A Classics Enterprise
Robert Strassler (MBA ’61), a self-described “scholar without credentials,” worked for seven years on his own dime to produce an unlikely 1996 bestseller: The Landmark Thucydides, a reader-friendly version of the Greek philosopher’s famously dense and convoluted account of the Peloponnesian War, Forbes magazine reported (January 29, 2007).
Over 700 pages long, studded with clear, helpful maps, notes, and appendixes, Strassler’s Thucydides was hailed and embraced by scholars and ordinary readers alike. Shortly after its publication, he began work on a similar project involving Herodotus, this time with a hefty publisher’s advance. Soon he was funding and editing a series of classical histories, including Xenophon’s Hellenica, Arrian’s work on Alexander, and Polybius’s Histories.
After a successful career in the oil-field equipment business, Strassler has a new passion: He wants to make the classics more accessible to modern Western readers because, he said, “We are the heirs of the Greeks and the beneficiaries of their thought.”
Vertically Inclined
Kamran (“Tom”) Elghanayan (MBA ’68), who arrived in the United States from Iran when he was five years old, helped found the Rockrose Development Corporation, a New York City firm with a reputation for building residential towers in neighborhoods that other developers overlook. A case in point is the firm’s current focus on Manhattan’s Hudson Yards district, an area of warehouses, parking lots, and factories that was rezoned for residential development in 2005, the New York Times reported (February 25, 2007).
Elghanayan, who is a Rockrose principal along with Frederick and anotherbrother, said his firm is positioned to make a profit with rental rates at $55 a square foot, rather than the $70-a-square-foot rate most developers must charge. “We’re able to do this because we’re completely vertically integrated, doing our own construction, with very efficient operations,” Elghanayan explained. “And we’re constantly buying land. We have a portfolio we purchased a long time ago.”
Saving the Steel Industry
Ron Bloom (MBA ’85) played a key role in helping to save the U.S. steel industry in the 1990s, writes the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (March 4, 2007). Bloom spent five years at Lazard Freres before starting a firm that advised unions about buyouts and employee stock-purchase plans. He positioned the United Steelworkers (USW) union as an “unsecured creditor” — much like a financial institution or corporate supplier — and used his Wall Street knowledge and contacts to facilitate mergers aimed at strengthening the industry. In exchange for its financial support for an ailing steel manufacturer, the USW would insist that executive pay be limited and that union representatives serve on the board. “We’re not going to save a company and go back to the old way of doing things,” explained Bloom, who engineered numerous steel-industry buyouts for the USW and eventually joined the union as a full-time member.
Uncorked
After graduating from HBS, Sue McClelland (HRPBA ’60) faced an unappealing job market. Back then, women were only truly welcomed as teachers, nurses, or secretaries, and “I didn’t want to do any of those,” McClelland told the Modesto Bee (January 14, 2007). So she accepted an advertising job — “they needed a token broad” — with Scott Paper Company, where, among other things, she made an advertising breakthrough: getting an ad for sanitary napkins on television for the first time. Recalled McClelland, “We couldn’t run it before 10 p.m. No children. It was so subtle, it might as well have been an advertisement for perfume.”
In 1972, E. & J. Gallo Winery called out of the blue and invited McClelland to its Modesto headquarters to manage its network television purchases. Eventually becoming the family company’s first female vice president and media maven, she helped Gallo upscale its brand while also introducing its popular wine coolers, featuring the Bartles & Jaymes country-boy pitchmen. Last December, after almost 35 years at Gallo, McClelland retired and now devotes much of her time to raising prize-winning Morgan show horses and wirehaired dachshunds.
A Big Deal
Ratan Tata (AMP 71, 1975) made big news in February when his Tata Group purchased Corus, the Anglo-Dutch steel producer, the Financial Times reported (February 3, 2007). The $12 billion deal was one for the record books as the largest Indian takeover of a foreign company to date, and showed the muscle of the country’s manufacturing sector. But Tata said that India cannot rely on the manufacturing and service sectors to produce jobs; it needs to add jobs in the agricultural sector. “We have to understand the magnitude of the problem,” he explained. “We have a billion people, we have 17 million to 18 million added each year, and we have perhaps 40 percent of our population under the age of 20. Therefore, we have the responsibility of educating, feeding, and finally finding jobs for the new entrants on the market.”
2020 Vision
When it comes to setting personal goals, Lara O’Connor Hodgson (MBA ’98) aims high: Her ambition is to become, like another notable HBS alum, President of the United States, most likely in 2020. (For those with a similar aspiration and timetable, recall that she will need a running mate.)
“I want to make a difference,” Hodgson told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (November 9, 2006), adding that for most elected officials, “it’s become job preservation instead of service.” A Georgia Tech alum with a degree in aerospace engineering, Hodgson has served as COO of Dewberry Capital Corp.; worked for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics; and served as EVP at Dunk.net, Shaquille O’Neal’s footwear and apparel company. She is currently the CEO of Insomnia Consulting LLC, an Atlanta-based firm specializing in investment, development, and consulting for complex and innovative “world-changing” projects. Hodgson also competes in marathons and triathlons, which can only help hone the kind of endurance and self-discipline she’ll need for that eventual run to the White House.
