Ideas against AIDS

CLAWSON AND VIRAVAIDYA: Early allies in the fight against AIDS.

Photo courtesy Curtis Clawson

In Thailand, anti-AIDS activist Mechai Viravaidya is known for getting not only Santas and tollbooth operators to hand out condoms, but traffic police as well, in a campaign he called “Cops and Rubbers.” Viravaidya, aka “Mr. Condom,” has been battling AIDS for three decades and recently was awarded $1 million by the Gates Foundation for his work.

As a visiting scholar at Harvard in the late 1980s, Viravaidya was frustrated by academia’s propensity for talk over action. Befriending HBS students Curtis Clawson, Jim Kralik, and John Galantic (all MBA ’90), he invited them to Thailand to help get its business community involved in rural economic development to battle poverty and prostitution.

Clawson, who remains close to Viravaidya and describes him as “the most selfless person I’ve ever known,” is now chairman and CEO of Hayes Lemmerz International, a world leader in the manufacture of wheel rims for truck and cars. Of his association with Viravaidya, Clawson told the Boston Globe (May 29, 2007), “It’s one of the greatest experiences I’ve ever had. He’s such a great ideas man.”

Stem Cell Man

Last year, Brock Reeve (MBA ’88) was named executive director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute to bring his managerial and diplomatic skills to bear on achieving organizational cohesion and help speed laboratory innovations to market. “Although not a scientist himself, Reeve’s focused and inclusive approach has helped to bridge differences and create new rules of engagement within and among Harvard schools and more than 750 scientists at eleven affiliated research hospitals,” the Boston Globe (June 11, 2007) reported.

Reeve, whose half-brother was the late actor and stem cell research activist Christopher Reeve, previously had worked in strategy, marketing, and management with several firms that were involved in IT, health care, and life sciences. “In the business world, a lot of what I did was getting people to work together across business units,” Reeve explained. “Because I don’t have one particular scientific domain, I’m not tied to viewing things through that lens. And at the same time, a lot of the challenges are not purely scientific, they are also organizational.”

Reeve sees Harvard’s expertise in so many other fields as a real plus. For dealing with the myriad beyond-the-laboratory issues — social, political, and ethical — that surround stem cell research, “Few other places in the world have this set of resources,” he said.

Back from the Brink

MILLS: Sometimes when the bottom falls out of the bottom line, the only place to go is up.

Photo by Eric Camden

Harold Mills (MBA ’98) is CEO of ZeroChaos, an IT staffing and human- resources outsourcing firm based in Orlando, Florida. With some $365 million in sales, it competes with the likes of Manpower in providing high-tech consultants, software developers, and help-desk professionals. Yet it wasn’t so long ago that Mills, brought in by ZeroChaos’s holding company to build up the firm, realized one day that “no one was buying our services, and we got down to a thousand dollars in the bank account,” Black Enterprise (June 2007) reported in its survey of the “BE Industrial/Service 100.”

So ZeroChaos redirected its focus (selling its services to major corporations rather than small businesses), introduced innovative, customer-friendly features, and expanded through acquisition. Having led a management buyout of ZeroChaos in 2004, Mills projects the firm to be a $1 billion operation by 2010.

“It’s always a great discussion to have with your wife when you’ve got three kids and a mortgage, but she was the one who looked me in the eye and said, ‘Let it ride,’ ” recalled Mills. “And that’s what we did. We gambled everything, and ultimately the story worked out.”

Busy…Very Busy

Courtesy Thriving Office

Bill Freund (MBA ’96) was working out of his home when he realized his telephone calls might pack more punch if they sounded like they were coming from a busy office. So he put together a CD that includes ringing phones, the barely audible murmur of background conversations, file cabinets opening and closing, and other office goings-on.

Aside from conveying over the phone the aura of a successful enterprise, his virtual, aural workplace has another benefit, Freund believes. “A lot of people feel isolated in their home offices,” he explained to the Boston Herald (May 30, 2007). “Many telecommuters miss the regular hubbub of the office.” So his CD not only “instantly builds the credibility of home-office workers, it also boosts their confidence and productivity.” Freund offers CDs or downloads of “Busy” or “Very Busy” office environments at www.ThrivingOffice.com.

Turf Boss

Scotts Miracle-Gro chairman and CEO Jim Hagedorn (AMP 153, 1997) sees business as “commercial warfare,” according to the Columbus Dispatch (June 10, 2007). “We don’t fight with bullets, but we can have exactly the same attitude,” Hagedorn said. “We fight with money and ideas.”

Hagedorn’s father started Miracle-Gro, which later merged with Scotts. The younger Hagedorn took over in 2001, and the company’s share price has more than doubled after he expanded the firm beyond lawn care into all manner of backyard products. Hagedorn likes hard work and initiative; some employees have left the company, he said, because they “don’t appreciate the intensity, the profanity, and the mercurial way I run the business.” Last year, the company began trying to fire employees who smoked, even if only in their homes. Employees must also try to improve their health or face higher medical premiums. To address that, company headquarters features a $5 million fitness center and free doctor’s visits for those on the company health plan.

“He’s a born leader,” said his mentor and predecessor as CEO, Chuck Berger (MBA ’60), who persuaded Hagedorn to attend HBS. “He had the right stuff but needed a lot of smoothing around the edges.” Said Hagedorn, “I kind of want to be at war all the time, and people aren’t always comfortable with that.”