Since its September 2002 kickoff at HBS, The Campaign for Harvard Business School has traveled to thirteen U.S. and international cities, helping to strengthen and unify the far-flung HBS community and giving more than 3,000 alumni the opportunity to meet Dean Kim B. Clark. In speaking to alumni about the challenges of maintaining and strengthening the School’s global relevance, Clark is upbeat. “The one thing I’m absolutely sure of,” he says, “is that the world needs leaders. In that kind of world, our role has special importance. So it’s incumbent on every one of us to make sure we can pursue the School’s mission with a high degree of excellence.”

Thanks to film executive Alan F. Horn (MBA ’71), who opened the Warner Bros. Studio lot to HBS, the Los Angeles event was a memorable evening for the several hundred West Coast alumni who joined Dean Clark, Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers, and a group of HBS professors at the February gathering. The following month, Dean Clark flew south to meet with enthusiastic groups of Florida alumni at well-attended events in Palm Beach, Miami, and Naples.

In late March, the campaign took off across the Pond to London, where the European launch at historic Whitehall Palace brought together more than 400 alumni from all across the Continent. Hailing from eighteen different countries, the group spent the evening reconnecting with each other and with HBS. The sizable turnout was a testimony to the School’s long commitment to global relevance and to the strength of European alumni interest in broadening and deepening the School’s efforts to that end.

The campaign, which runs through December 2005 and has already raised more than $400 million, is designed to support five key areas: student financial aid, global research, faculty development, learning technologies, and campus renewal. “Each of these initiatives is critical to the HBS mission,” notes Clark.

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