Illustration by Benjamen Purvis

While Silicon Valley chases immortality pills and uploads consciousness to the cloud, Boston has quietly become ground zero for actually living longer, better lives. As part of our April issue on aging well, here are how three academic institutions are helping the city become the world’s next longevity hub.

At Boston University, they’ve discovered centenarians’ secret isn’t what they do—it’s what they don’t.

What began as a mild curiosity for Thomas Perls turned into his life’s work. While a Harvard geriatrics fellow, he was assigned a group of patients at Hebrew Rehabilitation Center in Jamaica Plain, including two people more than 100 years old. Wanting to speak with them, he assumed they would be easy to locate, likely confined to their beds due to their age. Not so: The 102-year-old woman was in high demand playing piano on different floors each day, and the 101-year-old man, a lifelong tailor, was teaching his craft to younger patients and staff. Perls would have to make an appointment just to get on their busy schedules. Fascinated by their vitality, he launched the New England Centenarian study in the mid-’90s, which has been based at Boston University since the early aughts and is now the world’s largest and most comprehensive study of centenarians and their families. At first, Perls’s biggest hurdle was finding enough 100-year-olds. He first checked voter records before discovering a critical shortcut: local newspapers, which frequently celebrated people’s 100th birthdays on the front page. Now, after 32 years, Perls has studied those who’ve lived past 100, 105, and 110, finding that they often don’t develop many health problems until their mid-nineties and that their age-related illnesses are very compressed at the end of their lives. What separates Perls’s research from others is his focus not on what causes diseases, but what prevents them.

Also at BU, they’re fundamentally changing longevity research.

George Murphy, cofounder and codirector of BU’s Center for Regenerative Medicine (CReM), found Perls’s approach compelling. Ten years ago, Murphy had developed a groundbreaking technique to create master stem cells from blood samples without using embryonic tissue. At first, his team applied this method to develop treatments for heart and lung disease, but their focus eventually shifted. “We kind of turned everything on its head a couple of years ago, at the behest of collaborating with Tom, and started harnessing all the power of our center away from disease to resilience. Everybody gets exposed to diseases throughout their lives but vary in the way they respond to these things.” Inspired by centenarians’ ability to evade age-related diseases better than others, Murphy and his team are now studying the genes and factors that prevent people from getting sick and developing therapeutics that can help people live longer.

MIT AgeLab. / Courtesy

At MIT, they’re making aging better—and having a blast doing it.

Walking into MIT’s AgeLab is a bit like entering a real-life Pee-wee’s Playhouse. You are greeted by the host, founder and director Joseph Coughlin, an exuberant man in a natty pastel sports coat and bow tie who can’t wait to show off his toys. Most immediately eye-catching is “Miss Daisy,” a full-size, cherry-red VW Beetle that is actually a driving simulator, or as Coughlin jokes, “a several-­million-dollar video game.” While driving Miss Daisy, some of the AgeLab’s thousands of participants each year face a large external ­projection screen that simulates different weather and driving conditions, which, as you navigate and steer, lets Coughlin and his researchers “track your eyes, reaction time, attention, pulse rate, skin conductance, palm sweat, and ultimately how stressed you are under certain conditions,” he says. Coupled with the AgeLab’s collaborations with government transportation officials and car companies such as ­Volkswagen, the technology allows for the study of various age-related issues (including impaired vision and the impact of medications on focus and reaction time) so products can be modified accordingly for older people, allowing them to do the things they’ve always done.

Next up is AGNES (age gain now empathy system), a full-body suit that Coughlin says “gives you the joys of feeling two or three chronic conditions that you’re likely to experience in your late seventies and early eighties. To understand and feel the friction, fatigue, and frustration that older adults with arthritic hands or diabetic neuropathy feel.” Pepsi, Coke, General Mills, and GlaxoSmithKline, as well as auto manufacturers like Daimler, have all used AGNES to develop aging-friendly consumer product packaging, including over-the-counter medicines. Notably, CVS redesigned its new stores with lower shelving, wider aisles, and higher-contrast “lollipop signs” after consulting with AGNES.

With 11 students and 32 full-time staffers, Coughlin and his colleagues at the MIT AgeLab are clearly having fun doing serious business. “MIT is about envisioning and inventing the future. I want the AgeLab to write a new narrative of a 100-year life,” Coughlin says, adding that it’s about “setting the agenda for what 100 good years could be.” In some ways, he already has: His latest book, Longevity Hubs, shows how Boston’s unique mix of aging residents, universities, businesses, and government programs focused on seniors led Inc. Magazine to call it the “Silicon Valley for the octogenarian set.”

At Tufts University, they know what’s on your plate determines your fate.

Dariush Mozaffarian delivers a straightforward message: “Eat your veggies.” Or, as the director of the Tufts Food Is Medicine Institute more eloquently puts it, “It’s no secret—we all know what leads to longevity. It’s a very simple recipe of a healthy diet, physical activity, good sleep, low mental stress, and having meaning in life.” So rather than looking for a magic molecule or breaking down the components into some form of pill, he says his institute looks for “very real and practical ways to help people eat healthier food.”

Much of the organization works with healthcare systems and policymakers to bring “food-based nutritional therapies into healthcare,” as Mozaffarian puts it. The goal is simple: Doctors should be able to prescribe “a medically tailored meal, grocery basket, or fresh produce” that insurance covers, like drugs or surgery, or reimburses for, like gym memberships. Right now, the institute is bringing together healthcare providers, government officials, and nonprofit and business leaders to work on a variety of projects, including improving the nutritional quality of food assistance programs such as SNAP, WIC, and school meals. “Through healthcare, federal nutrition programs, and healthy food policies,” Mozaffarian says, “we could pretty radically improve health and longevity in this country.”

This piece was first published as part of a package in the print edition of the April 2025 issue with the headline: “Live Long and Prosper.”

Photo via Getty Images

While Silicon Valley chases immortality pills and uploads consciousness to the cloud, Boston has quietly become ground zero for actually living longer, better lives. As part of our April issue on longevity, here are some easily accessible tools helping to make aging more graceful.

There’re apps that can help you…

1. Read the fine print.

Whether it’s the aggravatingly small font in The Economist or the appetizer menu at a dimly lit restaurant, we all get to the point where squinting at something held at arms’ length just no longer works. Savvy seniors download Speechify, a text-to-voice AI tool that reads words of any size and offers up a variety of voices and accents to suit your aural preferences. Want to have Gwyneth Paltrow narrate Game of Thrones or Snoop Dogg read you Edith Wharton? This is the app for you.

2. Play smart, age slower.

Don’t let anyone tell you Wordle is a waste of time. One of the best ways to kill an hour is also proven to improve executive function, processing speed, and verbal and working memory. That’s right—crossword puzzles, sudoku, and other “brain games” can keep your brain sharp for much longer, so fire up that Wordle app and get guessing.

3. Hear without fear.

Remember those big, clunky hearing aids that nobody wanted to wear because they branded you as old? Those days are over. Practically invisible, today’s hearing aids feature improved technology and can be customized through smartphone apps. For severe hearing loss, prescription devices are still recommended, but over-the-counter options from brands such as Massachusetts’ own Bose offer effective alternatives.

4. Lean on convenience.

As MIT AgeLab’s Joseph Coughlin points out, companies targeting the elderly are missing the mark. After all, nobody wants to identify with the “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up!” crowd. The reality is that the same convenience tech embraced by college kids and young professionals works for older adults, too: ride-sharing apps (Uber and Lyft), food-delivery services (DoorDash and Grubhub), and on-demand help (TaskRabbit and Geek Squad).

Photo by Todd Kuhns/Getty Images

Illustration by Benjamen Purvis / Image via Getty Images

First published in the print edition of Boston magazine’s October 2024 issue with the headline, “When Crisis Calls.”

Previously

• From 2019: Massachusetts Has an Anti-Semitism Problem

Illustration by Dale Stephanos

It was an early moment of truth in the fledgling Harvard presidency of Claudine Gay. Called to testify in front of Congress about rising incidences of antisemitism on campus, Gay made her way to the Capitol on December 5 sporting her signature black-rimmed glasses, a classic gray suit, and a slight air of annoyance at having to explain herself to a committee stacked with skeptical Republicans.

The past few weeks had already been challenging for Gay, who was dealing with a torrent of unrest at Harvard following Hamas’s shocking October 7 assault on Israel. Almost immediately after the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, more than 30 student groups issued a pro-Palestinian statement squarely blaming Israel for “all unfolding violence”; this was followed by massive protests on campus, during which participants chanted antisemitic slogans. Some students reported being harassed, assaulted, and intimidated while on school property. In the midst of it all, Gay herself came under fire for not publicly addressing the attack quickly enough and not condemning Hamas strongly enough when she finally did.

Seated in the hot seat with the microphone inches from her face, Gay had already watched her fellow panelists, MIT President Sally Kornbluth and the University of Pennsylvania’s Liz Magill, drop jaws with their claim that calling for the genocide of Jews on campuses with significant Jewish populations might not violate their rules against bullying and harassment. As Magill said, “It is a context-dependent decision.”

Then it was Gay’s turn. “At Harvard, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment, yes or no?” asked Republican U.S. Representative from New York Elise Stefanik, a Harvard graduate herself.

“It can be, depending on the context,” Gay replied unemotionally.

Former president Claudine Gay testifies before Congress. / Photo by Mark Schiefelbein/AP Photo

The response, among other statements from Gay during her testimony, immediately set off an international firestorm. “I’m no fan of @RepStefanik but I’m with her here,” tweeted arch-liberal Harvard Law School professor emeritus Laurence Tribe of Gay’s “hesitant, formulaic and bizarrely evasive answers.” Even White House officials weighed in: “It’s unbelievable that this needs to be said: calls for genocide are monstrous and antithetical to everything we represent as a country,” said deputy press secretary Andrew Bates in a statement. Gay herself apologized a few days after her testimony, telling the Harvard Crimson: “I got caught up in what had become, at that point, an extended, combative exchange about policies and procedures. What I should have had the presence of mind to do in that moment was return to my guiding truth, which is that calls for violence against our Jewish community—threats to our Jewish students—have no place at Harvard and will never go unchallenged.”

Truth. The Congressional debacle was a rare and revealing glimpse into how far Harvard has strayed from the single Latin word—veritas—emblazoned on its seal. But in reality, it shouldn’t have surprised anyone that Harvard would handle this globally broadcast moment with such a tone-deaf, veritas-free spin. In fact, for a school that has always managed to sidestep external scrutiny, Harvard now finds itself under an electron microscope that is exposing just how deep the flaws are of this formerly impervious university.

Over the past few years alone, Harvard’s coveted image as the pinnacle of academic excellence has been taking a beating. Gradeflation is out of control: By 2021, 79 percent of students received A-range grades—compared to 60 percent a decade earlier. Two school leaders, Harvard diversity and inclusion chief Sherri Charleston and Gay herself, have recently been accused of being plagiarists. The Harvard Kennedy School, created to incubate public-sector leaders, has mostly become a finishing school for private sector executives. While construction crews toil away on Harvard’s long-delayed life-sciences mini city in Allston, it’s hard not to wonder what Harvard brass was thinking—or not—when it watched MIT for four decades build the biotech epicenter of the world in Kendall Square. Meanwhile, top life-sciences academics from Harvard are bolting for up-and-running competitors. As for the vaunted Harvard Business School (HBS), its rankings dropped sharply in the most recent Bloomberg Businessweek MBA standings to its lowest spot in nine years. Perhaps most frightening of all to the faculty and students for whom the Harvard brand is a passport to big jobs and contracts with high salaries, the business school has fallen behind its competitors at Yale, Dartmouth, and Cornell in job offers for graduates.

Meanwhile, the reality of the campus environment is far removed from the glossy brochure images of undergrads happily strolling beneath ivy-covered walls. Harvard students who aren’t terrified of getting confronted or canceled by the ‘woke mob’ are often left wondering when their campus became the place where fun goes to die. At the same time, prominent alumni already alienated by Harvard’s increasingly strident political climate were further repulsed by the post–October 7 hurricane of inept management and arrogant disregard for their input. And in what maybe the most telling rebuke of a place where, truth be told, money and status-seeking long supplanted veritas, big-money donors are bailing—a painful injury added to the insult of embarrassingly poor endowment investment performance.

Photo by Boston Globe/Getty Images

Regardless of what level of education is offered in the classrooms, it’s enough to make you wonder—could one of the world’s best-known and admired brands be past its prime? With the possible exceptions of the Bible and the Beatles, no great brand lasts forever. Just ask the folks behind the Duesenberg, the automotive star of the 1920s done in a decade later by mismanagement and the Depression; Pan Am, which led the boom in air travel before federal industry deregulation and the terrorist bombing over Lockerbie took their toll; and Cadillac, the ne plus ultra of luxury cars brought low by the end of cheap gas.

It seems even the most successful institutions can be humbled by their own arrogance and miscalculation of changing economic and political realities. In Harvard’s case, the Gay fiasco only ignited more speculation about how the Cadillac of colleges has blown a gasket, leaking academic prestige while lurching along on the noxious fumes of knee-jerk political correctness. “When you’re more concerned with making everybody feel good rather than having serious debates about the truths of our world, you’re going to fall into this malaise, where faculty are scared of students, administrators are afraid of faculty, and everybody consults a lawyer before doing anything,” says U.S. Representative Seth Moulton, Harvard College Class of  ’01 and the recipient of master’s degrees from the Kennedy School and HBS. “The brand has been tarnished, but in part because of Harvard’s own doing.”

All of this doesn’t just put into question the value of a Harvard education; it also puts into question the entire value proposition of college itself. If students can’t freely learn and discuss ideas, what is the point of dropping more than $200,000 for a degree? Harvard’s failures have done more than a disservice to the university—they’ve done a disservice to higher education as a whole.

It’s all quite the indictment of an academic institution that has ruled the roost for centuries while proudly sporting the regalia of its illustrious history. These days, though, it seems the emperor by the Charles has no clothes.

The first college of the colonies, Harvard was created in 1636 with a £400 government grant—more than $110,000 in 2024 dollars, significantly less than the salary of a Harvard professor today. Its first commencement consisted of nine graduates. One hundred and thirty-four years later, eight of its alumni were among the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Throughout the 1800s and into the 20th century, Harvard’s stature—and, by extension, its complexity—mushroomed. As early as 1869, newly installed school President Charles William Eliot could boast that “this University recognizes no real antagonism between literature and science, and consents to no such narrow alternatives as mathematics or classics, science or metaphysics. We would have them all, and at their best.”

Yet by the 1930s, key Harvard caretakers began expressing concern over whether the school could continue to live up to its reputation. As the tercentenary celebration in 1936 neared, Harvard’s celebrated reformist President James Bryant Conant wondered in a report to the university’s board whether places like Harvard that had grown “startlingly large and complex” could “escape the curse which has so often plagued large human enterprises well established by a significant history—the curse of complacent mediocrity? What will be written and said about the role of the university…when the four hundredth celebration draws near in the winter of 2036?” A more prescient statement could not have been uttered.

Though Harvard’s roof is far from caving in—when you’ve got $50.7 billion, you’ve got $50.7 billion—waiting until 2036 for a thorough inspection of one of the country’s wealthiest and most prestigious institutions probably isn’t a good idea given the cracks now showing in Harvard’s academic edifice. It’s been 18 years, for instance, since Harvard began the process of transforming university-owned land in Allston into a massive science-oriented campus that, according to the house organ Harvard Gazette, would help it “maintain academic leadership into the next century.” Ever since then-President Drew Faust temporarily put the project on hold in 2009 due to the recession, Harvard has been left playing catch-up with “lesser” rivals such as MIT, which played a huge role in Kendall Square’s 21st-century biotech boom. That neighborhood now has the greatest concentration of biotechnology companies in the world, which regularly work with and draw from MIT’s vast talent pool.

One consequence of Harvard’s lack of life-sciences progress has been brain drain. In one instance, renowned scientist and Broad Institute cofounder Stuart Schreiber recently bolted from the Harvard faculty to start a powerhouse Kendall Square drug research and development institute, Arena BioWorks, which has been aggressively poaching employees from university labs. It would take Harvard years or even decades to match its facilities, and in any case, the days of the university’s preeminence in funding for such ventures seems long gone—Arena BioWorks’ major investors include Celtics co-owner Steve Pagliuca, a Duke grad, and billionaire investor Michael Dell, who dropped out of the University of Texas.

Other areas of the university are similarly lacking. Harvard may still have the best-known name in American politics adorning its school of government, but it no longer sports the best reputation for nurturing public-sector leaders. While the Kennedy School has produced more heads of state than its competitors, these days, its graduates are just as likely to be found working at consulting firms or hedge funds as government agencies—as evidenced by the whopping 44 percent of the Class of ’22 who went to work in the private sector.

It’s a trend that’s been building for years. A 2017 article in this magazine referenced a Kennedy School instructor’s research from the early 2000s that found striking levels of “skepticism and disdain” toward government among students and “a decline in stated interest in government careers.” Students are not encouraged to think otherwise by official policy; the word “government” was removed from the school’s promotional materials in the late 2000s and is absent from its online mission statement.

