BU Alums, Faculty on Boston Business Journal’s List of 50 Leaders Making a Difference
BU Alums, Faculty on Boston Business Journal’s List of 50 Leaders Making a Difference
Cited for their “influence, innovation, commitment, and courage”
The Boston Business Journal has chosen five BU alumni, two professors, and the CEO of Boston Medical Center for its annual list of the city’s 50 most influential power players. But this year the criteria were different.
Instead of calling it the “Power 50,” for 2020 the Business Journal recognizes “Extraordinary Year, Extraordinary People: 50 professionals changing Boston for the better,” people “whose influence, innovation, commitment, and courage are making a difference in the community during an extraordinary time.”
The honorees “each found their own way to rise to meet the unprecedented challenges that accompanied this past year,” the Business Journal editorial says. “Many worked behind the scenes, without seeking recognition, while others used their positions of leadership to bring attention to areas that the pandemic and widespread racial reckoning have exposed as badly in need of change.”
While some are well-known leaders who have made the list in previous years, others are making their mark through hard work of a kind not often recognized in such lists.
All are “extraordinary people who are quietly helping change Boston for the better,” the editorial says. “And that’s something we can all aspire to emulate: In what’s been an extraordinary year by any measure, we can all work to be extraordinarily kind, or generous, or thoughtful of the needs of others. In doing so, we can meet the demands of the moment head-on.”
Below is a list of the BU-connected honorees, with excerpts from the Journal citations.
Kate Barrand (Questrom’85)
President and CEO, Horizons for Homeless Children
“Helped drive a public-private partnership that brings a much-needed new resource to the city and a new building for Horizons to help serve 30% more children…will bring some 400 new jobs to Jackson Square.”
Photo courtesy of Horizons for Homeless Children
Lori Cashman (Questrom’95)
Named with Suzanne Norris as cofounders and managing partners of Victress Capital
“Firm only funds start-ups that have at least one woman on their team…as Cashman and Norris recognized that female founders receive disproportionately low funding.”
Photo courtesy of Victress Capital
Paul Francisco (CGS’91, CAS’93)
Chief diversity officer, State Street Corp.
“One of 19 local executives of color who founded the New Commonwealth Racial Equity and Social Justice Fund…helped to organize a protest near Faneuil Hall shortly after George Floyd’s death, in which dozens of Black executives and professionals stood together in near-total silence, wearing suits and holding signs with the names of Black men and women killed by police.” Francisco’s wife, Betty Francisco, was also honored, for her work as general counsel with Compass Working Capital and as a cofounder of Amplify Latinx and Latina Circle.
Photo by Cydney Scott
Jeanette Ives Erickson (SON’87)
Chief nurse emerita, Massachusetts General Hospital; co–medical and operations director, Boston Hope
One of two people tapped to set up the 1,000-bed field hospital at Boston Convention and Exposition Center to prevent COVID-19 cases from overrunning city hospitals. “An essential bridge between hospital care and a discharge home…also a key way the city handled coronavirus within the homeless population.”
Photo courtesy of MGH
Marylou Sudders (CAS’76, SSW’78)
Commonwealth of Massachusetts secretary of Health and Human Services
“From outlining supply chain struggles and triumphs, to nursing home protections and funding, to statistics showing the uneven toll the virus was taking on minorities, Sudders has remained undeterred as head of the state’s coronavirus task force.”
Photo courtesy of Commonwealth of Massachusetts
BU Faculty Members Honored
Ibram Kendi
Founding director of BU’s Center for Antiracist Research, Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities, and a College of Arts & Sciences professor of history
“Although Kendi’s move to Boston was about a year in the making, the announcement came as protests around the country called for racial justice in the wake of the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.…This spring Kendi spoke before the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee about the disproportionate impact COVID-19 is having on Black communities.”
Photo by Janice Checchio
Catherine Klapperich
Director of the BU Precision Diagnostics Center at the College of Engineering, an ENG professor of biomedical engineering, of mechanical engineering, and of materials science and engineering
“Got to work with her team building a robust COVID-19 testing program with the capacity to test BU’s roughly 35,000 students every three days throughout the semester.”
Photo courtesy of Klapperich
Kate Walsh
President and CEO of Boston Medical Center and a School of Public Health adjunct clinical associate professor of health law, policy, and management
Led the BMC when “as many as 70% of its patients were stricken” with COVID-19. “Advocated tirelessly on Beacon Hill…Her work has not only benefited the thousands of patients that walk through the hospital’s doors, but the health care sector at large.”
Photo courtesy of BMC
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