Hauser Leaders Program

Deborah Borda
Hauser Leader, Center for Public Leadership
President and CEO, New York Philharmonic

Throughout her career Deborah Borda has extended the artistic, commercial, and technological boundaries of what an orchestra can be in the 21st century through creative leadership, commitment to innovation, and progressive vision. She became Linda and Mitch Hart President and CEO of the New York Philharmonic in 2017, having served in that role in the 1990s. The first woman in recent history to manage a major American symphony orchestra, she has held top posts at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. She currently serves as Chair of the Avery Fisher Artist Program.

Upon returning to the Philharmonic, Ms. Borda renewed the organization’s commitment to serving as New York’s orchestra. She worked with Music Director Jaap van Zweden to deepen the Orchestra’s community engagement through new initiatives, such as the low-cost Phil the Hall, and revitalizing educational projects, and to champion today’s music by conceiving Project 19, the single largest women composers commissioning initiative in history, and establishing two new contemporary music series. The Philharmonic quickly adapted to the landscape altered by the COVID-19 pandemic, presenting NY Phil Bandwagon, bringing free performances by small groups of Philharmonic musicians across New York City — an initiative that has been emulated across the country — and launching NYPhil+, the Orchestra’s first-ever streaming service hosting hours of newly recorded and historic Philharmonic performances. In collaboration with Lincoln Center, under her leadership the Orchestra accelerated the renovation of David Geffen Hall, scheduled to reopen in the fall of 2022.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s success during Deborah Borda’s 17-year tenure was chosen for case studies by Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School. While there, she designed a business, education, and curatorial plan credited with restoring the orchestra to robust artistic and financial health, reinvigorated plans to build and open Walt Disney Concert Hall, oversaw the addition of a new shell for the Hollywood Bowl, and reconceived and diversified programming. She spearheaded the appointment of music director Gustavo Dudamel, with whom she invested in groundbreaking educational initiatives. These include YOLA (Youth Orchestra Los Angeles), a flagship program that provides free after-school instrumental instruction to children in underserved communities, and the national Take a Stand initiative, which promotes social change through music.

Ms. Borda was the first arts executive to join Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership as a Hauser Leader-in-Residence and she now serves on Oxford University’s Humanities Cultural Programme Advisory Council. Recipient of Honorary Doctor of Music degrees from the New England Conservatory (2021), Curtis Institute of Music, and Manhattan School of Music, her recent accolades include election to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2018), being named a Woman of Influence by the New York Business Journal (2019), and a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s Women in Classical Music Symposium (2020). She is in demand internationally as a consultant and lecturer, and her accomplishments in the field of orchestral music have been cited in numerous reviews and articles, both nationally and internationally. A former professional violist, Deborah Borda graduated from Bennington College and continued her studies at London’s Royal College of Music.

Paul Grogan
Hauser Leader, Center for Public Leadership
President and CEO, The Boston Foundation (2001-2021)

Paul S. Grogan recently retired as President and CEO of the Boston Foundation where he served as the head for the past 20 years. With assets of over $1.6 billion, the Foundation distributed $150 million to nonprofit organizations in fiscal year 2019

Under his tenure, the mission of the Boston Foundation has expanded to include a powerful civic leadership role. Through this work, the Foundation has commissioned and published cutting-edge research into urban issues, held hundreds of public forums, formed task forces and coalitions, and informed and influenced legislative solutions to some of the city’s most intractable problems.

Grogan joined the Foundation from Harvard University, where he served as Vice President for Government, Community and Public Affairs and as a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School. In 2001, Grogan founded CEOs for Cities, a civic innovation lab and network of urban leaders and change agents from diverse sectors.

Prior to 1998, he was President and CEO of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), where he raised and invested over $3 billion of private capital in inner-city revitalization efforts across America. His passion for cities began in Boston where he served Mayors Kevin H. White and Raymond L. Flynn. He headed Boston’s neighborhood revitalization efforts in the 1980s, where he helped pioneer a series of public/private ventures that have been widely emulated by other cities.

Grogan graduated with honors in American History from Williams College and holds a master’s degree in Administration from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Williams College awarded Grogan a Bicentennial Medal for his leadership in inner-city revitalization efforts. He also holds honorary degrees from 5 institutions of higher education. Grogan is a founder and director of The Community Development Trust, and a former trustee of Williams College and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. He is co-author with Tony Proscio of the book, Comeback Cities.