Most recently, the Kennedy School stepped in it over one of the most pressing political issues of our times when it dismissed online disinformation expert Joan Donovan from the faculty as a result, she claims, of her harsh criticisms of Facebook and its parent company, Meta, both of which are the brainchild of mega-donor Mark Zuckerberg. Was the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s $500 million gift enough to buy Donovan’s silencing? Harvard has adamantly denied it and claims the research into Facebook’s culpability for misinformation continues. But Donovan’s accusations are still picking up steam. “If you think the plagiarism scandal or the failure to address antisemitism and Islamophobia are the biggest problems facing Harvard today, read my account of how donors from Facebook influenced [Kennedy School] Dean [Douglas] Elmendorf to shut down my research lab and prevent me from digging into Meta,” tweeted Donovan, who is now on the faculty at Boston University.

Donovan’s low grade for Harvard is an anomaly on a campus where a jaw-dropping 79 percent of undergraduates got As during the 2020 to 2021 academic year. That’s a 19 percent increase in As over just the past decade. Grade inflation has been a long-term trend in American education, but reports show the Ivy Leagues lead the parade, with Harvard’s grade point average on par with Yale’s. Are the students getting smarter? Perhaps not. After a meeting last fall of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, dean of undergraduate education Amanda Claybaugh told the Crimson that while many grades were well deserved, external “market forces” have been influencing grading, as faculty are reliant on positive course evaluations from their students for professional advancement.

Students also railed against former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos when she came to speak at the Kennedy School in 2017. / Photo by Maria Danilova/AP Photo

Beyond the questionable grading of students, the campus has become a breeding ground for political intolerance, particularly when it comes to more-conservative voices. Student comments gathered by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) for its annual rankings of free-speech climates on campuses range from scathing to sad. “I felt very alone,” wrote one senior who self-described as a moderate Republican. “It is an incredibly difficult and isolating political landscape to navigate.” One recent graduate noted, “I’ve had many moments where I didn’t want to disagree with the most ‘woke’ take during class for fear of backlash.” It makes sense on a campus where, as FIRE noted, 41 percent of Harvard students surveyed think it’s at least sometimes acceptable to shout down an individual to prevent them from speaking on campus. No wonder the school was given an “abysmal” rating and ranked dead last in the national pack.

This culture of intolerance has extended to the Israel/Hamas war, as evidenced by a pair of recent legal complaints filed against the university. Appalled by last fall’s aggressive, unrestrained displays of anti-Israel animus—including an instance in which two “visibly Jewish” law school students said they were regularly stopped and targeted in the student lounge based on their clothing—in January, a group of Jewish students sued Harvard, alleging that the university is in violation of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In the federal lawsuit, the students noted that the university has “at least five applicable sets of policies ostensibly to protect students from discrimination, harassment, and intimidation” that it failed to enforce last fall, despite threatening penalties in training classes for engaging in everything from “size-ism” to “fatphobia” to “transphobia” on campus.

That same month, the Muslim Legal Fund of America filed a civil rights complaint with the Department of Education on behalf of Palestinian students at Harvard, alleging the administration failed to protect them from discrimination. The allegations include instances in which they were stalked, threatened, and even assaulted on campus for wearing keffiyehs, traditional Palestinian scarves.

Beyond conflicts with their peers, students have had to endure the cold shoulder from Harvard—in some cases, quite literally. When the kids returned from their winter break earlier this year, the heat was out at Leverett House, sending some students fleeing for hotel rooms while others slept in jackets, hats, and gloves, according to the Crimson. Other dorms have also struggled with heat and hot water shortfalls. The issues aren’t a one-off. A 2019 Crimson article reported “repeated issues with [Harvard University Housing’s] infrastructure, including flooding and broken elevators.”

Students and their parents are noticing. When one mother moved her son into Cabot House recently, “it looked like something out of the ’50s,” she said. “There was peeling lead paint on the windowsills. What are they doing with their $50 billion endowment?” At Peabody Terrace, graduate students dealt with those and other problems in 2019, including destructive renovations and “days without water,” according to the Crimson. Kennedy School student Emma Margolin’s computer printer and charger were damaged by flooding and other issues, and she was displaced from her room for six days. When she sought rent compensation, Harvard officials refused, she said, choosing instead to give her some gift cards from Whole Foods.

If you had major maintenance issues in your home, you probably wouldn’t hesitate to throw money at the problem. But at Harvard, problems with campus upkeep persist despite the university’s massive wealth, which the administration could ostensibly use to improve the facilities if that were a priority.

Not only are some campus buildings in need of a little TLC, but Harvard Square itself is a symphony of for-lease signs that blight one of the most valuable pieces of land in America. The square is an outgrowth of Harvard’s campus, yet the university has shown little leadership in improving its appearance, choosing instead to turn its back on their own front yard. Conversely, Boston University saw a decaying Kenmore Square as a blight on the school and invested in the strip, including partnering on the construction of major hotel, restaurant, and office developments over the past four decades. In doing so, they repositioned the area into an asset for the campus.

Harvard Business School dropped sharply in Bloomberg Businessweek’s latest rankings, to its lowest point in nine years. / Photo by Dariusz Jemielniak (“Pundit”)/Creative Commons

Then again, perhaps it’s wise for Harvard to be penny-pinching—especially in light of the recent exodus of big-dollar donors. Take, for instance, Tim Day, a Marine Corps veteran and 1964 graduate of Harvard Business School who went on to make a fortune in the processed-meat industry. He’s given millions over the years to fund HBS fellowships for former and current Marines, as well as $5 million for a gleaming new fitness center that bears his name. These days, though, he’s openly questioning whether Harvard is fit to pocket any more of his charity. “I am very much against the whole diversity, equity, and inclusion aspects that have been built into the culture at Harvard,” he tells me. “I thought it should be purely a merit-based system.” Day was also “shocked” by what he saw as a “lack of concrete action to protect the Jewish students” on campus after October 7. He’s holding back further donations, he says, until he sees concrete evidence that Harvard is serious about making changes.

Billionaire businesspeople who’ve given hundreds of millions to Harvard, either individually or through their foundations—such as Leslie Wexner of Bath & Body Works fame, Israeli philanthropist Idan Ofer, and hedge-fund guru Bill Ackman—have also bailed in the wake of the administration’s botched response to October 7, along with countless smaller donors. Most recently, Citadel hedge-fund founder Ken Griffin, who has donated $500 million to the university over the years, announced he’d be shutting his checkbook until the school stops producing “whiny snowflakes” who are “caught up in the rhetoric of oppressor and oppressee.”

Griffin sees the broader failure of Harvard and his withdrawal as a donor as akin to a nuclear bomb going off in the school’s endowment office. But there are other problems there, too. Despite virtually unlimited resources, the university’s endowment team made a measly 2.9 percent return on its investments in fiscal year 2023, managing to underperform a Charles Schwab money market account, whose returns hover around 5 percent. Add all of that to expenses that are growing faster than revenues, and it’s clear that, as Harvard chief financial officer Ritu Kalra told the Crimson, the university has “a lot of repair work to do.”

A woman prayed for the Israeli hostages adjacent to another pro-Palestine rally at Harvard. / Photo by Boston Globe via Getty Images

So far, Harvard hasn’t done a great job of allaying donors’ concerns. Rabbi David Wolpe, appointed by Gay last fall to an advisory committee designed to curb campus antisemitism, says he resigned from the group in part because “changes weren’t happening on campus. Things were at least as bad or getting worse.” Advisory committee suggestions for easing the “culture of intimidation” of Jews on campus by “enforcing policies, not allowing protest to interrupt classes, [and] making sure professors didn’t turn seminars into political events” were being paid lip service but not being implemented, Wolpe explains. Instead, he believes Gay’s administration was enabling these behaviors “if enabling is defined as being able to put the brakes on something more than you have.”

Gay resigned in early January following her disastrous Congressional testimony and accusations of plagiarism, but the era following her presidency so far hasn’t been any more promising in that regard. Case in point: Interim President Alan Garber recently received some criticism for appointing a harsh critic of Israel, Professor Derek Penslar, to cochair a new and supposedly improved antisemitism task force. “He is unsuited,” tweeted former President Lawrence Summers. “Could one imagine Harvard appointing as head of [an] antiracism task force someone who had minimized the racism problem or who had argued against federal antiracism efforts?”

Jewish voices haven’t been the only ones calling out the university’s unwillingness to crack down on campus antisemitism. “Any form of protest that disrupts the conduct of a class violates basic prohibitions against interference with the normal duties and activities of the university,” wrote one of Harvard’s leading Black scholars, political philosophy and ethics professor Danielle Allen, in a Washington Post op-ed.

Lost prestige, financial pressure, anxious (and cold) students, dismayed faculty, furious alumni, and donors voting with their wallets—that’s some bad karma, all right. Still, as Gay was hustled to the curb the day after New Year’s like a once-festive family Christmas tree turned unwanted fire hazard, there was no immediate sign that anyone in power at Harvard truly grasped the depth and severity of their problems, let alone had a clue what to do about it. In a New York Times op-ed piece published the day after her resignation, Gay offered a spin widely echoed by defenders of Harvard’s status quo—that her exit was the work of outside “demagogues” out to “undermine the ideals animating Harvard since its founding: excellence, openness, independence, truth.” Universities like Harvard, she wrote, “must remain independent venues where courage and reason unite to advance truth, no matter what forces set against them.”

For all the handwringing over the hard time being given to Harvard by outsiders—presumably including the U.S. Supreme Court, which threw out the university’s race-based admissions programs, and the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee, which is investigating whether the mishandling of antisemitism at Harvard and other campuses might compromise their tax exemptions—the university’s embrace of outside forces is actually a fast-growing feature of campus life. According to the Network Contagion Research Institute, Harvard pocketed $894 million from foreign governments—the large portion of which were authoritarian regimes—during a five-year stretch of the 2010s. The institute’s study of the fallout from $13 billion worth of such funding to 203 American colleges and universities concluded that it resulted in “heightened levels of intolerance toward Jews, open inquiry and free expression.” When asked about foreign donors at the Congressional hearing, Gay gave this context: “We will not accept gifts that do not align with our mission.”

Protesters decrying the Supreme Court’s ruling against affirmative action policies at Harvard last year. / Xinhua News Agency/Getty Images

For all of its wealth and sprawl, what has always distinguished Harvard from lesser institutions is the esteem in which it is held by the marketplace—by prospective students, alumni, and outsiders. So when a self-proclaimed bastion of tolerance and courageous upholder of veritas is shown to harbor intolerance and debase standards while offering unpersuasive denials of it all, it’s time to call in the brand doctors.

One of the first things the university should work on, believes Edward Boches, a former chief creative officer for the MullenLowe ad agency who’s done work for General Motors, Google, and other blue-chip companies, is transparency. With the advent of social media and the Web, “brands of every kind lost the ability to control their messaging,” he explains. “You saw the most progressive and open-minded brands actually embrace that—how to be more transparent and interactive. Harvard is one of those who’ve stayed completely closed.”

Gay touched on the idea of openness in her inaugural address back in September, citing a litany of ways in which Harvard should open up. “Why not reach as many people as possible through our educational programs?” she asked. “Why not open our treasure troves of books, objects, and artifacts to the world?”

Still, when it comes to criticism of the university, Harvard tends to snap shut faster than a Venus flytrap. Journalists are likely to have better luck getting quotes from the Vatican than from the Harvard administration (who did not respond to a request for comment on this article). As Kennedy School professor Khalil Gibran Muhammad put it during a recent GBH radio interview: “The communication strategy of my employer is not to speak publicly on just about anything.”

The problem of communication, or the lack thereof, runs deep in Harvard’s culture. In just one example, Vanessa Beary, a graduate of and donor to Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, resigned in disgust from the board of the Harvard Alumni Association when she saw that the HAA’s executive committee—without consulting other members of the association, she says—had issued a statement supporting Gay after her Congressional testimony. For Beary, it was the climax of more than a decade of frustration with “the absolute lack of political diversity” she experienced at Harvard, including “blanket statements being made by students that are egregious and going unchallenged by the professor.” As she says, “It’s about Claudine, but it’s also about Harvard, going back three presidencies. It’s entrenched.”

As with any valuable brand, blunders have consequences. In a postmortem for Fortune magazine, Yale management guru Jeffrey Sonnenfeld wrote that “by allowing the erosion of the school’s public reputation for integrity and truth and a breakdown of trust internally, the board was negligent in attending to the priorities of key stakeholders: students, faculty, staff, and alumni. The board’s negligence has damaged the attractiveness of Harvard to the outside world.”

What now? Boches reaches the conclusion that Harvard needs transfusions of humility and openness, stat—a finding echoed by University of Maine communications expert Michael Socolow. Socolow cites the teachings of the late Edward Bernays, a longtime Cambridge resident who was known as “the father of public relations.” In his 1928 book Propaganda, Bernays suggested two possibilities when a university is hit with criticism: Either “the public is getting an oblique impression of the university, in which case the impression should be modified; or it may be that the public is getting a correct impression, in which case, very possibly, the work of the university itself should be modified.”

When it comes to Harvard, Boches says, that translates to making “enough change to the governing body so they can talk about it.” They should also “embrace and foster some different perspectives, then make sure the world knows about it.” Finally, “they need to do a better job of anticipating consequences of future criticism—they can’t just issue a press release or make a speech.” Professor Muhammad expressed a similar sentiment in his radio interview, saying, “Harvard’s strategy of rising above the fray and choosing silence over engagement has run out of road. It is no longer effective.”

Which brings us back to the word Harvard long ago embraced as the definition of its brand: veritas, the motto that, in the hands of this generation of university leaders, has become a sad, ironic antonym. “The meritocratic university nurtured the ideal of detached, objective scholars committed to the pursuit of truth,” wrote Brandeis University historian Morton Keller and longtime Harvard associate dean Phyllis Keller in their coauthored 2001 book Making Harvard Modern: The Rise of America’s University. “But in many areas of the academy, a new, postmodern skepticism with regard to objectivity and truth has come into its own. Closely related is political correctness, with its deadening effect on the free exchange of ideas…it is arguable that Harvard today is no more (and possibly less) open to diversity of thought than it was at the height of the Cold War during the 1950s.” (Full disclosure: The Kellers also happen to be this author’s late parents.)

Two decades later, Representative Moulton sees the same rot. He was appalled at Gay’s reluctance to immediately condemn Hamas following the October 7 attacks, a hesitancy he sees as reflective of an over-eagerness to accommodate opinions rather than shape them. “It’s not that hard to say that terrorism is bad—it doesn’t require a Ph.D. to say,” he says. “You used to go to Harvard to learn how to lead—now it seems you go to learn how to concede.”

Harvard is not the first great venture to overlook the cracks in its foundation. “Every institution, however successful, carries within it the seeds of future trouble,” wrote the Kellers in Making Harvard Modern. After the industrial revolution, the German universities of the 19th century became international role models, just as Harvard did in the 20th century. Then came the two world wars. Observed the Kellers: “That preeminence, to understate the matter, did not last.”

Can Harvard stop its slide by reforming its management style, practicing what it preaches about openness and truth, and, not least of all, making sure the heat works in the dorms? Looking back over the sweep of the university’s history, there have been numerous times when leaders stepped up to confront social and economic upheaval, rejuvenate the institution’s mission, and keep the place growing and relevant. They shaped the circumstances of their time for the better and left behind a university valued far beyond its immediate constituents.

So the answer is, yes, Harvard can most likely get its act together this time, too. But it all depends on the context.

First published in the print edition of the March 2024 issue with the headline, “The Crimson Has No Clothes.”

Photo via Sean Pavone Photo/Getty Images; Remigiusz Gora/Irina Shilnikova/Getty Images

Several years ago, Carlos Araque heard an idea that he thought could save the world. He was working at the Engine, an MIT-affiliated venture capital investment firm and incubator, when he was asked to attend a pitch meeting. At the gathering was Paul Woskov—a bespectacled senior research engineer at MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center whose office is littered with rocks featuring holes burned straight through their centers—and Aaron Mandell, a serial entrepreneur determined to get Woskov’s rock-drilling technique out of the lab and onto the open market.

Araque was asked to sit in on the meeting because he knew a thing or two about drilling. After getting his master’s in mechanical engineering from MIT, he moved to Houston, the country’s energy capital, to work for the oil field services giant Schlumberger. He’d assumed that legacy energy companies, with their vast resources and expertise, would be the ones to power the transition to renewable energy in the face of an impending climate crisis. He was wrong. The big boys, he says, were too wedded to business to think outside the box, and the breakthroughs the world desperately needed just weren’t coming. So Araque moved back to Boston, and just 10 days after starting his job at the Engine, found himself in a conference room, waiting to hear if this idea could rescue the planet from the brink of catastrophe—or was just a dud.

He introduced himself to Woskov and Mandell and took a seat. As he listened to their plan, his pulse began to quicken and his head began to reel from the enormity of what they were saying. Woskov explained that he had developed a technology that enables a gyrotron—a radio-frequency-wave generator—to melt or vaporize holes in rock. He believed he could use it to access a virtually limitless source of clean energy—intense heat—tucked away beneath the earth’s crust that, when converted to steam, could power civilization many times over.

Like many people in the drilling world, Araque had looked at geothermal energy a million times. The problem had always been accessing it. The energy lies 12 miles beneath the earth’s crust, and mechanical drilling bits break down after just a few miles. What Woskov was telling him, though, was that his technology could overcome this obstacle. “I knew that if this worked,” Araque said, “it would be massive. It would literally open up a new frontier.”

