Letter from the President
Amy Hanson, AB '92

December 2008

Dear HCSF Members and Friends,

Greetings! The holidays are upon us, and it is a time for reflection, celebration, and planning for the New Year.

We are in for a treat with this year's Holiday Party (our third annual). Thanks to Vice President of Membership Marv Kasoff, who has organized the party every year, we will be gathering at the Old Mint in downtown San Francisco on Thursday, December 4, for an evening of food and drink, networking, and merriment. The Old Mint has been closed to the public for over twenty years, and we have arranged for tours of the facilities–as well as an appearance of the HCSF Beach Blanket Babylon Harvard Yard Hat! If you haven't registered yet, do so now! The event is just days away, and space is limited. Please see our Web site, www.harvardclubsf.org, and inside this issue for details.

2008 has been a great year for the Club. We have nearly 1,400 members–representing Harvard College and all graduate schools–and have offered more than 100 events in this year alone! Thanks to Jen Shin (PhD '08), Vice President of Activities, and her committee for continuing to build upon the programming momentum generated by her predecessors, Charlene Nee (EdM '95) and Sheela Zemlin (MBA '98).

Looking ahead over the next few weeks, keep an eye out for your membership renewal form in the mail. Be sure to renew early to keep receiving the benefits of being of an HCSF member and to stay part of our dynamic community.

We will soon start organizational planning for next year and interviewing candidates for open officer positions. This is a great opportunity to increase your involvement with the Club and to be part of a friendly, close-knit group. Open positions will include the Vice President of Information Technology, Vice President of Partnerships, Treasurer, and Annual Dinner Chair. Please see page 2 of this newsletter for a full list of positions.

I would like to welcome two new members to our Board of Directors. Elaine Black (AM '74, PhD '81) has organized events for HCSF for many years–most notably, our annual outings to see Shakespeare outdoors as well as The Nutcracker ballet. Also joining us is Katherine Dowling (JD '98) as our new Vice President of Communications. Katherine contributes to our weekly e-mail blasts and will focus on how best to share information with our members and the larger community. We welcome both Elaine and Katherine and are thrilled to have their involvement and enthusiasm!

Would you like to become more involved with HCSF? Please contact me directly. I would be delighted to talk with you about how your background and passion can translate into a role that can contribute meaningfully to our Club.

I wish you a happy and healthy holiday season!

Amy Hanson, AB '92
President, Harvard Club of San Francisco
president@harvardclubsf.org

Letter from the Incoming President
Stephen Watkins, AM '96

September 2007

It is a true honor to follow Spencer Rhodes, AB '00, MBA '04, as HCSF's new President. For the past three years, it's been my great pleasure to work alongside some of the most creative and dedicated Harvard alumni on the West Coast. The remarkable successes that we have been able to realize during my time on the Board are a testament to the vision, talents, and strengths of my colleagues on the Board as well as those of the members of the Bay Area's Harvard alumni community.

Looking ahead, I welcome the challenges of helping the Club formalize some of the organizational and operational initiatives that were begun under the stewardship of Spencer and his predecessors, Gautham Reddy, AB '85, and Stephanie Evans, EdM '79.

It's my intention, for example, to help refine our committee structure, which channels so much of the energy and ideas necessary for meaningful events and creative internal governance. I'd like to see us continue to strengthen the Community Service Committee by enhancing current key relationships with the San Francisco Unified School District, Boys & Girls Clubs of San Francisco, and Habitat for Humanity San Francisco, to name but a few. I also look forward to helping the Club as it explores new directions in strategic partnerships, reaching out to leaders in business and government, to community service innovators, to our friends in education and philanthropy, and to luminaries of culture and the arts.

My goal is to keep HCSF vital, relevant, and above all, responsive to our membership's needs by reflecting the enduring, familiar themes that define the Harvard experience, and by finding new and different ways of expressing alumni affiliation.

If you are a current member, I'd like to thank you for your continued support and participation. Please let me know if there's anything that we might do to enhance your experience. If you have ideas about bringing a new event, activity, or benefit to the Club, I encourage you to share those thoughts with me and with my colleagues on the Board. If you are a prospective member, I invite you to explore the many events and activities we have to offer.

Here's to a great twelve months, here's to Harvard, and here's to you!

Letter from the Outgoing President
Spencer Rhodes, AB '00, MBA '04

September 2007

It has been a great honor to serve as President of the HCSF for the past year, and I'm honored and excited to be continuing with the club as Chairman. The HCSF has made a great amount of progress in the past year thanks to the efforts of our fantastic group of officers, volunteers, and board members.

