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Moir Donelson
Moir Donelson's first year at West Point wasn't easy. "Brains," as his Southside Chicago buddies called him, was valedictorian, class president, and a football star at his high school, yet he found it difficult to make a C average at the famously rigorous military academy. The significance of his own academic difficulties was not lost on him. "If I was one of the better students to come out of the Chicago public schools and I was struggling, what did that mean for the rest of my class?" he asks.
Having taken that question to heart, the hard-working, soft-spoken Moir (pronounced MOY-er) Donelson has devoted much of his life to helping others achieve and succeed. When he graduates this year, he will return to Chicago, where he plans to work for Bain & Company, in part to broaden his contacts with area businesses. His ultimate goal, however, will draw as much on his knowledge of the inner city as on his ability to navigate the inner circles of Chicago's business elite. Donelson hopes eventually to develop businesses that will create positive social changes in the part of Chicago where he grew up. "I realize this is a difficult thing to do," he says, "but it's my dream."
Be it creating a youth development program in rural Louisiana while serving in the Army or increasing revenues (by $39 million) as an engineer and administrator at Motorola in Texas (where he also tutored students), Donelson has shown great perseverance in pursuing his dreams. Grateful that the School "took a chance" and accepted him on his second try for admission, he has gone out of his way to give something back to HBS. Despite devoting most evenings to his four-year-old daughter, Amber, while his wife, Tammie, works the night shift as a respiratory therapist, Donelson has found time to tutor students in Technology and Operations Management, to cochair the School's Honor Committee, and to work with the Admissions Office to help attract a more diverse pool of applicants to the MBA Program.
Donelson attributes much of his motivation to his mother and father, both teachers, and to his training at West Point, where he learned the Cadet Prayer: "Lord give me strength to choose the harder right over the easier wrong." He calls upon this strength frequently. Back in Chicago during a college break, for example, an old friend sneaked into a movie theater without paying. Donelson went back and paid for the ticket, explaining to his friend: "This man has a business to run, and you are stealing from him." Similarly, during a pro-Reaganomics discussion in his BGIE class, Donelson spoke about the pain his community experienced as a result, he believes, of President Reagan's policies in the 1980s. Donelson noted that his mother lost her job, and his father was forced to take on a third job. Of his few friends who attended college, several came home because their financial aid was cut.
Donelson relates these stories without bitterness or judgment. "It's just that so much is being missed on both sides," he says. "I want to help bridge the gap."
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