HBS IN CHINA: The inaugural HBS Executive Education program at the new Harvard Center Shanghai in early January ensured that language was not a barrier to following the presentations. Participants could use headsets for Chinese translation of HBS professor Robert S. Kaplan’s case discussion, and a “scribe” provided simultaneous translation (left) of his blackboard notes.
A New Oath for Business Leaders
At the 2009 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the Forum for Young Global Leaders (YGL) resolved to study the idea of developing an oath to guide decision-making when facing tough business choices. HBS professors Rakesh Khurana and Nitin Nohria, who advised the HBS students who developed the much-talked-about MBA Oath last spring, worked with the YGL on writing the new Global Business Oath. Read the oath, available in eight languages, at www.globalbusinessoath.org.
A Helping Hand for Health Care
The HBS Buffalo Club continued its tradition of sponsoring community leaders for HBS Executive Education courses by sending senior management teams from two of the area’s health-care providers to the School’s new Managing Health- care Delivery program. The three-week program provides the management frameworks and leadership strategies needed to improve patient care, organizational performance, and financial outcomes.
Students Assist Needy Family
A Boston family threatened with homelessness got a financial lift from more than seventy HBS students just before Thanksgiving. In response to an e-mail campaign launched by roommates Grace Simmons and Jennifer Kelm (both HBS ’10), their classmates used the charity site SmallCanBeBig.org to raise $1,550 for the family in less than 48 hours. “It was a truly rewarding and meaningful experience for both of us,” said Simmons.
SmallCanBeBig.org, created by Boathouse Group, a Boston communications firm led by president John Connors (PMD 71, 1996), uses the Internet to harness the power of small donations on behalf of selected families in dire need. Commenting on the students’ effort, Connors said, “It was a great statement about the School and the students.”
Milestone for HBS Alumna
Alvarez-Bjelland
Photo by Fred J. Field
For the first time, the president of the Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) is a woman MBA from Harvard Business School. Teresita Alvarez-Bjelland (AB ’76, MBA ’79), who took office last summer, will focus her one-year term on Harvard’s role in global public service. She has been a member of the HAA board since 1995.
Alvarez-Bjelland emigrated with her family from Cuba to Miami in 1962 and has lived for the past 25 years in Norway, home to her husband, Christian Bjelland (MBA ’78). She has worked in marketing and advertising and currently is a consultant.
Wind Shift
HBS professor George P. Baker, a finance expert, has in recent years become an alternative-energy change agent as well, spearheading community wind projects in Maine. Now on leave from HBS, Baker is the CEO of Fox Islands Wind LLC, which last November unveiled three 1.5- megawatt wind turbines on the island of Vinalhaven, Maine. The $15 million project is the largest community-owned wind facility on the East Coast. Standing nearly 400 feet tall, the structures will fill the electricity needs of the several thousand year-round and summer residents of Vinalhaven and neighboring North Island.
At the dedication ceremony, it was noted that Baker’s leadership was instrumental to the project’s success. In his own remarks, Baker observed, “It’s exciting to see the turbines providing benefits to these islands after years of contribution by many people. These island communities are truly leaders in the field of coastal renewable energy.”
Hunting Red Balloons
In December, the government agency DARPA tethered to the ground ten red weather balloons at random locations around the United States in a test to see how social networks might mobilize and use the Internet for rapid problem-solving. In an online challenge, the government offered $40,000 to the first person or team to locate all ten balloons. Pledging to donate the prize to AIDS research, an HBS team of four students and two professors drew upon the School’s network, including alumni, for the balloon search. Although a group from MIT won the prize, the HBS team estimated its message reached 2 million people in three days.
