Blog Archives

Known for his quiet but effective leadership style, Dean McArthur served as founding Co-Chair of Partners HealthCare System that brought together two leading Harvard Medical School teaching hospitals: Brigham and Women’s Hospital which John chaired and Massachusetts General Hospital. Partners grew to become the largest private employer in Massachusetts.

In addition to his decades of service to the Harvard Business School (HBS), Dean McArthur also served as Senior Adviser to the President of The World Bank and as Chair of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. Other organizations where he served as a director or senior advisor included Benchmarking Partners, Chase Manhattan Corporation, Duke University Health System, GlaxoSmithKline, Partners In Health, and Thomson Reuters Founders Share. In recognition of his service, HBS established the John and Natty McArthur University Professorship and dedicated McArthur Hall; Brigham and Women’s Hospital established the John H. McArthur Fellowships in Medicine and Management; and the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada created the John H. McArthur Distinguished Fellowship.

With one of his mentors, John C. Whitehead, Dean McArthur co-founded the HBS Social Enterprise Initiative which has become a role model for similar programs at business schools around the world. In turn, John Whitehead and John McArthur worked together to develop the Venly team and the program that would go on to become the Mary S. Peake Fellowship. Dean McArthur drew particular inspiration for Venly’s applied learning methodology from how John Whitehead led Goldman Sachs after serving at D-Day and receiving a GI Bill scholarship to HBS.

Dean McArthur helped define field-based education systems at the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) in Switzerland and then at other universities worldwide. Even into the final few weeks of his life, John traveled back and forth to Istanbul as part of efforts to strengthen university programs in Turkey.

Along with all his other accomplishments, Dean McArthur was legendary in part because, at the time of his passing in 2019, HBS had existed for 111 years and John had been there for 62 of them. He might never have gone to university, but the owner of the Western Canada sawmill where John worked in high school heard that John was staying on at the mill instead of going to college. The mill owner encouraged John by telling him that the larger community needed the contributions that would come out of his education and offered to pay for his schooling.

For all Dean McArthur’s global experience, John often cited that high school job at his hometown sawmill as the pivotal opportunity of his career. A native of Western Canada, John earned a Bachelor of Commerce in Forestry from the University of British Columbia, his Doctorate from the Harvard Business School, and a number of honorary doctorates.

Dean McArthur shaped the pilot program for the Peake Fellowship and Venly’s mission to help local businesses grow, create jobs, and strengthen each community served. He found meaning through community commerce innovations by inventing with people he loved. The feeling was definitely mutual, and John’s culture-setting role makes a difference every day.

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Jameson joined Venly in May of 2018 after graduating from Bard College with a BS in Biology. Jameson brings a range of research and data science skills to help local businesses connect and grow. With a background in information synthesis, ecosystems, and computer programming, Jameson’s experience ranges from analytics at Athenahealth to developing computational models on behaviors in nature. Coming from a family that encouraged support for small businesses, Jameson continues to be dedicated to using his technical capabilities to promote local economies. Specifically, Jameson wants the Venly software tools he builds to make it easier for local businesses to innovate more personalized services and products in their communities.

In addition to his undergraduate degree, Jameson spent two seasons training at the National Outdoor Leadership School in Baja, Mexico and the Grand Tetons. Jameson also continues to study, perform, compose, and record for the cello, upright & electric bass, and guitar.

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Perry brings to Venly experience at the intersection of supply chain management and applied learning and teaching. Perry spent ten years in a range of field management roles for C&S Wholesale Grocers, the largest grocery wholesaler in the United States. C&S has been recognized internationally for its innovation with employees and its support for independent supermarkets and grocers. With over 90 years in the supply chain industry, C&S delivers over 140,000 different products from more than 50 high-tech warehouses. All together C&S supports over 14,000 grocers including many of the nation’s largest supermarket chains as well as independent stores. Perry’s roles at C&S included Director of Community Relations, Vice President of Regional Operations, and Vice President of Leadership Development and Education. Perry continues to serve as a C&S board member, and has been in that role for over a decade.

In 2014, Perry founded Venture Out, an applied learning and teaching organization that runs backpacking and ski trips for the LGBTQ community. Venture Out brings Perry’s educational skills in professional and personal discovery from supply chain to the outdoors. The organization puts special attention on access for participants who might otherwise not yet have the skills, funds, equipment, or transportation to join a trip. In 2018, the Sierra Club’s national magazine highlighted Venture Out’s success as a national role model for diversity and inclusion. For Venly, Venture Out’s strength in skill building provides a role model for how local businesses and organizations could use their community connection campaigns for growth to better respond and recover during natural emergencies.

