The HBS Club of Mexico joined the Harvard Club of Mexico in celebrating the latter’s 75^th anniversary with the Harvard Gala Mexico, held on May 12 at the Club de Industriales in Mexico City.

Approximately 275 alumni attended the dinner, which featured Professor Christina Wallace, Senior Lecturer in Business Administration at HBS, who shared insights from her best-selling book, The Portfolio Life.

This is the third such gala, launched in 2023 by HBS Club of Mexico President Juan-Manuel Fernandez (MBA 1993), taking inspiration from the HBS Club of New York’s Annual Leadership Dinner.

“It’s a great way to bring together the alumni community in Mexico and celebrate our connections to Harvard,” says Fernandez, who also serves as on the board of the Harvard Club of Mexico. He says that the HBS Club is closing in on reaching 1,000 HBS alumni in Mexico. Alumni from all Harvard schools attended the Gala, with approximately 60 percent from HBS.

“This year we had a special interest in having a HBS professor as keynote speaker given the large number of HBS alumni participating in this event,” says Fernandez. “Professor Wallace’s diverse background and her own very interesting ‘portfolio life’ made her a great choice to address our members for the Gala.”

A self-described “human Venn diagram,” Wallace has crafted a career at the intersection of business, technology, and the arts. At HBS, she teaches entrepreneurship and marketing in the MBA program, Executive Education, and HBS Online. Wallace is also a TONY-nominated Broadway producer through Nothing Ventured Productions and an active angel investor through Phi Factor Capital.

“She’s a rock star,” says Fernandez. “She spoke about a portfolio life, comparing it to portfolio diversification in finance. She said your life is multifaceted, with layers of activities, hobbies, and passions. They intertwine and you should not think about it in terms of monolithic careers. She said it’s important to make sure we have diversified lives.”

In addition to the keynote talk, Gabriela Ramos, a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, was honored with the annual Harvard Club of Mexico Award, which recognizes a member’s professional and personal career and contributions to Mexico and the Harvard community in the country. Ramos is currently Assistant Director-General for Social and Human Sciences at UNESCO, leading efforts on social inclusion, gender equality, youth support, anti-racism, sports values, and scientific ethics, including AI governance. She spearheaded UNESCO’s AI Ethics Recommendation, the first of its kind globally. Recognized with awards including France’s Order of Merit, she serves on various global advisory boards, including UNICEF and the Paris Peace Forum. She is currently a candidate to lead UNESCO.

While the gala was not expressly intended as a fundraiser, Fernandez says the two clubs used it as an opportunity to launch the “Crimson con Causa” (Crimson with a Cause) campaign to engage the alumni community to contribute to foundations that benefit the most vulnerable members of society.

The evening also included the presentation of the Harvard Prize Book Award, given to a local high schooler who hopes to attend Harvard.

Overall, the event received rave reviews, says Fernandez. “For us to have an event of that size, means we had a fairly significant proportion of alumni in the country,” he says. “People came from other Mexican cities, and from as far away as Monterrey and Guadalajara. And we had alumni from the HBS Class of 1954 all the way up to some new admits in the HBS Class of 2027. I think it was remarkable that we could bring all of them together.”

The HBS Club of Charlotte recently treated members to a special leadership talk given by Carolina Panthers Head Coach Dave Canales.

Held in the showroom at Ferrari Foreign Cars Italia in Charlotte, the event drew 90 alumni and friends to get a glimpse of the leadership mindset of the young NFL coach, who just took on his new role with the Panthers in 2024.

“He really focused on how he manages and develops his team,” says HBS Club of Charlotte President Vin Vera (TGMP 9, 2002), who organized the event. “He had coached under Pete Carroll in Seattle and said he’s adopted Carroll’s style of coaching, which is to say, he’s a player’s coach. He’s really grounded. At the same time, he said he’s learned from different coaches and leaders but isn’t trying to replicate their approaches. He said he’s going to be himself.”

Canales talked about having a great rapport with the team’s owner and GM and being in a position where he can build his own team and build his own culture. “That was really attractive for him,” says Vera. “It’s a great feeling to be able to put your own stamp on the culture of a company, if given the chance.”

Asked how he responds when his team loses a game, Canales said he’s not too big into calling people out. Instead, he said he’s more likely to address it with a collective approach, pointing out what’s working and how the team as a whole can fix what’s not working.

