When William Kleh (LAW’71) needed a summer job while in law school, he headed back to his hometown of Washington, D.C., and worked at the Securities and Exchange Commission. That work, plus the inspiration of Law School Professor Tamar Frankel, who taught him securities law, set the stage for Kleh’s successful career in the mutual fund industry.

	Patty, Erin, and Bill (LAW'71) Kleh in Colorado. Daughter Erin this fall will join the board of the Kleh Family Foundation, which sponsors the BU Distinguished Lecture Series in London.

His career took him to London in 1994 to head up mutual fund company AIM Management’s international operations. After the British firm Invesco bought out AIM, he became the general counsel, retiring three years ago.

Kleh hosted alumni events for his undergraduate college, Middlebury, in his London home, and in 1999 contacted Ranald Macdonald, director of BU’s British Programmes (as they spell it across the pond), offering to do the same for BU.

But instead, Kleh and Macdonald hit on something grander: semiannual lectures in London with prominent BU faculty. The first Kleh Lecture was in the spring of 2001, given by Christopher Ricks, BU’s William M. Warren and Sara B. Warren Professor of the Humanities. Presentations by historian and BU University Professors Fellow Lord Thomas and Law School Dean Ron Cass followed.

The response was enthusiastic. “We had large audiences of students, alumni, and friends of BU and people from the academic world, including Oxford and Cambridge, Imperial College, and the London School of Economics, plus interested members of the public,” says Macdonald. “I really wanted to have lecturers here to lift the profile of BU in London.”

Funding for the lectureship comes from the Kleh Family Foundation, overseen by Kleh, his wife, Patty, and several other relatives (including his daughter as of this fall), and friends. “The focus of our foundation and our giving personally is education, which we think has great relevance,” says Kleh, a generous contributor to the Law School and a new member of the Law School Board of Visitors.

And in October the lectureship is sure to get even more notice: the speaker is Elie Wiesel, BU’s Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and recipient of the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize. “I’m busily spending the summer reading everything he wrote,” Kleh said this August.

— Taylor McNeil