HSA 65th Anniversary Book

HARVARD STUDENT AGENCIES 1957 – 2022

1957 – 2022

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO

George E. Christodoulo

In appreciation of his 44 years of service to HSA as

General Counsel and member of the Board of Directors.

His time on the Board may be ending,

but his mentorship of students will endure.

HSA 65th Anniversary History Book 1

FACTS AND

FIGURES

STUDENT WAGES

PAID TO DATE:

$57 MILLION

HARVARD STUDENT AGENCIES

Hall of Fame

Since its inception in 1957, Harvard Student Agencies has been an integral part of Harvard University,

providing a wide range of employment opportunities and business experiences for Harvard students.

We honor the members of the HSA Hall of Fame for their exemplary contributions in support of this

organization’s initiatives and mission.

HARVARD

STUDENT

AGENCIES

REVENUE

EARNED TO DATE:

$176 MILLION

V. Lee Archer ’65

James V. Baker ’68, MBA ’70

Ralph O. Hellmold ’62

Ellen G. Hoffman, MBA ’76

A History

STUDENT EMPLOYEES

AT INCORPORATION:

14

Kenneth G. Bartels ’73, MBA ’76

Wendy F. Bennett ’76

Catherine V. Blake ’76

Bradlee T. Howe ’63, MBA ’69

L. Fred Jewett ’57, MBA ’60

C. Bruce Johnstone ’62, MBA ’66

1957–2022

STUDENT EMPLOYEES

IN FY22:

589

Blair Brown ’62, MArch ’67

Dustin M. Burke ’52, MBA ’55

Max L. Kiehne ’68

C. Kevin Landry ’66

ALUMS:

OVER 4,300

AGENCIES ATTEMPTED:

79

AGENCIES STILL

AROUND TODAY:

13

BUILDINGS

CALLED HOME:

17

CLASS RINGS SOLD:

7,272

LET’S GO

BOOKS PUBLISHED:

644 EDITIONS OF

75 DIFFERENT TITLES

Richard M. Burnes ’63

Larry W. Cheng ’96

George E. Christodoulo ’71,

MBA ’75, JD ’75

Amy Mueller Christodoulo

Peter G. Christodoulo ’02

William B. Coughlin ’75

Michael F. Cronin ’75, MBA ’77

Thomas R. Eisenmann ’79,

MBA ’83, DBA ’98

Archie C. Epps, BD ’61

Charles W. Filson ’66

Paul J. Finnegan ’75, MBA ’82

John N. Fulham III ’71

Jonathan N. Grayer ’86, MBA ’90

Thomas H. Lee ’65

Patrick R. Liles ’60, MBA ’64, DBA ’70

Robert W. McCoy ’62, MBA ’65

David A. Mittell ’39

Joseph O’Donnell ’67, MBA ’71

Kendall J. Powell ’76

William L. Richter ’64, MBA ’66

Harold Rosenwald ’27, LLB ’30

Michael Ryan ’72

Arthur I. Segel ’73

Thomas G. Stemberg ’71, MBA ’73

William F. Thompson ’50, MBA ’54

Andrew P. Tobias ’68, MBA ’72

Stephen M. Waters ’68, MBA ’74

Researched and written by Matt Heid ’96-’97 (first edition),

Thayer Christodoulo Meicler ’04, MBA ’09 (second edition),

Lucy Clark ’08, Irina Gumennik ’07 (third edition),

Sara Plana ’12, Ethan Waxman ’12 (fourth edition),

Harrison Choate ’17 (fifth edition), and

Nathaniel Rakich ’10 (fifth and sixth editions)

Designed by Michelle Lambert

BARTENDERS TRAINED:

OVER 50,000

2


Introduction

TABLE OF

CONTENTS

Thank you for celebrating 65 years of HSA with us!

This book details the history of our organization — the world’s largest student-run

company. HSA is a special place. It’s the place where we first learned how to run a meeting,

turn a profit, and write an invoice. It has created valuable work experiences and businessmanagement

opportunities for thousands of students. More than that, it’s created the

community that brought all of us together.

The pandemic brought on a substantial challenge — the student teams have demonstrated

the courage, persistence, and ingenuity to manage HSA out of the pandemic. None of

that would have been possible without the incredible support and guidance of our alums.

The past several years have been a testament to the resilience of HSA and its people.

I hope that for all of us — as we journey forth and the memories of our days at HSA are

further off — those memories will be held even more dear and our community will still

hold a place in our hearts.

Thank you to all of the student team members, Board members, alums, permanent staff,

business partners, and friends of HSA who have made the incredible success of HSA

possible over its storied history. We have all left our mark at HSA so far — and will all

continue to offer our management, guidance, and support to ensure our future success.

