United States - Publications - Faculty & Research

Portrait Project

Kari Gerster

I am opportunistic – I figure it out as I go along. In high school, I did not predict that I'd spend college studying art and literature in the Berkshire Mountains. In college, I never guessed that I'd work in venture capital in New York City. And back then, I never... View Details

Portrait Project

Kristie Gan

Will you take my breath away? I remember the glistening rain falling down my cheeks as a six-year-old growing up in Bacolod, a small town in southern Philippines. I remember splashing in the puddles and thinking that life couldn’t get any better. The rain was... View Details

Portrait Project

Kate Aitken

I cast my first vote at age three. My mother hoisted me up to the lever. I clasped it in my tiny hands and yanked it to the left, sending the blue curtains of the polling booth flying open behind us. I knew from a young age that democracy was a privilege and that my... View Details

Portrait Project

Jiao Zhang

The ruler snapped on my knuckles. "Girls dream of being wives not mathematicians." Another rant from the school teacher in front of my class. But I was busy dreaming... that one day, I would go to America and say: I will open a school for girls in China...... View Details

Portrait Project

Junaidi

I want to teach soccer to everyone in the world. For many, soccer is just a game. For me, it is beyond that. Soccer is universal. It demands teamwork and communication. It requires trust and respect. It is entertaining, makes people laugh and sometimes makes people... View Details

Portrait Project

Jimmy Tran

As a child, I asked questions relentlessly. Why is the sky blue? Why do birds chirp? My life consisted of a string of questions connected by bouts of limited understanding. One question would lead to another and then another, like a stack of dominos falling... View Details

Portrait Project

Jeremy Tan

Can you really plan your life? Did you know when you would be born?Do you know when you will take your last breath?The best-laid plans often go awry. If you don't plan, what will you do today?Where will you go?How will you get there?Failing to plan is planning to fail.... View Details

Portrait Project

Jon Swan

I am going to rediscover the buffalo. As a young kid, an elder on my reservation pulled me aside to tell me about the buffalo. He said that prior to contact with settlers, the buffalo provided our food, tools, shelter, clothes, and medicine. After a few hundred years... View Details

Portrait Project

Jevan Soo

You hear me coming around the corner before you see me. My earphones fill my world with song, and I often raise my voice to join it. I want a life of joyful melodies worth singing loudly and unashamedly. Will I always have courage to break the silence? I cannot waver... View Details

Portrait Project

Jason Sanders

There are no real tomorrows, no plans, no potential leads. All I have are moments, just fleeting spots of time. Choice is mine to use them, to love, to act, to heal. Could let my past define me, draw a nice graph from where I've been to where I should go. But who wants... View Details

Portrait Project

Jacquie Sandberg

Like lots of MBAs, I pretty piously followed a traditional metric of success. Recognition, compensation, and career progress ostensibly paved the road to achievement. But then my sister got sick. Really sick. So she left her studies at Harvard Law School, and I left my... View Details

Portrait Project

Jon Rudoe

I am deeply attached to a simple idea: If every human being can work to make things better in whatever place they have influence then the world will also be a better place. No matter at what scale each person changes the world, this is the way that mankind makes... View Details

Portrait Project

Jorge Roberts

A 7-year old boy stands on his grandmother's balcony with the Mexican flag across his chest while he imagines he is the president delivering a speech to millions of people. For the rest of his life he wants to have: Courage to stand up to those who prefer the dinosaur... View Details

Alumni Changing the World

James Reinhart

James Reinhart, MBA/MPA-ID 2009, is on a mission to keep clothing out of landfills. Co-founder and CEO of thredUP, Reinhart thought of his secondhand clothing business while at HBS and has since built a colossal logistics and supply chain company that will process its... View Details

Portrait Project

Jeff Norton

What is your favourite movie? An old woman on a train in France told me that her favourite was Casablanca, but it made her sad to think about the War. A little boy in Costa Rica told me that it was Superman. He wished he could fly. I have asked that question to people... View Details

Profile

Jeff Nelson

Since his undergraduate days at Cornell, housing has been a major theme in Jeff Nelson’s career. As a college student, he volunteered for Habitat for Humanity, building houses in the upstate New York communities near his campus, and in New Orleans after Hurrucane... View Details

Profile

Jacob Meiner

Jacob Meiner has always been attracted to the difficult. As an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania he initially studied Near East languages and civilizations. "It intrigued me from an interdisciplinary perspective, as a way to draw history, religion,... View Details

Keywords: Consulting; Nonprofit/Government/Education

Portrait Project

Jean Jinsun Kim

My mother worried I would never get married because my knees were too ugly. My left knee is scarred from a running accident. My right knee is marked by a scar when I fell off a train in Morocco. They're not pretty, but they remind me of a younger self that was not... View Details

Portrait Project

John Kelleher

I want to help make the term "foreign policy" obsolete. Political and business leaders talk a great deal about globalization but too often fall back on old dichotomies—picturing a world divided between domestic and foreign policy, between rich and poor... View Details

Portrait Project

JJ Singh

I want to live generationally. I want to preserve the American Dream. Years ago, I asked my father to take a day off work and visit Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington, with me. As an Indian immigrant, he was always interested in learning more American history.... View Details

Publications