Just one week before the Miami Science Museum’s Feb. 24 groundbreaking, Dan Bell, who co-chairs the museum’s board of trustees with his wife, Trish, is hoping that going vertical will allow him to expand fundraising efforts.

“We spent the better part of seven years trying to cultivate donors,” he said, “and one of the biggest problems was their response often was, ‘I’m not convinced this thing is going to happen.’… I expect that the groundbreaking, the beginning of construction and the fact that we’ve already raised about 80% of the total cost makes it a lot easier to believe this thing is going to happen and it is going to be successful.”

Before joining the museum’s board in 2002, Mr. Bell was executive vice president and chief operating officer of Miami-based Key Pharmaceuticals. After leaving the drug-delivery company in 1986, he co-founded Kos Pharmaceuticals, overseeing the company’s growth from three to 1,500 employees.

“It took us about nine years to get a product on the market,” he said. “We sold the company in 2006 to Abbott Laboratories, at which time had about 1,500 employees and nearly a billion dollars in annual sales.”

Mr. Bell discussed his fundraising efforts at the Miami Science Museum, his work with Community Partnership for the Homeless, and his efforts with the Florida United Methodist Children’s Home with Miami Today staff writer Ashley Hopkins at his home in Coral Gables.