substantially less and the lifestyle is good,” Whitson said. "I think it's a great idea and I think it's going to work.

Sheri Stickley, deputy director for Strategic Planning and Initiatives with the Department of Commerce, is spearheading Project Boomerang.

"Technology companies need people with management experience to come and provide management for these startup companies and make them attractive for investment,” Stickley said.

The economic development agency is hoping to recruit two groups of people, Stickley said. One group has experienced management level people like Rollins and Whitson. The other has highly educated, highly skilled people ages 35 to 45 to fill high wage jobs, she said.

Project Boomerang got a trial run with a project at Oklahoma State University in which postcards were sent to engineering alumni, Stickley said. The mailer pointed alumni to a Web site that offered job information.

"We had a super response rate on that based on the Web site hits that we got from that,” she said. "Based on that little project, we decided here at Commerce that we would expand that into a full blown Project Boomerang.”

Project Boomerang will use social networking Web sites and target out-of-state locations that seem to attract concentrations of Oklahomans to make the connection with expatriates.

"Our companies are telling us that workforce is an issue and that this is a way that Commerce can expedite and attract people back to Oklahoma,” Stickley said.