Over the next year, Araque did some homework: He studied the geothermal market. He ran a lot of simulations on his computer. He reached out to the top drilling experts in his network. No one could come up with a reason why it wouldn’t work. Then came another eureka moment: If the tech really did work, that meant holes could be drilled virtually anywhere—even right next to legacy coal power plants being mothballed due to their emissions. The fossil-fuel industry already had the buildings, the turbines, the transmission lines, the permitting, the rigs, the workforce, and the know-how—they just had to swap out drill bits for gyrotrons.

It was classic plug-and-play, meaning the new energy model could be up and running fast—which was exceptional news, because many experts say there’s little time to spare. A 2023 United Nations report—considered one of the most definitive studies ever conducted on climate change—concluded that without a significant reduction in carbon emissions, in a decade’s time, the earth will careen past the point of no return. Before the turn of the century, humans will be faced with a world in which increased temperatures spawn famine, disease, heatwaves, and natural disasters that will claim millions of lives. In sum, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres concluded, the world is facing “a climate time bomb.”

The good news—at least for Boston—is that many people believe the key to defusing that time bomb is being invented right here. And not just due to Woskov’s idea for how to access geothermal energy, but because of a virtual bounty of clean-energy breakthroughs that, thanks to a perfect storm of factors, have occurred here in recent years. “You don’t really think of Massachusetts and energy together,” admits Dennis Whyte, the director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, which has been a significant player in Boston’s rise as an energy powerhouse. But that’s because the energy sources of the past—coal, oil, and gas—were bulky resources that were found only in certain places, such as West Virginia and Texas, and the industry built up around the supply. That’s not the case for the energies of the future, which aren’t “driven by access to raw resources,” says Whyte, but “by talent and innovation.” Katie Rae, the CEO and managing partner of the Engine, agrees, saying, “IQ capital is what will develop the economies of the future. And Boston is ground zero for that. It’s all happening right here.”

In the past few years, in fact, startups such as Form Energy, Ascend Elements, Factorial Energy, Sublime Systems, Quaise Energy, and Commonwealth Fusion Systems have leaped to the front of their fields, drawing billions of dollars in investment and allowing tiny Massachusetts to punch well above its weight. Even as capital has dried up in other industries amid an uncertain economy, climate tech has stayed a relative bright spot. And it isn’t just startups. In December, when General Electric announced that it would be relocating its $30 billion standalone energy business, GE Vernova, to Kendall Square, the company cited the area’s “dynamic environment, steeped in the education, talent, and innovation that will be the core components of our work…to decarbonize power generation and lead the energy transition.”

That kind of development sounds a lot like the early days of Boston’s biotech scene, when genetic engineering began and Cambridge startups such as Genzyme and Biogen took the lead, leveraging university talent and a friendly regulatory environment to develop game-changing drugs. Those successes attracted more investment, more startups, and more talent flooding into local universities, and soon all of the established pharma giants feared missing out if they didn’t pitch a tent in Kendall Square. The dense clustering triggered a critical mass of innovation that continues to pay enormous dividends to the city. Now, says Whyte, it looks like the same thing is happening for energy. “Massachusetts has a really good chance of being the hub of this thing,” he says. Even more so given the stance of our local leaders: Governor Maura Healey recently said she wants to invest in making Boston the “global epicenter” of green energy.

The combination of bright ideas, willing investors, and eager politicians—to say nothing of the innovative startup incubators—has created the perfect ecosystem here for the future of energy. Yet there is another ingredient, too, that contributes to this energy paradise: our culture. “You have enormous mission-based ambition here,” Rae says. Sure, every city is full of people who would like to save the planet. The difference is that Boston seems to produce an unusual number of people who believe they actually can.

When it comes to game-changing breakthroughs in energy, three letters keep surfacing again and again: MIT. And within the institute, the heavy hitter has been the Plasma Science and Fusion Center. That’s where Woskov’s idea was born, remarkably, as just a side project—the main attraction at the center is fusion energy, a zero-carbon energy source whose science is so daunting that it has long been considered the stuff of sci-fi rather than a near-term climate solution.

Put simply, fusion energy is the atomic reaction that powers the sun and all of the other stars in the sky. When hydrogen atoms are forced together, they fuse and release an immense burst of energy. Fusion, if it works, will be a clean and unlimited source of energy. Unfortunately, the kind of intense pressure and temperature required to trigger the reaction is normally found only in the centers of stars. Doing it on Earth requires an incredibly powerful magnetic field.

The conventional way to make that field is to wrap miles of copper wire into a giant coil and run massive surges of electricity through it. But building that kind of pilot plant requires a facility the size of a small village and could cost as much as $65 billion, meaning it can only be tackled by international consortiums funded by numerous countries—the kind of unwieldy collaboration that invariably runs decades behind schedule. No one expects productive fusion reactors before the year 2070.

That’s way too late to address the climate crisis, so a handful of scientists and students at the Plasma Science and Fusion Center hatched an audacious plan: to use the rare-earth compound yttrium barium copper oxide to build a new kind of superconducting magnet that would be incredibly efficient in its use of electricity. Instead of requiring 200 million watts to produce the necessary magnetic field, they thought the new magnets could do it using just 30 watts. The reactor could be the size of a cabin instead of a cathedral, could be built quickly by a small team, and instead of costing as much as $65 billion, would have a price tag of just $1 billion. So in 2018, the scientists and the university spun out the company Commonwealth Fusion Systems to make it happen.

The Plasma Science and Fusion Center isn’t the only MIT lab where exciting breakthroughs are occurring. Just around the corner, MIT’s legendary professor of materials science, Yet-Ming Chiang, has also made strides in lithium-ion battery science, designing one that is lighter and more efficient. More recently, he has developed a super-cheap long-duration energy-storage system that addresses the sticky issue of how to store renewable energy. Meanwhile, down the Pike, scientists from Worcester Polytechnic Institute have developed one of the most promising local innovations in energy: a new way to turn spent electric-vehicle batteries directly into feedstock for new EV batteries, at up to 50 percent less than the cost of newly mined metals.

With top research institutions like these in our backyard, there is no shortage of bright ideas. That has never been in doubt. What has always been a problem is the lack of venture capital needed to get these innovations out of the lab and into the real world. Yet that, too, is changing in Boston.

MIT research scientist Paul Woskov developed a way to vaporize or melt holes in hard rocks, pictured above. This led to the founding of Quaise Energy, a Cambridge company working to harness Woskov’s technology to access an infinite source of geothermal energy 12 miles beneath the Earth’s surface. / Photo via MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center

It’s one thing to have a dream; it’s quite another to find someone to pay for it. When Araque, Woskov, and Mandell joined forces to get a geothermal energy company, Quaise Energy, off the ground, MIT’s Engine provided the initial liftoff by leading a first round of funding that netted $6 million. At presstime, the company had raised a total of $75 million and will soon start smoking some big holes in the ground.

Sounds easy, right? After all, that’s what venture capital is for: Some academic genius has a eureka moment, and then private investors fund the early stages of development in exchange for a piece of the company. Yet hard as it may be to believe, investment in world-changing innovations isn’t exactly flowing like milk and honey. Much of that is because the kind of venture capital made famous by Silicon Valley has not been attracted to the climate solutions coming out of Boston.

For one thing, West Coast investors have grown accustomed to looking for fast returns: Launch a company, write some software, disrupt whatever industry—food delivery, anyone?—and cash out in five years. That model works great when your final product is software, but tackling the energy crisis requires breakthroughs in physics, chemistry, and material science, and there’s no consumer-facing app for that. Whether it’s wind power, fusion, or better batteries, reinventing energy takes a whole lot of time, money, and materials. There’s no shortcutting the process of proto-typing, proving, deploying, and scaling.

An earlier generation learned that the hard way, as numerous green-energy startups overpromised, underdelivered, and failed. The high-profile meltdown of solar darling Solyndra in 2011, among other failures in the renewable energy sector, gave green energy a reputation as “a noble way to lose money,” as one of the industry’s top investors put it. Even one of Yet-Ming Chiang’s early startups, Waltham battery maker A123 Systems, went bankrupt in 2012, crippled by consumers’ slow adoption of electric vehicles.

Several years later, though, something began to shift. Climate change was, at last, being taken deadly seriously, wind and solar power were booming, and investors could see that huge amounts of public and private money were finally going to flow toward the energy transition. The risks were still present, but the rewards had grown substantially. Oh, and the fate of civilization was also at stake. That was the moment when MIT’s Engine launched its fund for climate-focused startups and its associated incubator. From the start, says Katie Rae, who has helmed the Engine since its inception, all of the investors involved understood that patience would be a necessary virtue. “Sure, it will take a while to scale,” she says. “But if you don’t start these impactful companies now, we’ll never get there.”

It was a huge gamble—but it worked. “A lot of very good ideas and very special founders came forward,” Araque says. “I had a front-row seat for many of those meetings.” And the lingering doubts were answered one by one. “Can we raise money for these? Check. Can we find the right people, the right founders, with the right skill sets? Check. Can we build these companies and entice other capital to pile on? Check.”

The Engine now has $672 million in assets under management and has invested in 44 companies, many of them based in Greater Boston. The skepticism is fading fast. “I used to think that capital was the bottleneck,” Araque says. “It’s not. It just needs to be enticed. Which means creating something very compelling.”

The Engine helped to make that happen. By putting its money where its mouth was and investing in nascent companies in the Boston ecosystem that might someday change the world, it served as a beacon to like-minded investors, giving them confidence that the days of climate tech being a noble loser were over. The sector also got a boost from the faltering economy: With the market flagging and interest rates near zero, suddenly, a long-term bet on climate tech didn’t look much worse than the other options. It’d be nice to believe that virtue played a role, too—that perhaps the billionaires realized it was time to finally take a chance for the good of humanity.

Today, some of the biggest names in venture capital have bet on Boston, including Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a multibillion-dollar venture-capital fund focusing specifically on high-risk, high-impact, green-energy companies that might not show a return on investment for 20 years. So far, Breakthrough Energy Ventures has backed half a dozen area startups, including Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Form Energy, a next-generation battery producer. And Breakthrough Energy Ventures isn’t alone. Local venture funds pouring money into climate solutions include MassVentures, Clean Energy Ventures, MassMutual Ventures, and Material Impact.

Some of the numbers are eye-popping. Factorial Energy—which pioneered ultra-efficient solid-state lithium-ion batteries—has raised $240 million. Ascend Elements has raised $300 million in private capital and garnered another $480 million in grants from the Department of Energy. Form Energy has secured $800 million in investments from the Engine, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and others.

The most eye-popping numbers of all belong to Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which had raised $200 million by 2020, more than enough to design and build its superconducting magnets. When those magnets passed their tests with flying colors in September 2021 and produced the strongest magnetic field ever created, Commonwealth was able to raise a whopping $1.8 billion in additional funding from the Engine, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and a host of other VCs. It was the largest funding round in Massachusetts history and one of the largest of all time in the U.S. “There’s an aspect of serendipity to it,” says Dennis Whyte, who directs MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, from which Commonwealth was spun out. “We had the great team. We had the great idea. We got great help. We set up a structure that looked extremely attractive. But part of it was that we just happened to hit it at the right time.”

The company is using the dough to build its pilot plant in Devens and is on schedule to fire up its prototype fusion reactor in 2025—years ahead of the competition. It’s one of the most encouraging stories in the world of clean energy, one that makes it possible to believe we might actually get out of this climate mess.

It’s also the perfect case study of how Boston’s ecosystem can accelerate Tough Tech—a term used to describe tech that aims to solve society’s greatest problems—though it’s not a typical one. Say you don’t have a technology that can cleanly power the globe for the next million years, or a famous fusion center to incubate your startup, or Bill Gates’s venture fund begging to take you to lunch. Say you are just a regular old genius with a terrific idea yet no clue how to commercialize it. That’s where the other key ingredient in Boston’s burgeoning energy ecosystem comes into play.

Somewhere within the sprawling 100,000 square feet of desks, shops, labs, and cozy coworking spaces at Somerville’s Greentown Labs, the largest climate tech incubator in the country, the next great energy innovation is waiting to break out of the pack. It’s just hard to know which of Greentown’s 134 Boston-based horses to bet on. Is it Aeromine, the maker of bladeless rooftop wind machines? Or Moment Energy, which repurposes old EV batteries into energy storage systems? Greentown doesn’t play favorites. For a monthly rent of $580 per desk and $4.80 per square foot of lab space, its startup members get access to the full Greentown ecosystem: offices, machine shops, prototyping labs, electronics labs, convening spaces, and, of course, a kitchen.

The most valuable amenity of all, though, is the human ecosystem. “The magic of Greentown is that we’re all working on a similar challenge, but on our own slice of the pie,” says Greentown’s senior VP of marketing Julia Travaglini. “It’s a community of peers who can learn from one another, take guidance from one another, and mentor one another. Who can say, ‘Hey, I’m negotiating this term sheet. It’s my first time raising money. Can you walk me through this?’” (That model has been duplicated by the Engine, which recently opened a 155,000-square-foot facility in the old Polaroid building in Cambridge to incubate the startups it funds.)

Greentown was founded in 2011 by four entrepreneurs and MIT alums who faced the same problem: Lab space in Boston was too expensive. So they teamed up to pinch their pennies, sharing a shoddy warehouse in Cambridge, and soon discovered the benefits of swapping tools and advice. “It was serendipity,” Travaglini says. “This group of like-minded folks all working on clean energy. And then just through word of mouth, that group of four grew to 10, and they realized there was this blossoming community that really needed its own nurturing.”

An essential part of that nurturing came from the local government. “There are so many other pieces of the ecosystem that are critical,” Travaglini says, “like progressive policy and public elected officials.” Greentown received support from Mayor Thomas Menino to launch a standalone incubator, and then–Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone was more than happy to lure Greentown Labs to Union Square in 2013.

When it comes to seeding Boston’s energy ecosystem, Travaglini singles out the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC), a state agency funded to accelerate climate innovations in both the building and transportation sectors. “There are very few organizations like MassCEC,” she says. “They’ve helped buoy so many startups and so much clean-energy and climate action across the state. They’re a huge part of the ecosystem.” Travaglini estimates that 85 to 90 percent of Greentown’s Massachusetts-based startups have received grants through MassCEC.

Greentown’s star pupil is Form Energy, founded in 2017 by Yet-Ming Chiang, some of his students, and several battery industry veterans. Their goal was to solve one of the great challenges of renewable energy: The sun don’t always shine, and the wind don’t always blow. Humans need a way to capture the excess energy renewables produce when conditions are right, so it can be used 24/7—and they need to capture a lot of it.

To break free from fossil fuels, the United States will need to store about 6 terawatt-hours of energy. The problem is the lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles and laptops are too expensive to be used at the scale required to store energy on the grid. So Form’s small team spent several years at Greentown quietly experimenting with new types of batteries that might do the job, and in 2021, it came out of stealth mode with the winner: iron-air batteries, which are based on the electric charge that iron gives off as it rusts. Form’s batteries can discharge power exponentially longer than lithium-ion batteries at one-tenth the price. They are far too large and heavy for use in cars, but because they can store energy for multiple days, they can solve the immense problem of how to affordably store the energy produced by wind and solar.

The technology is already ready to roll. Form is currently converting a Minnesota coal plant into a giant battery bank, and is also constructing its first full-scale bank-manufacturing plant in West Virginia. And though it now has hundreds of employees around the country, Form still has a large presence in Greentown Labs’s main building, plus its own HQ just next door.

The company is also representative of another trend among Boston’s energy startups: While they may get off the ground in Massachusetts, the heavy lifting happens elsewhere. Ascend Elements—the Westborough battery-recycling startup that spun out of Worcester Polytechnic Institute—is building its plants in Georgia and Kentucky, the heart of the “Battery Belt.” Form Energy is building in the Mountain State, where there is easy access to rail and freight lines. And Quaise is testing its rigs in Texas.

That’s as it should be, argues Araque, Quaise’s CEO. “Boston is very strong in the world of knowledge and ideas. It’s a giant incubator,” he says. “But things incubate, and then they have to grow, and they may not need to grow here. I think some will, but others won’t, just by the nature of their business.”

So is Boston doomed to sow the seeds of the energy revolution, only to watch it bear fruit elsewhere? Not exactly, Araque says. “Over the long-term, these companies will have serious competition. So how do you stay ahead? You have to go back to the world of incubation and ideas and continuous R & D.”

In fact, the beauty of this particular ecosystem is that it comes full circle. As the city’s research universities and startups become the leading lights in the climate tech movement, they draw to Boston the next generation of students and entrepreneurs who have expressed a strong preference for working in green industries. “You’re pulling in some of the brightest students around,” says MIT’s Whyte, “and they’re starting to work on this. And guess what? They’re going to be incredibly effective leaders.” And ultimately, that is what will keep the future of energy right here.

High Energy

How Massachusetts residents power their homes, businesses,
and cars today.

