Bob Massie (politician)

For the American historian (born 1929), see Robert K. Massie.
Bob Massie
Born Robert Kinloch Massie IV
(1956-08-17) August 17, 1956
Residence Somerville, MA
Nationality American
Alma mater Princeton University (A.B.); Yale Divinity School (M.Div.); Harvard Business School (D.B.A.)
Known for Ceres Executive Director; Global Reporting Initiative co-founder
Political party Democratic
Religion Episcopalianism
Spouse(s) Anne Tate
Children Daughter, two sons
Parent(s) Robert K. Massie, Suzanne Massie
Website bobmassie.org

Robert Kinloch "Bob" Massie IV (born 1956) is an American Episcopal priest, politician, author, and social activist—best known for his opposition to South Africa's apartheid regime. He is the son of historians Robert K. Massie, winner of the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for biography;[1] and Suzanne Massie, who played a key role in forming the relationship between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, which led to the end of the Cold War.[2][3]

Early life

Massie was born on August 17, 1956, with severe classic hemophilia, an inherited blood disorder affecting one in 5,000 males in the United States. In the process of learning to manage this condition, his parents began to study its history, which led to Robert Massie Sr.'s book Nicholas and Alexandra (1967), a biography of Tsar Nicholas II and his family, produced as an Academy Award winning film four years later. Massie's parents also wrote a more personal account of their son's challenges, "Journey" (Knopf, 1975), of which Time Magazine wrote, "Its portrait of Bobby Massie's enduring courage and the decency and devotion of those who helped him makes "Journey" a remarkable human document".[4]

One consequence of the family's struggle with hemophilia was a heightened awareness of the strengths and weaknesses of the U.S. health care system, its pivotal importance, and its potentially devastating costs.

Education, family and early career

Despite the physical challenges he faced, Massie entered Princeton University, graduating magna cum laude in 1978 with a degree in history. As an officer of his alumni class he established the Class of 1978 Foundation, one of the first university foundations to fund direct summer service for students.[5][6]

While at Princeton he became increasingly aware of the importance of politics in civil society and individual lives, becoming a leader in the student movement for Princeton’s divestiture from South Africa, and closer to home, campaigning for equal access to University dining clubs, many of which did not admit women as members. During this period he also spent three summers and parts of his sophomore year working in the office of U.S. Senator Henry Jackson (D-Washington). While investigating weaknesses in the U.S. blood supply system, he saw firsthand how industry pressures delayed the implementation of critical safety precautions now taken for granted. Massie’s concerns were underscored several years later, when he learned he had contracted HIV from contaminated blood products, a diagnosis considered a virtual death sentence at that time.

This diagnosis opened another chapter in Massie’s remarkable medical journey, as it became clear, over the ensuing years, that he was one of the very few HIV patients with native resistance to the disease. His immune response was intensively studied by physician Bruce D. Walker[7] at Massachusetts General Hospital and was the subject of a NOVA documentary in 1999.[8] Walker has pointed to Massie as the person whose immune system launched an entirely new area of international research on HIV.

After graduating from Princeton Massie entered Yale Divinity School, where he concentrated on social and theological ethics, taking a year off to return to Washington to work on issues of corporate responsibility with Congress Watch. He received his Master of Divinity degree from Yale in 1982, and was ordained in the Episcopal church the following year.

After graduation he met and married Dana Robert[9] with whom he had two sons, Sam (b. 1987), and John (b. 1989). The couple divorced in 1995. In 1996 Massie married Anne Tate, an architect and professor at Rhode Island School of Design,[10] with whom he has a daughter, Katherine (b. 1998).

From 1982 to 1984 he worked as an assistant and Chaplain at Grace Episcopal Church in New York, co-founding a homeless shelter.

Throughout this period Massie became increasingly aware of the powerful role of business, for good or ill, in shaping public policy and advancing or retarding economic, social and environmental progress. Determined to better understand and find ways to harness this powerful force, Massie entered Harvard Business School in 1985, on scholarship. He completed the core of Harvard’s M.B.A. program as a portion of his doctoral studies, and went on to write his dissertation on how large institutions balance organizational objectives with perceived moral obligations. He received a Doctor of Business Administration from Harvard in 1989.[11]

While a full-time business student he continued to serve as minister, at Christ Episcopal Church in the city of Somerville, Massachusetts, where he was responsible for preaching every week at Sunday services and ministering to hundreds of parishioners. During this period he also edited the Harvard Business School’s weekly newspaper and served on the Ethics Advisory Committee at Boston Children’s Hospital.