We’ve had 65 great years — full of business accomplishment, personal growth, and

lifelong community. Here’s to many more!

7 IN THE

BEGINNING:

1957–1969

25 A TIME OF

TRANSITION:

1970–1979

41 THE THAYER

YEARS:

1980–1993

63 INTO

MODERNITY:

1994–2005

85 RECESSION

AND REVIVAL:

2006–2020

109 BRAVE NEW

WORLD:

2021-2022

ALEXANDER KIM ’23

PRESIDENT, FY23

4


In the beginning

A fateful bicycle accident and an illicit black market of beer steins and class rings conspired to

hatch the world’s largest student-run company in the spring of 1957. John Monro ’35 dispatched

Dustin M. Burke ’52, MBA ’55, to harness the epidemic of entrepreneurship running amok

through Harvard’s dormitory walls as a vehicle for financial aid. Gregory Stone ’58 chanced

into a meeting with legendary attorney Harold Rosenwald ’27, LLB ’30, and with Burke they

spent the summer working out logistics for an umbrella corporation they called Harvard

Student Agencies (HSA). In the fall, the intrepid trio, Monro, and three other co-founders

incorporated and signed the charter that spelled out HSA’s formal structure and altruistic

mission.

In the years immediately thereafter, HSA experienced a period of intense growth and

entrepreneurial efforts as it pursued greater student wages. Within five years, the number

of agencies had climbed to 31, and HSA had expanded to two locations. Within six years,

gross sales grew from $100,000 to more than $1 million, buoyed by the strong Linen and

Charter Flights agencies. During HSA’s first 10 years, these two agencies together provided

more than 50% of gross sales. This secure financial footing enabled HSA to fund promising

new enterprises and weather fiscal difficulties (such as the ill-fated, but delicious, Ice Cream

agency). With the growth of the Information Gathering Service (IGS) in the mid-1960s, the

future boded well for a continued increase in student earning opportunities.

The Board of Directors supported and encouraged this initial growth. Warren Berg ’43, first

Chairman of the Board, did all he could to inspire entrepreneurship among HSA’s student

leaders. H. Gardner Bradlee ’40, the longtime President of Cambridge Trust Company, and

David Mittell ’39 both made considerable contributions to the early success of the corporation.

Behind the scenes, the secretaries were the unsung heroes of HSA, providing organization and

sanity amid agency chaos.

As it prospered, HSA endured considerable scrutiny and criticism from campus organizations

and the university. The Harvard Crimson regularly attacked, printing scathing critiques of

HSA’s practices. More than 40 editorials proclaiming the evils of HSA appeared in 1962 alone.

The university investigated the Charter Flights program in 1965 and kept a close eye on the

fledgling organization. Luckily, Monro — by this time Dean of Harvard College — steadfastly

defended his brainchild from internal university criticism, and HSA continued to thrive.

During the early period, student managers operated with a great deal of autonomy. Responsible

for their agency’s accounting, many managers had to turn in a detailed financial statement to

the corporation only once every three months. Some managers worked solely during a brief

sales season centered on the first three weeks of the academic year. With Burke working part

time as General Manager, HSA functioned more as a support system for the managers and

exercised relatively little administrative control over the agencies.

Aided by the capital acquired from its first fundraising campaigns, HSA attempted to continue

its success in the late ’60s. In addition to its traditional entrepreneurial efforts and creation

of new business endeavors, HSA also devoted considerable energy and capital to developing

existing agencies. IGS consequently gained a full-time professional manager and acquired

larger offices in which to expand. Publishing produced seven books between FY68 and FY69,

as many as had been written in the previous seven years. Immediate results were promising,

as gross sales hit a record high in FY68. It was not to last, however. In FY69, many agencies

both old and new encountered financial difficulties. With operations spread between three

separate locations, problems of communication and administrative control arose. As the 1970s

approached, HSA struggled with the problems of its rapid expansion.

1957-

1969

6


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OFFICE

58

OCTOBER 23, 1957 –

AUGUST 31, 1958

PRESIDENT

Gregory

Stone

102 Mt. Auburn St.

The dawn of the world’s largest

student-run company

Spring 1957. Harvard tuition had doubled in the previous 10 years, giving rise to concern that the increasing

costs of higher education would adversely affect the social makeup of those applying to Harvard. At the

same time, 14 ambitious students were running small-scale businesses out of their dorm rooms, selling

items as various as beer mugs, class rings, and personalized stationery. In utilizing Harvard’s facilities for

their assorted business empires, however, these budding tycoons placed Harvard’s real-estate-tax exemption

in jeopardy. With these two issues in mind, John Monro, Dean of Financial Aid, assigned Dusty Burke,

Director of Student Employment, to investigate student businesses as a possible source of financial aid and

to begin developing the idea that would become HSA.