Vera says Canales generously stayed and answered questions for 30 minutes. “It really was inspiring, and the questions were just flowing. It was great.”

To make the event truly memorable, Vera invited some young Panthers fans, including his 7- year-old neighbor and his own teenage son, to do the honors of introducing the Coach Canales.

The club has been partnering with Tony Rizzuti, Chief Marketing Officer at the Ferrari dealership, to bring club events to the showroom space, as it gives the club a place to gather and gives the dealership some visibility.

The HBS Club of New York held its 56^th Annual Leadership Dinner on April 30, welcoming more than 400 alumni and guests to The Plaza Hotel to celebrate the achievements of four “Leaders Who Make Difference.”

Steven Klinsky (MBA 1979), founder & CEO of private equity and credit firm New Mountain Capital, and his wife, author and screenwriter Maureen Sherry Klinsky, served together as the 2025 Dinner Chairs for the annual fundraising event. Proceeds from the dinner underwrite the club’s operations, programming and pro bono works, as well as fellowships for local Harvard MBA students and scholarships for local nonprofit leaders to attend HBS Executive Education programs.

For this year’s Business Leadership Award, the club honored the individual achievements of Lawrence E. Golub (MBA 1983), CEO of Golub Capital a market-leading, award-winning direct lender and experienced private credit manager, and his wife Karen L. Finerman, CEO & Co-Founder of Metropolitan Capital Advisors and Panelist on CNBC’s Fast Money. The club selected New York City Police Commissioner Jessica S. Tisch (MBA 2007), to receive the John C. Whitehead Social Enterprise Award, and the Entrepreneurship Award went to Kasseem “Swizz Beatz” Dean (OPM 50, 2017), Co-Founder of VERZUZ, recording artist, and Grammy Award-winning producer.

“All of our Annual Leadership Dinners are inspiring, but this years’ dinner was particularly impactful,” says Laila Worrell (MBA 1998), HBSNY Board Chair. “At a time when higher education faces seismic challenges, our dinner chairs and honorees provided powerful affirmation of the impact HBS and Harvard have had on our lives and in our communities. Jessica Tisch spoke movingly about the ways HBS inspired her to a career in public service. And later in the dinner, Swizz Beats spoke about the transformational power of education and reminded us it should never be taken for granted.”

Worrell added that the two couples—Dinner Chairs Steve and Maureen Klinsky, and honorees Lawrence Golub and Karen Finerman—represent the club’s “conscious effort this year to acknowledge that some of the most important things in life are achieved not through individualism but through partnership. In so many ways, that is what the mission of the HBSCNY is all about. Our mission is to build community among our alumni, in partnership with HBS. Our world needs unity and community more than ever, and our mission feels especially relevant right now. This dinner focused on our gratitude for HBS and Harvard and the ways they’ve shaped our lives.”

HBS Club of New York President Calvin Mew (PMD 48, 1984) opened the festivities, expressing gratitude to attendees for their ongoing engagement with the club and its broad range of programs, and took the opportunity to invite everyone to join together in support of Harvard University.

“I think our honorees, as a group, were a quintessential selection,” says Mew, adding that the atmosphere at the dinner was “warm and communal as so many people came together to honor these outstanding leaders, but also to be together and reinforce our ties to HBS.”

HBS Dean Srikant Datar also attended the dinner and shared his welcome and congratulations to the honorees.

According to Dinner Committee Co-Chairs Amy Vecchione (MBA 1984) and Bruce Marcus (MBA 1980) this year’s dinner raised $1.3 million.

“This event is just crucial to enabling the club to continue our many programs. Without the Leadership Dinner, we can't do any of it,” says Vecchione. “But equally as important and special is that it’s an opportunity for us as an alumni community to get together and reconnect. It’s very much a celebration of HBS and the HBS community, and this year, it really felt especially warm and connected.”

Vecchione says plans for next year’s dinner are already underway.

Founded in 1920, the HBS Club of NY is the alumni organization for the approximately 13,000 HBS alumni residing in the Greater NY area. It is the largest HBS alumni club. Funds raised from HBS Club of New York Annual Leadership Dinner support the Community Partners Program, the Skills Gap Initiative, Scholarships and Fellowships, events and seminars, HBS Alumni Angels and the Small Business Partnership Initiative.

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