Leadership Institute at Harvard College

History and Structure

Founded in 2005 by four Harvard undergraduates, LIHC was established in response to the lack of leadership development resources available to Harvard College students. More recently, in September 2008, LIHC announced its definition of leadership: "the skill of motivating, guiding and empowering a team towards a socially responsible vision." The Leadership Institute is guided by an Executive Board of eight undergraduates and a Board of Advisors drawn from Harvard Business School, Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School, the Kennedy School of Government, and as well as government and corporate institutions.

Members of the 2011 Executive Board are:

Members of the Board of Advisors (as of September 2011) are:

The current members of the Executive Board as of (May 2015):

James Ho , President

James is a junior in Dunster House concentrating in Statistics with a secondary in Economics. Growing up in the Bay Area, he is interested in business and technology. Before serving as the President of LIHC, he served as the Strategic Development Chair in 2014 and the Finance and Communications Chair in 2013, and has taught for YLC Boston and Myanmar. James is also involved as an Investment Research Director for the Harvard Financial Analysts Club, and dances with the Asian American Dance Troupe. In his free time, he enjoys watching stand up comedy, playing squash, and traveling. He looks forward to having another great year with LIHC and furthering the organization and its mission.

Jim Chan , Vice President

Jim Chan is a junior living in Dunster House, studying Biomedical Engineering, with interests in the business of health and healthcare. Before serving as Vice President, Jim spearheaded outreach (2013) and revamped programming (2014) for the Strategic Development Committee’s flagship conference, as well as revitalized LIHC’s social media platforms (2013). As a native New Yorker, it is no surprise that Jim is enthusiastic about exploring new places, listening to alternative pop-rock music, international traveling, breakfast foods and spending time with friends. Outside of LIHC, Jim serves as President of the Biotechnology Association, dances with Asian American Dance Troupe, works at Harvard’s student-run clinic and dabbles in non-profit work with the East Coast Asian American Student Union. This year, he is most excited about planning valuable full club trainings for members, as it pertains to personal awareness, development and success in leadership.

Serguei Balanovich , Chair, Harvard Leads

Serguei is a junior who was born and raised in Siberia, but currently lives in Cabot House. He is concentrating in Applied Mathematics with a secondary in Computer Science. Being very interested in both developing his skills as a programmer and in becoming more involved in the business and entrepreneurial world of start-ups, he hopes to someday try his hand at starting a business in the tech world and hopes that the Leadership Institute will help him develop the skills necessary for this. Outside of LIHC, he is a member of the Harvard International Review, the Hack Harvard club, and in his free time he likes playing chess and solving Rubik’s cubes.

Alex Heyde , Co-Editor in Chief, Harvard Leadership Magazine

Alex Heyde is a junior in Eliot House, concentrating in Applied Math and Integrative Biology. Born in Chicago, Alex is an editor-in-chief of Rise, the Harvard College Leadership Magazine. At Harvard, Alex conducts biomathematical and biostatistical research in the field of evolutionary developmental biology. He also works as a mathematics course assistant and a health educator for Peer Health Exchange. In his free time, he enjoys watching movies and discussing philosophy.

Dylan Clark ,Co-Editor in Chief, Harvard Leadership Magazine

Dylan is a freshman from Dallas, Texas who is planning on studying Economics. His crowning achievement is being awarded “Hardest Working Player” on his High School basketball team senior year, a season in which he averaged roughly 1/3 of a point per game. He was also the editor of his high school’s newspaper, which won a Pacemaker and is a Gold Crown finalist.

Wes Friedman , Chair, Leadership Development Initiative

Wesley Friedman is currently a Junior in Winthrop House, concentrating in History and Science. Wesley is also the head student coordinator for the 25th Reunion Committee of the Harvard Alumni Association. Last summer, he worked at the XPRIZE Foundation, designing competitions to incentivize innovation in such areas as aerospace technology and medicine. A graduate of the Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles, Wesley was the co-director of the Zoobiquity Research Initiative, a pathbreaking research organization focusing on the intersection of human and veterinary medicine. He also served as the Co-chair of the Student Ambassador program and the Student Director of the Harvard-Westlake Alumni Organization. He has also spent summers working at UCLA’s Ronald Reagan Medical Center and the Los Angeles Zoo, where he worked on medical procedures on black bears, chimpanzees, and other zoo animals.