Later that spring, a meeting with those existing student managers elicited considerable interest in the idea

of a corporation. Greg Stone, the baron of porcelain steins, took a particular interest in this idea and soon

became even more intimately involved when one of his friends, riding Stone’s bike, collided with a Radcliffe

student on Mass. Ave. Despite the lack of injury, Stone’s friend enlisted attorney Harold Rosenwald (whose

qualifications for this case of bicycular assault included defending Alger Hiss from accusations of Soviet

espionage in 1948–1951). Stone and Rosenwald soon met and discussed opening a student organization.

Intrigued, Rosenwald met Burke, and more concrete plans for such a corporation emerged.

An initial capital investment of $7,000 was necessary for rent, legal expenses, telephones, and other assorted

startup expenses, and the search began for one or two large businesses capable of carrying a major share of

corporate overhead. Early in the summer, the new corporation gained the rights to offer Harvard students

the weekly linen service traditionally provided by the university itself. With the assistance and consent of

“Skiddy” von Stade ’38, Dean of Freshmen, an offer of clean sheets, towels, and pillow cases went out to

incoming freshmen through a summer mailer. An overwhelming 90% of the incoming class accepted the

offer. This tremendous response provided the required capital and heralded the inception of the mighty

Linen agency, the first financial backbone of HSA.

The remaining pieces quickly fell into place.

In August, the papers were filed authorizing a

new nonprofit corporation. On September 10 at

8pm, the first meeting took place in the student

union. On October 23, the Commonwealth of

Massachusetts gave its seal of approval, and HSA

officially came into being. On December 13, the

seven original incorporators signed the charter:

Burke, Monro, Rosenwald, Stone, Richard Dale

’52, Theodore H. Elliott Jr. ’58, MBA ’60, and John

Giannetti ’57, LLB ’60. The first Board of Directors

met afterward, with a tripartite structure of five

students, five alums, and five university officials.

Warren Berg served as Chairman of the Board,

Dusty Burke, Harold Rosenwald, and John Monro.

Rosenwald obtained nonprofit status for the

organization and drew up its corporate bylaws, Stone became the first President, and the first offices of HSA

opened on the third floor of 102 Mt. Auburn St., above a Brattle Sq. liquor store.

In the words of Burke, who now split time as Director of Student Employment and General Manager of HSA, the original

objectives in creating HSA were:

• To provide an organization with facilities and some capital through which students of the university could be

encouraged to develop and to manage small businesses that might provide funds that could be applied to the cost

of their education.

• To afford needy students of the university the opportunity to earn substantial amounts of money for brief periods

of work through the exercise of energy and ingenuity.

• To encourage students to explore the business community as a potential career choice.

• To enable students to gain valuable experience and to develop a sense of the excitement and responsibility involved

in the management of small enterprise.

To these ends, the university placed existing student enterprises under the aegis of the new corporation, with 10% of their annual

net income to be contributed to corporate overhead. Despite some initial and strenuous objections on behalf of the student

managers, it came to pass.

The circle of 14 budding student businessmen expanded to 125 employees in that first fiscal year. The first revenue statement for

the umbrella corporation read $101,000. In addition to the powerful Linen cartel, the original agencies included refreshment

concession to slavering hockey fans and winded patrons in the Donald C. Watson Rink; a reservations agency for the tired and

huddled masses staying at the Sheraton Hotel; the ad-filled blotters, distributed for free in the summer and fall; and the delivery

of birthday cakes, a service in existence since 1953. HSA also bought 15 refrigerators in hopes of renting them to students desiring

frosty mugs of beer. When they were quickly snapped up, Burke authorized the purchase of as many refrigerators as there were

students interested in renting them. The sales team came back with a list of hundreds of undergraduates, and the enduring

Refrigerator Rental agency was born.

AGENCIES

• Linen

• Refrigerator Rental

• Rings

• Refreshment

• Birthday Cake

• Fall Blotter

• Beer Mugs and Banners

• Watson Rink

• Coop Laundry

• Summer Blotter

• Eliot Grill

• Spring Street Stadium

• Summer Refreshment

• Sheraton Hotel

8 HSA 65th Anniversary History Book 9

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59

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60

SEPTEMBER 1, 1958 –

AUGUST 31, 1959

HSA takes over

charter-flight operations


AUGUST 31, 1960

The birth of a student-run

travel guide

PRESIDENT

Theodore

Elliott Jr.