Work

From 1989 to 1996 Massie lectured at Harvard Divinity School, and served as Director of the Project on Business Values and the Economy there, and forging ties between the Business and Divinity School communities.

He participated in the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School in 1991, and that year was also awarded a Henry Luce Fellowship (1991–1993).

In 1993 he received a Senior Fulbright Research Award which enabled him to spend six months in South Africa, lecturing at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business and traveling the country to research a history of the anti-apartheid Movement in which he had participated as a college student. His book, "Loosing The Bonds: The United States and South Africa In The Apartheid Years", was completed over the next four years, and published by Doubleday in 1997. It won the Lionel Gelber Prize for the Best Book on International Relations in 1998 and was reviewed favorably across the United States, including the New York Times.[12]

In 1994 he won the statewide primary election and became the Democratic candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts. Although he did not win, the campaign gave him the opportunity to traverse the length and breadth of Massachusetts and to meet thousands of citizens from all walks of life, many of whom would remain partners in subsequent issue-oriented initiatives.

From 1996 to 2003 Massie served as the Executive Director of Ceres, the largest coalition of environmental groups and institutional investors in the United States, increasing that organization’s size and revenue ten-fold during his tenure. He also proposed and led the creation of the Investor Network on Climate Risk and the Institutional Investor Summit on Climate Risk, a major gathering of public and private sector financial leaders held every two years at UN Headquarters in New York City.[13]

In 1998, in partnership with the United Nations and major U.S. foundations, he co-founded the Global Reporting Initiative with Dr. Allen White of the Tellus Institute, and served as its Chair until 2002.

Ceres and GRI pursue an innovative approach to corporate responsibility which relies on transparency and reputational incentives as opposed to traditional bureaucratic regulation alone. Initially considered impractical, this approach has proven far more effective and efficient at improving social, environmental and human rights performance than traditional regulatory methods alone. More than two thousand major corporations and institutional investor groups now voluntarily participate in Ceres and GRI corporate disclosure standards.

In 2002, Massie was named one of the 100 most influential people in the field of finance by CFO Magazine.[14] In the same year, he learned that he had contracted Hepatitis C from his blood medications. This illness proved a far more stubborn adversary than the hemophilia and HIV he had battled with relative success for much of his life, eventually causing severe liver damage that forced him to reduce his role at Ceres and GRI[15] while awaiting a transplant. During this period, he continued to serve on a number of boards, and was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School.

In 2008, while gravely ill, he founded and co-chaired the Massachusetts Energy Efficiency Coalition, and led a campaign against slot machine and casino gambling in Massachusetts. In that year he was awarded the Damyanova Prize for Corporate Social Responsibility[16] by the Institute for Global Leadership[17] at Tufts University, and in April, 2009 he received the Joan Bavaria Innovation and Impact Awards for Building Sustainability in Capital Markets.[18] These awards are normally given to separate persons, but in recognition of his global achievements, he was given both.

In June, 2009 Massie finally received a long-awaited liver transplant, in an innovative “domino transplant” procedure performed at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta which not only cured his Hepatitis C, but his hemophilia as well (the clotting factor is produced in the liver).[19][20] The impact on his health was immediate and dramatic.

In 2010 he became an investment advisor to Domini Social Impact Fund, and a member of the Board of the Sustainable Investments Institute (Si2), and a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Hauser Center.

In January, 2011, his recovery complete and his health restored, Massie declared his candidacy for the United States Senate[21][22] and began actively campaigning for the Democratic nomination for that office. In April, 2011, noted Democratic strategist Joe Trippi joined the Massie campaign.[23] Massie ended his campaign on October 7, citing the entrance of Elizabeth Warren into the race.[24]

In March 2012, Massie became the president of the New Economy Coalition (at the time New Economics Institute),[25] an organization dedicated to moving the American economy towards greater justice and sustainability. He stepped down from being the coalition's president in October 2014.

