ALUMNI ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS The mission of Harvard Business School is to educate leaders who make a difference in the world. Every day more than 80,000 HBS graduates strive to make these words a reality in a wide array of organizations that affect the lives of millions of people around the globe. Since 1968, the School has selected a number of outstanding men and women to receive its most important honor, the Alumni Achievement Award. Throughout their ca- reers, these distinguished graduates have contributed significantly to their companies and communities while upholding the highest standards and values in everything they do. As such, they represent the best in our alumni body. Exemplary role models, they inspire all those who aspire to have an impact on both business and society. Mary Callahan Erdoes MBA 1993 Chief Executive Officer J.P. Morgan Asset Management It’s hard to talk with or about Mary Callahan Erdoes for more than five minutes without the notion of EQ and IQ coming up. Erdoes is someone who has both emotional and intellectual intelligence—in spades. The combination of compassion and analytical skills serves her well as she blazes a trail in the upper echelons of the banking world. TIMELINE 1967 Born, Menlo Park, California 1989 Earns BS, Mathematics, Georgetown University 1989 Joins Bankers Trust, Analyst 1993 Earns MBA 1993 Joins Meredith, Martin & Kaye, Portfolio Manager 1996 Joins J.P. Morgan Global Investment Management, Portfolio Manager 2005 Named CEO, J.P. Morgan Private Bank 2005 Joins Board of Directors, U.S. Fund for UNICEF 2009 Named CEO, J.P. Morgan Asset Management 2013 Launches Women on the Move initiative at JPMorgan Chase 2013 Named to Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Investor Advisory Committee on Financial Markets 2013 Named Most Powerful Woman in - 15 Finance by American Banker 2016 Joins Board of Directors, Robin Hood Foundation From top: Erdoes chats with a colleague; JPMorgan Chase’s New York headquarters; picking up her daughters from school. scribes their life together: “He brings the intelligence and “To be successful you need humor to the family,” she says. “I provide the annoying to have a passion not just discipline.” Both CEOs, they find raising three daughters in New York City “a little exhausting, sometimes unnerv- for the job itself, but for ing, but always sheer joy.” Family dinners—technology free—happen most evenings; weekends are usually spent the people you are doing in hotels for gymnastic tournaments; and summer vaca- it with.” tions consist of touring national parks in an RV. Erdoes is equally at home running morning markets meetings with thousands of people—which she does Erdoes recently celebrated her 20th year with J.P. Mor- every week—as she is mentoring staff one-on-one. “If I gan. A member of the firm’s operating committee, she could be a mentor to all 22,000 employees, I would,” she has run the Asset Management division, a global leader says. “I love helping others discover things about them- in investment management and private banking, since selves so they can blossom and grow.” She’s also grateful 2009. Her group’s record-setting performance is unheard to those who have mentored her. “One of the people I of in this volatile industry. Frequently cited as the most learned the most from was a guy who was the polar oppo- powerful woman on Wall Street, Erdoes leads a huge- site of me,” she says. “He taught me more about how to ly complex global business “with an iron fist in a velvet manage than anyone.” glove,” as her boss, Jamie Dimon (MBA 1982), puts it. Given the criticism of banks in recent years, Erdoes is The eldest of four and the only daughter, Erdoes grew up sometimes put on the defensive. “I am proud to be a in Wilmette, Illinois, where her father was an investment banker. We work with major endowments, foundations, banker and her mother a stay-at-home mom. She cites and countries that entrust us with their money. We her family, including four grandparents, as major influ- assist millions of people every single day—to buy their first ences. “There weren’t a lot of dolls in our house,” says home, get their first credit card, or pay for college. I have Erdoes, who rode horses competitively until she went to a passion for helping people.” Georgetown University. Mary Callahan Erdoes is also passionate about giving back Erdoes majored in mathematics and joined Bankers Trust to society and is particularly interested in supporting wom- when she graduated in 1989. “It was a rough time in the en and children. She has served on UNICEF’s board of markets—baptism by fire,” she says, noting that her two directors