OFFICE

4 Holyoke St.

At the close of the previous fiscal year, HSA moved to new offices at 4 Holyoke St., beginning a fourdecade

odyssey through most of the basements in Cambridge. Rented from the Porcellian Club, this former

basement pool hall proved fertile ground for the entrepreneurial spirit suddenly found coursing within.

Throughout the year, several students in the college and business school had been operating their own

charter-flight service to Europe. The university, concerned about the potential abuse of charter regulations,

requested that HSA supervise the operations. Taking over the Cambridge franchise for YTC Universal,

HSA formed the Europe by Air agency and recruited G. Oliver Koppell ’62, JD ’65, son of the president of

YTC and one of the original charter-flight entrepreneurs, to manage it. Utilizing several slow, jet-propelled

BOAC planes, the agency provided several round-trip summer flights to Europe for approximately $200

each as well as seven-week grand tours of Europe for $545 (meals and accommodations included). Europe

by Air spawned many agency progeny, the first being Europe by Car. Catering primarily to charter-flight

passengers, Europe by Car allowed travelers to purchase

a car in Europe, drive it maniacally about, and then have it

shipped back to the States for resale at prices comparable to

the original purchase price.

HSA gained the concession rights to Harvard football games in the fall of 1958, and the students of HSA

began to bombard the fans with hot dogs, drinks, programs, and other food and novelty goodies during each

Saturday home game. The agency proved to be one of the more logistically challenging, as one never knew

when rampant hot-dog gorging might occur, when the horrifying Boston weather would keep the less stalwart

fans at home, or when Harvard might so brutally crush its opponent into pulp that there would be an early

exodus from the stadium. Needless to say, calculating the correct amounts of food and refreshments to prepare

was an inexact science at best.

The Student Calendar, a “weekly schedule of events and information, void of editorial content, delivered

free to all student rooms and administrative offices in the university,” also made its debut. As it generated

income to HSA through the sale of advertisements contained within, a coalition of the presidents of the

Advocate, Crimson, Lampoon, and Yearbook lobbied to have it shut down, complaining of lost revenue for

their organizations. Other new agencies included the Union News Stand, which dished up snacks, drinks,

cigarettes, and other good stuff to those needy and anxious first-year students in the Freshman Union; the

House Painting agency, HSA’s first venture into the area of skilled summer employment; and the Sampler,

a booklet of money-saving coupons from merchants in Harvard Sq. and Boston sold to frugal students.

PRESIDENT

Philippe

Charat

OFFICE

4 Holyoke St.

At first HSA favored seasonal

businesses out of fear that yearround

managers would fall behind

in their studies. Intrigued by the

potential of the ice-cream business

and with the help of a bank loan,

HSA decided in the spring of

1959 to purchase five Ollie Orbit

Soft Ice Cream trucks (at a cost of

$12,500 each) to create summer

employment opportunities. During

the summers of 1959 and 1960,

these five trucks cruised the streets

of Boston’s suburbs, supplied on the

road by first-year manager Peter

Sellar ’58 in the “Ollie Orbit Rocket Scooter,” a painted motor scooter with sidecar. Unfortunately, the new

soft-ice-cream technology proved difficult to maintain, cold and rainy weather plagued the operation, and,

in order to reach a large enough market for the business to be profitable, students had to drive their trucks

into neighborhoods where Harvard accents and mannerisms were not exactly warmly embraced. HSA was

forced to liquidate the entire operation in 1961 at a loss of $30,000. Despite this disappointing foray into

summer jobs, HSA had more success with its Tanglewood agency, which ran buses to the popular summer

concert venue in Western Massachusetts, and boosted overall revenues to $595,000.

Europe by Air customers in the summer of 1960 received an exciting

extra bonus that would have far-reaching implications for HSA: the 1960

European Guide. Compiled by Oliver Koppell as a service for these European

travelers, this 25-page pamphlet contained eight pages of advertisements

from Harvard Sq. merchants and YTC Universal, three pages of

introduction from HSA President Philippe Charat ’60, MBA ’62, a threepage

“Photographer’s Guide to Europe,” and 11 pages of travel information.

Useful tips included passport and visa requirements, the amount of tobacco

(in its various forms) that could be brought duty-free into each European

country, four pages of upcoming European events, and the fact that “a tweed

jacket and flannel or rayon slacks make the perfect travel uniform.” HSA

produced 4,000 copies.

