David Fanning

the 48 year-old CEO of Seattle-based Theraclone Sciences, died suddenly Monday, June 14, 2010, at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, Washington. Mr. Fanning collapsed while walking to work to take a ferry from his home on Bainbridge Island to his office in Seattle. Mr. Fanning was born in Boston to Irish physician parents and raised in southern Maine. He attended high school at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., where he was a nationally ranked middle distance runner, and graduated from Harvard University with an A.B. in English literature. Upon graduation from Harvard, Mr. Fanning moved to Tokyo to teach English to executives of the Nippon Kokan K.K. steel company before joining the Tokyo and later, Cambridge offices of The MAC Group/Gemini Consulting (currently, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young) as a consultant. He then received his SM in Management from the MIT Sloan School of Management. Over the next 20 years he held senior positions in pharmaceutical and corporate management in both Seattle and elsewhere; including CoPharma, Inc. of Hopkinton, MA. and Cytotherapeutics, Inc (currently Stem Cells, Inc) in Boston. He was most recently President and CEO of Theraclone Sciences in Seattle. Prior to Theraclone, he served as Chief Operating Officer of Seattle-based Corixa Corporation. From an early age, Mr. Fanning demonstrated a remarkable curiosity about other cultures and the people around him. As a youth growing up in Maine he prevailed upon his parents to allow him to spend summers attending a "Gaeltacht", or Irish-speaking summer camp in the Aran Islands off the West coast of Ireland so that he could master Gaelic, a language both his parents had learned while in school in Ireland. His love of Ireland was one of his defining characteristics, and while in college he spent his summers reporting and writing the Ireland portion of the Let's Go travel guides published by the Harvard Student Agencies Inc. His college thesis on the Irish writer Sean O'Faolain included research from an interview Mr. Fanning conducted himself with Mr. O'Faolain, and was read by the Irish poet Seamus Heaney. He approached his seven years in Tokyo with the same enthusiasm as he did his immersion in his own Irish culture, and was notable for the unusual fluency of his Japanese. He was known among his friends and colleagues alike for his warm manner, excitement about new ideas and skill in storytelling. He is survived by his beloved wife, Katie and adored daughter Caroline, his parents Joseph and Constance Fanning, a brother John, two sisters Fiona and Deirdre Fanning Quesada, and his three nephews and one niece. A Memorial Service celebrating his life will be held at 1:30pm on Tuesday, June 22, 2010 at the Grace Episcopal Church on Bainbridge Island.In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation to support Mr. Fanning's passion for finding a cure for Type I Diabetes. Arrangements by Cook Family Funeral Home.