Ron and David — together as always

Ron never let anything slide.

Not a weak assumption, not an untested premise, not a strategy that sounded good but hadn't been stress-tested from every angle. He had a gift for the question nobody else in the room was willing to ask — the kind that stops you cold, makes you think, and ultimately makes everything sharper. We called them his "nasty questions." They were, in fact, the kindest thing he could do.

But the questions were never cynicism. They came wrapped in something rarer: genuine belief. Ron believed in BioFund. He believed in the mission. And — perhaps most generously — he always believed in me, with a warmth that was impossible to doubt.

One evening at our home, I made him a proper Manhattan. We sat, we talked, and for a moment the whole ambitious, slightly crazy project of building BioFund felt completely inevitable. That's what he did — he made the impossible feel like it was simply a matter of time and nerve.

The One Health Translational Engine that bears his inspiration is built exactly the way Ron thought: own every layer, ask every hard question, and never settle for the slow road when the urgency is this real.

He made sure we understood the assignment.

Ron in his element — always a question forming, always making things happen.