Blog Archives

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Michael Burt

Michael has a proven 19-year track record with Cisco Systems driving cross-functional teams in the scoping, planning, and execution of strategic customer opportunities. Most recently, Michael managed the Cisco Voice and Contact Center where he was a technical expert in the design and deployment of on-premise and cloud contact center solutions, specializing in critical customer situations. Michael also had responsibility for the vetting of high risk future customer deployments in North America. Michael is a longtime leader with the National Society of Black Engineers, and served most notably as the Chair for the Northeast region and, more recently, Director of the Information Technology Think Tank (ITTT) Special Interest Group. This group convenes subject matter experts to address critical technology scaling challenges. Michael holds a BA in psychology/computer science from Merrimack College and is a graduate of the Atlanta-based Information Technology Senior Management Forum. Michael’s years of technical leadership and coaching give him the skills to help local businesses grow and to strengthen each community served.

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Harvard Business School Dean Emeritus John McArthur

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 Imageat business schools around the world. In turn, John Whitehead and John McArthur worked together to develop the program that would go on to become the Mary S. Peake Fellowship. Dean McArthur drew particular inspiration for Venly Institute’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 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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Alissa Onigman

Alissa has helped to launch the Fellowship over several years following more than two decades 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 experience as treasurer of the support association for a local public library. Alissa received a BA from Brandeis University and an MBA with a Concentration in Accounting from Boston University. 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.

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Ted Rybeck

Ted has helped to launch the Mary S. Peake Fellowship for more than a decade. Ted began his own career as a Thomas Watson Fellow based at IBM Düsseldorf working on regional revitalization through technology after graduating with a BA in Economics from Haverford College. He saw the potential for joint innovative capabilities when he spearheaded development of Walmart’s first Internet-based collaboration system from customers back to suppliers. He subsequently co-led the roll-out of an open source version of Walmart’s “Collaborative Planning, Forecasting, and Replenishment” (CPFR) software as a standard among retailers globally. Ted went on to develop and teach semester-long courses courses on network collaboration at MIT, Wharton, and the University of Chicago School of Business. Ted served on the non-partisan U.S. Congressional review panel on ecommerce and his work on secure Internet collaboration was then funded by a multi-million dollar award from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Since 9/11, Ted has served as volunteer chair of a committee to mobilize physical and cybersecurity of the U.S. Defense Industrial Base. Ted’s experience accelerating cybersecure growth of local businesses with the help of next gen leaders, AI, and big data fits with the national priority for adult upskilling.

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David Sandberg

David has helped to launch the Mary S. Peake Fellowship over more than a decade. After retiring as a Cambridge-based business development lead for Google/ITA Software, David and his wife became pioneering neighborhood bookstore leaders in the community commerce movement. In doing so, he brought the same innovation to a local retail business that he did to the international software development business that he and his team sold to Google for $800 million.

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Pamela Passman

Pamela has helped to launch the Mary S. Peake Fellowship over several years. Pamela began her own career as a Thomas Watson Foundation Fellow before serving as Microsoft Corporate VP for Global Corporate and Regulatory Affairs where she managed privacy, cybersecurity, law enforcement, national security, telecommunications, cloud computing.risk, and regulatory compliance in over 110 countries. Funded by Microsoft, Pamela founded the nonprofit Center for Responsible Enterprise and Trade (CREATe.org) which developed 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.

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Perry Cohen

Perry has helped to launch the Mary S. Peake Fellowship over several years. Perry’s experience includes a range of field management roles for C&S Wholesale Grocers, the largest grocery wholesaler in the United States with approximately $30 billion in annual revenue and supporting over 14,000 grocers. His roles at C&S have included Director of Community Relations, Vice President of Regional Operations, Vice President of Leadership Development and Education, and a board member representing the fourth generation of his family leadership of C&S. In addition to Perry’s C&S skills, he is a certified first responder and leader of Venture Out, a national leader in LGBTQ outdoor education. The combination of Perry’s background in grocery distribution, elearning, and disaster response reinforces the effectiveness of upskilling on cybersecure growth as part of strengthening each Anchor Community served.

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Mark Bezos

Mark has helped to launch the Mary S. Peake Fellowship over several years. As longtime Senior Vice President of Communications for the largest poverty fighting foundation in NYC, the 501(c)(3) Robin Hood foundation, Mark started his career at the storied Madison Avenue advertising firm, DDB before becoming CEO of his own firm. He also has developed the go-to-market communications for his brother, Jeff Bezos. In addition to his non-profit and for profit efforts, Mark also has served as a Captain of his local volunteer fire department. Mark’s dedication to ecosystem mobilization and communication, directly strengthens the upskilling for cybersecure growth for underserved Anchor Communities nationwide.

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Mark Coblitz

Mark has helped to launch the Mary S. Peake Fellowship over nearly a decade. He focused on the Fellowship after 25 years as Senior Vice President of Strategic Planning for Comcast Corporation and his time as a Captain in the U.S. Air Force serving at the Pentagon. He has also been a long term advisor to Carnegie Mellon. His passion for cybersecure growth across the nation goes back to his early leadership experiences growing up in an Ashtabula, Ohio family business where he and his family members were active in the local chamber and other community associations.

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Professor David Cooperrider

Dr. Cooperrider has helped to launch the Mary S. Peake Fellowship for several years. He is the Case Western Reserve University Distinguished University Professor and faculty Founder of the Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit. Dr. Cooperrider 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. For the Fellowship, Dr. Cooperrider’s development of Appreciative Inquiry as an internationally recognized discipline continues to expand the blueprint for the Peake Fellowship’s mobilization to help small & local businesses with cybersecure growth.