Dear Mr. Bezos and the Committee:

Oklahoma is no longer, as our state's namesake musical once declared, a brand-new state. But, having joined the union a mere 110 years ago, we are still relatively young.

That youth manifests itself in a certain fearlessness. A willingness to forgo hidebound practices simply because that's the way it's always been done. It's this sort of audaciousness that will, I hope, lead you to consider Oklahoma City for Amazon's new corporate headquarters. Indeed, it's helped catalyze and sustain the success of my organization, the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation.

OMRF is a nonprofit biomedical research institute that employs about 400 people, the lion's share of whom are scientists. Although we appear to be a single, unified entity, we are, in truth, 50 individual labs bound together by a central, administrative hub and a shared purpose: advancing medical knowledge in the interest of improving people's lives.

Read the full story at NewsOK.com