Jesse Jiang , Chair, Strategic Development

Jesse Jiang is a sophomore in Adams who was raised in New York/New Jersey and currently lives in Beijing, China. He is interested in the intersection of business and science and its cross cultural significance. Having attended boarding school in Connecticut, where he served as the Chairman of the Judicial Committee, he is passionate about leadership in the context of integrity and strongly believes that leadership is a skill that can be taught and developed.

Kate Hoffman , Chair, Social Outreach

Kate Hoffman is currently a Sophomore living in Pforzheimer House. She is originally from Dallas, Texas and attended both The Hockaday School and the School for Ethics and Global Leadership. At Harvard she hopes to concentrate in Social Studies, as well as explore her interests of Environmental Science and Psychology. She is very excited to continue with LIHC this year and teach high schoolers leadership skills. Outside of LIHC, she volunteers as a coordinator for the Mission Hill After School Program through the Phillips Brooks House Association. She loves to work with kids, to travel, and to spend time with family and friends.

Chris Willis , Chair, Youth Lead the Change

Chris is a sophomore in Cabot House. Growing up in Atlanta, he participated in many leadership development clubs and activities where he planned Leadership Summits and led training sessions. Chris enjoys playing tennis on the Harvard Club Team. He is a brother in the Sigma Chi fraternity, where he loves socializing and learning from his brothers. Chris looks forward to all the work in YLC and LIHC!

Christina Gao , Co-Chair, Finance and Communications

Christina is a sophomore living in Leverett House who is from Cincinnati, OH. She has figure skated for 12 years and is returning from a gap year she took to train. She studies Economics with a secondary in Neurobiology and is interested in leadership across many different fields. She hopes to bring her knowledge of leadership and share it with the college population and beyond by being actively involved with LIHC.

Victoria Machado , Co-Chair, Finance and Communications

Victoria is a junior in Leverett House concentrating in Statistics with a focus in Biology. In her second semester as a member of LIHC’s Strategic Development Committee, she has taken on the role of co-manager of Finance and Communications for LIHC. In this position, she hopes to expand alumni outreach initiatives to increase advising and support for LIHC’s various committees and leadership initiatives. Victoria is from Braintree, MA and attended Braintree High School. Outside of LIHC, She is also involved with the Harvard Alumni Association as a Student Coordinator for Commencement and Reunions. In her spare time, she enjoys traveling, running, and breakfast sandwiches.

The current Board of Advisors as of (May 2015):

Jared Katseff

Jared Katseff is currently a candidate for an MBA at Harvard Business School as well as a Master in Urban Planning at Harvard Graduate School of Design. He is pursuing both degrees because he is interested in realizing transit oriented development by making the financial case for walkable urbanism. Originally from Manalapan, New Jersey, he graduated Magna Cum Laude from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania with a major in Finance and Real Estate. After college, Jared worked for three years at McKinsey & Company, where he focused his time charting economic development strategies for cities in North America, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

Rita Chung

Originally from Hong Kong, but growing up between Vancouver, Hong Kong, Duino (Italy) and London, I am now pursuing her Master in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS). My interest is in energy and water policy. Prior to HKS, I worked for Earthwatch Institute in their Hong Kong office, developing and managing employee engagement projects on climate change and freshwater scarcity research across the Asia Pacific region for large corporations. My work at Earthwatch led to my interest in energy and water resource distribution conflicts, and I am passionate about finding more equitable and sustainable ways of distributing energy and water resources around the world. In my other lives, I have worked in investment banking in London, campaigned for human rights issues in Canada and Israel, and launched a magazine in Shanghai.