since 2005 and recently joined the board of the intense years there were great training, as was her time Robin Hood Foundation, an organization that fights pov- at HBS. “If you can master the case method, you can do erty in New York City. Aiding struggling families in all parts anything. Organizational behavior, manufacturing, the of the world, she says, “is the most rewarding thing you Cranberry case, it all got fused in my brain,” she says. “I can do.” UNICEF CEO Caryl Stern is full of appreciation carry with me what I learned at HBS every day.” and admiration. “Mary is truly part of this organization,” She also met Philip Erdoes, a classmate, while working she says. “No matter how crazy her schedule might be, out at Shad. She pursued him, and it worked out: the pair she finds time to give back. And she does it consistently, married four years later. Her eyes light up when she de- quietly, generously, and brilliantly.” Alan F. Horn MBA 1971 Chairman The Walt Disney Studios After two years working on the Ivory Soap account at Procter & Gamble, Alan Horn was approached by Hollywood legend Jerry Perenchio, a partner of Norman Lear, the renowned creator of All in the Family. “I had no experience in the entertainment business, I had never been to Hollywood, and I didn’t know anyone there,” says Horn. “He said, ‘You’re perfect,’ and hired me. He wanted a blank slate.” From top: Horn in his Burbank office; one of Disney’s iconic characters; on the Marvel set of Captain America. TIMELINE 1943 Born, New York, New York 1964 Earns BA, Economics, Union College 1971 Earns MBA with Distinction 1971 Joins Procter & Gamble 1973 Joins Tandem Productions, later Embassy Communications; named CEO 1985 Named President and COO, 20th Century Fox 1987 Cofounds Castle Rock Entertainment; named Chairman and CEO 1989 Castle Rock produces When Harry Met Sally and Seinfeld 1999 Named President and COO, Warner Bros. 2004 Awarded Pioneer of the Year, Will Rogers Motion Picture Pioneers Foundation 2010 Receives Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from Union College 2012 Named Chairman, The Walt Disney Studios Perenchio was not the first—or the last—to see a talent in Horn that had not yet been fully developed. “He took a “If one just puts his head chance on me,” says Horn, who moved from Cincinnati to down and works and treats Los Angeles, where he launched a career in entertainment that included cofounding (with Rob Reiner) Castle Rock the people around him with Entertainment and running Warner Bros. before taking respect, I think all good over Disney’s studio division. things flow from that.” Horn’s gentle manner is fueled by respect for others and a natural confidence. When he arrived at Disney, hired by CEO Bob Iger to help heal a troubled group, he employed most popular television shows ever. He then joined War- his tried-and-true method of watching, listening, and ner Bros., greenlighting film projects that included three insisting on collaboration. “One of the few things that is Batman films,Happy Feet, and one of Hollywood’s biggest good about aging,” says the wry Horn from his perch amid sensations, the Harry Potter series. Hollywood’s youth-obsessed culture, “is the experience That success has continued at Disney. “Getting Alan to that comes with time.” work for us is one of the big achievements of my career,” Alan Horn was born in New York City, the second of three says Bob Iger. Under Horn’s leadership, Disney has pro- children, and raised on Long Island by working-class duced Frozen, The Avengers, Inside Out, and the 2015 parents. His mother worked with a firm that booked Star Wars film, which set box-office records and was well trial dates and his father tended bar and later ran a liquor received by critics. store. By the time Horn was in the ninth grade, they had Horn couldn’t be happier at Disney, where he is known moved eight times. While their finances weren’t stable, for his sentimental reactions to films: If he isn’t moved at the family was built on a solid foundation of love. After a screening, filmmakers know they have a problem. Emo- graduating from Union College, Horn fulfilled his ROTC tion comes easily to him—at the mention of his deceased scholarship by serving in the Air Force in Korea and then parents as well as when he talks about his wife of 33 came to HBS, where he graduated with distinction. years, Cindy, and their two daughters. “The girls are our Horn thrived as Perenchio’s business associate and biggest accomplishment,” he says. It is concern for future eventually was asked—by producer Lear—to oversee the generations, in fact, that inspired the Horns to cofound the creative side of the business.