Alumni in the News
Hollywood and Humility
WICZYK AND SATCHU: With Hollywood’s major studios increasingly risk-averse, a pair of HBS classmates finds a winning niche.
Photo by Charley Gallay/Getty Images
Media Rights Capital (MRC) founders and co-CEOs Mordecai (“Modi”) Wiczyk and Asif Satchu (both MBA ’99) are among the hottest dealmakers in Tinseltown. In addition to a recent flurry of movie projects, including a three-picture deal with director M. Night Shyamalan, the pair is becoming, through MRC, one of the largest suppliers of programming for television, according to Daily Variety (September 25, 2008).
With the major studios growing increasingly risk-averse, MRC found a niche: It turned to Wall Street and private equity for capital while establishing its own talent relationships and keeping creative control over MRC-produced content. Asked about his philosophy of dealmaking, Wiczyk replied, “Do what’s original. Don’t worry about precedent. But remember, everything has been done before and seen before. We have a fifty-foot board here with an industry timeline from 1890 to 2008. History is humility.”
Attention, Oenophiles
THE CUFFES: A new career importing “fantastic” African wines from black-owned vineyards.
Photo by Asia Kepka
In 2005, while on a trip in South Africa, Selena Cuffe (MBA ’03) saw an ad for the Soweto Wine Festival. “I was used to seeing negative African images,” Cuffe told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (October 1, 2008). “Soweto meant apartheid, but the wine festival was completely different and positive.” In talking with vintners there, she found that some had been making wine for generations but had never had full-fledged business opportunities until apartheid collapsed. Their stories fascinated her, and “the wines tasted fantastic,” Cuffe said. “A light went off in my head.”
Not long after, Cuffe and her husband, Khary Cuffe (MBA ’07), founded Heritage Link Brands (www.heritagelinkbrands.com), dedicated to importing the finest wines from the handful of South Africa’s 570 wineries that are owned by blacks. One recommended label is Seven Sisters Bukettraube Odelia, selling for about $13 a bottle, of which one critic noted: “The obscure Bukettraube grapes provide peach and floral aromas opening to peach and apricot flavors witha touch of lime. Fine acidity deftly balances an off-dry finish. Try it either as a refreshing aperitif or with baked flounder with a fruit sauce. Highly recommended.” Heady stuff indeed, especially for someone like Cuffe who “never in a million years imagined a professional wine career.”
New School for New Orleans
ALFORD AND FRIENDS: Committed to the establishment of high-performing schools.
Photo by Sean Gardner
Among those honored this year by the Young Leadership Council of New Orleans was John Alford (MBA ’01), the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported (September 19, 2008). Alford is CEO of NOLA 180, a nonprofit charter-management organization designed to turn around failing schools.
When Hurricane Katrina struck, Alford was teaching at a charter school in Baltimore. He moved to the Big Easy, where he founded and is “school leader” of the Langston Hughes Academy, a kindergarten through eighth grade charter school that expects to expand to 350 students by next year. “Everyone here realizes for New Orleans to change its course, the schools need to be high-performing,” Alford told USA Today (July 23, 2008).
The Next Chapter
OLSON: After publishing, turning over a new leaf.
Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Former Random House chairman and CEO Peter Olson (MBA ’76) has donned a new hat and will begin teaching corporate strategy at HBS next month. Olson is no stranger to Harvard, having attended Harvard College and Harvard Law School as well as HBS. “I love Cambridge, and I love Harvard Square,” he told Publishers Weekly (September 15, 2008).
And speaking of corporate strategy, especially in the book publishing business, there’s one company that really stands out in Olson’s mind. He predicted that Amazon will be the industry’s dominant player because it not only markets and sells directly to customers, it also possesses enormous amounts of information about their buying and reading habits. “There’s never been anything like it,” he said.
Farm Boy
JEPPSON: With his wife, Marianne, a long, happy life at Oakholm, the family farm.
Photo by Dan Gould/Worcester Telegram & Gazette
Apart from his role as chairman and CEO of the Norton Company and service on the boards of numerous nonprofit and civic organizations in Worcester, Massachusetts, John Jeppson (MBA ’40) found time to operate a 150-acre commercial farm, named Oakholm, in nearby Brookfield. At age 91, he has just completed a memoir, Making Hay, which is about his childhood and life on the farm. The Worcester Telegram & Gazette (September 16, 2008) said the book “paints a portrait of a time, a place, and a person who has weathered life’s trials and embraced its successes with perspective, kindness, and humor.” On the challenge of recalling long-ago events without contemporaneous notes, Jeppson said, “I find when I am writing, my memory comes back. It was a lot of fun to relive the times of my life.”
