Business Statesman Award

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  John B. HessAB '75/MBA '77

  CEO, Hess Corporation

  John B. Hess is Chief Executive Officer of Hess Corporation. Mr. Hess led the Fortune 500 company through a strategic transformation from an integrated oil company into a pure play E&P company. Mr. Hess previously served on the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board Quadrennial Review Task Force. He is a member of the Board of Directors of KKR & Company and the Board of Trustees at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is also a member of The Business Council, the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations, and serves on the Executive Committee of the American Petroleum Institute. In addition, Mr. Hess serves on the Board of Directors of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and on the Board of Trustees at Mount Sinai Hospital and The Economic Club of New York.

  Mr. Hess holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard College and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. A member of the Board of Dean’s Advisors at Harvard Business School, he was also Chairman of the Harvard Business School Campaign.

Entrepreneurship Award

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  Michael MartinMBA '15

  CEO, RapidSOS

  Michael is Founder and CEO of RapidSOS, an advanced emergency technology company that powers safety, security, health and emergency response for 500M+ devices globally. 90+ tech companies and over 15,0000 first responder agencies rely on RapidSOS’ technology to power critical data and services across 165 million emergencies annually in four continents. Originally founded out of HBS and MIT in 2015, RapidSOS has raised $250M+ to date.

  Michael has spoken at TEDMED and TEDx and been featured across national media including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Newsweek, Time, CNN, CBS, Fox News, TechCrunch, New Scientist, Smithsonian Magazine, and Popular Mechanics.

  Michael holds an MBA from Harvard Business School where he was a Baker Scholar and was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Healthcare list.

John C. Whitehead Social Enterprise Award

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  Paul J. ZofnassAB '69/MBA '73

  Founder, Environmental Financial Consulting Group

  Paul J. Zofnass is a proud alum of Harvard College, Class of ’69, and Harvard Business School, Class of ’73. He moved to New York City right after Business School and began working at Citibank, then joined Oppenheimer where he became a Partner in their investment banking group, specializing in private placements of securities. Paul then took off on his own and started the Environmental Financial Consulting Group which he built up over the next thirty years. In so doing, he combined his passion for the environment and conservation with his skills in providing financial and strategic advice to businesses.

  Along the way, Paul played a major role in initiating Harvard’s Environmental Studies Program in the 1990s, helped design and fund a permanent New England Forest Exhibition at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, created the 150 acre Westchester Wilderness Walk preserve in Westchester County with almost eight miles of trails open to the public, initiated a Tree Identification program along the pathways of New York’s Central Park and created the Envision rating system at Harvard which measures the environmental sustainability of civil infrastructure projects. The Envision system is being used around the world, including the recent renovation of LaGuardia Airport, and has trained and credentialed more than 9000 engineers as Envision Sustainability Professionals under the aegis of the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure (ISI).

  Paul served on the Boards of the Westchester Land Trust, Riverkeeper, Mt. Auburn Cemetery and ISI, while still finding time to sail every year up to Marblehead and Maine, ski wherever and whenever possible and hike the miles of trails of the WWW.

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  Renee E. Ring

  Chief Operating Officer, Environmental Financial Consulting Group

  Renee E. Ring is currently the Chief Operating Officer for the Environmental Financial Consulting Group, a company created by Paul Zofnass over thirty years ago and now run by their daughters, Rebecca Zofnass and Jessica Zofnass Barclay. Over the years Renee has had significant involvement with cultural institutions and with preservation and environmental issues which complemented her relevant experience and accomplishments as a corporate lawyer. After a long career as a Structured Finance lawyer, as a partner in several major New York City firms, Renee transitioned to management and financial consulting and the not-for-profit world. She first embarked on an encore career as the Director of Corporate Relationships for the Wildlife Conservation Society, headquartered at the Bronx Zoo, and then moved on to EFCG when her daughters took over the business. In addition to her work at EFCG, she currently serves on the Boards of the University of Virginia Law School Foundation, where she chairs the Executive Committee, the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure, where she chairs the Compensation Committee, the Westchester Land Trust, where she serves on the Land Preservation Committee, and the Historic House Trust of New York City, where she serves on the Executive Committee.

  Renee enjoys the outdoors as much as Paul does, but she likes to venture beyond the Westchester woods. She has climbed Kilimanjaro, trekked the Salkantay Trail to Machu Pichu, hiked miles in Torres del Paine in Patagonia and reached Tiger’s Nest in Bhutan.