Courage and Hope in Africa Some Racquet ¡Vamos al Cine! Harvard's MBA/AD The Play's the Thing   Courage and Hope in Africa Sierra Leone, the West African nation of five million people, has been the scene of a brutal civil war for most of the 1990s. An accord signed last year has yielded an uneasy truce; with it has come an opportunity to restore some measure of stability to the strife-torn country, the Toronto Star (July 6, 2001) reported. With hundreds of thousands of displaced people now starting to return to their homes, UNICEF’s Sierra Leone representative JoAnna Van Gerpen (MBA ’81) explained, “We need to have schools and health facilities. Both were damaged or destroyed during the war.” Indeed, with much of the country’s economy and infrastructure in shambles and with its enormous social problems (Sierra Leone has the highest infant mortality rate in the world), Van Gerpen is seeking aid for UNICEF from Western governments and international development agencies. An Iowa native who has spent a dozen years in the field working for UNICEF, Van Gerpen observed that despite Sierra Leone’s devastation, “people have a clear desire here to improve their lives. I guess you could say that’s where the hope lies.” RETURN TO THE TOP OF THE PAGE Some Racquet In an era of corporate sports, John Korff (MBA ’77) is a throwback to the days of the maverick impresario. A promoter of sporting events, hot-air balloon festivals, and other extravaganzas, he is the founder of the A&P Tennis Classic, a women’s professional tournament in Mahwah, New Jersey. He’s also a man on something of a mission — to get the sports-marketing business to lighten up and make big events more fun for all involved. Describing Korff as an ultramarathoner and “offbeat 48-year-old Deadhead bachelor,” the Newark, New Jersey, Star-Ledger (July 12, 2001) observed, “For 24 years, Korff has worked to shrink the widening chasm between sports fans and their heroes by turning his [tennis] event into a week-long food and music festival.” Explained Korff, “If you take big-time athletes and put them in a family-friendly environment where the fans can have real access to the tennis players, that’s unique.” In addition to her matches, a player in Korff’s tournament might find herself on stage dancing with the Beach Boys, participating in a Frisbee-throwing contest, whacking souvenir tennis balls into the crowd, or having a Q&A session with fans. A once-hostile tennis establishment is beginning to see things Korff’s way. In 1989, Korff parted company with the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) because it wouldn’t allow him to invite then 13-year-old Jennifer Capriati to his event. But in 1999, the WTA asked Korff to join its board, while the Players Association chose him for its business advisor. Although his business has its ups and downs and there’s a constant scramble to arrange sponsorships, Korff said, “I’d much rather be scared than bored.” RETURN TO THE TOP OF THE PAGE     ¡Vamos al Cine! As a student at HBS, movie buff Matthew Heyman (MBA ’93) used to ask classmates what the theaters were like in their hometowns. When two classmates from Mexico City told him the theaters there were terrible, Heyman sensed an opportunity, the New York Times (July 15, 2001) reported. Without speaking a word of Spanish, he set out for Mexico City and found that the theaters there were indeed “the worst — they were old decrepit buildings that would never operate in the United States.” With his two Mexican partners, Miguel Angel Dávila Guzmán (MBA ’93) and Adolfo Fastlicht (MBA ’93), Heyman launched his first theater in 1995. Today, with 317 screens, privately held Cinemex averages 90,000 viewers per screen, one of the highest levels in the Americas. Heyman, who is director general of Grupo Cinemex, S.A. de C.V., expects that by the end of this year, his company will control 51 percent of the cinemas in Mexico City, one of the world’s most-populated urban areas. To reach the working poor, Heyman decided to cut ticket prices by about half in low-income neighborhoods while building the same luxurious theaters that Cinemex was constructing in wealthier areas. At first there was skepticism on the part of local people unaccustomed to such lavishness in their neighborhoods. “It looked like Disneyland,” Heyman admitted. “But we delivered first-world service, and it took them eight to twelve months to figure out that, ‘Hey, this isn’t a scam; they really built it for us.’” RETURN TO THE TOP OF THE PAGE Harvard's MBA/AD Mention Harvard and most people think of geniuses, not jocks. But with 41 varsity sports, 24 junior varsity teams, and more than 1,500 intercollegiate athletes, Harvard College has the nation’s largest Division 1 athletic program — and now it’s under new management. HBS official Bob Scalise (MBA ’89) was named Harvard’s new athletic director in July, stepping down from his position as the School’s associate dean for administration, senior executive officer. An All-American lacrosse player at Brown who later coached men’s lacrosse and women’s soccer for the Crimson, Scalise wrote in his HBS application that some day he wanted to be the athletic director of a major sports program, according to the Boston Globe (July 17, 2001). “My dream has come true,” said Scalise, who noted that Harvard’s extensive program enables “a large number of people to participate and learn from their sports experiences. This is what I hope we are all about.” RETURN TO THE TOP OF THE PAGE     The Play's the Thing Visiting Mr. Green, by Jeff Baron (MBA ’78), is a play about the relationship that develops between an elderly widower and the youthful executive who almost kills him while driving recklessly down a Manhattan street. To make amends, the young man is ordered to pay weekly community-service visits to the old man for six months. “It’s an arrangement neither of them is very happy with,” Baron told the St. Petersburg Times (July 12, 2001), “but once they get to know each other a little better, they end up playing out some big unfinished business each of them has with his own family.” The play, Baron’s first, had its off-Broadway premiere in 1997 with Eli Wallach in the title role, and has since been widely produced in the United States and performed in translation in ten other countries. The play’s Vienna production garnered the 2001 Kultur-Preis Europa for Baron, the first non-European to win the prestigious award. “I think it’s a well-made story, and it’s funny,” said Baron, a former executive with American Express and Coca-Cola who later became a television and movie writer. “It’s really about parents and children and parental expectations of children.” RETURN TO THE TOP OF THE PAGE