Harvard Business School was profiled in a recent Globe and Mail article regarding its first annual Leading People and Investing to Build Sustainable Communities program.
The four-day course was developed to “equip professionals from First Nations and native-American communities with new investment practices and governance strategies for managing their businesses and resources for generations to come.”
The curriculum was spearheaded by Meagan Hill, a Harvard alum ’16 who is Mohawk and a Six Nations member. Professor of Business Administration Thomas Nicholas, Managing Director of Executive Education David Ager, the Aboriginal Financial Officers Association of Canada and the National Congress of American Indians also made important contributions.
According to the Globe and Mail article, Ms. Hill started the project to “share Harvard’s community of like-minded, diverse and driven students and staff with other Indigenous people.”
Hill says, “[Within] First Nations and Native American communities … there might just not be an understanding that Harvard is possible. There was such a sense of pride and excitement that I had been successful enough to get accepted to a place like Harvard. Ever since that happened, I’ve constantly been thinking of ways to share that excitement and experience with other people.”
Andrew Leach, of the St’at’imc Nation and the Tsleil-Waututh Nation’s chief administrative officer, used the conference as an “opportunity to network and create new partnerships with other Indigenous leaders.” In the article, Leach says these programs are “especially important now as communities in Canada and the United States are shifting from managing poverty to managing wealth.”
He elaborates, “First Nations are coming across tremendous opportunity right now. And [there’s a gap in] the capacity to fulfill that opportunity. What we are in is a catch-up mode … and programs like this come a long way in helping to build that capacity.”