Tuba Rashid Khan

Tuba is currently in the child advocacy track at Harvard. She is a strong advocate for increasing opportunities, access and early identification for special needs children. A doctor with also a public health degree from Harvard, she has worked on numerous projects on child development in Pakistan, UAE, Kenya, US and Nigeria in association with MIT and Boston Children’s Hospital. Having completed the leadership concentration from HSPH, her other leadership experiences include being a teaching fellow, instructor and leading special needs projects in Bangladesh. She also happens to be a scrabble fanatic and loves to jet ski.

Tessa Hamilton

I am a recent graduate of the University of Arizona, where I completed my degree in Psychology. As an undergraduate I was actively engaged in research projects as well as community projects related to youth empowerment, mental health, and educational equity. I am currently studying Prevention Science/School Social Work at the Ed school and I am especially interested in promoting leadership and participatory improvement efforts amongst low-income Latino populations. Outside of school, I am passionate about nutrition and fitness. I am an avid socializer. Currently, I serve as a Senator on the Student Council Association at the Ed school and as a member of the Association’s Diversity Committee.

Yasser Jeelani

I am a physician from London, England, training in Neurological Surgery and currently here at Harvard doing a postdoctoral research fellowship in Minimally Invasive Pediatric neurosurgery at HMS. Being orphaned at a young age of 8, and being left to tend to myself and to my siblings, challenges demanded not only solving challenges for myself, but also to lead my siblings to survival. Since then, I have been capitulating on those instincts by utilizing them in all walks of life, academics included. At my current position, I have been instrumental in establishing the first Neurosurgery cadaver laboratory for minimally invasive and skull base neurosurgery at Harvard, where we will be training neurosurgeons and fellows besides conducting some ground breaking research in attempting novel approaches to relatively inaccessible areas of the brain.

Benjamin Summers

I’m an active duty Army officer, current MBA candidate at Harvard Business School and will return to West Point in 2015 for a 2-year teaching fellowship in the Department of Social Sciences. I live with my wife, Chrissy, in Cambridge (and we’re expecting a new member to our family in September). After graduating from West Point in 2006, I attended the Army’s flight school and was qualified in the Blackhawk helicopter. After flight school, I deployed twice with the 101st Airborne Division. Whether leading a company of Soldiers during a deployment to Afghanistan or leading an aircrew during a Blackhawk helicopter combat mission, I’ve found that successful leadership often means trusting, empowering and developing the people around me. That realization is what brought me to HBS and what makes the idea of teaching and mentoring cadets at West Point so fulfilling. Serving on the Board of Advisors with the LIHC would match with these passions towards leadership development.I currently serve as a VP for Admission for the Armed Forces Alumni Association at HBS, as a planning officer for the Harvard Veterans Alumni Organization and as a member of the Social Enterprise Club.

Amal Elbakhar

I grew up in an immigrant culture in which educational achievement was difficult to obtain, and this has always served as a source of motivation for me. Thus, as an eager New Yorker, I spent my college years immersing myself in every aspect of my community, attending events as well as leading them. Experience after experience, I realized that – academically – women’s issues are the most important to me. I am intrigued by the concept of using the law and policy to affect social change in a way that serves a greater societal purpose. In fact, I am driven by any topic that is innovative, fun and challenging – and yet, moves an important societal discourse forward.

Desmond Lim

Desmond Lim previously worked for Bank of America Merrill Lynch and UBS in a wide variety of sectors including financial institutions, energy and power, and retail. He ran an education non-profit, Choson Exchange, teaching business skills to over 200 North Koreans in Pyongyang, Beijing, and Singapore. He also previously co-founded a Thai-cuisine restaurant, started up a clothes trading company, and was an infantry officer with the Singapore Armed Forces for 2.5 years. He played competitive basketball for over 15 years and represented the Singapore National Team in the Southeast Asian Games. As a Research Affiliate at MIT, and a university fellow at Harvard University, Desmond pursued research in entrepreneurship, development, and innovation. Desmond is a current graduate student at Harvard University, and completed two bachelor's degrees in 4 years in Business Management and Accounting (Magna Cum Laude). Desmond has lived in Singapore, China, United Kingdom, Korea, and the US, is fluent in Mandarin, and proficient in Korean.