Perry is a certified wilderness first responder. He also served as a Division I and Division III college soccer coach. Perry holds a BA in Fine Arts and a Masters in Education for Leadership Development from the University of Pennsylvania and a Masters in Sports Administration from the University of New Mexico.

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Pamela Passman brings a unique understanding of how individuals and organizations can improve their adoption of current best practices as they jointly invent new ones. She began her own career as a Thomas Watson Foundation Fellow learning how Japan dealt with environmental problems. After 15 years serving as a Microsoft corporate executive in Asia and the U.S. with global responsibilities for managing risk, regulatory compliance, Pamela founded the nonprofit Center for Responsible Enterprise and Trade (CREATe.org). CREATe.org develops policies and practices that drive greater compliance and responsibility along global supply and demand chains as a way to create more sustainable jobs, growth, and innovation. CREATe.org’s effective approach to helping companies measure internal capabilities and manage risk led to the spin-off and sale of CREATe Compliance Inc. to another industry leader, The Ethisphere Institute.

Until October 2011, Pamela served as Microsoft’s Deputy General Counsel and Corporate Vice President for Global Corporate and Regulatory Affairs. In that role, Pamela led Microsoft’s regulatory compliance work in 100+ countries, addressing a range of issues including privacy, cybersecurity, law enforcement, national security, telecommunications, and issues related to cloud computing. She also led Microsoft’s public policy work on these issues as well as the company’s corporate citizenship and philanthropic efforts globally. Pamela joined Microsoft in 1996 and until 2002 led Microsoft’s Legal and Corporate Affairs organization in Asia, focusing on Japan, China and South Korea. Prior to Microsoft, Pamela practiced law with Nagashima & Ohno in Tokyo and Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C. Pamela is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the boards of Kids In Need of Defense (KIND) and Lafayette College. Pamela also served as 2011 Chair of the Information Technology Industry Council (ITIC) which represents industry leaders including Microsoft, Google, SAP, and Oracle. Pamela earned a BA Government and Law from Lafayette College and a JD from the University of Virginia Law School.

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Dr. Cooperrider’s decades of strength-based community commerce innovation created the blueprint for Venly’s mobilization to help small & local businesses grow. David is a Case Western Reserve University Distinguished University Professor and holds the Fairmount Santrol – David L. Cooperrider Professorship in Appreciative Inquiry at Case Western’s Weatherhead School of Management. At Weatherhead, he serves as the faculty Founder and Director of the Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit.

David is best known for his establishment of Appreciative Inquiry with his mentor Suresh Srivastva. Leaders in business, the public sector, education, faith-based organizations, and nonprofits attribute their innovation and measurable growth to their use of David’s strength-based methodologies. David has been brought in for multi-stakeholder innovation projects by U.S. Presidents, the U.S. Navy’s Chief of Naval Operations, and the General Secretary of the United Nations. His corporate clients include Apple, Boeing, Cleveland Clinic, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Johnson & Johnson, McKinsey, Smuckers, National Grid, Verizon, and Walmart. Jane Nelson at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government recently wrote, “David Cooperrider is one of the outstanding scholar-practitioners of our generation.”

In addition to his industry work, David has published 25 books and authored over 100 articles and book chapters. He has also been the recipient of numerous awards and honors. In 2014 with the support from the family foundation of Green Mountain Coffee founder Robert Stiller, Champlain College created the David L. Cooperrider Center for Appreciative Inquiry at the Stiller School of Business. In 2017, David received the Organizational Development Network’s Lifetime Achievement Award—the highest honor from the largest international association in the field of organizational development.

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Allison Mnookin currently teaches at the Harvard Business School. Previously she served as Vice President and General Manager of Intuit Inc.’s $500M portfolio of small business products, including QuickBooks, used by more than 3 million small businesses. Allison was also instrumental in the early formation and growth of Quicken Loans. In her most recent role, she served as CEO of Quick Base Inc. used by more than 50 percent of the Fortune 100. Prior to joining Intuit, Allison held several roles with Oracle Corporation.

