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Pathways to Leadership
Black Graduates of Harvard Business School
ANTHONY J. MAYO and LAURA MORGAN ROBERTS
In 1968, five Harvard Business School (HBS) graduate students, including the first African American women to graduate, organized—like students on many other US college campuses during the late 1960s—to found the African American Student Union. The AASU advocated for increased representation of African American students and faculty at HBS, as well as curricular and policy changes. We used the fiftieth anniversary of the formation of the AASU as an opportunity to do a deep dive into the career paths of the school’s black alumni.1 Who are they? How have their careers unfolded? What can we learn from their specific journeys?
HBS did ...