42.3% Natural Gas

25.8% Motor Gas (excluding ethanol)

15% Distillate Fuel Oil

5.4% Biomass

3.8% Other Renewables

3.4% Jet Fuel

2.1% Other Petroleum

1.4% Hydrocarbon Gas Liquids

0.8% Hydroelectric

Massachusetts’ Energy Revolution, by the Numbers

67.4

The state’s total greenhouse-gas emissions in 2020, in million
metric tons.

1.6 million

Tons of carbon emissions that will be eliminated every year thanks to Vineyard Wind.

1.8 billion

Amount, in dollars, raised in a series B round by Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which is pursuing fusion, the “holy grail” of clean energy.

12

Depth, in miles, to which Quaise Energy needs to drill to access geothermal energy that could power civilization for millions
of years.

0

Net amount of greenhouse-gas emissions that the state aims to achieve by 2050.

First published in the print edition of the June 2023 issue with the headline “The Future of Energy Starts Here.”

Illustration by Benjamen Purvis

Cancer. It’s the word no patient wants to hear. But thankfully, right here in Massachusetts, the world’s finest physicians are creating the weapons to fight it. Whether you’re dealing with a diagnosis or helping someone who is, here are 20 ways we’re collectively battling the disease.

Illustration by Benjamen Purvis

An Unlikely (Tiny) Weapon

Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT

For many newly diagnosed cancer patients, chemotherapy drugs conjure thoughts of debilitating side effects, from nausea and fatigue to mouth sores and hair loss. That’s because chemotherapy is a systemic drug, which means it affects not only cancer cells but also healthy ones. Thanks to the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, though, that may not be the status quo for much longer.

Researchers there are exploring targeted drug delivery through the use of nanoparticles a few thousand degrees smaller than a single strand of human hair. Designed to circulate through the bloodstream, these small but mighty travelers can deliver a chemotherapy drug directly to a target cancer cell without disturbing any healthy cells along the way. In doing so, patients may be able to avoid some of the worst side effects of chemotherapy drugs while still effectively treating their cancer. Essentially, the nanoparticles are “engineered for selectivity,” says Paula Hammond, head of MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering and a member of the Koch Institute. “We’re trying to get cancer cells to love the nanoparticle and healthy cells to hate it.”

The next challenge? Determining which patients will benefit most from nanoparticle therapy. A recent study conducted in Hammond’s lab may have discovered a new clue: Working with technology from the Broad Institute, researchers analyzed 35 types of nanoparticles against a set of 488 cancer cells. And what they discovered was quite promising: The most aggressive cancer cells were shown to be more receptive to nanoparticle therapy. This means that patients who arguably need this emerging treatment the most would also see the most benefit.

One tricky form of cancer that nanoparticle therapy could revolutionize is ovarian cancer, which is typically detected late and is highly recurrent following the first round of chemotherapy. What’s more, Hammond says that ovarian cancer doesn’t have one clear “Achilles heel” and is often unresponsive to immunotherapy. That’s why her lab is currently working with collaborators at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and other cancer centers to design nanoparticles that can specifically target ovarian cancer cells and stimulate the patient’s immune system at the same time. That kind of medicine hasn’t been possible in the past. Luckily, the future is here—and it’s tiny.

Photo by Michael Goderre

How I’m Beating Cancer

Lynn Aureli

Age: 26
Treated at: Boston Children’s Hospital

I was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a blood and bone marrow cancer that causes abnormal white blood cell formation, one week before my 16th birthday. After an ER visit for chest pain that was diagnosed as heartburn, doctors found a blood clot where my IV had been, and I was admitted to Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, where lab work revealed a white blood cell count so high I probably wouldn’t have survived if it had been caught a few days later. Two days later, I started chemotherapy. At the time, I didn’t understand how serious it was. But today, working on the inpatient side as an oncology nurse at Dana-Farber, I know treatments don’t always move that quickly after diagnosis.

I had to go through four rounds of chemotherapy in Connecticut before the cancer cell count in my bone marrow fell under the 5 percent threshold that qualified me for a bone marrow transplant. When I was in the middle of chemotherapy, I also harvested my eggs—which, at the time, was really unheard of to do. Having a baby isn’t on my mind right now, but to have that bit of hope is amazing.

In November 2012, I had my bone marrow transplant at Boston Children’s Hospital. We found my donor, Andrew, through the national bone marrow registry, Be the Match. I got out of the hospital right before Christmas and stayed at the Ronald McDonald House, now the Boston House, in Brookline. About nine months later, I was able to return to school in-person. It felt really good to be back, but it was also difficult. I was still very fatigued. I had a puffy face and weight gain from steroids, and I didn’t have my hair.

When I hit the one-year and five-year milestones following my transplant, it took a big weight off my shoulders. Looking back on things now, the experience changed me for the better. Within the first month or two following my diagnosis, I knew that I wanted to go into oncology nursing because my nurses treated me not only as a patient but as a friend. That’s what’s so special about the job—you really get to know these patients, their families, and their struggles. Today, I feel so, so lucky to be back in Boston and working at Dana-Farber.

Illustration by Benjamen Purvis

Modern Medicine For All

Boston Medical Center

What if there was a treatment out there that could vanquish your cancer, but you had no way to access it—let alone afford it?

That’s the unfortunate reality facing many non-Hodgkin lymphoma patients. Over the past five years, a powerful new treatment known as chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy has been rolled out at major cancer centers around the country. The therapy modifies a patient’s own T-cells (the foot soldiers of the body’s immune system) to strengthen their ability to recognize and destroy cancer cells. Boasting a 40 to 50 percent cure rate, the treatment is promisingly effective—but with an average price tag starting at $400,000, it’s also prohibitively expensive and nearly impossible for uninsured or underinsured patients to access.

In 2022, Boston Medical Center (BMC) set out to change that with its very own CAR T-cell Therapy Program, which is now offering a path to a cure for the hospital’s lower income population regardless of their insurance status. “If we could just refer the patient [somewhere else], it would not be a big deal,” says program director Fabio Petrocca, who notes that the initiative (like many others at this safety-net hospital) is funded through grants and philanthropy. “But most of our patients don’t have access to the same services if they go to other hospitals.”

While at presstime, BMC only offered CAR T-cell therapies for lymphoma, the hospital is working hard to expand access to therapies for multiple myeloma as well, which are currently only available at major cancer centers. “Our job is to advocate for BMC patients and make sure that they get access to currently FDA-approved therapies yesterday, not in five years,” Petrocca says.

Fact or Fiction?

Local experts break down three common cancer misconceptions.

MYTH: Antiperspirants cause breast cancer.

REALITY: Don’t sweat it: You can keep your favorite deodorant in your medicine cabinet.

According to Timothy Rebbeck of Dana-Farber and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, some brands contain ingredients, such as aluminum, that studies have shown can be cancer-associated in animals. But worrying about exposure to a compound that hasn’t been found to cause cancer in humans is futile. Instead, he recommends focusing on avoiding things that are known to increase your cancer risk, like cigarette smoking.

MYTH: Cancer is a genetic inevitability.

REALITY: Because cancer is the second-leading cause of death in the U.S., it’s common for most people to have some family history of the disease. But that doesn’t necessarily correlate with a hereditary predisposition. “Lung cancer runs in families,” Rebbeck says, but it’s not always genetic. “If you smoke, your relatives are more likely to smoke,” he notes. In fact, Jennifer Shin, a medical oncologist at Mass General, explains that only 5 to 10 percent of cancer diagnoses may have been caused by an inherited genetic trait. And even if you do inherit a gene associated with cancer, that doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed to get it.

MYTH: Darker-skinned people can’t get skin cancer.

REALITY: It’s true that the darker your pigmentation, the lower your risk of developing sun-related skin cancers. But anyone can get skin cancer, Rebbeck says—it’s the type and location that differs. Darker-skinned people most commonly develop skin cancer on the soles of their feet, the palms of their hands, or under their fingernails. What’s more, perpetuating this myth can have adverse effects for patients: Data has shown that non-Hispanic Black Americans are more likely to have low melanoma survival rates, potentially due to a lack of awareness leading to late-stage diagnoses.

It Takes a Village

Dealing with a diagnosis? Here’s who to call when you need a little help.

For financial assistance
Joe Andruzzi Foundation

Rent or mortgage payments. Utilities. Household expenses. It can be tough to keep up with the costs of day-to-day living when you’re focused on battling cancer. Dedicated to financially supporting New England cancer patients and their families, this foundation’s grants are there when the bills just become too much.

joeandruzzifoundation.org.

For family housing needs
Christopher’s Haven

Located right across the street from Mass General, Christopher’s Haven provides a low-cost, temporary housing solution for pediatric cancer patients and their families while they’re in town for treatment. Best of all? No one has ever been turned away from the Haven due to an inability to pay.

christophershaven.org.

For physical support
YWCA Encore and Livestrong at the YMCA

At the YWCA of Greater Newburyport, participants practice both land and warm-water exercise designed to target areas of the body affected by surgery and treatment. Certified post-rehab instructors at the YMCA of Central Massachusetts, meanwhile, help patients build back strength and muscle mass.

ywcanewburyport.org; ymcaofcm.org.

For emotional support
Support Groups at Dana-Farber and Mass General

With help from compassionate staff members, both Dana-Farber and Mass General bring together people suffering from nearly every form of cancer, as well as groups for patients facing advanced or metastatic cancer, newly diagnosed patients, and young people.

dana-farber.org; massgeneral.org.

Photo by Lamar Valentina

How I’m Beating Cancer

Lamar Valentina

Age: 38
Treated at: Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

In September 2019, I was driving my son back to Boston, where he lives with my ex-wife, after spending the summer with him in New York. On the drive home, I had some pain in my lower back. Throughout the summer, I’d had some weight loss, but I didn’t think much of it because I was dieting. I also had a lump in my neck next to my collarbone that would come and go. I thought it was a muscle spasm. But when I came back to New York, I couldn’t sleep from the pain, and I checked into the hospital. They did a tumor board and diagnosed it as lung cancer. Not being a smoker, I went for a second opinion and was diagnosed with renal medullary carcinoma (RMC). It’s a very rare cancer most commonly found in people of African descent who have the sickle cell trait.

For treatment, I decided to go back to Boston, specifically Dana-Farber. At the time, I was a completely different person. I was afraid—I didn’t know what was going on with my body—and I was in a ton of pain. When I met with Dr. Brad McGregor, he recommended I start chemotherapy immediately. He and I hit it off right away because I’m in the Air Force, and he served in the Air Force. He was very direct, very blunt, and honest. I felt like he treated me like a family member. I really wouldn’t want to be under the care of anyone else.

The first chemo I was on was a five-hour infusion every two weeks. It was pretty brutal. When you’re introduced to chemo for the first time, it’s a change to your body. But in the first three months, we saw a great response. Originally the cancer was in the lymph nodes, lungs, right kidney, and abdomen area. By the second scan, it had gotten significantly smaller in those areas.

Overall, I’ve done about 44 or 45 sessions of chemotherapy over the past three years. I also had my right kidney removed last March at Brigham and Women’s. We have one spot that’s left in my back, so we recently did 10 cycles of radiation for that.

For me, work has been an outlet and has given me purpose. I’m thankful that my work family allowed me to pursue care in Boston while doing my job in New York. I also completed my bachelor’s degree from Arizona State University while undergoing treatment. I’ve traveled out of the country and just tried to live as normally as possible. I even got to throw out the first pitch at Fenway Park through Dana-Farber. I didn’t want to put my life on hold because of my cancer. —As told to Brittany Jasnoff

Illustration by Benjamen Purvis

The Testing Problem: Solved

Mass General Cancer Center

You can’t treat cancer if you don’t know you have it. But for many people, getting regular colonoscopies and mammograms can be as terrifying as scaling Mount Everest. Mass General’s new Cancer Early Detection and Diagnostics Clinic, however, is on a mission to make regular cancer screening a lot less daunting. The facility is currently conducting clinical trials for a suite of emerging early-detection and risk-prediction technologies, including some tests that could be as simple as having your blood drawn at an annual checkup.

Among the exploratory blood-based tests in the works are two pioneered by Mass General itself. One evaluates blood protein signatures to determine the presence of cancer in the body. The other uses highly sensitive technology to pick up on rare circulating tumor cells in the blood associated with invasive cancers. The clinic also plans to offer biotech company Grail’s Galleri test, the first multi-cancer early-detection test on the market.

As great as they sound, there are still challenges to widespread adoption of these emerging blood-based screening tests. Clinic director Lecia Sequist explains that finding cancer as early as possible, before it spreads to other parts of the body, is ideal. “But when you have a very small cancer relative to the size of your whole body, any kind of signal is going to be very diluted in the blood,” she says. Picking up on that signal requires highly sensitive technologies and a lot of computing power, something the clinic is actively working on.

Another issue is the question of what to do if a test comes back positive. None of these emerging tests can definitively diagnose a specific form of cancer. Regardless, if a patient’s test comes back positive at the clinic, “we’re going to work with you until we figure [it] out,” Sequist says.

Photo by Sarah Owen Photography

How I’m Beating Cancer

Laura Kipp

Age: 52
Treated at: Mass General Cancer Center

One day, at the blissfully naive age of 25, I was sitting at my desk at work and found a lump on my neck. I was diagnosed with medullary thyroid cancer, and it had already metastasized. I met with lots of different doctors in Cleveland, where I was living at the time, but there was no cure. The cancer was slow-growing, and we just had to hope that it stayed that way. Looking back at it now, I never had any real hope that I was going to live this long.

After the first couple of years, crisis mode died down, and I had to learn how to live with chronic fatigue and gastrointestinal upset. But the most difficult part was emotional. Cancer was a black cloud lingering over every life decision. My husband and I ended up having one biological daughter, but before we decided to try for a baby, I remember thinking, Is it fair to bring kids into the world if I’m not going to be here? After experiencing secondary infertility, we ended up adopting our son at eight weeks old and then went on to adopt three more kiddos.

About 10 years ago, my husband was transferred to Boston for his job. We got in with Lori Wirth at Mass General Cancer Center right away. However, when she was ready for me to try a medicine called sel-percatinib that targets a specific genetic mutation in my tumors, I was afraid to upset the apple cart. The cancer had spread to just about everywhere in my body, but I had learned to live with it. One day, Dr. Wirth asked, Can you trust me, please? This medicine is going to work well for you. Having been through the medical world for so long, it’s hard to find a doctor who’s that brilliant, but also compassionate.

I started the medicine in 2019, and within a week or two, I had a new lease on life physically. Mentally, it was an even bigger gift—it reset me back to 25 again. I’m on it today, and there’s still wiggle room with the dosage. But Dr. Wirth has reassured me that if and when it stops working, there are other options.

Without sounding trite, there have been a lot of gifts from having this cancer. It opened my eyes to so much pain and suffering in the world and what part I needed to play in helping. My husband and I are coming up on 15 years of fostering more than 20 children. It’s the best thing we’ve ever done. We laugh that we’ll never be retired—ever. But it gives the cancer purpose. It gives a positive ending to something that was hard for so long.

Illustration by Benjamen Purvis

Vaccines Made For You

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Back in the early ’90s, when Cathy Wu was a medical resident in the stem cell transplant division of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, she recalls watching in awe as leukemia patients were cured through bone marrow transplants. “Patients were receiving new immune systems from their donor, and those immune cells had the ability to recognize that the leukemia shouldn’t be there,” she recalls. At the time, immunotherapy as a treatment for cancer was still a far-off dream. But Wu was convinced that one day, researchers would unlock the key to generating tumor-specific immune responses without all the complications that come with a donor transplant.

That day is nearly here. As codirector of Dana-Farber’s Center for Personal Cancer Vaccines, Wu and her team are developing NeoVax, a personalized vaccine that mimics the body’s natural immune response to find and kill cancer cells. The results so far have been promising: A recent study of eight advanced-melanoma patients treated with NeoVax found that all eight patients were alive a median of four years after treatment, with six showing no signs of disease at all.

To make NeoVax, doctors first biopsy a patient’s tumor material and sequence its DNA to identify abnormal proteins, a.k.a. neoantigens, in the cells. Then they develop a specialized peptide cocktail that stimulates the immune system to wage war on the bad guys while sparing normal cells in the patient’s body.

NeoVax is delivered on a specific schedule of five shots in the first three weeks, followed by two boosters a month apart. So far, the center has conducted NeoVax trials in melanoma and glioblastoma patients and is currently expanding to ovarian cancer, renal-cell carcinoma, and blood cancers such as chronic lymphocytic leukemia. It’s also pursuing FDA approval of the vaccines to get them into the arms of as many patients as possible.

How I’m Beating Cancer

Richard Rohl

Age: 39
Treated at: Tufts Medical Center

I got COVID around the start of 2022. I felt fatigued and generally achy, and I had low energy and trouble with my breathing. That lasted a week or so, and I started to feel better, but the shortness of breath and achiness lingered for another few months. I thought I had long COVID.

Then I was out in Vermont looking at some beverage manufacturing equipment for my company, Novel Beverage Co. I wasn’t doing anything strenuous, but all of a sudden, it became hard for me to even walk without getting so winded that I had to stop and sit down. I went to the ER at the University of Vermont Medical Center. That’s where they did a CT scan and found a germ cell tumor the size of three grapefruits in my chest. It had collapsed my left lung, putting pressure on the nerves in my chest. It was also crowding out my heart. The doctors estimated that another few weeks and my heart would have stopped.