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Alissa joined Venly to help local businesses grow after a successful 35 years of financial analysis and accounting at John Hancock, a market leader in global financial services. Alissa understands the return on investment of community connection from her family’s experience running a local restaurant and her current experience as treasurer for Friends of the Reading, Massachusetts Public Library. Her career in a multi-billion dollar company drives her desire to give local business leaders the power of data and analysis tools that were only available in the past to large corporations. Alissa received a BA from Brandeis University and an MBA with a Concentration in Accounting from Boston University.

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Dr. Paul Horn is an innovator of mass scale, MediaWiki-based Networked AI & Big Data systems for applied learning, collaboration, and commerce. Paul joined Venly and the Peake Development Team in 2017 after his roles as Senior Vice President of IBM Research; New York University Senior Vice Provost for Research; and Chair of the New York Academy of Sciences during its 200th year. Paul helped define what became the VenlySpaces ecosystem management software when he first started advising the team in 2005.

Under Paul’s leadership of IBM’s 3,200 technical employees across eight sites in five countries, IBM pioneered the Watson artificial intelligence system and a wide range of innovations in big data and autonomic computing aligned with IBM’s overall focus on open source. Beginning in 2017, Paul began day-to-day guidance with Venly and the Peake Development Team. Specifically, he focused on how the MediaWiki open source platform could drive community upskilling through microcredentials on outreach & engagement, ecommerce, cloud-based operations, and cybersecurity. In this role, he has been active nationally with needs assessments of local businesses and their industry ecosystems, local chambers of commerce & other trade/professional associations, higher ed institutions, and the U.S. Department of Defense. As a first generation college student, Paul has had a focus on strengthening the impact of higher ed institutions in serving both first gen undergraduates and their anchor communities.

Prior to IBM, Paul was a tenured professor of Physics at the University of Chicago and an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow. After IBM, he helped found the New York University Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP). He holds a BS in Physics from Clarkson University and a PhD in Physics from the University of Rochester. Paul is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and has received numerous industry and science honors for his contributions at the intersection of business and technology.

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Mark Bezos’ role at Venly builds on his experience in pioneering brand development and social enterprise. As Senior Vice President of Communications and Events for the Robin Hood Foundation, he helped establish Robin Hood as a role model for impact investing. Robin Hood established a unique approach to strengthening the economic health of all New Yorkers by measuring the new value to recipients created by each dollar invested by Robin Hood. From the Mayor of New York to the Harvard Business School, Robin Hood’s spectacular growth has been heralded as a benchmark for constructive, non-partisan, community change. Each year, Mark helped rejuvenate Robin Hood’s efforts by rallying New Yorkers behind the Foundation’s programs with the help of leading performers from Beyoncé to Bruno Mars. Mark started his career at the storied Madison Avenue advertising firm, DDB, before becoming CEO of Bezos-Nathanson, the ad agency he co-founded with DDB’s Chief Creative Officer. Bezos-Nathanson created campaigns for brand name corporations and public enterprises from Dom Perignon to Ramada Hotels to the New York City Economic Development Corp. Mark’s most recent challenge has been developing the go-to-market communications for Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ revolutionary effort to make commercial space travel an everyday experience. Beyond Mark’s work in marketing, he serves as Captain of his local volunteer fire department. Based on lessons from that experience, Mark delivered a TED Talk which became a viral hit with nearly 1,500,000 views and a rebroadcast on National Public Radio. Mark’s vision and skills strengthen Venly’s ability to help small & local businesses to grow during good times and to rally their community when emergencies hit.

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Professor Len Schlesinger’s connection to Venly starts with his commitment to Venly’s goal of field-based business certification for recent graduates, returning veterans, and each of the small & local businesses they serve. For over three decades, Professor Schlesinger has pioneered entrepreneurial, organizational, and service best practices that bridge the gap between academia and business. As President of Babson College, his development and expansion of experiential methods of teaching and learning extended the school’s top ranked programs for educating entrepreneurs. He began his academic career at the Harvard Business School where he now serves as Baker Foundation Professor and teaches in both MBA and Executive Education programs. Outside of academia, he has held several roles in the private sector. From 1985-1988, he served as Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Au Bon Pain (a chain of French bakery cafes). From 1997-2007, he served in various executive positions including Vice Chairman and Chief Operating Officer with the retailer Limited Brands (now L Brands), which owns and operates numerous retail concepts including Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works. He was also a leader in the design and development of the “Work-Out!” initiative at General Electric, is the author or co-author of 13 books and numerous articles in leading journals and has served as an advisor or board member for more than 200 organizations around the world.

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