In May, the School's annual Alumni Achievement Award was conferred upon six alumni, while two faculty members received the HBS Distinguished Service Award. Profiles of the honorees follow.
Ralph M. Barford
Frank Batten
David J. Dunn
Ann M. Fudge
Ellen R. Marram
Robert F. McDermott
Martin V. Marshall
Arthur N. Turner
President, Valleydene Corporation Limited Chairman, GSW Inc.
Despite occupying diverse industry sectors, several of Canada's best-known blue-chip companies have one thing in common - they all include Ralph Barford on their boards of directors. It's a tribute to his years of experience as a corporate and community leader and to his stature as one of Canada's most distinguished executives.
Barford graduated from the University of Toronto at the age of twenty, entered Harvard Business School, and graduated as a Baker Scholar. After spending a year at HBS as assistant to the legendary Professor Georges F. Doriot, Barford moved on to work as a financial analyst at Doriot's American Research & Development Corporation, one of the first U.S. venture capital firms. Before long, Barford himself was eager to become an entrepreneur. With several other HBS graduates, he undertook a decidedly low-tech startup: plastic phone book covers to carry local advertisements in Massachusetts. The company, the National Merchandising Corporation, was such a success that over the next six years, the Barford-led enterprise expanded into other parts of the country, added four production facilities, and saw sales top $7 million.
In 1960, Barford sold his share of the business to his partners and returned home with his family to Toronto. The following year, he purchased Beatty Brothers, a small Ontario manufacturer that made a wide assortment of consumer durables. Two years later, Barford took Beatty into the big time, buying up a larger competitor, General Steel Wares, Inc. (GSW).
As head of the new concern, Barford reorganized GSW and developed it into the largest appliance maker in Canada. Remaining chairman of GSW after it was reconfigured following a merger, Barford then took up the reins of Valleydene Corporation Limited, a family-run holding company that has a majority interest in GSW and also oversees warehouse facilities, oil and gas businesses, and a portfolio of real-estate investments. The move to Valleydene provided Barford with the flexibility he needed to spend more time with his ailing wife (who died in 1991 after a long struggle with multiple sclerosis) and six children.
Beyond the boardroom, Barford has been associated in various capacities with causes such as the Toronto Hospital, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Toronto School of Theology, Victoria College, and the University of Toronto. In addition, he has served on numerous federal and provincial committees and chaired the advisory board of the University of Western Ontario's Ivey School of Business.
Barford's ties to Soldiers Field remain strong. From 1994 to 1997, he headed the HBS Canadian Initiative, a program conceived by former HBS Dean John H. McArthur in part to enable a geographically and culturally diverse group of qualified Canadian students to attend the School. Under Barford's leadership, the first phase of the Initiative ended last December with the announcement that HBS graduates from across Canada had raised $20 million (Canadian) to create the Canadian Financial Aid Program. Barford continues to work with the School as chairman of the Canadian Alumni Advisory Committee.
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Former Chairman Landmark Communications, Inc.
Frank Batten has delivered hundreds of speeches on the media, philanthropy, and education. The fact that most of these talks were given after his larynx had been removed is a testament to his courage and perseverance. In 1979 Batten, a nonsmoker, had surgery to remove a cancerous tumor in his throat. Stripped of his voice box and vocal cords, he had to learn to speak using his esophagus.
Batten, an entrepreneur who thrives on difficult challenges, says that coping with cancer was one of the biggest hurdles he has ever faced. A former president of the Associated Press, he spent 43 years building Norfolk, VirginiaÐbased Landmark Communications, Inc. (and its earlier incarnations), from an $8 million family business to a multimedia enterprise with close to five thousand employees.
Batten's career at Landmark began as a copyboy for Norfolk's Virginian-Pilot, a daily newspaper owned by his uncle. After graduating from the University of Virginia (UVA), serving in the Merchant Marine, and earning a Harvard MBA in 1952, he took a job as a reporter and ad salesman for his uncle's media company. In 1954, at 27, he was appointed publisher of the Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch and the Virginian-Pilot. Despite his youth, Batten gained the respect and admiration of his colleagues. He made ethical, careful reporting a top priority, strongly supported school desegregation, and encouraged civic involvement among his employees.
In 1964 Batten made the first in a series of significant acquisitions, purchasing a small cable television station. During the next few decades, Landmark's TeleCable division bought dozens of cable stations around the country before selling them to Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI) in 1994 for more than a billion dollars. He made further investments in the newspaper, television, and radio realms, combining them all under the name Landmark in 1967.
In 1982, amid considerable skepticism from industry experts, Batten created The Weather Channel, a 24-hour cable network that carries national and local weather reports. For the first five years the channel lost money, but Batten stuck with it, ultimately convincing cable providers and advertisers that it was a viable service. Today, The Weather Channel reaches over 70 million subscribers in all fifty states.
At the end of last year, Batten stepped down as the chairman of privately held Landmark, but he remains head of the Landmark Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the business that has helped many charitable and educational organizations. Over the years, his contributions to his community have been enormous, from helping to build Norfolk's Old Dominion University into a high-quality urban institution, to serving on the Virginia Council of Higher Education, to funding the Batten Center for Entrepreneurship at UVA's Darden School of Business. Batten's biggest challenge these days, he says, is to "continue to help create opportunities for others."
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