“Let Us Now Praise Famous Women”
Val Curtis, Marianna Lozzi, and Doris Bogues
Photo by Susan Young
Thousands of alumni over recent decades have spoken and corresponded with three HBS women even though they’ve never met them. I’m talking about the backbone of the Alumni Records Office — Val Curtis, Doris Bogues, and Marianna Lozzi — who cumulatively have more than 80 years of experience getting accurate alumni names and contact details, explaining LEFAs, doling out passwords, and recording and verifying deaths.
Val, the Records Office’s necrologist since 1979, started at the office in 1973 and recalls how alumni records were kept in those precomputer times: on 8x5-inch alphabetized cards, one per alum, filling buckets set in five-foot-long deep trays placed on four revolving shelves, like cars on a very wide, miniature (about 4 ½ feet tall), electrically operated Ferris wheel. This contraption was cumbersome and inefficient (only one person at a time could use it), and one time it managed to spill all its cards on the floor. Val remembers that it took most of a week to put them back in order.
How were changes in alumni data recorded back in those days? The staff filled in the alum’s new data on a form with fields for each category of information (street, telephone number, etc.), and batches of filled-in forms were sent to the keypunching center in the basement of Baker Library. Piles of keypunched cards (each somewhat smaller than a size 10 envelope) containing the new data were regularly taken across the river to the Harvard University computing center to be run through a computer there so that new HBS 8x5 cards could be printed containing the new data. Then the new cards were proofed against the old ones. So it turns out the late 1970s were not, in fact, precomputer times for the Records Office; it’s just that the computer storing the data was not on campus.
Doris at the dot-matrix printer, with a Decmate at the right
Doris came to Alumni Records in 1979 after two years with the HBS Fund. That was the year HBS records were computerized using the VAX System 1022 program (running on a DEC PDP-10 on the first floor of Baker Library) and accessed with the DECmate housed in a VT100 terminal cabinet. At first I was envisioning Doris and Val at their Decmates inputting all the data for some 38,000 alumni, but no, the keypunched cards allowed alumni data to be digitized. The data went from chads and their holes to bits and bytes via Harvard’s computers.
Marianna began in 1988, so she experienced the old green-on-black-screen Decmate before all alumni data were switched in 1990-91 to a new database, called Ace, which was custom-built at HBS with a slick Uniface GUI on a Sybase platform and viewed on Mac computers. (Yes, Virginia, HBS was once Mac territory!) Ace stored more kinds of alumni information (e.g., kin relationships between alums, one level of prior employment, and, eventually, e-mail addresses) than the previous system did and was easier to use to produce class directories, Excel datafiles, and labels.
Over the next 15 years, as the use of e-mail and the Web expanded, the work of the Records Office became more complex and demanding — paradoxically even as alums could do more and more online themselves. Do you remember, back in late 1994, that HBS arranged for AOL to host what was called the HBS Electronic Network? Alumni subscribers to it received an AOL e-mail address and could access the alumni directory, career services, Bulletin articles, and class notes, etc. — a rudimentary version of the HBS Web site. But by April 1996 HBS had its own, independent Web site. In late May 1997 the LEFA (Lifelong E-mail Forwarding Address) system was set up and, shortly thereafter, the “E-Mail Your Class or Section” function on the HBS Alumni Web page.
The very large volume of e-mails (more than 1,000 a month) and telephone calls (300–325 a month) coming in to the Records Office is rotated among Val, Doris, and Marianna: one person handles e-mail for a week, another the telephone, and the third the other tasks. Recently the Records Office has begun a very valuable service: inputting from the Reunion Profile books compiled for MBA reunion classes such information as alumni children and their date of birth, nonprofit and corporate board memberships and years served, and multiple layers of prior employment (company, job title, and years).