It was very surreal. Up until that point, I had considered myself to be a very healthy guy. I run 5Ks and do triathlons; I’m a regular golfer and am always heading up to Sugarloaf for skiing. To hear that I was weeks away from death was shocking in a way that I’ve never experienced.

I did some research and found that Tufts is a great place to treat this form of cancer. My understanding is that had this been 20 or 30 years ago, it was basically a death sentence. In the past, doctors would see this big tumor and go in and surgically remove it, but the outcomes associated with that were pretty bad. They figured out somewhat recently that the optimal way to do it is to go through chemo to shrink the tumor and kill off any extraneous cancer cells, and then do surgery.

I was an inpatient for the first week, and then I did outpatient for rounds two, three, and four. The tumor really responded to the chemo; over the course of just 24 hours, I could already start to feel relief on the nerve on my left shoulder blade that was being pressed.

I finished chemo in early June. I had the surgery to remove the tumor on July 27. When they analyzed it, they found that the entire tumor mass was dead cells, so it followed logically that all of the other stragglers in the body were dead too. It was hard to process. I couldn’t accept that I was cancer-free yet.

I think I finally began to feel it when I was able to walk a few miles, which took me four or five days. I was able to run a 5K this weekend and put up a good time for me. It was surreal in the opposite direction. —As told to Brittany Jasnoff

Pay It Forward

How to help raise money for cancer causes in 2023.

Boston Hot Pink Luncheon & Symposium

What it is: A panel of leading local breast cancer researchers and experts sharing the latest news in the field over lunch.

Benefits: The Breast Cancer Research Foundation, the largest private funder of breast cancer research in the world. Last year, the event raised more than $330,000.

When: Fall 2023.

Where: The event is typically held at iconic event spaces like the Boston Harbor Hotel.

Who goes: Past attendees have included now-Governor Maura Healey and former First Lady Lauren Baker.

Pan-Mass Challenge

What it is: A massive bike-a-thon that raises more funds for charity than any other athletic fundraising event in the country.

Benefits: Dana-Farber. In fact, the Pan-Mass Challenge is its single largest contributor, raising $69 million in 2022 alone.

When: The first weekend of August each year.

Where: 16 routes spanning 25 to 211 miles from Sturbridge to Provincetown.

Who goes: Local notables who ride include chef Jody Adams, WBZ anchor Lisa Hughes, and Pan-Mass Challenge founder and director Billy Starr.

Rock ‘N Rumble XII (Haymakers for Hope)

What it is: A charity boxing competition for amateur and first-time boxers. Participants train for the experience through partnerships with local boxing gyms and are matched with a competitor of equal ability.

Benefits: Organizations chosen by the fighters, including Dana-Farber, Boston Children’s Hospital, and smaller nonprofits such as Family Reach and Camp Casco.

When: May 11.

Where: MGM Music Hall at Fenway.

Who goes: Fighters range from C-suite execs to firefighters.

Boston Key Gala

What it is: An elegant gala featuring gourmet food, music, a live auction, and an award presentation ceremony.

Benefits: The American Cancer Society’s Hope Lodge in Boston, a free place for cancer patients and their caregivers to stay while undergoing treatment. The 2022 event raised over half a million dollars.

When: October 13.

Where: The Omni Boston Hotel at the Seaport.

Who goes: Business leaders, philanthropists, and local media personalities. Last year’s gala was emceed by 7News reporter Victoria Price.

Cooking Live with Ming Tsai

What it is: A live cooking event featuring curated cocktails and a multi-course dinner crafted by local chefs.

Benefits: Family Reach, an organization that helps families deal with the financial burden of a cancer diagnosis. One ticket runs upward of $2,500.

When: Summer 2023.

Where: Past events have been hosted at popular restaurants like Davio’s in the Seaport.

Who goes: Families supported by Family Reach and an array of world-class chefs who work their magic alongside Tsai.

Massachusetts by the Numbers

The local cancer digits you need to know.

42,190

Estimated number of new cancer cases in Massachusetts in 2022.

12,520

Estimated number of deaths from cancer in Massachusetts in 2022.

1

Massachusetts’ ranking among states for women aged 45 years and older who are up-to-date on their mammography.

2,760

Estimated number of deaths from lung and bronchus cancer in Massachusetts this year, the cancer with the highest mortality rate in the state.

136.9

Average number of women per 100,000 diagnosed with breast cancer in Massachusetts each year.

107.7

Average number of men per 100,000 diagnosed with prostate cancer in Massachusetts
each year.

500+

Number of cancer specialists at Mass General Cancer Center.

188,242

Number of infusion treatments performed at Dana-Farber in 2021.

402 million

Amount, in dollars, Dana-Farber raised through philanthropy in 2021.

First published in the print edition of the February 2023 issue, with the headline “The Big C.”

Photo by Jared Lazarus, Duke University. Edited by MIT News.

With renewed concerns about diversity, affordability, and censorship on campus—to say nothing about the future of space exploration and renewable energy—there’s a lot going on at MIT these days. For recently named president Sally Kornbluth, who is moving to the Bay State from North Carolina, where she’d served as provost at Duke University since 2014, it means the chance to shape one of the world’s most prestigious universities at a time of momentous change.

We caught up with her to discuss all of that, plus Smoots, the Sox, and how she plans to navigate the academic waters north of the Charles when she officially takes her post on January 1.

What do you anticipate being the best perk of your new job?

I’m a scientist by training, and I haven’t had a lab for some time. So I can live vicariously through the work of others, in a way, and really enjoy the discoveries that they’re making. I expect to learn about a lot of exciting projects, findings, discoveries, and inventions that I can help enable or support in a way that I could never do in my own work. I think it’s going to be like a candy store for the intellectually curious.

What percentage of what goes on academically or in research at MIT do you think will be comprehensible to you since—for most of us—the answer is zero?

Well, I’ll certainly understand what’s going on in the biology department, deeply. A lot of my colleagues, I follow their work. I have some understanding of what’s going on in engineering—although I’m not an engineer—particularly in the biomedical or biological engineering space. And, you know, I’ve closely followed a lot of different disciplines in my work as provost. I’m excited by what’s going on in the arts at MIT, the social sciences, and the humanities. A big part of the MIT ethos and culture is to try to make the work really accessible to others because it’s important to people’s lives on this planet. So, either I will understand it and help to translate it, or my faculty and colleagues will help translate it for me.

First thing you’ll do when you walk in the door?

The first thing I’ve got to do is get a map. I have never seen such a confusing welter of buildings that are numbered in a seemingly crazy manner. And then, honestly, just really get out there and meet everybody: the students, the faculty, the staff. It’s really going to be an exciting moment to get to know all these new people and all their exciting work.

So, offhand, do you know MIT’s Latin motto?

I believe it’s “Mind and hand.”

Yes! “Mens et Manus.” Well done. What do you think are the things you’ll miss most about North Carolina, and what are you most looking forward to in moving to New England?

I’ve been here [in North Carolina] a long time. I’m going to miss all my friends and colleagues. You know, my kids grew up here, there’s people here that I’ve known for years. Also, the weather’s pretty mild here. But it’s funny. I was up at MIT last weekend, and I was walking around with friends, and something really struck me, which is you don’t realize how much the foliage, plants, and trees that you were used to seeing growing up make you feel at home. I grew up in northern New Jersey, and I went to school at Williams College. I was with a friend who’s also from the Northeast, and she reached out and touched this shrub. She said, “You remember this?” I said, “Yes. I haven’t seen it in years.” I’m kind of excited about going back to this environment that’s so familiar.

But probably less excited about a long winter?

Well, I just bought myself a nice warm coat.

This next question is extremely important: Are you a sports fan, and if so, are you ready to swear fealty to Red Sox Nation, Patriots Nation, and Celtics Nation?

It’s so funny. I was thinking about that because when I was growing up, and my father would be watching sports on television, I’d say, “Dad, who are you rooting for?” And he’d say, “Nobody. I just find the game interesting.” I like watching sporting events, but I must admit, I’m not rabid for one team or another. I will be rooting for the MIT Engineers. But I have to say, I’ve gotten emails from people saying, “Don’t you dare root for the Red Sox!” Maybe I’ll maintain my neutrality for a bit, but then I might get sucked in.

But I assume you’ll always have a warm spot for the Blue Devils?

Yeah, of course. Plus, I have an extensive wardrobe of Duke stuff.

In a nutshell, what do you see as MIT’s greatest strength?

Honestly, it’s the ingenuity and brilliance of the faculty and students. If you believe that higher education is the talent development game, you can’t be anyplace better than MIT to help do that. It’s just brilliant people doing what they do best, and it’s amazing to me the amount of mind-bending work going on there.

Photo by Paul Marotta/Getty Images

Here’s another gotcha question: Do you know what a Smoot is?

I do. I know because my son is a graduate student at MIT, and we were walking across the bridge, like a year or two ago, and he explained it to my husband and me.

Are you prepared for, and what do you think of, the incredibly elaborate pranks MIT students are famous for, like taking apart and reassembling a police car on top of the dome?

I have to admit that I find those kinds of things incredibly amusing. I remember hearing about pranks like that throughout my career. My favorite was a sign on an elevator that said, “Elevator has now become voice activated. Please loudly announce the floor you wish to go to.” And there were all these people yelling, “Fourth floor!” It was hilarious. So, I’m familiar with them, and I think it’ll be fun.

On a more serious note, you’re joining a heavily female executive team: board chair, chancellor, provost, dean of science. Do you think that has particular significance?

I think we’ve reached a point, or I hope that we have, where we’re selecting the top talent and tapping into the full range of human talent. I think all of the leaders at MIT, and I hope I’m included, have been selected for their skills. It’s wonderful that they’re also women, but I believe that it’s a really strong team. My husband always says he thinks women should run the world.

How do we, as a society, get more young girls interested and involved with math and science?

One way is that I do think the presence of more women in these areas provides more role models, and it behooves women who have had success in these areas to reach down the pipeline and help others have the same success. The other thing is to have low barriers to entry into these areas. Because in some areas, girls may not have been traditionally encouraged to jump in. Girls, as well as boys, should be able to gravitate to their true interests and talent and not have to scale a wall to get into certain areas.

At this point, you’ve served in an administrative role for nearly nine years. Do you think you could go back to teaching an undergraduate course in your field of biology, or has that ship sailed?

I’d have to do a lot of reading, a lot of catch-up. But the basic skill set is still there. Could I understand what I read and learn to think about ways to teach it effectively? I think so. To go back and run a lab from scratch? That would be a bigger mountain to climb than teaching a course.

Any thoughts about the affirmative action question facing the Supreme Court?

Well, obviously, we’ll see how this plays out, and certainly, MIT will follow the law, whatever that is. But I think the bottom line is that institutions really, really benefit from a diversity of perspectives and a diversity of backgrounds, and regardless of the outcome of the Supreme Court decision, it’s going to be important for a place like MIT to still be able to hear truly diverse voices. A diverse team just comes up with much better ideas and discoveries. It’s not an echo chamber.

Do you think that in academics and society, too much emphasis is placed on sort of “brand name” schools?

There are many, many, many institutions in this country where you can get a fabulous education. So, do I divide the world in that way? Not necessarily. That said, what’s exciting to me about MIT and other institutions you might name is the high concentration of fabulous scholars. There are some institutions that can offer students exposure to that kind of scholarship as part of their experience.

Photo by M. Scott Brauer

Your predecessor had to navigate censorship and “cancel culture” on campus. How do you intend to handle that?

You’ve got to foster a culture where freedom of speech is strongly supported, even if that speech is maybe something someone doesn’t want to hear. That’s fine, as long as it doesn’t incite violence and doesn’t target individuals. That said, it can be difficult because people feel that words can hurt them. They don’t like to hear things they don’t want to hear. But I believe it’s the role of an educational institution to expose students to ideas or positions that they might not have otherwise entertained or heard.

Will it be weird to be president of a university where your son is a Ph.D. candidate?

[Laughs.] You might ask him that. I hope it won’t be weird for him. For me, it’s delightful because I’ll get to see him more often. And I’m not going to show up at his lab with a batch of cookies.

Thoughts on the idea of making tuition free to all?

You know, I can’t speak to that for MIT now, but I will say this: 85 percent of MIT graduates leave debt-free. There is a very robust financial aid program that’s both need-blind admissions-based and meeting the full needs of students financially. MIT is, no doubt, in a very privileged position in this way to have the resources to do that, but I don’t think that an MIT education is where these problems currently reside.

You were the chair of the trustees for the Duke Kunshan University partnership. China is so demonized these days; do you see it as an ally or a threat?

Well, let me just say up front that the partnership was really meant to bring liberal, American-style education to China, so it was not a deeply political play, nor was it a heavily research-based program. China is a place to approach with some balance. The open exchange of ideas has really fueled science, taking advantage of brilliant ideas from all over the world. But you have to balance that with national security threats and risks, which are very real. And greater minds than mine are grappling with that. I don’t demonize it as a country, but there are certainly thorny issues that have to be navigated.

What are your hobbies or pastimes?

I have two dogs that I like to walk all the time. People will see them walking around campus. I like to read. I have to admit that I like to watch those British mysteries. In fact, given the number I’ve watched, it’s surprising there’s a person left alive in the British Isles. I like to ride my bike. I like to hike. And during the pandemic, I took up needlepoint and felt flower making, which is a little odd. Some sort of latent craftiness that I never knew I had.

Any desire for a Nobel Prize?

No. I’ve never done anything that would merit a Nobel Prize. But I hope to be able to create, continue to create, I should say, fertile ground for future Nobel Prize winners.

By the Numbers

MIT Loves Numbers!

Here are some of the most important.

100

Number of MIT alumni, faculty, researchers, and staff who have won Nobel Prizes.

3,473

Number of active U.S. patents assigned to MIT as of November 1.

364.4

Span of the Mass. Ave. Bridge in “Smoots,” as measured using the body of Oliver Reed Smoot, MIT class of 1962.

50

Years since MIT students first pushed a beyond-repair piano off the roof of a residence hall—a tradition now known as the Baker House Piano Drop.

40

Number of MIT alumni known to have competed at the Olympics across 13 sports.

1

MIT’s ranking since 2012 in the QS World University Rankings.

First published in the print edition of the December 2022 issue, with the headline “Madame President.”

Photo via Pigiam/Getty Images

It’s been called “the best movie yet done about politics,” and 50 years after its release, one line from The Candidate still resonates. A political novice, Bill McKay (played by Robert Redford), has just won an improbable victory in a California Senate race. Before addressing his supporters, however, he demands a private moment with his top campaign handler to forlornly ask a question: “What do we do now?”

Maura Healey is no greenhorn. She has a track record and a campaign platform full of plans and promises. But inauguration day means an end to vague nostrums and a need for specific, actionable ideas—the more creative, the better. So with that in mind, here are nine recommendations (tailored for Healey, but in the improbable event of a Geoff Diehl victory this month, he is welcome to them, however awkward the fit might be), hot from the oven and ready to digest—if she has the stomach for them.

Illustration by Mark Matcho

1

Fix our state’s lame tourism branding—by embracing our inner Masshole

“My Perfect Massachusetts Getaway”? “It’s All Here”? Come on. We can do better, and we can start by embracing our pop-culture image as a bunch of beer-swilling, doughnut-loving, wisecracking, sports-obsessed Massholes.

Maybe Casey Affleck’s star turn as the profane, chain-smoking “Mayor of Dunkin’” in a widely viewed 2016 Saturday Night Live skit (“I come to Dunkin’ every day, grab a cruller, have an extra-large, three Parliaments, take a big dump, that’s kinda the routine”) isn’t our best foot forward. But some of the most successful tourism campaigns of the past two decades have turned “negatives” into catchy hooks. Acclaimed examples include Finland’s promotion of winter tourism (“Nobody in their right mind would come to Helsinki in November—except you, you badass”) and Las Vegas’s classic capitalization on its sketchy image (“What happens here, stays here”).

Could a slogan like “Come find your inner Masshole” appeal to younger generations of tourists looking for something funkier than overpriced chowder and Walden Pond? It could be coupled with bus tours of what makes this such a Masshole paradise. For instance, how about a “Doughnut Crawl” that winds through Kane’s in Saugus, Mike’s in Mission Hill, and Doughboy in Southie before a visit to—where else?— Mass Hole Donuts in Arlington? These tours could include distinctly Masshole events such as raucous tailgating at Gillette Stadium, al fresco “dining” at Sullivan’s on Castle Island, and visits to the scene of the Orange Line MBTA bridge catastrophe, which should definitely play host to future diving competitions (see #3).

Leading local comedians could also offer prerecorded narration to presumably rapt visitors between stops. Like the legendary Jimmy Tingle, who gave a sneak preview of how he’d suggest tourists get the full Masshole treatment: “Try the Tingle triathlon. What you do here is: You take the T to Fenway Park, you sit in the bleachers, you eat or drink whatever you want, you root loudly for the other team, and then you run home!”

2

Show the NIMBYs who’s boss

Whether you’re a fast-food worker or a CEO, the critical lack of affordable housing in the state will eventually affect your life in one way or another. Healey understands this. “Young families can’t buy their first house, renters can’t stay in their homes, small businesses are struggling to retain workers, and our seniors can’t afford to downsize,” she said before the election.

