Taylor R.M. Keen

Against the Current

It's the first day of class at HBS, and students introduce themselves one by one, proudly enumerating their accomplishments. Finally a young man with a long black braid rises from his seat. "I don't have much to say," he declares with quiet dignity. "Chief Seattle, a famous Native American tribal leader once said, 'Hold your tongue in youth so that someday with age and maturity you might have something worthwhile to say.' That's the philosophy I follow."

The new student who has stunned his classmates into silence is Taylor Keen, a member of the Cherokee and Omaha Nations. "Omaha," he will tell you, means "those who move against the current," and for Keen, who is always stretching the conventional thinking in whatever community he travels, the name couldn't be more fitting.

Spending most of his childhood on his parents' reservations in Oklahoma and Nebraska, Keen was initiated during adolescence into the Omaha Warriors Society. "That's where I learned manners of humility," he says. He attended public high school in the cities of Omaha and Tahlequah and then Dartmouth College, attracted by the school's strong Native American studies department. During the summers, he would return to the reservations, gradually assuming roles of increasing responsibility in sacred ceremonies and serving as an administrative intern for both of his tribes. The high-profile Cherokee chief, Wilma P. Mankiller, served as his mentor. "I got the chance to witness the fine art of negotiation by a master," he says admiringly.

After college, Keen served as a management trainee for Bath Iron Works, the Maine shipbuilding firm. Guided by the Native American philosophy that "any decision you make should consider the welfare of the next seven generations," Keen also became involved in the company's environmental improvement efforts. Encouraged by Mankiller, he applied to Harvard as a joint degree candidate at both HBS and the Kennedy School of Government, but deferred admission for a year to help the Omahas reinvest profits from the tribe's gaming operations in housing and microlending projects.

When Keen finally arrived at HBS in the fall of 1995, he experienced a profound sense of culture shock. "Having been on the reservation for a long stretch, I was caught off guard by all the noise," he says. "The Omaha are a very quiet people. It's disrespectful to clap, for instance."

After readjusting to the academic world, however, Keen became as much a teacher as a student. On two occasions he performed tribal rituals for his section, playing the sacred water drum and sharing songs and wisdom from his tradition. "You have the potential to make a great impact on the world," Keen told his transfixed classmates during one ceremony, "and so you must use that power responsibly. Remember also that your family is the most important thing in life."

Keen, who will pursue a managerial position in telecommunications after graduation in the hopes of some day helping his tribes develop a technology-based infrastructure, says he has been profoundly changed by his HBS experience. "My elders chide me for using the word 'I' too much now," he says reflectively. "But I've also been exposed to the humanity of capitalism; I've learned that American business is filled with people who share my values and who are truly dedicated to helping make the world a better place. That's been a wonderful surprise."

- Marguerite Rigoglioso