Leadership Development Initiative

The Leadership Development Initiative (LDI) hosts skill-building workshops (the Skills Development Series) and speaker events with veteran leaders (Biography Speaker Series) to connect undergraduates with exemplary role models. Speakers are drawn from all sectors, including business, civil service, healthcare, non-profits, and social entrepreneurship. LIHC conducts surveys to determine the specific leadership training needs at Harvard College and tailors its workshops to satisfy these needs, such as ethical decision-making in difficult situations, public speaking, negotiation and persuasion, leadership in entrepreneurship, dealing with organizational change, and facing competition with integrity.

In the past, LDI has hosted:

• Ray Mabus, United States Secretary of the Navy and former Mississippi Governor • John Clarkeson, former CEO and Chairman of Boston Consulting Group • Tom Monahan, CEO and Chairman of The Corporate Executive Board Company • David Gergen, Director of the Center for Public Leadership and adviser to presidents for over 30 years • Bill Drayton, CEO and Founder of Ashoka • Lewis B. Kaden, Vice Chairman of Citigroup
• Seth Moulton, Marine Corps veteran in Iraq, Special Assistant to General Petraeus
• Rye Barcott, Founder and President of international NGO Carolina for Kibera
• Tad Hutcheson, Vice President of Marketing of AirTran Airways
• Fred Swaniker, Co-Founder and CEO of the African Leadership Academy
• Alan Khazei, Co-Founder and former CEO of City Year
• Jim Mongan, President and CEO of Partners HealthCare, former President of the Massachusetts General Hospital

LDI has also hosted workshops on Building an Effective Team Culture, Effective Delegation, Elevator Pitches, Managing Organizational Transitions, Negotiations, Organizational Sustainability and Growth, Public Speaking, Sales, and Using Your Emotions as you Negotiate.

The Presidents' Forum

The Presidents' Forum (TPF), founded by Jessica Zofnass ('08), brings together the Presidents, Managing Editors, and Captains of Harvard's student organizations and Varsity sports teams in bi-monthly discussion forums and an annual banquet (the Presidents' Banquet). The Presidents' Banquet began in 2006 and is the largest gathering of student leaders at Harvard College. TPF enables student leaders to learn from each other's experiences and establish lifelong friendships and correspondences. Past keynote speakers of the Banquet include:

• Bill George, HBS Professor of Management Practice, author of True North, and former CEO of Medtronic, Inc. • Carl Hobert, Founder and Executive Director of Axis of Hope Center for Conflict Resolution and Prevention • Abigail Levy, McKinsey & Company innovations expert

Harvard Undergraduate Leadership Magazine

The annual Harvard Undergraduate Leadership Magazine (HULM) was inaugurated in 2008 with the intention of empowering students to examine leadership through multiple perspectives and to construct their own conceptions of what it means to be a true leader. The full-color publication features articles on leadership skills as well as interviews and biographies. The magazine has a circulation of 1000. Featured leaders have included:

Social Outreach

In 2009, LIHC began an experimental youth outreach program, targeting at-risk middle school students in the Boston area. This program, a partnership with the nationally renowned Citizen Schools program, aims to provide pertinent leadership skills for youth. The program has now expanded to three schools and hopes to expand in the future.

Special Initiatives

LIHC spearheads a number of special initiatives to expand its impact at and beyond Harvard.

Partnership with the Ivy Council

The Leadership Institute works with the Ivy Council to facilitate a coordinated response to the leadership challenges faced by all eight Ivy League schools.

Ivy Leadership Summit XII

In the 2011-2012 school year, LIHC and the Ivy Council hosted the Ivy Leadership Summit, which brought together student leaders from all eight Ivy League schools.