Sounds urgent. So let’s match that urgency with action that directly challenges the not-in-my-backyard crowd and its army of lawyers and spin doctors continuing to wall off those who can’t afford sky-high real estate prices. Lew Finfer, one of the region’s leading affordable-housing activists, suggests Healey begin by choking off local aid to cities and towns that don’t reach the state’s modest goal of 10 percent affordable housing. In what might be the understatement of the year, he also acknowledges that “this would meet great local opposition.”

So why not start with a more politically palatable solution, such as requiring towns to use Balancing Act, an online simulation tool out of California that gives citizens the power to help shape housing development? Users can get down in the weeds of planning new housing, neighborhood by neighborhood, lot by lot. The one thing they can’t do is say no. The biggest benefit of the program? Because it invites broader public input, it potentially diminishes the impact of a vocal NIMBY minority killing population growth in the ’burbs.

Whatever solutions she ultimately employs, Healey should make it clear from day one that taking baby-steps forward followed by unimpeded stalling is not an acceptable response to our housing crunch. Would foot-dragging communities and the politicians who enable them like to see the new governor push for a boost in the 10 percent quota and cuts in discretionary state aid for non-compliers, as Finfer suggests? No? Then encourage residents to either log onto Balancing Act and chart their own reforms, or brace for legal and financial blowback for their towns. The status quo is not an option.

Illustration by Mark Matcho

3

Put out the fires (literal and figurative) on the MBTA

It’s long past time to acknowledge the obvious: The public sector can’t get the job done when it comes to the T. Between the competing demands of constituency groups, the chronic incompetence of managers willing to work for government salaries, and the powerful transit unions allergic to privatization, even an earnest wonk like Charlie Baker couldn’t cut through the political fog and establish clear priorities with effective oversight. If only there were a successful private management company familiar with both the T and local politics available to step in and lead the system out of the abyss.

Actually, there is. Alternate Concepts Inc. (ACI) of Boston was founded in 1989 by former MBTA general manager Jim O’Leary, famous for blowing the whistle on bribery schemes involving top T officials. ACI, alongside two other transit companies, ran the metro Boston commuter rail relatively successfully for 11 years before the widely panned 2014 decision to give the contract to Keolis. It went on to become the nation’s largest private provider of passenger rail services, including a Denver system that won this gushing praise from Politico: “Using an unprecedented public-private partnership that combines private funding, local tax dollars, and federal grants, Denver has done something no other major metro area has accomplished in the past decade.”

Last March, the T brought in ACI to fix the crash-prone Green Line—on a no-bid contract, no less. It’s a show of confidence and urgency that raises a question: Why mess with demonstrably hapless in-house remedies for the rest of the system’s failures when a proven-successful private manager right in your backyard is ready to (literally) roll?

4

Make Massachusetts a clean car showplace.

One look at the gas guzzlers clogging the Pike and I-93 every afternoon, and you’ll forget there was ever a time when the Bay State’s highways were completely empty. Yet even as we search for answers about how to alleviate the traffic crisis, we also need to think about putting the pedal to the metal when it comes to making the transition to electric vehicles.

Healey has already made a lot of promises in this area, committing to achieving net-zero emissions by 2030 “across state operations” in part by transitioning the state fleet to EVs. That’s swell—but even if all of Massachusetts’ 15,000-plus publicly owned vehicles make the switch to electric, that’s still a tiny fraction of the more than 5 million cars and trucks on the road here.

If we want to speed up progress, the first thing Healey needs to do is make it easier—much easier—for EV owners to charge their cars and be on their way. According to a recent Consumer Reports survey, 28 percent of respondents said they wouldn’t consider buying or leasing an electric vehicle, twice the percentage who said they would do so. The top two barriers for the hesitant? Concerns over “charging logistics” and worries about how far you can drive without needing to juice up.

The good news is that earlier this fall, state transportation officials celebrated federal approval of their plan to install 92 more charging stations on major highways. But a flush-with-cash new administration in the State House could increase that effort and give the state a hip new branding as the EV-friendly capital of America, sure to be a hit with drivers sick of usurious gas prices.

It would be swell if the brainiacs at MIT could come up with a more environmentally friendly power source than the lithium batteries used by today’s EVs. But in the meantime, the state could be adding EV charging hubs in key exurban locations to encourage new housing development. Healey could also install heavy concentrations of chargers at strategic points near the state’s borders, specifically focusing on nearby commercial centers to promote shopping while charging. And once Massholes learn they can get a bottle of Grey Goose vodka for less at Methuen’s One Stop Liquors than they’ll pay at a New Hampshire state liquor store, they’ll never leave the Bay State again.

Illustration by Mark Matcho

5

Make the billionaire universities pay their fair share

They hold prime real estate, they’re loaded with cash, and they’ll do anything to avoid paying taxes. No, we’re not talking about the wealthy Bostonians who’ll be affected by the passage of ballot question #1, the so-called Fair Share Amendment. We’re referring to the billion-dollar endowment club, a.k.a. the wealthy colleges and universities that have enjoyed a free ride at local taxpayers’ expense for years.

Exempt from property taxes under state and federal law, the schools participate in PILOT (Payments in Lieu of Taxes) programs, which are voluntary. For most of them, this is a joke. The 21 educational institutions in Boston asked for contributions in the fiscal year 2022 coughed up a mere 68 percent of what the city requested, most in the form of “community benefits” instead of cash. That list includes Harvard ($53.2 billion endowment, gave 79 percent of the city’s ask), BC ($3.8 billion, gave 22 percent!), and Northeastern University ($1.47 billion, gave 67 percent).

These well-heeled institutions and others like them can afford to do more to pay for the public services from which they benefit and compensate their host communities for the tax revenue they displace. They can and will play the institutional nonprofit exemption card. But according to the Association of American Universities, they “must pay tax on income from [anything] that is not substantially related to their educational tax-exempt purposes.”

Healey’s a smart lawyer, which means she could go after our wealthiest universities’ for-profit ancillary operations (like Harvard’s “executive education” programs) and their endowment investments. The college bureaucrats will squawk, but here’s guessing the applause from grateful taxpayers will drown out their cries.

6

Prod our thriving tech-economy beneficiaries to give back.

For tech workers, Massachusetts is pretty much nirvana. Consider the fact that the state has the nation’s highest concentration of tech jobs as a percentage of the total workforce —more than 450,000 people hauling in $73 billion worth of good wages, according to stats compiled by the Mass Technology Leadership Council. Laissez les bon temps rouler!

Still, less than 2 percent of that windfall comes back to the community in tech business taxes. And even when it comes to those “community benefits” academia so loves to offer in place of cash, it’s unclear how widely the sector is stepping up. To quote Luke 12:48: “To whom much is given, much will be required.”

So enough with the endless hype about so-called centers of innovation where overpaid tech geeks can guzzle overpriced coffee and pretend to be “incubating” ideas. New taxes may be a political nonstarter, but the new gov should make it clear that it’s time for these folks and their firms to step up the pace by committing to public service on a wider scale than the occasional riverbank cleanup.

In a state with some of the highest computer competency rates in the nation, nightmarish stories of seniors struggling to snag online COVID vaccination appointments were ubiquitous. The governor could demonstrate leadership and win over a high-voting constituency by mobilizing an all-out war on elder online illiteracy, staffed by the tech troops who know cyberspace best.

When we called looking for examples of this type of good tech citizenship, the Mass Technology Leadership Council offered some, such as the Technovation Girls Challenge, which recruits tech industry volunteers to mentor girls for three months. But the council couldn’t provide a master log of who’s doing what. With a state-compiled list in hand, the governor could use the office’s bully pulpit to offer praise for the performers and coax/shame the slackers
into action.

Call them “Healey’s Helping Heroes” or some other hokey, feel-good thing; it’ll help take some of the edge off that new tourism slogan.

7

Loosen up the liquor laws

When he stepped down in 2016 after 28 years in office, Medford Mayor Michael McGlynn’s tenure was widely hailed as a local model of urban governance. He brought new schools, new development, and a striking level of community cohesion to one of Greater Boston’s most diverse smaller cities. So during an exit interview with McGlynn a few months before he left office, he was asked: What is Medford’s secret sauce?

“Pony rides,” he replied without hesitation.

Pony rides? According to McGlynn, the city required organizers of large community events such as fairs or festivals to include pony rides for kids because they create a long line, which forced the adults to interact to pass the time. “It facilitates neighbors getting to know one another,” he explained.

It’s a simple concept, but at its core, cutting-edge urban planning is about creating spaces and events that encourage understanding and cohesion. And when pony rides are impractical, how about pony beers?

Don’t laugh. In Spain, playgrounds with adjacent cafés where parents can enjoy a cava while monitoring their tots are a common sight. It’s a hell of a lot more convivial than Keno. And the combination of bar service and family time is well established in U.S. cities such as Chicago, where local tour guides run lists of kid-friendly venues that allow the grownups to tipple.

Healey hasn’t always been especially tolerant of popular vices. She opposed the 2016 referendum that legalized recreational pot sales, went hard after big vaping companies, including Juul, and sided with Falmouth when its ban on the sale of nip bottles was challenged. But now, she acknowledges that her past concerns over dire warnings of legal marijuana’s impact on young people “may have been…unnecessary.” And long-building pressure to reform the state’s often archaic liquor laws seems to be peaking, with a question on this year’s ballot expanding the ability of food stores to sell booze, a Boston push for more liquor licenses in traditionally short-changed minority neighborhoods, and even a call to bring back happy hours at saloons.

Those ideas are debatable, and the new governor needn’t go along with all of them. But the big cheese can at least help the struggling hospitality industry, create new jobs and revenue, and earn the eternal gratitude of parents by prodding the state’s Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission to give maximum leeway to cities and towns that want to try new ideas like the playground/café alliance.

8

Back “reparations” for impoverished Black residents (just don’t call them reparations)

When on-the-job injuries occur, when business failures wipe out pensions, when natural disasters strike, government steps in to help repair the damage. “But unlike those other, everyday reparations,” wrote Harvard Kennedy School faculty members Cornell William Brooks and Linda Bilmes earlier this year, “Black reparations [for the economic damage of slavery and racism] are seen by many as a highly charged political third rail.” And that leaves an open social and economic wound to fester. According to data gathered by the website commodity.com, welfare is the largest part of state and local budgets, and Massachusetts spends the third-most per capita among the 50 states, trailing only New York and Alaska. A whopping $24.6 billion a year here goes to state and local welfare spending.

Could a massive local investment in breaking the cycle that confines Black family wealth to a tiny fraction of what whites enjoy bring welfare spending down, convert welfare recipients into middle-class tax-revenue generators, and help make amends for the systemic discrimination that has denied African Americans access to the fruits of capitalism? Yes, it might, and that’s exactly how the governor-elect should sell the idea.

But whatever the next governor does, she shouldn’t call it reparations. The political toxicity of the term was reflected in a 2019 Associated Press poll in which reparations to African-American descendants of slaves were opposed 68 to 29 percent, driven by 83 percent disapproval among whites. When the word “reparations” is removed, however, those numbers change significantly: In a recent Gallup poll that asked if the U.S. government has a “responsibility to take action to reduce the impacts of slavery,” 54 percent of whites and 62 percent of adults overall approved.

Here in Massachusetts, the new governor should consider marketing a major investment in Black business startups and homeownership as straight-up economic development. (Consider that a 2021 study by McKinsey projected the creation of 615,000 new Black-owned businesses nationally “if the Black share of business ownership matched the Black share of the population,” generating a potential trillion dollars in new revenue.) Student debt forgiveness and subsidized community college could also help boost upward mobility.

The governor will have to manage this directly, bypassing a legislature that never saw a pot of money it didn’t want its hands in and bracing for the inevitable political firestorm. But you know the saying: no pain, no gain. Charlie Baker took the heat for the late-summer Orange Line shutdown to fix the rails. It’s Healey’s turn to step in and offer a long-overdue fix for this third rail.

9

Don’t throw out the baby with the Baker water

Healey had all summer to plan her primary-night acceptance speech. When she came to the podium to address her supporters and, more important, the live TV audience, she was clearly mindful of the enduring popularity of the man she hoped to succeed. “Governor Baker has led with respect and worked with both parties,” she said. “I thank him for that and for his service to this state.”

She shouldn’t just thank him. As Healey shapes her own administration and agenda, she would be well advised to carry forward some of the outgoing governor’s smarter initiatives and approaches—especially given the fact that pre-election polls showed a near-majority of likely voters wanted Massachusetts’ next leader to be a Baker-style centrist, with only 26 percent clamoring for someone more liberal.

That won’t be hard when it comes to housing reform. With the exception of her support for “local rent stabilization policies” (i.e., rent control), which the outgoing governor opposes, her housing agenda and Baker’s are simpatico.

But while Healey’s base is down with her affinity for Baker’s approach to housing, her relative moderation on criminal justice issues will be a tougher sell. Supporters of Senator Sonia Chang-Díaz’s doomed candidacy zeroed in on what they saw as Healey’s insufficiently progressive positions on issues like expansion of wiretap laws (she supported it) as well as marijuana legalization and banning the use of facial recognition software (she opposed both).

An early test of this political balancing act awaits Healey in Baker’s “dangerousness” bill, which would make it easier for the cops and the courts to lock up suspects in sex crime and domestic violence cases pending a threat-level hearing. It was the focus of an unusually acrimonious showdown at the end of the last session between the governor and the legislature when 27 Senate Democrats broke with leadership to support the bill before it died in the House.

In her September 6 victory speech, Healey vowed to be a governor “as tough as the state she serves,” and seeing that bill through in some form would be a way to demonstrate that. It would also tick off the ACLU and some left-wing Democrats, but could send an important message from the new governor: You don’t own me.

Which brings us to another Bakerism Healey should emulate: Declining, for the most part, to bring special-interest advocates into major administration positions, instead prioritizing progress over ideology. For Baker, that translated to a steady stream of criticism (and may have cost him a shot at a third term if he had wanted it), but he swallowed that as the cost of doing business on his way to an extraordinary run of public approval.

In her primary-night speech, Healey said, “I am tired of the anger, the vitriol, the division. That’s not who we are; that’s not what Massachusetts is all about.” That’s the governing style that endeared voters to Baker amid the rise and spread of Trumpism—and it may be the single best idea for a successful run we can offer the new governor.

Polito introduces Governor Backer for his State of the Commonwealth Address on January 25, 2022. / Photo by Barry Chin/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Karyn Polito’s Letter in the Desk

On the eve of the election, the Lieutenant Governor welcomes her successor—and offers some candid advice.

Dear Next Lieutenant Governor,

As I sit here in my office, within shouting distance of Governor Charlie Baker’s working office, I think back to my early days of settling into this position and assuming the role of lieutenant governor: of our transition into office, the work we set out to accomplish, the people we surrounded ourselves with building a team, and the responsibility that comes with this position.

Congratulations. Soon, this journey will become yours.

With Jan Cellucci’s permission, for which I am grateful, I chose to hang Governor Paul Cellucci’s official portrait above my desk as a reminder that the people of this great state are best served by the bipartisan, results-focused leadership our administration has prided itself on. Governor Baker and I chose to follow the example set by our mentors Governor Cellucci and Governor Weld and decided to stiff arm the political noise, take a pass on the politics of personal attacks, and roll up our sleeves to move the ball forward every single day. Governor Baker adopted a model of co-governing, elevating the office of the lieutenant governor to one of partnership—and we proved, that through this approach, we could accomplish even more for the commonwealth and the people who put their trust in us.

Now that role is one you will own, as a partner that can help your administration communicate better, listen more carefully, and accomplish more.

Part of that is to recognize the important role of local communities. Governor Baker tasked me in his first executive order to lead our community development strategy. It has been an honor of a lifetime. I guess “351” will always be my lucky number. Visiting each and every city and town, listening to and learning from the people who show up every day to deliver vital local services gave our administration a unique perspective on how the decisions of state government truly impact our communities.

We learned that because of the diversity of communities across our state—from Gosnold to Mount Washington—a one-size-fits-all approach is not effective. We learned that through a constant and open dialogue with local leaders, we could adapt, employ creative approaches, and deliver services more effectively. And we learned that the men and women serving in local office across our state, like our administration, aren’t interested in the hyper-partisan politics we see in Washington. Today, there’s more hope and opportunity in the places that feel a larger sense of appreciation, and I’m optimistic that the future of Massachusetts is now brighter, with stronger and more prepared municipalities.

In your position, you can’t choose the crisis you would like to work on. You take it all as it comes. During our time in office, Snowmageddon, the Merrimack Valley gas explosions, and of course, a global pandemic rose to the top.

To our next lieutenant governor: Get out on the road. The journey across Massachusetts requires long days and time away from loved ones, but focusing on all 351 cities and towns will pay off. When the snow hits, storm visits are a must. You spend time with local officials on the ground, and maybe even ride in a massive “water buffalo” military vehicle—that’s an experience I’ll never forget. These times will leave you with a strong appreciation for the Massachusetts National Guard; they are superheroes who always answer the call. You’ll take field trips and might get the chance to use a blowtorch to start a control burn, turning scrub brush into a beautiful meadow. And you’ll have the best Executive Protection Unit to guide you.