TITLES

• 1960 European Guide

AGENCIES

AGENCIES

• Linen

• Europe by Air

• House Painting

• Fall Concessions

• Student Calendar


• Europe by Car

• Rings

• Refreshment

• Union News Stand

• Moving

• Ice Cream

• Summer Calendar

• Stationery

• Birthday Cake

• Fall Blotter

• Novelties

• Magazine


• Newspaper

• Watson Rink

• Coop Laundry

• Summer Blotter

• Eliot Grill

• Summer Guide

• Sampler


• New England Laundry

• Sheraton Hotel

• Linen

• Europe by Air

• House Painting




• Europe by Car

• Rings

• Refreshment


• Moving

• Ice Cream

• Summer Calendar

• Stationery

• Birthday Cake

• Fall Blotter

• Novelties

• Magazine

• Beer Mugs

and Banners

• Newspaper

• Watson Rink

• Coop Laundry

• Summer Blotter

• Eliot Grill

• Summer Guide

• Sampler

• Spring Street

Stadium

• New England

Laundry

• Book Return

• Union Grill

• Tanglewood

• Spring Sampler


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61


AUGUST 31, 1961

Let’s Go gets its name

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62


AUGUST 31, 1962

The Catering agency

pours its first drink

Europe by Air spawned another, much smaller offspring with the inception of the Import agency. Now

passengers on HSA’s charter flights could buy foreign goods at a reduced price through a distributor, earning

HSA a tidy commission.

The Carling Brewing Company donated $6,000 to HSA for capital funding and the expansion of the HSA

idea to other colleges. With the aid of this gift, HSA hired Robert McCoy ’62, MBA ’65, a former manager

of Europe by Car, as Assistant General Manager. Commencing work on June 1, 1962, McCoy provided

Dusty Burke with considerable administrative support.

PRESIDENT

William

Gross

OFFICE

4 Holyoke St.

LET’S GO TITLES

• A Student Guide to Europe

AGENCIES

HAIL TO THE HSA FOODMEN!

From HSA’s inception through FY65, the courageous employees of the Refreshment agency labored

to provide the college community with late-night sustenance. Snack-laden red wagons in tow, the

HSA foodmen trudged through rain, wind, snow, and frigid temperatures to air their plaintive cries

of “FOOD!” at the base of many a dorm and house, hoping ever so desperately that someone might

emerge to purchase one of their sodas, doughnuts (5¢), or eight-inch subs (30¢). As if it were not

already a task of superhuman dimensions, the heroic foodmen also had to fend off rampaging hordes

of their own classmates.

In April 1962, 200 freshmen in Holworthy, Thayer, and Stoughton responded to the HSA goodyman’s

cry with a mob onslaught. Yelling from windows and beaming two blinding spotlights on our

hero, the slavering rabble descended en masse on his little red cart. Five were later relieved of their

bursar’s cards. In October 1963, partisans of the Eliot House Grill (a former HSA agency gone awry)

harassed the noble HSA foodman on his nightly rounds, relieved him of his wares, liberated his wagon,

and burned Dusty Burke in effigy. Escaping without wounds, the HSA warrior vowed never again to

serve a house full of such savages.

The 1960 European Guide acquired the title “Let’s Go,” a name coined by Henry G.

Koppell, President of YTC Universal and father of Oliver Koppell. With the assistance

of Lois Dean and Gordon Milde ’62, MCP ’66, John Marlin ’62, the well-traveled son

of a UN officer, researched over 20 European countries for the new guide, wrote more

than 300 pages, and earned $200 for his efforts. The list of countries was determined

by where Marlin had traveled and expanded according to Dean’s experience. Koppell

consolidated their work down to 64 pages and coordinated the printing and sale of

the 6,500 copies produced. It was the first time Let’s Go was distributed beyond the

Harvard campus, but HSA couldn’t afford to ship the books to their

distributor, so Koppell piled as many as he could fit into the back

of his aging Chrysler and set off for New York City. The weight of

the books broke the car’s struts, and it broke down somewhere in

Connecticut. The books, however, eventually made it onto the shelves

— and sold out every copy. This very first, very sage Let’s Go book

included a tip on how to travel from Europe to Asia for four cents

(take the ferry across the Bosphorus strait in Istanbul) and reminded

readers, “It is the dream which makes traveling fun.”