Even had Val, Doris, and Marianna’s duties not expanded over the years, just the fact that there are nearly twice as many alums as in 1973 means their workload has increased. But as alumni have come to realize the value of accessing the password-protected parts of the HBS Web site (for mass e-mailing, consulting the directory, or using career services, for example), they have increasingly turned to these three women for patient coaching over the phone on how to log in, what their password is, how to enable cookies, how to deal with corporate firewalls, and much, much more. And this is where my admiration for them knows no bounds. Patience, one of the seven Roman virtues, is underrated, I believe, for I think it underlies most of the other six virtues. But in Val, Doris, and Marianna, alumni experience it in full measure. So let us now praise these paragons of patience.
Your Comments
Doris: Thanks for the help. 1979 was the last year of our class. My daugther who is a junior in high school will be in Boston to compete in a Mandarin speech competition Apr. 19. at Boston U
Keith, Thank you for that very interesting historical summary of the Records Office. And a big thank you to Val, Doris and Marianna for all your support for us alumni. Regards, Dan
Thanks Keith, for profiling the names behind the voices. Being a section secretary, I have called these women from points all over the globe, and at at various points of deadline urgency. I usually feel like I hear a smile behind the voice, and they always know their stuff.
What a very well deserved tribute to these dedicated women. I can't really imagine how they are doing it all, but it's clear that we alumni would be at a total loss without them. Val, Doris and Marianna - thank you very, very much.
Thanks for all your hard work!
Thanks for the great work that everyone in the Alumni Records office does to make our jobs easier.
You guys do a fantastic job!!! Thanks
I always appreciate anything Keith Larson has to say and this is another wonderful essay. I have on occasion had dealings with the Alumni Records Office and I agree, these women are as praiseworthy as Keith says!
While I have not had the pleasure of Val, Doris or Marianna's services I can vouch for the services and tremendous help of Keith Larson. I am new at the Class Secretary and do look forward to the assistance of the Dynamo Trio. Great article Keith. Tom
Thank you so much ladies!
Gosh! What perseverance, dedication and commitment! An example to all of us who serve our Classes as Class Secretaries. Hope we stick it out as Val, Doris, and Marianna have done. God be with you.
Keith, I loved the historical perspective of alumni records that your blog imparted. Thanks! In trying to generate awareness for an AMP Reunion this fall almost entirely online, I have had many occasions to be in touch, electronically, with the ladies of Alumni Records. They have been wonderfully supportive not only of me but of hundreds of executive education alumni. Many, many thanks!
Great article Keith. There is no way that we could do our job without Val, Doris, & Marianna's tireless efforts. By doing their job, they allow thousands and thousands of alumni to maintain and re-establish contact every year. Our community would not be the same without them.
Nice article. Good to know how people work behind the scenes for others to enjoy the fruits of their labor.
Once again, it comes through loud and clear: "Behind every successful man there is a woman...in this case THREE"!
A heartfelt THANKS! to ALL of you!
JAD
Amazing!!! Keep up the good work!!!! Much appreciated. I am now wondering what Keith does??? Just kidding...running a publication of EXCELLENCE!!! And I always have fun pulling together the '66 Sec C notes.
Good insight into another part of the alumni network. It's a little scary that we have a full person dedicated to necrology! Thanks again, Keith, for the information and thanks, Val, Doris and Marianna for your support.
Keith - great article. My group got out in 1973 and I well remember how helpful the "gals in the office" (how's that for dating myself) were to us in all manner of little and big problems.
Keith... Thanks for recognizing the ladies who run the Alumni Records Office. Val, Doris and Marianna... Thank you for keeping our records straight and Keith as well... We appreciate all you do for us.
JMS
Thanks, Keith, for sharing this wonderful history with us.
Val, Doris, and Marianna, a HUGE thanks to you three for the work you do every day!
Thank you, Keith, for putting faces to the names. I deal much more with Val, but all three ladies have been invaluable in providing me information about my classmates, who seem to move and never inform me. They are great ambassadors of HBS.
Knowing now who has been doing what in the Alumni Office gives me new courage and inspiration to inquire of them and you how I might bring the blog-world to the older generation of my classmates notes. Thank you so much.
Way to go Doris!
So proud of you and the way you have represented our class from the small town in Virginia.
Carolyn