Babson’s global network of Entrepreneurs of All Kinds is one of our greatest institutional strengths. As that network expands and evolves, new opportunities arise to celebrate homegrown successes, raise our international profile, and be the destination for the world’s most influential entrepreneurs to share their knowledge and experiences with a community uniquely qualified to appreciate their journeys.
Photo: Webb Chappell
President Kerry Healey
In April, we welcomed two new members into our Alumni Entrepreneur Hall of Fame. Designers Michael Bastian ’87 and Ruthie Davis, MBA’93, came to campus to be recognized for their entrepreneurial successes and the impact of their eponymous labels on the fashion industry. Michael Bastian’s men’s collections are worn worldwide, and A-list celebrities regularly hit the red carpet in Ruthie Davis-designed footwear.
On the heels of the Hall of Fame, we held our inaugural Babson Connect: Worldwide, a regional business summit and global MBA reunion. MBA alumni from around the world joined local alumni and parents, leading South American business executives, and social innovators in Cartagena, Colombia, to celebrate the power of entrepreneurship as a positive force for social and economic change. At the same time, we expanded our invaluable global network and advanced our institutional strategy as the convener, catalyst, and educator of Entrepreneurship of All Kinds. Special thanks to Babson trustee Carlos Mattos, MBA’76, P’17, and the Babson Connect: Worldwide advisory board for their leadership and hospitality.
This month during Commencement we celebrate the accomplishments of hundreds of future entrepreneurial leaders. While graduates eagerly plan for the future, they are reminded that achievement is measured in innumerable ways as evidenced by this year’s honorary degree recipients who each defied convention on their way to realizing incredible success.
Kevin Colleran ’03, our undergraduate Commencement speaker, joined Facebook in 2005 and was a key leader of the executive team that forever changed our online lives. In 2012, Colleran left to pursue venture capital opportunities and serve as a mentor to the next generation of world-changing companies.
Richard Saul Wurman, the creative and intellectual whirlwind who is our graduate Commencement speaker, is relentless in finding new, fun ways to bring together the world’s most exciting thinkers, inventors, and innovators to discuss global issues. As Wurman is the author of 83 books, a renowned American architect, a pioneer of information architecture, a professor, an urban designer, a cartographer, and creator of the TED conference, his impact can be seen and experienced seemingly everywhere.
As a leader in entrepreneurship education, we have both the opportunity and responsibility to redefine and reimagine how future generations of entrepreneurs will be inspired to affect society in a positive way. At Babson, we not only seek out this challenge but also relish it, because we can draw on our history, our experience, and our talent to achieve outcomes of which we all can be proud.
Kerry Healey