We organized 96 events in the past twelve months thanks to the large number of volunteers on our vibrant activities committee and to the tireless efforts of co-VPs of Activities Charlene Nee, EdM '95 and Sheela Zemlin, MBA '98. With the help of incoming President Stephen Watkins, AM '96, and co-VPs of Community Service Lara Fox, AB '99, Preston Dodd, EdM '94, and Ray Mertens, AB '94 MBA '03, we have had a tremendous increase in the number and variety of community service activities including a deepening of our relationship with the Boys & Girls Clubs of San Francisco.

Marv Kasoff, AB '64 launched the wildly successful "Salon" speaker series which has held ten sold-out sessions in less than a year, and VP of Schools Bruce Jackson, AB '66 led the efforts of countless volunteers to interview over 800 applicants to Harvard College. Outgoing VP of Strategic Partnerships Lin Zhu, MPA '02 and Tania Condon, MTS '93 built out our new membership discount program, and we began providing credit card-sized membership cards as a benefit of membership.

Kirsten Pickford has continued to do a fantastic job running all of our administrative affairs as Executive Director. Stephanie Evans, EdM '79 and Gautham Reddy, AB '85, both past presidents of the HCSF, have continued to generously support the club in many ways. Anne Knight, AB '66, AM '71, HAA Regional Director, has been a great resource and friend to the club as have the HAA staff back in Cambridge including our primary contact Rachel Lamson.

Beyond our countless social and community service events, The HCSF continued to bring the best of Harvard to the Bay Area with numerous events featuring professors and department heads. Most notably, we hosted both President Drew Faust and Provost Steven Hyman in separate events that were both sold out.

I'm happy to announce that Sean Jacobsohn, MBA '98, former President of the HBS Association of Northern California, has been elected to serve in the new role of Director of Revenue, and Elizabeth Cryer, AB '97 has been elected to serve in the new role of Director of Career Mentoring. Other new officers include Amy Hanson, AB '92, President-elect; Greg Groeneveld, MPP '88, Secretary; Kenneth Marshall, MBA '94, VP of Technology; and Jing Nie, AB '06, Director of Young Alumni.

We'd like to welcome recent graduates to the area and encourage them to join both the club and our Young Alumni Yahoo Group at:www.groups.yahoo.com/group/hcsf-recentgrads .

We have a new communication channel for those wishing to get intimately involved in our community service efforts. While all community service events and committee meetings will continue to go out to the whole club via our normal updates, this new yahoo group will serve as a community within which even more community service news can be shared among Harvard graduates in the area: www.groups.yahoo.com/group/hcsf-communityservice .

Finally, I have the pleasure of welcoming Stephen Watkins AM'96 into the role of President. Stephen has contributed immeasurably to the club in recent years. He has served as VP of Community Service, helped found our community service committee, organized several successful events, served as a board member, and contributed significantly to our Early College Awareness Program and to our relationship with the Boys & Girls Clubs of San Francisco. Time and time again, he has proven his desire to see Harvard's presence in the Bay Area be the best that it can be. The board and I are delighted that he has accepted the Presidency, and we look forward to helping him make his mark on the club.

Thanks for a great year, and thanks for your interest in the Harvard Club of San Francisco! We hope to see you at an event or at a committee meeting in the near future!

Spencer Rhodes, AB '00, MBA '04
President, Harvard Club of San Francisco

October 2006

We've had a great beginning to the 2006/2007 year with 16 events in the past three months. I hope you've been able to join us for some of the fun!

The highlights included our Annual Dinner featuring Mayor Gavin Newsom, a private screening of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth (we packed an entire full-sized movie theater!), a hike on the Land's End Coastal Trail, a scavenger hunt around the city, a beach BBQ, a social mixer at Cav Wine Bar, Shakespeare at Stinson Beach, and a visit from Harvard Dean Scott Abell, not to mention several other prominent speakers, educational events, and private tours. Activities VPs Charlene Nee, EdM '95 and Sheela Zemlin, MBA '98, and the whole Activities Committee are doing a fantastic job! Consider joining them at the next committee meeting on November 2. Register at www.harvardclubsf.org/events/index.asp#nov2.

I want to take this opportunity to welcome all of the recent grads who have moved to the Bay Area! I've seen the numbers at our Young Alum Yahoo group swell in the past few weeks. If you haven't discovered that group yet, please see groups.yahoo.com/group/hcsf-recentgrads.