His autobiography, "A Song in the Night: A Memoir of Resilience" was published in 2012 by Nan Talese/Doubleday books.[26]

In May 2014, Massie called on Harvard University to divest its endowment from fossil fuel corporations in an op-ed for The Harvard Crimson.[27] Also, he was still devoting his time to the New Economy Coalition.[28]

In November 2015 Massie was appointed the executive director of the Sustainable Solutions Lab (SSL) at UMass Boston. Created by the deans of the School for the Environment, the College of Management, the College of Liberal Arts, and the John McCormack Graduate School for Policy and Global Studies, SSL has launched a strong drive to unite Boston area faculty and organizations concerned with social justice and resilience with those who are working on physical resilience against climate change.

References

  1. ↑ cite |url=http://www.pulitzer.org/awards/1981
  2. ↑ Mann, James (2009). The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War. Penguin Group.
  3. ↑ "Agent of Influence". Suzannemassie.com. Retrieved 2011-06-27.
  4. ↑ "Books: Blood Will Tell". Time. May 19, 1975.
  5. ↑ "OIP: Princeton Funding". Princeton.edu. 2011-06-23. Retrieved 2011-06-27.
  6. ↑ "Princeton University Class of 1978". Princeton78.com. 2011-04-01. Retrieved 2011-06-27.
  7. ↑ "HHMI Scientist Bio: Bruce D. Walker, M.D". Hhmi.org. Retrieved 2011-06-27.
  8. ↑ "NOVA | Transcripts | Surviving AIDS". PBS. Retrieved 2011-06-27.
  9. ↑ "Dana Robert » Religion and Conflict Transformation » Boston University". Bu.edu. 2011-06-23. Retrieved 2011-06-27.
  10. ↑ "Anne Tate | Faculty | Architecture | RISD". Risd.edu. Retrieved 2011-06-27.
  11. ↑ "June 2002 - Alumni Bulletin - Harvard Business School". Alumni.hbs.edu. 2011-06-09. Retrieved 2011-06-27.
  12. ↑ Wheatcroft, Geoffrey (January 11, 1998). "Loosing the Bonds Book Review in The New York Times".
  13. ↑ Walsh, Bryan (January 15, 2010). "After Copenhagen, Getting Business into Green Tech". Time.
  14. ↑ "The Global 100: Investors - Cover Story". CFO.com. 2002-06-25. Retrieved 2011-06-27.
  15. ↑ "CERES Executive Director Bob Massie steps down – Press Releases on". Csrwire.com. 2003-01-29. Retrieved 2011-06-27.
  16. ↑ "Robert Massie | Institute for Global Leadership". Tuftsgloballeadership.org. Retrieved 2011-06-27.
  17. ↑ "Institute for Global Leadership". Tuftsgloballeadership.org. Retrieved 2011-06-27.
  18. ↑ "Robert Massie Honored – Twice – for Long String of Achievements in Building a Sustainable Global Economy — Ceres". Ceres.org. 2009-04-14. Retrieved 2011-06-27.
  19. ↑ "Transplant Press Release".
  20. ↑ "Transplant TV clip".
  21. ↑ "Broadside: Bob Massie on Senate campaign". Necn.com. 2011-05-11. Retrieved 2011-06-27.
  22. ↑ Loth, Renee (January 16, 2011). "The timely return of Bob Massie". The Boston Globe. Retrieved January 15, 2011.
  23. ↑ Goodison, Donna (2011-04-26). "Joe Trippi joins Robert Massie campaign". BostonHerald.com. Retrieved 2011-06-27.
  24. ↑ "Bob Massie drops out of U.S. Senate race". BostonHerald.com. 2011-10-07. Retrieved 2011-11-06.
  25. ↑ "Bob Massie, President and CEO". New Economics Institute. Retrieved 2012-04-23.
  26. ↑ "A Song In The Night". Random House Inc. Retrieved 2012-04-23.
  27. ↑ "Even the Bricks Cry Out: It's Time for Harvard to Divest". The Harvard Crimson. Retrieved 2014-05-28.
  28. ↑ Confino, Jo. "Driving social and environmental justice into the heart of the US economy". The Guardian. Retrieved 17 February 2015.

External links

Selected publications

Selected addresses and projects

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