PRESIDENT

Oliver

Koppell

OFFICE

4 Holyoke St.

LET’S GO TITLES


AGENCIES

On the agency front, Catering was established

and began operations late in the summer of

1961. Initially founded as a service for Harvard

faculty parties, the agency quickly expanded

to include events and parties throughout the

Cambridge and Boston area. Particularly

well suited to HSA’s mission, the Catering

agency returned a significant portion of its

revenue as wages to the students it employed

as servers and bartenders. The Concessions

agency staged a Salada Tea promotion at one

of the fall football games, dressing several

Bradlee Howe ’63, MBA ’69, Betsy Slade, and Robert McCoy.

students up as butlers and maids and serving

tea by the cup to fans. The Linen agency, tired of door-to-door linen pickups and dropoffs, established the

depot system, depriving countless students of hallways filled with the pungent odor of dirty laundry. The

Crimson fretted that “undergraduate organizations which cannot pay students for participation may in the

future have difficulty in attracting members among people who could do similar work with HSA for a

profit,” despite HSA’s promise to “not publish a daily newspaper, a humor magazine, a yearbook, or a literary

magazine, as long as the existing publications occupy these fields ‘adequately.’”

The 1962 edition of Let’s Go was “researched” and “written” by a group

of Lampooners, although the majority of the work occurred back in the

basements of Cambridge. Upon discovering that HSA had employed a

non-Harvard student in the production of the guide, questions arose. Upon

discovering that HSA had paid $150 to a (gasp) Yalie... Nothing really

happened. Phew. Let’s Go produced 7,200 copies of the guide that declared

the Netherlands to be, “by and large, a country of fat, jolly little blonde girls.”

The creative cartooning of Richard Copaken ’63, JD ’66, including the iconic

hot-air balloon, appeared on the front cover for the first time.

• Linen

• Let’s Go

• Europe by Air

• House Painting




• Europe by Car

• Rings

• Refreshment


• Moving

• Summer Calendar

• Stationery

• Birthday Cake

• Fall Blotter

• Novelties

• Magazine


• Newspaper

• Watson Rink

• Coop Laundry

• Summer Blotter

• Fall Programs

• Sampler


• Import

• Tanglewood

• Linen

• Let’s Go

• Catering

• Europe by Air

• House Painting




• Europe by Car

• Rings

• Refreshment


• Moving

• Typing

• Summer Calendar

• Stationery

• Birthday Cake

• Fall Blotter

• Novelties

• Magazine


• Newspaper

• Watson Rink

• Coop Laundry

• Summer Blotter

• Fall Programs

• Sampler


• Medical School Laundry

• Import

• Tanglewood


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63


AUGUST 31, 1963

The Information Gathering Service

expands HSA’s reach

WHERE THEY ARE NOW...

Oliver Koppell | ’62, JD ’65

JOBS AT HSA: Manager, Europe by Air, FY59 – FY60; Manager, Let’s Go, FY61; President, FY62. Founded Let’s Go in 1960.

JOBS SINCE HSA: New York State Assemblyman, 1970–1993; New York Attorney General, 1994; New York City Council

Member, 2002–2013; currently principal attorney at the Law Offices of G. Oliver Koppell and Associates.

WHAT ROLE DID HSA AND LET’S GO PLAY IN YOUR PROFESSIONAL AND PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT? “HSA was

very central to my Harvard experience. It taught me a great deal about running a business, about relating to other people, about

taking responsibility. … Let’s Go helped me in terms of running an organization and also in terms of introducing new ideas and

new things. In the course of my political career particularly, I think I innovated quite a bit, and I think the fact that I was able to

start something like Let’s Go certainly played a role.”

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO STUDENTS CONSIDERING JOINING HSA TODAY? “HSA is a wonderful training for anyone

who wants to get involved in business. … They’re doing something that has both practical and educational value if they get

involved in HSA businesses, in addition to making friends and having fun.”

WHAT DOES LET’S GO MEAN TO YOU? “So many people have told me over the years they worked for Let’s Go and it’s been

important to them; several people have told me it’s what motivated them to become writers, other people have told me how much

it helped them in terms of their own maturity. … Let’s Go gave them opportunities to visit parts of the world that they might not

have been able to do if it hadn’t been for Let’s Go. So looking at that and thinking about all these literally thousands of people

who’ve benefited in one way or another — not to speak of the people who’ve benefited by reading the book — I’m very proud.”

WOULD YOU LIKE TO SAY ANYTHING TO ALL THE LET’S GO EMPLOYEES WHO CAME AFTER YOU? “Thanks! Thanks

for keeping that tradition alive, and for working on something that was one of my proudest achievements in life.”

PRESIDENT

Douglas

Harding

OFFICES

4 Holyoke St.

2 Garden St.

Overcrowded at its 4 Holyoke St. location, HSA doubled its available office space, expanding its territory to

include offices at 12 Garden St., next to the Sheraton Commander Hotel. Warren Berg advanced the idea

for the Information Gathering Service (IGS) an agency that was to use Harvard’s intellectual resources,

both personal and material, to do research for clients. With the successful completion of an historical

research project for Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, MA, the agency was born. Concentrating exclusively

on research, the agency did not dabble in the dark arts of consulting.

