A Fond Farewell To HBS

My Fellow HBS Alumni,

Harvard Business School’s mission is to educate leaders who make a difference in the world.

Little did I know that one of the best ways to rise to this challenge was to join the ranks of HBS volunteer leaders as a past executive vice president, club president, chair and global alumni board member, representing more than 80,000 alumni around the world. Serving our community in D.C., Maryland and Virginia, where we have more than 4,000 alumni, has been a great privilege and an honor. Serving as your representative at HBS, where I had the privilege to engage the alumni board in advising Dean Nitin Nohria, arguably one of the most effective deans in Harvard’s history, was nothing short of inspirational.

For the past 7 years, I have been a visible community leader trying to weave HBS and our alumni into the fabric of our region and our nation’s capital, which remains deeply stratified. One of the best emblems of our commitment to making a difference in the world, has been the Club’s social enterprise initiatives. Over the past 7 years we have awarded more than 12 scholarships to regional non-profit leaders, such as Katherine Roboff, and Herb Tillery, whose organizations serve vital missions of shoring up the most vulnerable people in our region. Showing that even a brief time at HBS makes connections that last, past recipients of our Strategic Perspectives in Non-Profit Management scholarship have formed a local alumni network of their own and remain engaged with each other and the Club. We look forward to welcoming a number of past awardees at our upcoming leadership gala.

In addition to the scholarship program, our long-standing partnership with Compass, which arrays highly-skilled non-profit consulting teams in which HBS alumni figure prominently, is another way the HBS community serves as a force multiplier to making a difference in the city and communities we call home. In the 2016-17 project year, Compass provided $5.4 million in pro bono consulting to 56 local non-profits of which HBS alumni featured prominently. Indeed, since 2001, more than 75 HBS alumni volunteered to lead Compass projects and more than 150 served on consulting teams giving their time and talent in lasting ways.

As a learning and professional organization, being a veritable embassy for Harvard Business School in Washington, D.C., the Club has strived since its foundation more than 85 years ago, to provide meaningful engagement to our alumni at all stages of their lives and careers. Whether this takes the form of visiting professors, like Dr. Francesca Gino, who has unveiled two of her bestsellers in D.C., or Professor Scott Snook who described is unique brand of values-based leadership at the French Embassy, the Club continues to serve as the nucleus for alumni connections with each other, the local community and the alumni network writ large.

Two of my personal highlights have been watching the spark of entrepreneurship take light in our region, where the HBS Club and its volunteers played a pivotal role in launching (and occasionally winning) the New Venture Competition and engaging in local pitch nights and venture investing activities. The second, was joining Dr. Michael Porter and Dr. Jan Rivkin (with whom I have formed a tradition of walking around campus solving the world’s problems) in unveiling the ground-breaking U.S. Competitiveness Project on Capitol Hill. This event inspired me to create the Business Council for American Security at the American Security Project – an initiative I continue to chair that is aimed at getting businesses off the sidelines in confronting long range challenges.

As with any transitional non-profit organization, there have been many challenging times and much “trench warfare” alongside my small, but able cadre of volunteer officers and board members. We have worked over the years to not only keep the Club financially viable, but relevant. I am pleased to report that during this period, the HBS Club of D.C. has increased its membership 150%, its financial resources 3-fold and the staying power of our corporate engagements sufficient to fund our ongoing activities - not least of which is the ability to fund our social enterprise scholarship for many years to come. I thank all the volunteers who served with me, whether for a minute or many years, weathering the effects of volunteer fatigue.

All this to say, I am confident that the Club’s better years lie ahead, and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to serve. My friend and successor as board chair, Antonio Alves, has been a key driver of the Club’s success over the years, together with our board and officers. Thanks to his leadership in launching our annual leadership gala, regional luminaries, such as David and Katherine Bradley, Glenn Youngkin, Jean Case and Ted Leonsis, among others, see the value of an engaged HBS community in their region. The upcoming leadership gala on June 13, 2018, underscores how these connections remain everlasting. As the adage goes, to whom much is given, much is expected and the HBS Club of D.C. has served as a platform for making a difference in our region.

Professionally, I will continue to devote my time to building Risk Cooperative, a company I founded 3 years ago following a “Jerry Maguire” moment, working to enhance global resilience and to my writing, where book two is underway. I am also pleased to join Power Ledger, alongside HBS alum Bill Tai, as a strategic advisor and ambassador in improving energy resilience around the world.

As I retire from the board and my volunteer roles serving the HBS community, I look forward to being a beneficiary of the Club’s work as an active member. It remains for me to thank my board colleagues, officers and the many lifelong friends who have made these past 7 years truly rewarding. Finally, I must thank my own chairwoman, Amal Disparte, a social entrepreneur in her own right, and our children, Andalus, Messina and Nero, for the allowances to serve our community.

In gratitude,

Dante A. Disparte