Ex-execs go back to university

Xavier Rolet was no longer a full-time chief executive but busy with board directorships when he received a call inviting him to go back to university. It sparked his investigation into the growing number of programmes for successful professionals — many of them wealthy — entering the “third chapter” of their life. He ultimately signed up at the institution that pioneered the approach.

The former banker and head of the London Stock Exchange moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and committed to a year-long stay as part of the 2024 class of 40 fellows in Harvard University’s Advanced Leadership Initiative (ALI). Fellows pay the standard graduate fee of about $80,000 plus accommodation, with scholarships for those in need. He was so impressed that he agreed to remain for several more months and support the next cohort.

Rolet, 64, says: “These are people who have dedicated the bulk of their career to their career and find themselves in their early sixties thinking that the world keeps going and a younger generation of managers has arrived, but they are still full of beans, with lots of experience and have had an opportunity to observe societal issues that had not really been addressed.” On a recent Tuesday, several dozen high-achievers with varied backgrounds from around the world gathered at Harvard Business School for a seminar on Becoming Effective Changemakers, after digesting “pre-reads” including one by their professor, Julie Battilana, entitled “How to exercise influence without losing your moral compass”.

Each fellow comes with an idea for a project with social impact and draws on Harvard’s academic expertise, convening power and networks as they seek to bring it to fruition. “You are not here to impress anybody and show who’s got the biggest brain or wallet but to create a team environment enabling each participant to successfully execute on their project,” says Rolet.

The idea for ALI dates back to a 2005 academic paper, “A new model for universities: a third stage of education”, by the Harvard professors Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Rakesh Khurana and Nitin Nohria. They identified a growing cohort of experienced leaders for whom “retiring and playing golf is not the idyllic future to which they look forward” and for whom “a school for action [could] jump-start the ‘service’ phase of life, as well as contribute to meeting societal needs”. Universities, they argued, should offer programmes to those beyond undergraduate and professional education, in order to “create a healthier and happier older population” that would be more fulfilled and productive, rather than seen as a societal cost.

Since Harvard launched ALI in 2008, more than 700 fellows have completed the programme. The appetite is clear: it now receives 10 times as many applications as it has spaces, and many of its “graduates” have begun to generate results.

Current faculty chair Brian Trelstad, says: “In any cohort of 40, three or four have done something truly significant against the problem they worked on.” He estimates that a third are “earnestly trying” to grow their project and another third “have found another pathway of purpose”.

ALI has alumni who have helped launch organisations placing migrants into skilled jobs and have worked to improve public health, boost rehabilitation after incarceration and tackle sex trafficking. Two gave a new direction to Sesame Street, developing a new business model for the children’s education programme and winning a $100mn MacArthur Foundation grant to support children in conflict zones including Syria.

Many fellows have a focus on the environment, including Rolet, who is building on his existing interests in regenerative agriculture to reverse degrading food quality and rising rural impoverishment.

Marcelo Medeiros, a current fellow, is deepening his understanding of science to strengthen re.green, the company he founded to sell carbon offsets to restore the forest in Brazil. “I’m really making an effort on trying to use my time to concentrate on learning,” he says. “If your aim is to develop more contacts, this is one of the best places. But, for me, it’s about the classes and contact with researchers doing state-of-the-art analysis on everything related to climate. A big part is being precise and focused.”

ALI’s broader effects include inspiring other universities to launch similar initiatives, with nearly 30 academic institutions from the US, Canada, Switzerland and the UK now members of the Nexel Collaborative of “college-based midlife transition programmes”. They take varied approaches in their structure, duration and recruits.

People still have gas left in the tank. They want to do something different

Katherine Connor, who runs Stanford’s Distinguished Careers Institute — the follow-on programme established in 2015 — says it was founded by a former medical school dean who focused on purpose, community and wellness as keys to living longer. “For us, it’s not so much what you are going to do but who you will be for the next 20-30 years. It’s thinking about your legacy more than your resumé.”

As at Harvard, fellows pay the typical fees of a student for the year and cover their own accommodation, although scholarships are available for those in need. She stresses that participants contribute significantly to the life of the university, engaging with and learning from undergraduate and graduate students, and accompanying them on projects and visits.

Thomas Schreier, the inaugural director of Notre Dame’s Inspired Leadership Initiative (which costs about $65,000), stresses the spiritual aspect that reflects his university’s Catholic roots and the variety of its cohorts. “We didn’t want to use the word ‘successful’ for people solely who made it into the C-suite in business. We wanted a much broader array of candidates.”

He says there is less emphasis than at Harvard on having a project upfront and more on self-discovery. “People have a fair bit of gas left in the tank. They want to do something different, but don’t know what that is and can’t figure it out. In some ways, it’s not terribly dissimilar to a good quality undergraduate education. It renews their ability to be super thoughtful about where they can be most effective.”

Shelly London, a fellow from Harvard’s first ALI class, reflects on the continuing benefits, such as maintaining many of the new friendships she forged. Before ALI, she had pursued a corporate marketing career with companies including AT&T and American Standard Companies but, since her period at Harvard, she pivoted to run a foundation, launched several non-profits and continues to lecture at New York University’s business school.

“As you get older, your world gets smaller. ALI allowed our worlds to get bigger, to meet more people and do new things. We’re connected for life. You reach a point and you get reflective. As a colleague said: ‘we’ve all been successful; now we want to be significant’.”