A Vibrant Hub
What does the Chao Center mean for the HBS campus?
The location makes it so spectacular because it brings people together. We have our Executive Education participants. We have our MBA students. We have faculty. We have staff. If you think about the spaces that this building has created—a forum where we imagine all kinds of talks occurring, classrooms that are flat-floor rooms, and a new coffee and wine bar, which will bring people together in the evening. So it's been programmed to invite people in, to be a hub of sorts that connects all parts of our community.
The Center sits at the intersection of our MBA programs and our residential buildings, in the middle of all of these flows. I think it's remarkable because it's at the nexus of so many different things that come together.
The building itself has this dual capacity: in the front it looks as if it has been part of Harvard Business School for 100 years. And through its back, it has this invitation, which is a glass, transparent invitation that says this is the Harvard Business School of the 21st century as well. It's a great building that connects our past to our future.
What does it mean to have the building named after the Chao family?
The fact that this is the first building named for a woman—Ruth Mulan Chu Chao—on our campus is truly historic. We announced this gift in 2013, which marked the 50th year of women being admitted to Harvard Business School. If you think about Harvard Business School and how much it's changed, in many ways the Chao family is a great example of the beginnings of that change. We've had four wonderful daughters of this amazing family come through Harvard Business School. When they came to the School, there were very few women who were part of our MBA classrooms.
Additionally, the Chao family is a great example of the power of leadership. They have been wonderful business leaders. They have been great philanthropic leaders. They have done an amazing job in politics. In so many spheres of life, they have been ambassadors who have built the bridge between China and the United States, two economies that together will shape the future of the world. We are so proud to have the legacy of this leadership represented on our campus.
Do you think the history of the Chao family and the newly opened Center are representative of the evolving, global reality of business?
Harvard Business School has become a deeply global institution. One way in which one can understand the evolution of business is just to walk through Harvard Business School and see the names of the buildings. You start with J. P. Morgan and Mr. Baker. These were people who were pioneers of American business at the turn of the 20th century when Harvard Business School was first founded.
As we enter our second century, you think about the frontiers of business and where business is being shaped and created, and where the global economy is being shaped and created. You think about places like China, like India. They are so much a part of where business enterprise is now being created.
So, to now see names on our campus that represent the emerging and evolving shape of the globalization of business—with Tata Hall, the emergence of business in India, and now with the Chao family, the emergence of business in China—while walking through the Harvard Business School campus, you get a sense of how business continues to evolve.