Recognize the value of investing in people. My great-grandfather came to America in search of a better life for his family and the opportunity to succeed. His story can be seen in the dreams of so many Massachusetts families. I was tasked by the governor to lead workforce-development initiatives to accomplish these goals. As chair of our STEM Advisory Council, we’ve transformed classrooms and created pathways to early college and connections to meaningful careers. This effort is about creating more opportunity, especially for young girls and kids of color who need to “See Themselves in STEM.” You directly affect people’s lives: At a STEM event, after a student spoke about the credential he received, he got three job offers on the spot. I’ll never forget the look on his face.

And as a female leader, recognize and respect the importance of your voice and your success as an inspiration to young women. I’ve spent much of my time in this role talking with young girls and women and have worked to elevate the voices of survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, because safety and well-being are essential for women to thrive, and too many are held back. Your perspective as a professional woman is on display and demonstrates that women can have it all with support from partners, family, and colleagues. Share your challenges and what’s worked for you to achieve this high-level executive position.

Like you, I’ve been honored to commit my career to public service. From local government to the state legislature, to the office of lieutenant governor, this has been the greatest experience of them all—and I know it will be for you. Your nickname will become “LG.” And for me, my experience in the corner office with “Team LG” has been amazing. They are my wind and forever friends.

So if I can leave you with anything, it is this: Enjoy every day, appreciate the gravity and the responsibility, be prepared for good days and bad, and expect the best-laid plans to find unexpected challenges. Surround yourself with people who share your commitment to the commonwealth, and never forget the reason you are there and the impact you can have for the people who have put their faith in you.

I’m rooting for you to succeed. We all are. And if you want to connect, I’m always just a phone call away.

Enjoy the ride!

Card Design by Benjamen Purvis

Stunning wealth is nothing new to Boston. In fact, it’s been part of the city’s fabric for centuries. The Cabots and the Lowells preceded Fidelity’s Johnson clan, and the Patriots-owning Kraft dynasty has nothing on surnames such as Saltonstall, Forbes, Gardner, Wigglesworth, Amory, and Perkins. What is new is the growth of individual riches in this city, and how the folks who have money got it.

Today’s local billionaires, in fact, are the farthest thing from your Brahmin ancestor’s merchant magnates. Most didn’t have the benefit of family wealth. Several are immigrants or first-generation Americans. And the number of members in the city’s most exclusive club has only increased over the past few years, in lockstep with global trends: The world’s population of three-comma-net-worth individuals expanded during the pandemic, with the U.S. alone closing in on 1,000 of them, according to Wealth-X, an Altrata company, which maintains a proprietary collection of research on the well-to-do. To come up with the roster of 24 names you’ll find on this list, we partnered with Wealth-X to identify those they consider billionaires and we consider Bostonians.

Twenty-four billionaires in a city of nearly 700,000 might not seem like that many. But the ever-increasing concentration of money—roughly $85 billion at press time—among the Hub’s wealthiest is a striking trend, particularly as the skyrocketing cost of living shines a spotlight on our ever-widening wealth gap. Consider that Boston ranks among the top 10 cities for income inequality in the nation, with our highest-earning households earning a whopping 15 times more than the lowest-earning households in 2016.

At least the city isn’t yet home to any “super billionaires”: the 20 individuals who have a net worth of at least $50 billion and collectively hold a stunning 17 percent of all billionaire wealth. In fact, Fidelity CEO Abigail Johnson, with some $20 billion, and Patriots CEO Robert Kraft, with $10.6 billion, are the only Bostonians to top $10 billion, or to even come close to that 11th digit.

Just a word about wealth estimates: They fluctuate. Wealth-X did not provide them, and it’s worth using caution when considering figures from Forbes, Bloomberg, and others. That’s because the recent wild fluctuations of the stock market, real estate, and even cryptocurrency quickly render any dollar figure placed on assets obsolete. Moderna’s Stéphane Bancel, for instance, was reported last autumn to be worth more than $12 billion; this spring, the figure cited was $4 billion. Jim Koch, the founder of Boston Beer Company, debuted on the Forbes 400 list in 2020, thanks to the soaring value of shares in his company. The value of those shares has since plummeted, and Wealth-X does not consider him a billionaire.

Regardless of individual net worth, the one thing this group of deep-pocketed Bostonians does have in common with the Brahmins of yore is their commitment to carrying on the community-oriented examples of the barons who gave us the MFA, Mass General, and WGBH. Today’s billionaires are not only supporting many of those same institutions but are also transforming the region with new buildings and developments, making medical breakthroughs, and backing more contemporary efforts to promote equity and racial justice.

In other words, they affect the quality of our lives in ways big and small every day. We’ve relied on them to put together a good Pats team, create a new neighborhood and rail station in Brighton, and preserve our hometown newspaper and baseball team. And that certainly makes it worth knowing a little about them.

Illustration by Joe McKendry

Abigail Johnson

Chairman and CEO, Fidelity

Age: 60

Lives In: Milton

How She Made It: It’s the classic story of a multigenerational family business: Grandpa started the company, Dad grew it into a big success, and Abby spent years learning and working her way up through its ranks. It so happens that the family business is one of the world’s largest financial service firms, and Abby owns a quarter of the stock.

How She’s an Ordinary Person: By all accounts, Johnson just likes to stay home with her husband, healthcare entrepreneur Christopher McKown.

How She’s Not an Ordinary Person: She lost an estimated $10 billion of personal wealth over the course of four months this past winter, according to Bloomberg. She’s already recovered most of that, and that publication believes Johnson is currently worth roughly
$20 billion.

She Uses Her Money for Good When She: Supports arts, education, and youth development. The Johnson family has a reputation for very generous philanthropy, which Abby is said to continue. She is, of course, a director of the mammoth Fidelity Foundation, which has well over a billion dollars in assets and hands out some $50 million a year in grants.

Signature Look: Those iconic heavy-rimmed glasses, although she has said that she goes unrecognized on the sidewalks of Boston.

Fun Things She Owns: A five-bedroom, 5,500-square-foot seaside cottage on Nantucket’s Brant Point, bought for $9 million and currently assessed at more than $16 million.

Her Politics: Johnson has made campaign contributions to candidates on both sides of the aisle, often to moderates. Not usually a major giver (for her wealth bracket), she did open her wallet to give $220,000 to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election campaign after her preferred candidate, Jeb Bush, dropped out.

Why She Flies Under the Radar: Johnson maintains—and even exceeds—her father and grandfather’s tradition of excessive privacy, especially regarding the news media. (Although she has started to grant some industry interviews over the past couple of years.)

Illustration by Joe McKendry

Robert Kraft

Chairman and CEO, Kraft Group

Age: 81
Lives In: Brookline

How He Made It: First, he married well. Then, after expanding his in-laws’ packaging business, he parlayed that into ownership of a football stadium, which he used as leverage to eventually buy the team playing there. He then turned the New England Patriots into one of the world’s most valuable sports franchises: Forbes estimates the team is worth $5 billion of Kraft’s overall $10.6 billion net worth.

How He’s an Ordinary Person: Just watch him in the owner’s box—he goes through every emotion you do during a Pats game.

How He’s Not an Ordinary Person: Kraft gets his pal Elton John to play at his private parties—and attends John’s parties in Hollywood.

Superstar Moment: Early in the COVID crisis, with personal protective equipment in short supply, Kraft used the Patriots team plane to fly in 1.2 million N95 masks from China.

He Uses His Money for Good When He: Supports community health—and a host of other causes and institutions—through the Kraft Family Foundation.

Signature Look: Blue jacket, red tie, sneakers.

Fun Things He Owns: The New England Revolution and six Lombardi trophies.

His Politics: His close connection with Donald Trump has been the headlining story, but Kraft actually tends to give more of his money to Democrats than Republicans.

Illustration by Joe McKendry

Jim Davis

Owner and chairman, New Balance

Age: 79
Lives In: Newton

How He Made It: Manufacturing shoes and athletic apparel. He was still in his twenties when he purchased the 66-year-old New Balance shoe company for $100,000 on the day of the Boston Marathon in 1972. Just in time for the running craze of the mid-1970s, Davis introduced new styles and increased capacity, and the rest, as they say, is history. Although he stepped down as CEO in 2007, he has kept the company private, and he and his wife, Anne, remain chairman and vice chair.

How He’s an Ordinary Person: He couldn’t cut it as a pre-med student. Davis studied biology at Middlebury College until he was told that perhaps his talents lay elsewhere.

How He’s Not an Ordinary Person: Davis, who Forbes estimates is a four-times-over billionaire, has been dubbed “The richest Greek on the planet.”

His Fingerprints on the City: Davis almost single-handedly created a new Boston neighborhood, Boston Landing, around the headquarters he opened there in 2015. It has the Celtics’ training facility, an ice rink, a concert hall, a commuter-rail station, office and lab space, and very little of the desolate landscape many of us remember.

Fun Things He Owns: A growing real estate empire in Gloucester, including his $3 million Bay View summer home and the $25 million Beauport Hotel.

His Politics: Davis is a GOP bankroller, having supported both Mitt Romney and Donald Trump. In last year’s nonpartisan Boston mayoral election, he spent more than a million dollars trying to get Annissa Essaibi George elected.

Illustration by Joe McKendry

John Henry

Founder and principal owner, Fenway Sports Group

Age: 73
Lives In: Brookline

How He Made It: Commodities trading, then hedge fund management, and now sports ownership has allowed Henry to amass what Forbes says is a $4 billion fortune.

How He’s an Ordinary Person: As a teenager, Henry played guitar in a prog-rock band.

How He’s Not an Ordinary Person: Henry and his wife—Boston Globe CEO Linda Pizzuti Henry—host an elaborate, themed summer solstice party at their Brookline home for the locally rich and fabulous every year.

Good Luck Charm: Did Henry break the Curse of the Bambino? One could certainly make the argument, given that the Red Sox won the World Series just two years after he bought the team.

He Uses His Money for Good When He: Gives to healthcare and educational charities through his family foundation, including BostonSight, Boston Healthcare for the Homeless Program, the Meadowbrook School in Weston, and the Fessenden School in West Newton.

Signature Look: Everybody in Red Sox Nation knows Henry’s dark-rimmed, rectangular glasses.

Fun Things He Owns: The Boston Globe and a Daytona 500–winning racing group. Also, a fabulous 35,000-square-foot home in Brookline—on the previous site of Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt’s much smaller place, which Henry tore down after buying the property in 2007.

His Politics: He has mostly steered clear of politics, with the exception of supporting the 2004 presidential candidacy of Red Sox devotee John Kerry.

Illustration by Joe McKendry

Amos Hostetter Jr.

Chairman, Pilot House Associates

Age: 85
Lives In: Beacon Hill

How He Made It: Hostetter established a company in 1963 with his college buddy Irv Grousbeck—now co-owner of the Boston Celtics with his son, Wyc—on the belief that TV viewers wanted more options. Over time, Continental Cablevision became the third-largest cable-television provider in the country, eventually selling in 1996 for more than $5 billion. He is currently worth a little more than $3 billion, according to Forbes.

How He’s an Ordinary Person: He’s constantly trying to protect his properties from New England’s unforgiving climate—although, in his case, that has meant spending millions trying to forestall the collapse of his Nantucket home on Sconset Bluff.

How He’s Not an Ordinary Person: Hostetter lives in the Beacon Hill house built in 1800 by then-U.S. Representative Harrison Gray Otis, one of the wealthiest Bostonians of the time.

He Uses His Money for Good When He: Supports education, arts, and, most recently, climate initiatives through the Barr Foundation, chaired by his wife, Barbara, and assessed to have a stunning $2 billion in assets.

His Politics: Hostetter and Barbara are longtime high-dollar Democratic donors, contributing millions in the 2020 election cycle alone.

Illustration by Joe McKendry

Ted Alfond

Former executive vice president, Dexter Shoes

Age: 78
Lives In: Weston

How He Made It: Through the worst deal Warren Buffett ever made—according to Buffett himself. Ted’s father, Harold Alfond, built a successful shoe business in an old Maine wool mill. In 1993, when Ted was an executive with the company, Harold sold it to an overeager Warren Buffett for 25,000 shares of Berkshire Hathaway stock—worth $439 million then and around $10 billion in 2022. Alfond is worth an estimated $2.3 billion today, according to Forbes.

How He’s an Ordinary Person: He enjoys spending his summers on a Maine lake.

How He’s Not an Ordinary Person: With his wife, Barbara, Alfond is considered one of the country’s premier art collectors. They maintain a major contemporary collection at their alma mater, Rollins College, in Winter Park, Florida. Closer to home, you can visit the Alford Auditorium at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

He Uses His Money for Good When He: Promotes education, healthcare, and youth development, mostly through the Harold Alfond Foundation.

Fun Things He Owns: The oldest house in Weston, dating to the 17th century. Also, a slice of the Boston Red Sox.

Why He Flies Under the Radar: The Dexter Shoes brand, the origin of his fortune, ceased production 20 years ago.

Illustration by Joe McKendry

Frank Laukien

President, Chairman, and CEO, Bruker

Age: 62
Lives In: The Back Bay

How He Made It: By growing his father’s scientific instruments company, along with his three siblings. The company’s high-tech equipment does everything from magnetic field research to greenhouse gas measurement. Laukien’s share of Bruker is a major part of his wealth, estimated at more than $2 billion.

How He’s an Ordinary Person: Laukien’s interest in anti-cancer research is especially meaningful, as his pioneering physicist father, Günther Laukien, died of cancer in 1997.

How He’s Not an Ordinary Person: He once paid his own brother nearly $20 million for a million shares of his stock in Bruker.

Innovations: Laukien is cofounding a new endeavor, the Galileo Project, to hunt for extraterrestrial technologies traveling or floating through space.

He Uses His Money for Good When He: Leads major anti-cancer efforts, including the American Association for Cancer Research’s Cancer Evolution Working Group.

His Politics: Not historically a huge political donor, Laukien has contributed to Republican Governor Charlie Baker and the Massachusetts Republican Party in general.

Why He Flies Under the Radar: Born in Stuttgart, Germany, and educated at MIT and Harvard, Laukien mostly keeps his head down, working on cutting-edge scientific initiatives rather than running up impressive wine tabs at the city’s finest restaurants.

Illustration by Joe McKendry

Robert Langer

Institute Professor, Langer Lab, MIT

Age: 73
Lives In: Newton

How He Made It: Over the course of an extraordinary career in scientific research. Having founded or invested in many companies, including Moderna, Langer has been called “the Edison of biomedical engineering.” He came to prefer startups because he found Big Pharma companies frustratingly slow in developing his ideas.

How He’s an Ordinary Person: He is fascinated by magic and does tricks for classes and presentations (see: the TikTok of him pulling a very, very long series of colored papers from his mouth).

How He’s Not an Ordinary Person: In addition to an estimated net worth of nearly $2 billion, he has more than 1,400 patents issued or pending.

Innovations: Where to start? His research has led to advances in treating brain cancer, reversing paralysis, and much more.

Fun Things He Owns: A prestigious Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, for which Langer and his wife, Laura, got to hang out with the late royal and her family.

Why You May Not Have Heard of Him: He spends his time hunkered down at his beloved MIT with his students and his research.

Illustration by Joe McKendry

Herb Chambers

Owner, Herb Chambers Companies

Age: 80
Lives In: The Back Bay

How He Made It: Selling more than $2 billion worth of cars a year—which is, coincidentally, his estimated net worth, according to Forbes.

How He’s an Ordinary Person: He grew up in a two-family house in Dorchester.

How He’s Not an Ordinary Person: Chambers builds cutting-edge luxury yachts (all named Excellence), which he then sells before starting on the next one.

He Uses His Money for Good When He: Supports well-known Boston-area nonprofits—including Mass Eye and Ear, the Boston Foundation, and Camp Harbor View—through his charitable foundation.

Signature Look: Tortoiseshell glasses and slicked-back hair, at work or out and about with his longtime girlfriend, Melissa Lees.

His Politics: Although Chambers has frequently supported local Democrats—including Ed Markey and Lori Trahan—he used to write his biggest checks to the national and Massachusetts Republican Party committees. That changed in 2020, when he funded Joe Biden and the Democratic National Committee.

Illustration by Joe McKendry

Noubar Afeyan

Founder and CEO, Flagship Pioneering

Age: 60
Lives In: Lexington

How He Made It: Born in Lebanon and educated in Canada, Afeyan has helped found dozens of life sciences companies since getting his Ph.D. from MIT in 1987 for biochemical engineering. One of them is Moderna, which struck gold with a COVID-19 vaccine in 2020, pushing his net worth to an estimated $2 billion, according to Forbes.

How He’s an Ordinary Person: Afeyan is a die-hard Boston Celtics fan.

How He’s Not an Ordinary Person: George Clooney is on the selection committee for an award program Afeyan cofounded, the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity.

He Uses His Money for Good When He: Works to support Armenia, from which his family hails. That includes donating a large sum toward a building for the St. Stephen’s Armenian Elementary School in Watertown and co-founding the Foundation for Armenian Science and Technology.

Signature Look: He’s seldom seen without a dark blazer; rarely, however, with a tie.

His Politics: Not a big political donor, Afeyan has given almost exclusively to Democrats.

Illustration by Joe McKendry

John Fish

Chairman and CEO, Suffolk Construction Co.

