Howard H. Stevenson

Olin College Trustee Emeritus Howard Stevenson passed away on September 26 at 85 after a long illness. He was a respected and engaged voice on several committees of the Olin Board of Trustees from 2012-2021 and remained an active member of the Investment Committee as a Trustee Emeritus. 

The Olin community will remember Stevenson for his years of dedicated service. He was responsible for connecting Claudio Haddad, an HBS alum and São Paulo investment banker, to Olin College, leading to a partnership that produced a new engineering program at Insper, a respected private business school founded by Haddad in Sao Paulo. 

Howard Stevenson was a Sarofim-Rock Baker Foundation Professor, Senior Associate Dean, Director of Publishing, and Chair of the Harvard Business Publishing Company board. The Sarofim-Rock Chair was established in 1982 to provide a continuing base for research and teaching in the field of entrepreneurship. Professor Stevenson was its first incumbent. He served as the Vice Provost for Harvard University Resources and Planning and as Senior Associate Provost from 2005-2007. As Senior Associate Dean and Director of External Relations at Harvard Business School from 2001-2005, he led the successful capital campaign. From 1999-2001, he served as Chair of the Latin American Faculty Advisory Group. He also served as Senior Associate Dean and Director of Financial and Information Systems for Harvard Business School from 1991-1994. He had been chairperson of the Owner/President Management Program in Executive Education and of the Publications Review Board for the Harvard Business School Press of Harvard Business Publishing Company. 

Stevenson was a founder and first president of the Baupost Group, Inc. which manages partnerships investing in liquid securities for wealthy families. When he resigned from active management, Baupost assets had grown to over $400 million. He was co-chairman of the Advisory Board of Baupost LLC, a $21 billion registered investment company. From 1978-1982, Stevenson was Vice President of Finance and Administration and a Director of Preco Corporation, a large privately-held manufacturing company. In addition, in 1970-71, he served as Vice President of Simmons Associates, a small investment banking firm specializing in venture financing. 

Prior to 1978, he held various academic appointments at Harvard University, specializing in Real Property Asset Management and General Management. He received his B.S. in mathematics, with distinction, from Stanford and his M.B.A., with high distinction, and D.B.A. degrees from Harvard University. He was a recipient of the ALCOA and Ford Foundation Fellowships for graduate study. He was awarded an honorary doctoral degree in 2007 by the Universite de Montreal. 

He authored, edited or co-authored eleven books and forty-two articles. Other scholarly papers of his have appeared in Sloan Management Review, Real Estate Review, Journal of Business Venturing, Journal of Business Strategy, Strategic Management Journal and elsewhere. He also authored, co-authored or supervised over 150 cases at Harvard Business School. 

He was a director of Camp Dresser & McKee Inc. as well as a trustee for several private trusts and foundations. He was on the board of National Public Radio (NPR) and served as chairman of the NPR Board of Directors from 2008-2010. He was a trustee of Mount Auburn Hospital; a life trustee of the Boston Ballet; a trustee emeritus of the Nature Conservancy; and a director of Sudbury Valley Trustees where he served as president from 1996-2000. He was a member of the governing board of INSPER School of Business in Sao Paulo, Brazil and the Advisory Board of the J.J. Strossmayer University in Osijek, Croatia.