Europe by Air inaugurated its Christmas charter-flight program, transporting holiday revelers to the West

Coast, Chicago, and London. The Entertainment agency appeared in its first incarnation, placing student

entertainers in jobs and retaining a 10% booking fee. A new agency produced an appointment calendar,

which listed the phone numbers of local women’s colleges. HSA exceeded $1 million in gross sales.

After the disaster that was the 1962 edition, HSA considered folding Let’s Go entirely, but James Posner

’65 convinced Dusty Burke to give him a crack at turning it around. The precocious Posner hired newlyweds

Brigitta Troy ’61 and Joseph Troy, LLB ’63, to research and edit the 1963 edition while honeymooning

through Europe. Their efforts, BOAC’s sponsorship of the guide, and Richard Copaken’s continued

outstanding artwork allowed Let’s Go to turn a profit for the first time. All in all, a manager, a sales manager,

two editors, and three part-time ad salesmen created the finished product, which was assembled on Oliver

Koppell’s living-room floor. Eleven thousand copies were produced of the first guide to include maps.

LET’S GO TITLES


AGENCIES

• Linen

• Let’s Go

• Catering

• Information Gathering

Service

• Europe by Air

• House Painting




• Europe by Car

• Rings

• Refreshment


• Moving

• Typing

• Summer Calendar

• Stationery

• Birthday Cake

• Fall Blotter

• Novelties

• Magazine


• Newspaper

• Watson Rink

• Summer Blotter

• Fall Programs

• Sampler

• Summer Guide

• Entertainment


• Import

14


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64

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65


AUGUST 31, 1964

Revenue and the number

of agencies hit an all-time high


AUGUST 31, 1965

HSA launches first

fundraising campaign

PRESIDENT

Bradford

Perry

OFFICES

4 Holyoke St.

993A Mass. Ave.

HSA’s offices at 12 Garden St. were demolished to make

way for a parking lot, forcing a move to a new haven. HSA

found refuge halfway to Central Sq. in the basement of

993A Mass. Ave., beneath the offbeat, avant-garde Orson

Welles Cinema.

The number of agencies reached an all-time high (36),

as did gross revenue (once adjusted for inflation): $12.5

million in 2022 dollars. IGS led the pack in growth: after

little more than a year, the agency had contracts worth

over $20,000 and employed nearly 150 students from the

college, business school, law school, and Graduate School

of Arts and Sciences. New agencies on the block included

Furniture, which resold the furniture the university sold to

HSA after purchasing the Ambassador Hotel; Lawn Care,

providing green, grassy goodness to its customers; and Fruit

Basket. Europe by Air changed its name to Charter Flights.

So many genteel Cantabrigians relished the opportunity

to have their parties catered and bartended by erudite

Harvard men and women in their sartorial red frocks that

the Harvard Bartending Course held its first class, training

the next generation of servers for the Catering agency.

The venerated course has ever since taught pupils how to

remain dignified yet uncondescending at parties, how to keep guests in that happy

medium between “sociable” and “wrecked,” and how to make numerous drinks

running the gamut from “scotch, straight up” to a “Polynesian Paralysis.”

PRESIDENT

Lee

Archer

OFFICES

4 Holyoke St.

993A Mass. Ave.

HSA weathered some unpleasantries in the Charter Flights department, as mechanical difficulties and a

university investigation filled the Crimson headlines. After celebrating Christmas and New Year’s, passengers

returning on HSA’s charter flight from San Francisco peered out their windows to see smoke billowing from

one of the jet engines. Since the fuel leak responsible had occurred shortly after takeoff, the plane quickly

turned around and landed safely back in San Francisco. The frazzled passengers had the luxury of returning

to Boston the next day on a four-engine propeller plane. The next month, continued complaints by students

over high flight prices and never-ending Crimson antagonism toward HSA prompted the university to

undertake a thorough investigation of the charter-flight operation. Although there were brief Crimson hopes

that the “HSA behemoth” would be dealt a crushing blow, the university left the investigation “entirely

satisfied with the HSA operation.”

Other highlights included IGS performing well enough to gain national attention with a September article

in Business Week, the death of the first version of the Entertainment agency, and the launch of HSA’s first

fundraising campaign in an attempt to raise $150,000 in capital for new entrepreneurial efforts.

Let’s Go became a real book for 1964, stepping out of the

back pocket and into the backpack. Another student couple

and seven editorial assistants spent the summer in Europe

updating the 1964 edition. As in previous years, the book

was massaged into editorial splendor during the fall and

completed in December. Each of the 20,000 copies printed

cost $1.95.

