Harvard Club of Boston in partnership with Class ACT 73 and the Harvard Clubs of Ireland and Pakistan
Harvard Alumni Allyship Series
Honoring the Leadership Legacy of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto AB'73
Wednesday, June 21, 2023 at 12:00pm ET, Virtual Event
On June 21, 2023, Benazir Bhutto, the first female Prime Minister of Pakistan would be turning 70. Her life was cut short by an assassin on December 27, 2007. Benazir believed in democracy, equality for women, reconciliation of religious and cultural differences and education and she was a beloved member of the Harvard-Radcliffe Class of 1973. Her classmates, through ClassACT HR73 founded the Benazir Bhutto Leadership Program for scholars enrolled in the Edward S. Mason Program (MC/MPA) of the Harvard Kennedy School.
In this Allyship Series Forum we will honor Benazir Bhutto and her legacy. Peter Gabraith AB ’73, former US Ambassador to Croatia and Benazir’s friend will speak about her life, commitment to her people, and courage. Marion Dry AB ‘73 chair of ClassACT HR’73 will share the story of the Benazir Bhutto Leadership Program and Leigh Hafrey AB ’73, a ClassACT board member, will speak with the 2022-2023 Bhutto Fellow, Laila Khondkar MC/MPA'23 about her year at HKS.
FEATURED SPEAKERS
Marion Dry
Marion Dry was a founder of ClassACT HR73 in 2014 and served as co-chair till 2022. She was also the Director of the Benazir Bhutto Leadership Program and developed ClassACT’s Bridge program. She is the current president and chair of ClassACT. Previously Marion was a professional concert and opera singer who performed throughout the U.S. and Europe. For 20 years, she was a member of the faculty of Wellesley College where she taught voice and opera, served as chair of the Music Department, and led the Music Performance Program.
Ambassador Peter Galbraith
Peter W. Galbraith AB ’73 served as the first U.S. Ambassador to Croatia where he negotiated and the 1995 Erdut Agreement that ended the Croatia War. In 2000-2001, he served as a senior official in the UN mission in East Timor and concurrently as a cabinet minister in East Timor’s first government negotiating resulting its independence. Currently, he is the Senior Diplomatic Fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation and where he focuses on the war in Syria.
Leigh Hafrey
Leigh Hafrey is Senior Lecturer in Behavioral and Policy Sciences at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He has also taught at Harvard Business School; served as co-Master of Mather House; and for 25 years has moderated seminars at the Aspen Institute. He serves on the boards of the Green Rural Opportunities Fund, and ClassACT HR73. A former staff editor at The New York Times Book Review and a frequent contributor to The New York Times, he has also published business case studies for MIT Sloan. He is the author of The Story of Success: Five Steps to Mastering Ethics in Business (2005) and War Stories: Fighting, Competing, Imagining, Leading (2016). Hafrey holds an A.B. in English Literature from Harvard College and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Yale University.
Laila Khondkar
Laila Khondkar is from Bangladesh and has two decades of experience in international development. As a practitioner and researcher, she has contributed to Child Protection, Child Rights Governance, Reproductive Health, HIV/AIDS sectors. Laila has worked with Save the Children in Bangladesh, Papua New Guinea, Liberia, Australia and England. She has worked with several national and international organizations, including CARE. Her research includes public health issues at the Centre for International Development (Harvard University), Africa Centre for Health and Population Studies (South Africa), and Institute of Population and Social Research (Mahidol University, Thailand). Laila writes regularly on child rights and other development issues. Laila's studies include a MSc Control of Infectious Diseases from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Post Graduate Diploma: Children, Youth and Development from Institute of Social Studies, the Nederlands. She has a Mid-Career Master in Public Administration/Mason Fellows Program (MC/MPA'23) at the Harvard Kennedy School.