Stories
Stories
A Remarkable Life Story
Lillian Lincoln Lambert (MBA ’69) credits much of her business confidence and acumen to her years at Harvard Business School, where she was the first black woman to receive an MBA. But those two years, exhilarating and educational as they may have been, were not necessarily happy ones, she relates in her recent autobiography, The Road to Someplace Better: From the Segregated South to Harvard Business School and Beyond (Wiley). Her first-year class had just eighteen women (including herself) and five black men.
“No one at Harvard, including the faculty and the administrators, really knew what to make of me or what to do with me,” recalls Lambert, who received an HBS Alumni Achievement Award in 2003. Professors would pass her by in the halls, eyes cast downward. Recruiters seemed more interested in white students. Even at graduation, “many of the black students felt out of place.” It didn’t help her self-esteem when she fumbled her first cold call.
Not one to hold a “pity party,” Lambert joined an effort in 1967 to recruit black students from other schools (the number swelled 450 percent in the Class of 1970) and was a founding member of the African- American Student Union, both with the strong backing of Dean George P. Baker.
The Road to Someplace Better charts Lambert’s life from her humble upbringing on a Virginia farm (which didn’t get electricity until she was eight) to her founding of Centennial One Inc., a janitorial-services firm she built into a $20 million enterprise with 1,200 employees.
Her HBS education regularly gave her opportunities and helped her overcome challenges, Lambert relates. Early in her career she took over a struggling janitorial firm burdened with “every conceivable problem that a small business could have: unpaid withholding taxes . . . delinquent bank loans, unpaid vendors, overdue receivables, and other major cash-flow issues.” Her systematic, creative approach to overcoming obstacles would bring nods of approval from many HBS alumni, one suspects.
Lambert credits the late H. Naylor Fitzhugh (MBA ’33) with introducing her to business and pushing her toward HBS. Fitzhugh first mentored Lambert at Howard University, where he was a professor and she a student. “I came to appreciate the shrewdness in his approach to me,” she relates. “Just as in his teaching of the case method, he let me think that I was making my own decisions.”
This well-written book, leavened by healthy doses of self-deprecating humor, offers a unique perspective on the strengths and weaknesses of HBS in the late 1960s and is a tribute to the tenacity and spirit of its author.
Post a Comment
Related Stories
-
- 01 Jun 2023
- HBS Alumni Bulletin
Just Breathe
Re: Zee Clarke (MBA 2008); By: Jen McFarland Flint -
- 01 Jun 2023
- HBS Alumni Bulletin
Alumni and Faculty Books
-
- 01 Mar 2023
- HBS Alumni Bulletin
March 2023 Alumni and Faculty Books
-
- 01 Mar 2023
- HBS Alumni Bulletin
What’s in a Name
Re: Dolly Chugh (MBA 1994); Mihir A. Desai (Mizuho Financial Group Professor of Finance); Felix Oberholzer-Gee (Andreas Andresen Professor of Business Administration); By: Jen McFarland Flint
Stories Featuring Lillian Lambert
-
- 18 Jun 2020
- HBS News
HBS Community Conversation on Race: June 11, 2020
Re: Mia Mends (MBA 2003); George Ellis (MBA 1984); Chiamaka Anyoku (MBA 2021); Ronnie Wimberley (MBA 2021); Priyanka Chaurasia (MBA 2021); Michael Klain (MBA 2021); Ann Fudge (MBA 1977); Lillian Lambert (MBA 1969); Lewis Long (MBA 1991); Craig Robinson (MBA 2002) -
- 26 Oct 2018
- Making A Difference
A Chance to Lead
Re: Lillian Lambert (MBA 1969) -
- 01 Jun 2018
- HBS Alumni Bulletin
Alumni Connections: Photos of Recent Alumni Events
Re: Daniel Peng (MBA 2017); Wendy Lim (MBA 2017); Jacqueline Valentine (MBA 2017); Anish Nahar (MBA 2017); Ben Dupont (PLDA 20); Ted Lewis (MBA 1969); Leroy Willis (MBA 1969); Lillian Lambert (MBA 1969); Karin Kissane-Gaisford (MBA 1997); Jeannie Lavine (MBA 1992); Jonathan Lavine (MBA 1992)