Beyond the Yahoo group, we invite you to join our Young Alum Committee, which meets for dinner on the first Sunday of every month at 7 pm (the November dinner will be at the Grandviews Restaurant on the 36th floor of the Grand Hyatt, Union Square). Come have dinner, meet new people, and share your ideas for young alum activities! Also, be sure to join us for the Ivy League Young Alum Mixer on Friday November 3rd (see the E-vite at: tinyurl.com/fgtle).

From recent grads to recent admits, I'm happy to report that the club has once again made a positive impact back in Cambridge. A small portion of the Harvard College Fund is composed of the “Scholarship Fund of the Harvard Club of San Francisco” which was donated to The College by past members of the HCSF. Each year, two students receive grants from this fund. These students are told that the HCSF is the source of their grants, and the club always receives nice letters of thanks. This year, one recipient wrote, “My scholarship has opened up a whole new world for me, and I am extremely grateful.”

We can be proud that the Harvard Club of San Francisco helps aspiring students in need at all points of development: from small children through our partnership with the Boys & Girls Clubs of San Francisco, to teens and preteens in the HCSF Early College Awareness Program, to deserving Harvard students who receive our scholarship.

Finally, on behalf of the HCSF Executive Committee and Board of Directors, I would like to invite you to attend the Second Annual HCSF Leadership Open House and Wine Social. If you've ever wondered about holding a leadership position in the club, serving on the board, or just organizing an event, we hope that you will join us on the evening of Monday, October 23. Please reserve a spot by visiting www.harvardclubsf.org/events/index.asp#oct23. (Note that security will not allow you to enter the building without registering in advance.) Then drop in between 5 and 8 pm at the Bingham McCutchen law offices, located at 3 Embarcadero Center in San Francisco.

The board, officer group, and past presidents will be on hand to answer your questions and solicit your ideas. In addition to these informal conversations, I will give a short presentation on the club's structure and goals. Whether you'd like to make a large contribution or a small one, we hope that you will join us.

We're off to a great year! Thank you for your interest in and support of the Harvard Club of San Francisco!

Spencer Rhodes, AB '00, MBA '04
President, Harvard Club of San Francisco

July 2006

I am excited to be starting my term as your new president of the Harvard Club of San Francisco. We are ending a very successful year under the presidency of Gautham Reddy, AB '85, in which we doubled membership; engaged a fantastic new executive director; greatly increased our administrative, e-mail, and website functionality; overhauled the Club's governing bylaws; devoted new energy to community service activities; executed a tremendous roster of almost 60 events; and resurrected the newsletter. Gautham spent countless hours working on Club business, attending events, and coordinating with Cambridge. We are fortunate that we will continue to benefit from Gautham's energy as he has agreed to accept the newly created position of “Immediate Past President”, a role we created to assure continuity by keeping past presidents on the executive committee for an additional year.

Amy Hanson, AB '92, our outgoing VP of Activities, also deserves our gratitude for keeping the Club's calendar full of great events. The Club would not be where it is today without Amy, and her leadership will be greatly missed.

For those of you who are new to the Club or new to the Bay Area, I want to take a moment to describe the HCSF at the highest level. Our Club has three core missions: community service, interviewing candidates for admission to Harvard College, and organizing social and educational events. We serve all alumni of Harvard regardless of school or degree, and our board is composed of graduates from almost every school at Harvard, including the Law School, Business School, School of Education, Divinity School, Kennedy School, GSAS, and College. We also include former Harvard instructors, current students, and parents of current and past students.

Founded in 1873, The Harvard Club of San Francisco is the fourth oldest Harvard Club in the world. However, unlike Boston and New York, we do not have a physical location. Instead, we leverage venues all around the city for our events and charge a very modest membership fee of only $50 per year ($25 or less for recent grads). This dues revenue is what keeps us going. Please see www.harvardclubsf.org or call us at 415-621-3900 for information on upcoming events or to join the Club.

In the coming year, we have many goals. Beyond the clear mandates of maintaining a solid schedule of events and continuing to increase membership, some of our priorities include the following:

1) Our greatest assets are our leaders: the people who donate their energy to build the Harvard Community here in San Francisco. This year, we will greatly expand the Club's roster of leaders on all levels, from event organizers to board members and officers. If you would like to fill a leadership role, join a committee, or organize an event, please contact me at rhodes@post.harvard.edu . You can make as large or as small a commitment as you would like.

2) We will build on our new relationship with the Boys and Girls Clubs of San Francisco and further expand our community service platform.

3) We will launch an online, searchable, members-only directory to facilitate social and professional networking. This directory will include employer information and will thereby be more informative than the directory at www.post.harvard.edu . To protect privacy, members will be able to opt out, and access will be restricted to paid members.