Age: 62
Lives In: The Back Bay

How He Made It: Fish joined his father’s construction business after college and built it into a multibillion-dollar national behemoth. Encore Boston Harbor? He built that. Millennium Tower, the BU “stack of books” computing center, Four Seasons One Dalton Street…yeah, he built those, too. He is worth just over $1 billion, primarily from the estimated value of his company.

How He’s an Ordinary Person: Fish is known to be unfailingly gracious: He sends prompt thank-you notes and often ends phone calls by asking, “Is there anything I can do for you?”

How He’s Not an Ordinary Person: For PR maven George Regan’s Cape Cod wedding this summer, Fish graciously provided his refurbished tugboat, the SS Lollipop, to ferry the bride, Elizabeth Akeley, to her groom and officiant Charlie Baker.

Taking the Lead: There hardly seems to be a significant board in Boston that Fish hasn’t served on, if not chaired: Massachusetts Competitive Partnership, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Brigham Health, Boston College, and the list goes on.

He Uses His Money for Good When He: Donates to Brigham and Women’s Hospital: John and his wife, Cynthia, have given nearly $20 million to the institution over the years, including $2.5 million to start a COVID-19 caregivers’ initiative.

Signature Look: He’s never seen without a tie on, even at the ridiculously early hour he is said to start working.

Illustration by Joe McKendry

Seth Klarman

CEO, Baupost Group

Age: 65
Lives In: Chestnut Hill

How He Made It: At age 25, one of Klarman’s Harvard Business School professors invited him to join a new investment management firm, Baupost Group. He was soon bringing 20 percent annual returns to wealthy clients, amassing a personal fortune now estimated at $1.5 billion in the process.

How He’s an Ordinary Person: Klarman met his wife, Beth, on a Boston Harbor cruise. He coached his daughters’ soccer teams.

How He’s Not an Ordinary Person: Legendary football coach Bill Parcells once cited Klarman’s Margin of Safety as the last book he’d read.

Giving from the Heart: After his daughter suffered from an eating disorder, Klarman wrote a $2.5 million check for a treatment center at McLean Hospital, in addition to providing grants for scientific research on anorexia nervosa. This was through the Klarman Family Foundation, which has more than half a billion dollars in assets. The Klarmans are also supporters of Israel and Jewish philanthropies.

Signature Look: Klarman is recognizable in his glasses and trimmed beard.

Fun Things He Owns: Two Preakness-winning horses.

His Politics: He’s a longtime Republican, described as fiscally conservative and socially liberal—but so anti-Trump that he has shifted from a major GOP donor to an even bigger Democratic one in recent years, including giving thousands to Democratic state parties from Arizona to Florida.

Illustration by Joe McKendry

Arthur Winn

Founder, WinnCompanies

Age: 83
Lives In: Brookline

How He Made It: Steered toward real estate by a Harvard Business School professor, in 1971 Winn stepped into the emerging field of government-subsidized affordable housing and grew one of the biggest companies in the business. His legacy of buildings—mostly for low-income residents—maintain their daily presence in Boston, throughout the region, and in 23 states across the country.

How He’s an Ordinary Person: According to friends, Winn can recite extensive scenes from his favorite films: The Godfather trilogy.

How He’s Not an Ordinary Person: As a student at the University of Massachusetts, he launched a business selling formal wear for fraternity functions—which he soon expanded to include corsage sales. fingerprints on the city: Winn’s company transformed Boston’s Mission Main property into a national model for low-cost public housing. He has earned praise throughout his career for developing affordable housing that becomes a part of the community, rather than cookie-cutter barracks-style structures.

He Uses His Money for Good When He: Gives to Jewish organizations and causes, among other philanthropic activities.

Fun Things He Owns: Red Sox season tickets behind home plate.

His Politics: Winn has been a Republican supporter for decades, but has mostly donated to Democrats in recent election cycles.

Why He Flies Under the Radar: His friend and fellow philanthropist Lenny Zakim got a bridge named for him; he didn’t.

Illustration by Joe McKendry

Stéphane Bancel

CEO, Moderna

Age: 50
Lives In: Beacon Hill

How He Made It: In 2011, not yet 40 years old, the France native was hired to run an ambitious Cambridge startup that was trying to use messenger RNA (mRNA) technology to produce new types of medicine. When that company brought forward a successful COVID-19 vaccine, Bancel’s already valuable shares in the company soared; he’s now worth $4.6 billion, according to Forbes.

How He’s an Ordinary Person: Bancel credits his success to being raised and taught by Jesuits.

How He’s Not an Ordinary Person: Earlier this year, he was made a chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur—a knight, essentially, and France’s highest meritorious honor.

He Uses His Money for Good When He: Funds Boston-area community-focused charities through the Bancel Foundation. His wife, Brenda, who studied at Harvard’s Divinity School, recently launched a second foundation called Champions of Love. And that’s all before the couple announced this year that they will exercise hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of stock options—and sell them all, giving the money to charity.

Signature Look: Bancel is usually seen in rimless glasses, tailored suits, and a buzz cut.

Why You May Not Have Heard of Him: For years, Bancel toiled quietly—secretively, some say—to turn the promise of mRNA vaccines into a real, tested product. Clearly, it was a success.

Illustration by Joe McKendry

Joshua Bekenstein

Cochair, Bain Capital

Age: 64
Lives In: Wayland

How He Made It: Bekenstein was one of the original people from Bain & Company chosen by founder Bill Bain and partner Mitt Romney to start Bain Capital, which became one of the most successful investment firms in the country. Much of his wealth comes from his holdings in companies that Bain Capital bought over the years, including the Bright Horizons childcare company, Waters Corp., Burlington stores, and Michaels.

He Uses His Money for Good When He: Backs climate change awareness and mitigation efforts along with his wife, Anita. Bekenstein has also funded New Profit, a nonprofit that supports “breakthrough social entrepreneurs who are advancing equity and opportunity,” especially Black, indigenous, and Latinx grantees who are often overlooked by philanthropists.

All in Good Fun: As a young man, he and other Bain Capital founders goofed around during a photo shoot, taking a picture with dollar bills in their hands and mouths. Unfortunately, the photo was widely seen years later when the young man in front of Bekenstein—Mitt Romney—was a candidate for president.

Fun Things He Owns: When the Bekensteins get the itch to leave their 10,000-square-foot home in Wayland (with stables and a tennis court), they can stretch out at their $18 million house on 14 beachfront acres on Nantucket.

His Politics: The couple are huge funders of Democratic and liberal candidates and committees.

Why He Flies Under the Radar: Bekenstein has never craved attention, leaving the spotlight to his former boss, Mitt Romney, and current cochair, Steve Pagliuca.

Illustration by Joe McKendry

Niraj Shah

Cofounder, Wayfair

Age: 48
Lives In: The Back Bay

How He Made It: The son of immigrants from India, Shah attended public high school in Pittsfield before meeting his future business partner, Steve Conine, at Cornell University. The two eventually went on to create the multibillion-dollar online home furniture store Wayfair. They are each worth an estimated $1.5 billion.

How He’s an Ordinary Person: He furnishes his home with Wayfair purchases, of course.

How He’s Not an Ordinary Person: Shah sat on the board of the Boston Fed, was once on Fortune magazine’s “40 under 40” list, and has been Ernst & Young’s “Entrepreneur of the Year.” He and his wife, Jill, have also purchased seven adjacent properties at Little Parker’s Pond in the Osterville Village section of Barnstable to develop into a family compound.

He Uses His Money for Good When He: Helps fund public education and healthcare access through the Shah Family Foundation, primarily run by Jill. Although it just launched in 2017, the organization is quickly becoming an influential player in Boston.

Signature Look: Round, clear-framed glasses and a slightly graying beard.

His Politics: Shah has given extensively to Democrats nationally, including six-figure contributions to support Joe Biden in 2020.

Timothy Springer

Investor and immunologist, Harvard Medical School

Age: 74
Lives In: Newton

How He Made It: After several other investment successes—he reportedly made $100 million from an earlier drug-development startup, LeukoSite—Springer was approached by a colleague for advice on raising capital for a new company. Springer put in $5 million himself, which turned into $400 million by the time that company, Moderna, went public in 2018. Now he’s worth more than $2 billion, according to Forbes.

Other wins: Springer has helped create treatments for cancer, multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease, and more. He also cofounded (and funded) the Institute for Protein Innovation located at Harvard Medical School, which is designing synthetic antibodies for potential scientific research.

Signature Look: Casual. Known to bicycle to work in jeans, Springer recently conducted a Zoom interview with this magazine from his office while wearing a white T-shirt.

Fun Things He Owns: He collected several large gongshi rocks from China, one a massive 23 tons, to decorate the home he built in Newton.

His Politics: After supporting Barack Obama in 2008, Springer had no record of political giving until the 2020 election cycle, when he contributed to Jake Auchincloss in his local district’s congressional race. Auchincloss’s parents are both prominent alumni of Harvard Medical School.

Why He Flies Under the Radar: Noubar Afeyan and Stéphane Bancel have gotten most of the Moderna media attention.

Terry Ragon

Founder and CEO, InterSystems

Age: 73
Lives In: Cambridge

How He Made It: Way back in 1978, Ragon launched a company to produce data-management software for banks and hospitals. More than 40 years later, InterSystems continues to thrive as a privately held company, with Ragon as CEO and his wife, Susan, as VP.

How He’s an Ordinary Person: He and Susan ran their first Boston Marathon as “bandits”—without credentials—in 1993.

How He’s Not an Ordinary Person: The couple just spent a reported $93 million to buy three beachfront properties—two of which were not officially on the market—to build a new Florida home.

He Uses His Money for Good When He: Gives to Mass General, including $100 million for AIDS research. And that’s not all: The Ragons have taken the “Giving Pledge” to give away the majority of their money—which totals nearly $2 billion—through philanthropy.

His Politics: The Ragons have contributed more than $6.5 million over the years, almost all to Democrats or Democrat-supporting committees. This spring, Ragon gave a cool million to the committee working to keep the Democrats’ majority status in the U.S. Senate.

Why He Flies Under the Radar: InterSystems is almost obsessive about being Boston’s quietest major corporation—something that’ll become much more difficult when it moves into its new 420,000-square-foot space at the new One Congress Tower.

Steve Conine

Cofounder, Wayfair

Age: 50
Lives In: The South End

How He Made It: Partnering in entrepreneurship with Niraj Shah.

How He’s an Ordinary Person: Conine can often be spotted riding his bicycle around Boston.

How He’s Not an Ordinary Person: He competes worldwide in mountain-bike races.

Innovations: Conine has been trying for years to create an AI-driven augmented-reality shopping experience for Wayfair customers.

He Doesn’t Need His Name in Lights: He and Shah recently gave $10 million to build a new computing and information science building at their alma mater, Cornell University—but the building will be named for Apple exec Ann Bowers, not themselves.

Fun Things He Owns: A brass-and-copper clock that he made himself, among other handcrafted pieces.

His Politics: Conine’s largest contributions have been to the national and state GOP, but he’s also given to some local Democrats—including Deval Patrick during his brief 2020 presidential campaign.

Alan Trefler

CEO, Pegasystems

Age: 66
Lives In: Brookline

How He Made It: The software company he launched at age 27 (with a helpful loan from his mother) is doing more than $1 billion in annual revenue some 40 years later—with him still running it and owning about half the shares.

How He’s an Ordinary Person: Trefler enjoys an occasional game of good old-fashioned Ping-Pong.

How He’s Not an Ordinary Person: He achieved chess-master status and won a world chess championship while still in college.

He Uses His Money for Good When He: Helps kids in underserved communities succeed by supporting STEM education and healthcare needs. He and his wife, Pam, created the Trefler Foundation in large part to tackle the inequities she observed while teaching math at Dorchester High School (they later gifted $1 million to the school).

Signature Look: He sports a well-trimmed beard that he’s worn since college and prefers a casual jeans-and-polo-shirt getup.

Elizabeth Johnson

Owner, Louisburg Farm

Age: 59
Lives In: Beacon Hill

How She Made It: Johnson owns roughly 5 percent of Fidelity, the investment management firm created by her grandfather and currently run by her sister Abigail.

How She’s an Ordinary Person: Johnson is constantly being judged in relation to her supposedly more accomplished sibling.

How She’s Not an Ordinary Person: Fidelity created a new investment firm, Volition Capital, for Johnson’s husband, Rob Ketterson, to be a founding partner of.

She Uses Her Money for Good When She: Makes considerable charitable contributions directly and via her family’s Edward C. Johnson Fund. She also donates to Boston’s Society of Arts & Crafts.

Fun Things She Owns: An equestrian training facility in Wellington, Florida, named Louisburg Farm, after the tony square where she resides in Boston. When the farm held a fundraiser for U.S. Olympic equestrian teams, Bruce Springsteen—whose daughter is an equestrian competitor—cochaired the event and played an impromptu set on a Fender guitar being auctioned off.

Why She Flies Under the Radar: Beth is the Johnson sibling least involved in the family business. She is also the least wealthy, according to Forbes, hovering above the $5 billion line this summer.

Edward Johnson IV

President, Pembroke Real Estate

Age: 57
Where He Lives: The North End

How He Made It: As the brother of Fidelity chief Abigail Johnson, Ed IV owns roughly 5 percent of the huge investment management firm—and runs a subsidiary of the empire.

How He’s an Ordinary Person: He majored in “recreational and leisure studies” at Northeastern University.

How He’s Not an Ordinary Person: He manages 2.2 million square feet at Seaport Place, which is owned by his real estate company, a branch of—surprise, surprise—Fidelity.

Signature Look: His cherubic red hair.

Why He Flies Under the Radar: Johnson, who is reportedly worth upward of $6 billion, is just as media-averse as his namesake father and grandfather, as well as his powerful sister Abigail. And without that top position at Fidelity, he has far fewer people trying to put him in the spotlight.

George Sakellaris

Chairman and CEO, Ameresco

Age: 76
Lives In: Milton

How He Made It: Sakellaris amassed a fortune in the 1980s and 1990s retrofitting other companies’ buildings for energy efficiency and getting paid out of their resulting savings. Now, with businesses looking for cleantech and renewable solutions, he’s making even more money—some $1.2 billion of revenue a year, with a net worth of about $1.6 billion, according to Forbes.

How He’s an Ordinary Person: He worked his way through college in restaurants and grocery stores.

How He’s Not an Ordinary Person: Sakellaris enjoys racing Maxi 72 class sailing yachts, which carry a crew of around 15.

He Uses His Money for Good When He: Supports the local Greek Orthodox community along with his wife, Cathy Papoulias-Sakellaris.

Fun Things He Owns: Proteus, the 2017 International Maxi Association’s Yacht of the Year.

His Politics: George and Cathy give mostly, but not exclusively, to Democrats.

James Pallotta

Founder, Raptor Group

Age: 64
Lives In: Weston

How He Made It: After growing up in the North End, Pallotta spent years running one of the city’s most successful hedge fund businesses out of Rowes Wharf—at one point, before the 2008 crash, reportedly earning up to $200 million a year.

Fun and Games: He reportedly participated in an annual $1 million fantasy football league with nine other rich guys.

He Uses His Money for Good When He: Shares his wealth with a wide range of local institutions, including Big Brothers Big Sisters and the Institute of Contemporary Art.

Fun Thing He Owns: A 27,000-square-foot custom-built estate once dubbed “The House That Ate Weston” by this magazine, featuring a home theater, music room, basketball court, and one entire wing just for Pallotta’s two sons.

His Politics: Pallotta has a history of giving to Republicans, nationally and in Massachusetts.

Future Billionaires

They’re not on the list yet…but give them time.

Claire Hughes Johnson
Corporate officer and Adviser, Stripe

Age: 50
Lives in: Milton

Formerly the COO at Stripe, Johnson (no relation to the Fidelity Johnsons) is still one of the higher-ups at the wildly successful payment processing business, which ranks as one of the top-valued private companies of all time. This comes after a successful run with Google and an active side gig as an angel investor. An anticipated Stripe IPO might get her that 10th digit.

Carmichael Roberts
Founder and managing partner, Material Impact

Age: 54
Lives in: Brookline

A company-builder with a string of successes behind him, Roberts runs his own venture capital firm and participates in Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures investment committee. You’ll also find him on a host of boards, corporate and nonprofit, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra and WGBH.

Sam Slater
Managing partner, Tremont Asset Management

Age: 38
Lives in: The Back Bay

Slater has a large real estate portfolio, co-owns the Seattle Kraken NHL team, produces movies, and is behind a huge new development in Quincy. It’s not clear how far he is from his first billion, but at 38 years old, he has plenty of time to make up the gap.

Nancy Zimmerman
Cofounder and managing partner, Bracebridge Capital

Age: 59
Lives in: Newton

Forbes calls Zimmerman “one of the most successful female hedge fund founders in the U.S.,” and at this point, she’s just one of the most successful, period. Bracebridge manages more than $12 billion in assets, and her own net worth has been pegged at more than $700 million.

Demond Martin
Partner, Adage Capital Management

Age: 48
Lives in: Newton

Martin worked in the Clinton White House and now serves on the Obama Foundation’s board of directors, but his financial success comes from 20 years managing portfolios at Adage. Politically, socially, and philanthropically connected, Martin’s potential for billionaire status is sky-high.