Stories
Stories
Class Day and Commencement 2001
Transformed by a large, canopied stage and row after row of folding chairs, Baker Beach took on the guise of its more stately alter ego, Baker Lawn, and served as an ideal venue for the Class of 2001's Class Day and graduation ceremonies on June 6 and 7. Although this year's activities had to be relocated from nearby Aldrich Lawn due to construction of the new Hawes Hall classroom building, tradition otherwise prevailed in the form of beautiful weather, wise and humorous speeches, and an enthusiastic crowd of MBA graduates (some 843 strong), families, and friends.
Student Association presidents Mini Desai and Stephen Moret, two of six students who received this year's Dean's Award, opened formal remarks on Class Day with their amusing descriptions of the HBS experience. They then reflected more seriously on some of the key components of a satisfying and honorable life, including honesty and integrity, respect for others, community involvement, and pursuit of one's passion.
Four professors, honored by the class for their ability to inspire, impart knowledge, and contribute to student life, were next presented with the Class of 2001 Student Association Faculty Awards. Selected in the Required Curriculum category were Michael E. Porter (Competition and Strategy) and Mihir A. Desai (Finance), who were joined by André F. Perold (Finance) and Benjamin C. Esty (Finance) in the Elective Curriculum.
Class Day student speaker Dan Senor then took the podium and declared that the class's education was enhanced by the fact that "our classmates are a refreshingly down-to-earth group of people who contributed to all of our learning in meaningful ways." The influence of that dynamic, Senor noted, is at once pervasive and individual: "As we depart," he said, more than eight hundred "unique experiences will leave this campus."
Senor was followed at center stage by featured guest Jack Welch, General Electric chairman and CEO. He was joined by Nigel Killick (MBA '01), winner of a School-wide competition to have the honor of interviewing Welch one-on-one, in lieu of, at Welch's request, the traditional Class Day address format. The blunt, veteran CEO with the Massachusetts accent and his unabashed, youthful interlocutor - a Cambridge University graduate possessing formidable verbal agility and a rapier wit - put on quite a show. (Welch, on starting young at GE as the first employee in a new division, to Killick, who intends to launch his own start-up: "Being the first employee with a company with lots of money behind it is a pretty good deal; it's a little different than being the first employee in your own start-up, Nigel." Killick to Welch: "That's OK, Jack. With your money behind me, I'll be fine.")
Describing GE as really not much different from the neighborhood grocery he patronized while growing up in Salem, Massachusetts, Welch said, "Business is a bunch of lucky calls, a bunch of bounces here and there. It's about your ability to build a team and take the field. If you try to make more out of it than something very human and informal, you'll get all caught up in your tail.
"The job of any leader is to build self-confidence in the people around him," Welch continued. "Make those people feel twelve feet tall. Clap for every achievement, no matter how small, with everybody around you. That's a hell of a lot more important than some finite strategy."
Asked about how he assesses people, Welch replied that he insists on integrity and then asks four "E" questions: "Do they have the Energy to play in a global environment? Do they Energize others? Do they have Edge, the ability to say yes or no, not maybe? Do they Execute?"
The following day, in his Commencement remarks to the graduates (including four doctoral students), Dean Kim B. Clark said, "I believe this class and its leadership have done as much as any class in memory to make the School a better place." He then recognized a number of students by name for their contributions and activities.
Clark also congratulated the winners of the HBS Business Plan Contest, which for the first time this year had two tracks, adding a social enterprise category to complement the traditional business category. Both winning teams addressed health-care issues. The social enterprise team of Neil Houghton, Ashley Magargee, Naomi Weinberg (all MBA '01), and Marcel Acosta won for their venture Low Cost Eyeglasses, whose aim is to supply eyeglasses to one billion people in the developing world who can't afford them. In the traditional category, Alec Machiels (MBA '01), and his MIT and Harvard teammates Paul Ashby, David Darst, Jason Hong, Scot Sternson, Martin Szummer, and Angie You created the winning plan for Potentia Pharmaceuticals, a venture that would help improve the product development process at drug companies.
Looking to the future and emphasizing that "there is no success in business that can compensate for failure at home," Clark told the Class of 2001, "You have the capacity to change the world, and you will touch the lives of many people. That is a great responsibility."
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