Thanks for your interest in and support of the Harvard Club of San Francisco!

Gautham P. Reddy, AB '85
Past President, Harvard Club of San Francisco

July 2006

It has been an honor and a delight to serve as president of the Harvard Club of San Francisco. The year has passed quickly, and there has been a whirlwind of activity by our officers, board members, and numerous volunteers, all working to make the Club better for its members. I owe all of you special thanks.

I am especially proud of the Club's renewed focus on community service, one of my priorities and a matter of great appeal to the membership. We have created a new office – VP, Community Service – currently held by Stephen Watkins, AM '96, who has developed a program for Club members to volunteer at the Boys & Girls Clubs of San Francisco. Ray Mertens, AB '94, MBA '03, led another highly successful endeavor – the Stanley Lynn Early College Awareness program for disadvantaged youth (described elsewhere in this newsletter).

Our new executive director, Kirsten Pickford, has helped us reorganize the Club administration and update our database, ensuring the accuracy of members' data. Kirsten is also continuing in her role as the executive director of the Harvard Business School Association of Northern California, which she has managed for eight years. We have been lucky enough to benefit from her long experience and her efficiency – she returns your phone calls and emails almost immediately!

I am privileged to have followed in the footsteps of Club Presidents Stephanie Evans, EdM '79, John Trasvina, AB '80, Michael Sears, AB '84-'85, Wally Sleeth, AB '65, and Modesta Garcia, EdM '79. During my tenure on the board, we have grappled with the transition from conventional to electronic communication. Each of my predecessors led the Club through positive changes, such as creating an updated and highly functional website and enhancing our email capability. We were able to culminate the transition this year by updating our database, gaining the ability to send email messages to 13,000 Harvard alumni and affiliates in the Bay Area, preparing to launch our online membership directory, and – as you can see – resurrecting the newsletter (thanks to Kathy Rosenberg-Wohl, AB '83, JD '86, and Yvonne Tsang, AB '99.) I am confident that our improved digital communication capabilities will serve our members well. At the same time, we will offer the newsletter and dues invoices in hard copy and continue event registration by phone or fax.

I have been fortunate to work with a fantastic leadership team who worked hard on behalf of our members, and I want to give special recognition to those who are stepping down as officers or leaving the board. Stephanie Evans, my immediate predecessor as president, was instrumental in the launch of our new website last year, has been incredibly generous with her time and financial resources, and over the course of the year has provided me with wise counsel. I am happy to report that she will continue on the board in an ex officio capacity. As VP, Activities, for the past two years Amy Hanson, AB '92, has led the amazing revitalization of the Club's social, educational, and cultural program, which now has the breadth and depth to appeal to the range of members' interests. The board is awed and impressed by the accomplishments of her enthusiastic and innovative committee. Amy also oversaw the creation of the new website. Club Secretary Eric Behrens, AB '7 0, has been a tireless record keeper and, with his legal background, provided invaluable advice and was always the voice of reason. Both Amy and Eric will remain on the board for another year.

Wally Sleeth, the Harvard Alumni Association Regional Director, was a great source of advice and guidance. Wally has moved to Worcester, Massachusetts, but he returns frequently to the Bay Area to visit family, and I am sure that we will see him at Club events. Garrett Stone, MBA '67, and Rick Wales, AB '76, are retiring from the board after several years of dedicated service.

Our Annual Dinner on July 11th will mark the official transition to the next president of the HCSF, Spencer Rhodes, AB '00, MBA '04. Spencer came to us with stellar reviews from the Harvard Club of the United Kingdom, where he served as an executive committee member from 2000 to 2002 and was next in line to be president before he left London to attend to business school.

Spencer has assisted me immeasurably over the past year as the Club's President-elect. His business experience and level-headed advice were great resources for me, and the Club benefited from his boundless energy, earnestness, and willingness to try new ideas. The membership's needs were always uppermost in his mind and were central to his ideas and efforts. From long-range and strategic planning, to recruiting new board members and officers, to event organization, Spencer has proved his managerial and leadership abilities time and again. As organizer of the Ivy League Young Alum Mixer, he held three mixers that drew over 300 attendees each and engaged all seven of the other Ivy clubs in the city.

At Harvard College, Spencer was a Psychology concentrator in Eliot House and earned a Citation in German Language. After working in venture capital in London, he earned an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he served as chair of his section's social committee. Professionally, Spencer is a Vice President at Merrill Lynch and focuses on institutional investment management.

I am pleased to pass the leadership of the HCSF to Spencer.

Thank you for a memorable year, and best wishes.