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SCRA’s New Leader Shares Objectives

Bob Quinn
Mike Switzer/SC Public Radio

This past summer, our next guest left the world’s largest nonprofit research and development organization to become the head of one of South Carolina’s top research and economic development organizations devoted to job creation in our state’s innovation economy.

Mike Switzer interviews Bob Quinn, executive director of SCRA, formerly known as the SC Research Authority.

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After almost 20 years, Mike Switzer retired from Wells Fargo Securities in 2001 as Senior Vice President/Investment Officer and Certified Portfolio Manager. In 1999, he and his wife, Maggie, purchased and operated for eight years the Baskin Robbins ice cream store on Forest Drive in Columbia. They grew the store from a bottom-tier operation in the Baskin Robbins franchise system to one in the top 5% nationwide within three years, tripling sales along the way. While operating the ice cream store, Mike and Maggie received patents for a portable ice cream sink and fold-down sneezeguard they invented and in 2002 started Magnolia Carts, an ice cream cart manufacturing company, which they sold in 2013.