Transcript

Again, I was visiting in Dean Clark's office, and he said, "We think we need to have a capital campaign." And my first thought, "Well, we'll be supportive." That was my thought, unexpressed. And then he said, "I want you to be chairman of the campaign." And I thought, "This is a whole new thought that hadn't occurred to me." And I said, "I don't think that's a good idea. And my thought is that about half this money is going to have to come from the New York area." That would mean the Connecticut, and New Jersey suburbs too, which is true. About half the money would have to come from that. "And I think, Dean, that you need someone who either is with McKinsey, or with Goldman Sachs, or one of the major circumstances in New York City to be the leader." And he said, "Well, I don't think so." He said, "I think you're going to be the right person."

And so I still am not quite sure what his insight was on that, because I didn't have the same insight he had. And yet he and I worked very well together. The Business School has a substantial number of successful alumni, alumnae, and they know who these people are. The Business School is not without the capacity to do research about who is around that has the capability to help. And so they amassed, the Business School, Donella Rapier and her team, Howard Stevenson was a major factor, Professor Stevenson, and we called on these individual alumni.

Kim Clark and I made at least two hundred and fifty individual calls together on an individual person, alumnus, mostly alumni. And in 95 percent of those cases, those people responded to Dean Clark's request for support. It was the most amazing campaign I've ever seen. I went into it reluctantly thinking this might be a chore, but came out of it thinking it was a real blessed experience to have an opportunity to meet all these people, whom I would not have met, and I would not have heard their life experiences. And they responded to a degree that was not experienced ever in any campaign I've ever seen before. They truly liked having come to Harvard Business School, and they truly willingly acknowledged that this place had made a difference in their careers. And they said frequently, "I wouldn't be sitting here if I hadn't gone to Harvard Business School." And then Dean Clark talked about what was needed, and they responded. . . .

Every month we went somewhere in this nation, or sometimes London or Paris, to call on people. And it was interesting in that Kim and I worked so well together. Dean Clark would start out talking to this alumnus, who would generally be a man in his fifties or sixties, maybe older sometimes. And he would maybe didn't know these individuals. Some of them he knew, some he didn't.

But he would tell about what the School is now, compared to what it was when they were here. The fact that we now have one-third female students, one-third international students. Something that wouldn't have been the case in earlier years of the Business School. And why that had worked well, and why we needed to be more focused on getting students that didn't have financial obstacles to come to the school, financial support. We needed certain facilities. We need to have a global presence, because what was happening in China, and in India, and in other countries, Chile, was going to have a bearing on what happened in Harvard Business School, and in the world, and so we needed to respond. We being Harvard Business School need to respond. And he would make a wonderful presentation about that, usually only about ten minutes' time. He'd come back to it, because that would generate discussion later on by the person with whom we were speaking.

Then I would come in, generally, and say, "When you were there, did you have Charlie Williams as a professor, or General Doriot?" And invariably they would have had some professor that we knew that they respected. And they would then put themselves back into the classroom, or put themselves on the campus, and tell what it felt like. And you could see them smiling about the experience, and they would tell some stories. And then that's when they would say, "I wouldn't be sitting here except for the fact that I had had the opportunity to go to Harvard Business School." And then their stories were wonderful—about not only the Business School, but what they had done once they had gotten out, and how they established some part of the business, or enlarged some part of the business that turned out to be economically beneficial for themselves as well as their company, and for their communities.

So those were wonderful opportunities, and I wish every one of them had been recorded. We didn't even make notes. It was paying attention to the person who was talking. But then Kim would talk about the needs, and invariably the person would respond pretty much right then. Sometimes a second call, a third call, but I don't think there were maybe five times that we were disappointed in the results. Most amazing campaign I've ever seen. Instead of raising five hundred million, we raised six hundred million. Kim Clark was outstanding, and it was the capstone of his success as the Dean of Harvard Business School.