For Immediate Release: September 27, 2007

Contacts:	Kerry Parke, kparke@hbs.edu, (617) 495-6931

HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL HONORS FIVE OUTSTANDING GRADUATES

Annual Alumni Achievement Awards recognize excellence, integrity, and leadership in business and society

2007 Alumni Achievement Award Winners Top Row (L-R): Sir Martin Sorrell, Donna Dubinsky, Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala Botton Row (L-R): A. Malachi Mixon, III, Hansjörg Wyss Credit: Stuart Cahill

BOSTON - At a special ceremony today before some 900 MBA students, faculty, and staff, Harvard Business School Dean Jay Light conferred the School's highest honor, the Alumni Achievement Award, on five outstanding graduates whose lives and careers epitomize the School's mission to "educate leaders who make a difference in the world."

The 2007 honorees are:

• Donna L. Dubinsky (MBA 1981), cofounder, CEO and board chair of technology platform provider, Numenta, Inc.; former CEO of Palm Computing, Inc. and Handspring, Inc.
• A. Malachi Mixon, III (MBA 1968), chairman and CEO of Invacare Corporation, the world's leading manufacturer and distributor of home medical equipment.
• Sir Martin S. Sorrell (MBA 1968), group chief executive of the advertising and marketing services organization WPP Group plc.
• Hansjörg Wyss (MBA 1965), chairman of the global medical device company Syntheses, Inc.
• Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala (MBA 1987), chairman and CEO of Ayala Corporation, one of the largest and most diversified business groups in the Philippines.

The presentation of the Alumni Achievement Awards has been an annual HBS tradition since 1968. "These awards recognize an extraordinary group of graduates who embody the highest standards of accomplishment and integrity," Dean Light said in his introductory remarks at the ceremony. "The recipients have all contributed immeasurably to their profession, their industry, and their community. They personify what this School stands for. They inspire all those who aspire to have an impact on both business and society."

Donna Dubinsky has an extraordinary talent for bringing practical applications of cutting-edge technology into our daily lives. She led Palm Computing to introduce the first successful PDA - thereby creating and dominating a multi-billion dollar market - and then went on to launch Handspring, which became the fastest growing company in American history at that time. Most recently, Dubinsky cofounded Numenta, an enterprise developing a new type of computer memory system modeled after the human neocortex.

In 1979, A. Malachi Mixon parlayed $10,000 of his own money to engineer the purchase of an Ohio-based wheelchair maker that nobody else wanted. Today, Invacare is the world's leading manufacturer and distributor of medical products used in the home - a line with some 200 different items including a revolutionary new system that enables emphysema patients to make portable compressed oxygen in their home and transfer it to lightweight containers they can easily carry around with them. Guided by his leadership, the company puts a premium on new product development and innovation, while providing help and hope to people of all ages with disabilities.

When Sir Martin Sorrell bought a stake in Wire and Plastics Products plc - soon to be renamed WPP Group - it was a small company that made wire shopping baskets. He became chief executive of WPP and began purchasing companies in Britain and the United States specializing in sales promotion, design, and direct marketing. Twenty-two years later, Sorrell has grown WPP into one of the world's largest advertising and marketing services organizations with revenues of around $12 billion and comprised of some of the most famous firms in advertising, marketing, and public relations.

Hansjörg Wyss has led Synthes, a global medical device company whose surgical instruments and implants have revolutionized the way surgeons treat traumas that can afflict the human skeleton, to become a $2.3 billion organization with some 8,500 employees worldwide. Concurrently, his philanthropic work has enabled him to follow his passion for the world's wide-open spaces. For example, The Wyss Foundation focuses on preserving extraordinary landscapes in the intermountain west and the Colorado Plateau, and The National Conservation System Foundation - soon to launch - will devise plans for sustainable resource management. Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala didn't plan to start his career in the family business. However, after completing a training program at the venerable Ayala Corporation - the largest and most widely diversified conglomerate in the Philippines - and attending HBS, he accepted a short-term position at Ayala and never left. Today, Zobel embraces his role as the leader of the 173-year-old firm, where his innovative, entrepreneurial style of management has benefited both Ayala and an island nation that faces significant social and economic challenges.

About Harvard Business School
Founded in 1908 as part of Harvard University, Harvard Business School (www.hbs.edu) is located on a 40-acre campus in Boston. Its faculty of more than 200 offers full-time programs leading to the MBA and doctoral degrees, as well as more than 70 Executive Education programs. For almost a century, HBS faculty have drawn on their research, their experience in working with organizations worldwide, and their passion for teaching to educate leaders who have shaped the practice of business around the globe.