Michael Lomax
Hauser Leader, Center for Public Leadership
President and CEO, UNCF

Since 2004, Dr. Michael L. Lomax has served as president and CEO of UNCF, the nation’s largest private provider of scholarships and other educational support to African American students and a leading advocate of college readiness: students’ need for an education, from pre-school through high school, that prepares them for college success. Under his leadership, UNCF has raised more than $3 billion and helped more than 110,000 students earn college degrees and launch careers.  Annually, UNCF’s work enables 60,000 students to go to college with UNCF scholarships and attend its 37 member historically black college and universities (HBCUs).

At UNCF’s helm, Dr. Lomax oversees the organization’s 400 scholarship programs, which award 10,000 scholarships a year.  He also launched the UNCF Institute for Capacity Building, which helps UNCF’s member HBCUs become stronger, more effective and more self-sustaining.

Under Dr. Lomax’s leadership, UNCF has fought for college readiness and education reform through partnerships with reform-focused leaders and organizations and worked to further advance HBCUs with Congress, the administration and the Department of Education.  He serves on the boards of the KIPP Foundation, America’s Promise, Teach for America and the Studio Museum in Harlem.

Before joining UNCF, Dr. Lomax was president of Dillard University in New Orleans and a literature professor at UNCF-member institutions Morehouse and Spelman Colleges.  He also founded the National Black Arts Festival, was a founding member of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) and served as chairman of the Fulton County Commission in Atlanta, the first African American elected to that post.

Dan Pallotta
Hauser Leader, Center for Public Leadership
CEO, Advertising for Humanity

Dan Pallotta is an activist, humanitarian, author, and builder of movements. He is a pioneer in the national effort to transform the way our culture evaluates the character and impact of nonprofit organizations. His TED Talks have been viewed more than seven million times and he is one of the 100 most-viewed TED speakers of all time.

He is a founding thought partner for TED’s Audacious Project, which has raised nearly $1 billion for disruptive entrepreneurial social initiatives across a variety of issues.

Pallotta invented the multi-day charitable event industry. He created the Breast Cancer 3-Day walks and the multi-day AIDS Rides long-distance cycling journeys, which raised in excess of half a billion dollars in nine years and were the subject of a Harvard Business School case study. The model and methods he created are now employed by dozens of charities and have raised in excess of $1.5 billion more for important causes from pediatric leukemia to AIDS to suicide prevention and many others.

He is the author of Uncharitable: How Restraints on Nonprofits Undermine Their Potential, the best-selling title in the history of Tufts University Press. His newest book is, The Everyday Philanthropist: A Better Way to Make a Better World, a field guide for the average person who wants their life to matter.

Pallotta is the founder and President of the Charity Defense Council, which is dedicated to transforming the way the public evaluates charities. He is the founder and President of Add Humanity, a message and movement-building consultancy that helps super innovative humanitarian organizations dream and grow.

Pallotta has given over four hundred talks on philanthropy and innovation, and has written over one hundred articles for the Harvard Business Review online.

He is a William J. Clinton Distinguished Lecturer, and has spoken at Stanford, Wharton, Harvard Business School, Harvard’s Hauser Center for Nonprofits, Harvard Kennedy School, Brown, the United Nations, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Council on Foundations, and the Gates Foundation, among others.

The recipient of multiple award and accolades, Pallotta has been written about in feature and cover stories in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and has appeared on numerous media outlets.

Paola Ramos
Hauser Leader, Center for Public Leadership
Correspondent, VICE and VICE News; Contributor, Telemundo News and MSNBC

Paola Ramos is an author, Emmy-award winning journalist and Latinx advocate.

She is a host for VICE and VICE News, as well as a contributor for MSNBC and Telemundo News. Ramos uses these multi-media platforms --in both English and Spanish--to uplift the voices of marginalized communities, break down stereotypes and mobilize people towards civic engagement. Ramos was the former Deputy Director of Hispanic Media for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Presidential Campaign and a political appointee during the Obama Administration, where she served in Vice President Biden’s Office as Dr. Jill Biden’s Special Assistant. Ramos was also involved in President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign.

She is the author of Finding Latin-X: In Search of the Voices redefining Latino Identity, published by Penguin Random House in October 2020.

Ramos received her B.A. from Barnard College, Columbia University and her MPP from Harvard University’s Kennedy School. She is Mexican, Cuban and American.

Maria Ressa
Hauser Leader, Center for Public Leadership
Co-Founder and CEO, Rappler

A journalist in Asia for 35 years, Maria Ressa co-founded Rappler, the top digital only news site that is leading the fight for press freedom in the Philippines. As Rappler’s CEO and president, Ressa has endured constant political harassment and arrests by the Duterte government, forced to post bail ten times to stay free. Rappler’s battle for truth and democracy is the subject of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival documentary, A Thousand Cuts.

In October 2021, Maria was one of two journalists awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of her “efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.”

