Claudio (OPM 12, 1987) and Rosalie Haddad

In 1998 Claudio Haddad (OPM 12, 1987) had achieved great success in a nearly 20-year banking career. He easily could have rested on his laurels, but instead, he left the world of finance to put his skills to work for education.

“I came from a background in engineering and economics,” says Haddad, a native of Brazil who holds a PhD from the University of Chicago. “Participating in the OPM Program in the mid-1980s opened up my understanding to new ways of thinking.” In addition, then-Dean Kim B. Clark invited Haddad to serve on the School’s Visiting Committee, and he became increasingly involved with HBS.

His experiences at the School helped him to benchmark what constitutes an outstanding business school. “I came to see education as the key to success for any country,” says Haddad, who now heads a company that operates schools as well as a nonprofit business and economics institution in Brazil. The Insper Institute of Education and Research, he says, aims to address the shortage of prepared leaders. “Many of our problems [in Brazil] stem from microeconomics,” he says. “We need better leadership and management of individual firms.”

Haddad believes that HBS can play a significant role in helping his country—and continent—achieve its full potential. Toward that end, he established the Claudio Haddad and Family Latin America Research Center Fund to support the development of more HBS cases focusing on Latin American companies.

“Business schools can play a major role in creating a better world,” he says, “and HBS stands out because of its vision and values.”

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