Harbo Jensen PhD '74
Where Is MIT? Asks Alumni Association President
Seventy-seven Mass. Ave. is the obvious answer to the question Where is MIT? But new MIT Alumni Association president Harbo Jensen PhD '74 has a more insightful answer: "I have found that MIT is everywhere. MIT is re-created anywhere MIT people get together. When I graduated and moved 3,000 miles away, I still felt part of MIT. When I meet MIT people on a business trip, our shared MIT experience creates a common bond."
Staying connected to MIT has meant more than leading the MIT Club of Northern California in the '70s. He has sought out alumni worldwide during his career with Chevron's international operations. When Jensen led a Chevron project in Argentina, lunch meetings with leaders of the MIT Club of Buenos Aires helped him deepen his understanding of that country. Similarly, during a Chevron project in Greece, he and the head of the MIT Club of Athens fell into a discussion about the management challenges of the then-upcoming Olympics. These conversations can develop quickly because of the common vocabulary of MIT experiences. "This spirit encircles the globe," he says. "Wherever people get together, the shared MIT experience creates a new MIT community. I encourage alumni to take advantage of this opportunity to connect, either by becoming active in a club or just getting together informally with fellow alumni."
Jensen is assuming Association leadership while continuing his professional work as Chevron's manager of international technical services. "It's the perfect job for me," he says. "It allows me to stay involved in technology, while working primarily in business and negotiations." A Boston native, he earned his undergraduate degree at Northeastern University and a PhD in chemistry at MIT, and then studied at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Business. He now lives in Novato, CA, with his wife, Tyna, and 16-year-old daughter, Elizabeth. Although he's worked for Chevron since 1974, he also launched his own entrepreneurial venture, Cal Bionics, in the '70s. As founder and CEO, he led the company as it successfully developed, sought FDA approval of, and manufactured hydrophilic polymers for soft contact lenses.
He is on campus regularly as a member of the MIT Corporation and visiting committees for chemical engineering, materials science and engineering, and biological engineering. His leadership in the MIT Club of Northern California and participation in the MIT Alumni Fund and MIT Alumni Association earned him two of the Association's highest honors, the Lobdell and Bronze Beaver awards.
The new president sees participation on all levels as important for converting MIT's global presence into global relationships. "Participation continually reinvigorates club leadership and develops new topics to interest new members," he says. From the Association side, he adds, "engaging tools such as the Infinite Connection are great ways of creating a virtual community. And the next step after finding someone in that virtual community is the wonderful and magical part. Then, getting together face to face creates a real community, our own little MIT community—anywhere we get together, anywhere on earth."
By Nancy DuVergne Smith
(First published in Technology Review, July/August 2007)