For her courage and work on disinformation and ‘fake news,’ Ressa was named TIME’s 2018 Person of the Year, was among its 100 Most Influential People of 2019, and has also been named one of TIME’s Most Influential Women of the Century. She was also part of BBC’s 100 most inspiring and influential women of 2019 and Prospect magazine’s world’s top 50 thinkers. In 2020, she received the Journalist of the Year award, the John Aubuchon Press Freedom Award, the Most Resilient Journalist Award, the Tucholsky Prize, the Truth to Power Award, and the Four Freedoms Award.

Among many awards for her principled stance, she received the prestigious Golden Pen of Freedom Award from the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, the Knight International Journalism Award from the International Center for Journalists, the Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Shorenstein Journalism Award from Stanford University, the Columbia Journalism Award, the Free Media Pioneer Award from the International Press Institute, and the Sergei Magnitsky Award for Investigative Journalism.

Before founding Rappler, Ressa focused on investigating terrorism in Southeast Asia. She opened and ran CNN’s Manila Bureau for nearly a decade before opening the network’s Jakarta Bureau, which she ran from 1995 to 2005. She wrote Seeds of Terror: An Eyewitness Account of al-Qaeda’s Newest Center of Operations in Southeast Asia and From Bin Laden to Facebook: 10 Days of Abduction, 10 Years of Terrorism.

Former Hauser Leaders

Tommy Amaker (Spring 2020, Spring 2021) || Thomas G. Stemberg '71 Family Endowed Coach, Harvard Men's Basketball; Director's Visiting Leader, Harvard Institute of Politics

Larry Bacow (2014-2018) || President, Harvard University; President, Tufts University (2001-2011)

Don Baer (Spring 2020) || Chair, Board of Directors, PBS; Walter Shorenstein Media and Democracy Fellow, Shorenstein Center, Harvard Kennedy School

LaTosha Brown (2020-2021) || Co-founder, Black Voters Matter Fund; 2020 Leader in Practice, Women and Public Policy Program, HKS; 2020-2021 American Democracy Fellow, Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, Harvard University

Michael Brown (2020) || Co-founder and Senior Advisor, City Year; Principal, Public Purpose Strategies

Carol Browner (2019-2020) || Director, White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy (2009-2011); 8th Administrator, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (1993-2001)

Geoffrey Canada (Fall 2017) || President, Harlem Children’s Zone

Carol Caruso (2017-2018) || CEO and Co-Founder, Bloom Impact; Innovator-in-Residence, Social Innovation + Change Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School

Alice Chen (2017-2019) || Executive Director, Doctors for America (2011-2017)

Nicholas Ehrmann (2017-2018) || President and Founder, Blue Engine; Visiting Innovator, Social Innovation + Change Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School

Claude Grunitzky (2017-2018) || Entrepreneur, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, TRUE Africa; Visiting Innovator, Social Innovation + Change Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School

Donald Kaberuka (2015-2016) || President, African Development Bank (2005-2015)

Tawakkol Karman (Spring 2020) || 2011 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

Nicholas Kristof (2017-2019) || Op-ed Columnist, The New York Times; Pulitzer Prize winner

John Kroger (2018-2019) || Chief Learning Officer, U.S. Navy (2019-2020); President, Reed College (2012-2018)

The Hon. Mitchell Landrieu (Spring 2018) || 61st Mayor, New Orleans, Louisiana (2010-2018)

Susana Malcorra (2020) || Dean, IE School of Global and Public Affairs; Minister of Foreign Affairs and Worship, Argentine Republic (2015-2017)

Linda Mason (2014-2017) || Chair, Mercy Corps; Founder, Bright Horizons

Desmond Meade (2020) || President and Executive Director, Florida Rights Restoration Coalition

Bruce Mehlman (Spring 2021) || Founder, Mehlman, Castagnetti, Rosen & Thomas; Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Technology Policy to George W. Bush (2001-2003)

Karen Gordon Mills (Fall 2018) || 23rd Administrator, United States Small Business Administration (2009-2013)

Vivek Murthy (2017-2019) || 21st United States Surgeon General (2021-present); 19th United States Surgeon General (2014-2017)

Ellen Ochoa (Spring 2019-Fall 2020) || 11th Director, NASA Johnson Space Center (2013-2018); Astronaut

Emily Kernan Rafferty (Fall 2019) || President Emerita, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Henry Timms (2018-2019) || President and CEO, Lincoln Center

Doug Ulman (Fall 2019) || President and CEO, Pelotonia

LTG Nadja Y. West, USA, Ret. (2019-2020) || 44th Surgeon General, United States Army (2016-2019)

Sheryl WuDunn (2017-2019) || Co-founder, FullSky Partners; Pulitzer Prize Winner