Over the course of a multifaceted career, Bonnie R. Cohen has held leadership roles in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. A few years out of HBS, Cohen managed the United Mine Workers of America Health and Retirement Funds; after a family move to California, she served as consultant to Stanford University’s endowment and Hewlett Packard’s retirement funds. In 1989, Cohen was selected as senior financial officer for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, later becoming the organization’s COO. In 1992, she entered the US government as Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Policy, Management and Budget, serving until 1996. In 1997, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright asked Cohen to be her Undersecretary of State for Management—in effect, the agency’s COO. When her term ended in 2000, she founded B.R. Cohen & Associates, a firm providing logistical insights to film companies shooting overseas. More recently, she has worked to revitalize the DC Public Libraries, overseeing a $200 million effort to modernize the flagship Martin Luther King, Jr. Library as well as construction or renovation of 21 neighborhood libraries. Raised in Brockton, Massachusetts, Cohen received a BA from Smith College and an EdM from Harvard. Married to Louis Cohen for 60 years, she is the mother of two adult children and has five grandchildren.

Born in Brescia, Italy, Vittorio Colao received a business administration degree from Bocconi University before coming to the United States to study at HBS. After consulting in the media and telecom industries for McKinsey, he joined Omnitel Pronto Italia in 1996, rising to CEO before its acquisition by Vodafone UK, where he became regional CEO of Southern Europe. After leaving to serve as CEO of RCS Media Group from 2004 to 2006, Colao rejoined Vodafone Group and was named CEO in 2008. During his 10-year tenure, he built and transformed Vodafone through organic growth and many acquisitions, including the company’s purchase of Cable & Wireless; he also oversaw the divestiture of a $130 billion stake in Verizon Wireless. In 2018, Colao joined General Atlantic, a global growth equity firm, as a special advisor, leaving in 2021 to serve the Italian government as Minister for Innovation, Digital Transition, and Space under Prime Minister Mario Draghi. In that role, Colao led the country’s broadband connectivity plan, increased digital public services for its citizens, launched the Italian National Cybersecurity Agency, and financed the first Italian earth observation satellite constellation. He rejoined General Atlantic in 2023. The father of two adult children, he divides his time between London and Milan.

Deborah A. Farrington’s fascination with finance began at a young age, with a visit to the NYSE with her father. After receiving an AB in Economics at Smith College, she completed a training program at Chase Manhattan Bank before enrolling at HBS. Farrington then worked in investment banking at Merrill Lynch in New York, Hong Kong, and Tokyo over the next 10 years before being named Managing Director, Investment Banking, at Asian Oceanic Group in 1987. Six years later, she joined investment firm Victory Ventures as President and CEO; in 1998, she cofounded StarVest Partners LP, the largest majority woman-owned venture capital firm in the United States. Among the firms many successful investments are Fieldglass, CrowdTwist, Veracode, and Insurance.com. In 2000, StarVest was a lead investor in NetSuite, when the firm had just $100,000 in revenues; Farrington served on the company’s board until NetSuite’s $9.4 billion acquisition by Oracle in 2016. She has continued to provide her insight and expertise to numerous organizations and institutions, including the board of trustees and investment committee of Smith College, NCR, Dayforce, and Cumulus Media. A dedicated alumna, she has also served on Harvard Business School’s Visiting Committee in addition to chairing the HBS Club of New York.

Raised in Doncaster, Yorkshire, Jeremy Grantham studied economics at Sheffield University, despite having more failed A-level exams than successful ones. After a brief stint as a traveling salesman for his stepfather’s business, Grantham joined Royal Dutch Shell, working as an economist with a focus on Latin America until he enrolled at HBS. Post-MBA, Grantham worked in consulting before quickly switching to finance, cofounding Batterymarch Financial Management in 1969. There, he became an early advocate for commercial indexing, an approach that has since become a central tenet of modern investment strategy. In 1977, Grantham cofounded GMO, where he continues to serve as the long-term investment strategist and is part of the firm’s asset allocation team. In 1997, Grantham founded the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, an organization that funds impact investing, research, and public advocacy to drive the structural change required to address climate change. Elected a member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2015, he was awarded a CBE from the UK in 2016 and received the Carnegie Medal for Philanthropy in 2017, in addition to three honorary doctorates from various institutions of higher learning. A longtime resident of Boston, Grantham has been married to his wife, Hannelore, for 59 years. He is the father of three children and grandfather to seven.

The seeds for MLT were planted at HBS when John Rice conducted a second-year field study that showed that many talented minority college students had less exposure to career opportunities in business than they did in areas such as law and medicine. After leaving HBS, Rice held leadership roles at The Walt Disney Company and the NBA, while on the side he raised seed capital and piloted MLT’s initial programming. A nationally recognized nonprofit, MLT expands economic mobility for ambitious, hard-working students and professionals and advances meritocratic employer practices. Over the last 20 years, MLT has provided professional coaching and a high-performance playbook to 15,000 individuals and developed over 1,000 senior executive leaders across the private and social sectors. MLT partners with more than 200 leading employers as well as many major philanthropies. Born and raised in Washington, DC, Rice received a BA from Yale University and has two college-aged children, Mateo and Kiki.