Thirteen traveling editors. Two hundred and forty pages. A cover price of $1.95. A guide to wine-tasting

in France. Bizarre abstract art. What a book. Yet the 50,000 copies produced were not all sold. So 15,000

libraries across the country received an unsolicited copy — invoice included. Most paid.

LET’S GO TITLES


LET’S GO TITLES

• The Student Guide to Europe

AGENCIES

• Linen

• Let’s Go

• Catering


Service

• Charter Flights

• House Painting




• Europe by Car

• Rings

• Refreshment


• Moving

• Typing

• Summer Calendar

• Stationery

• Birthday Cake

• Fall Blotter

• Novelties

• Magazine


• Newspaper

• Watson Rink

• Summer Blotter

• Fall Programs

• Sampler

• Summer Guide

• Entertainment

• Furniture

• Foodmaking


• Lawn Care

• Import

• Fruit Basket

• Radcliffe Bus

AGENCIES

• Linen

• Let’s Go

• Catering


Service

• Charter Flights

• House Painting




• Europe by Car

• Rings

• Refreshment


• Moving

• Summer Calendar

• Stationery

• Birthday Cake

• Fall Blotter

• Novelties

• Magazine


• Newspaper

• Watson Rink

• Summer Blotter

• Sampler

• Addressing and Mimeograph


• Import


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66

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67

SEPTEMBER 1, 1965–

AUGUST 31, 1966

Andy Tobias promotes

Let’s Go on the Today show


AUGUST 31, 1967

A cash infusion leads

to rampant expansion

PRESIDENT

Charles

Filson

OFFICES

4 Holyoke St.

993A Mass. Ave.

After eight years of splitting his time

between the positions of Director

of Student Employment at Harvard

and General Manager of HSA,

Dusty Burke shifted his focus and

energy exclusively to HSA. President

Charles “Chip” Filson ’66 received

a Rhodes Scholarship and married

Mary Ann Ballmer, a former Charter

Flights employee, the following year.

Perhaps because of his exposure to

thousands of screaming football fans,

Barry Williams ’66, JD ’71, MBA

’71, manager of the Fall Concessions

agency, was elected First Marshal for

the Class of 1966.

Time magazine declared: “Shorter, hipper, and absolutely fresh is Let’s Go.” You know it. In this edition

could be found 260 pages of travel hipness, including new sections on “How to Buy Art in Europe” and

“Hitchhiking in Europe”: “Two girls can get rides safely and easily; so can a single boy. The ideal combination,

in hitchhiking as in life, is one girl and one boy. So if you are a girl, get another one to go with you. If you are

a boy, show this to some girl.”

Burke told the Let’s Go Business Manager, a greenhorn by the name of

Andrew Tobias ’68, MBA ’72, that he had to find a way to make Let’s Go

profitable or the travel guide would meet the axe. In February, Tobias appeared

on the Today show to promote the 50,000 copies that were out and available

by Christmas. The day after, the office was swamped with 180 orders for

books, $2 checks enclosed. Dozens of magazines and newspapers, including

Newsweek, Esquire, Mademoiselle, Seventeen, the London Times, the New York

Times, and the Christian Science Monitor, did features, reviews, and excerpts

on Let’s Go. HSA installed WATS lines to take orders and hired students to

staff a direct-call bookstore campaign. Sales grew by leaps and bounds.

Now-full-time General Manager Dusty Burke.

PRESIDENT

Frederick

Gruber

OFFICES

4 Holyoke St.

993A Mass. Ave.

After approaching a small number of alums and foundations,

HSA’s first capital campaign raised $51,000, was deemed

a success, and was discontinued. This extra money allowed

considerable expansion of several agencies. HSA found itself

able to hire John Merrill ’64, MBA ’70, who had managed

the business as a student, as a full-time manager for IGS.

Merrill more than doubled the agency’s sales, reaching nearly

$100,000 by the end of FY67, and had a retinue capable of

translating 35 different languages. In a fall exhibition game,

the Boston Patriots and Baltimore Colts did battle at Harvard

Stadium, and the Fall Concessions agency was there, helping

the exuberant fans consume 15,000 hot dogs in two and a half

hours.

With the aid of $2,000 in capital, the Entertainment agency

blazed back into the spotlight for a brief two-year stint of

mayhem. Expert in the field of psychedelic lighting, the agency

pushed the limits of consciousness and reality with more than

50 different mind-bending, brain-warping effects, including

one that projected old-time silent movies on weather balloons. With its squad of dancing go-go girls and

flotilla of musical acts, the agency could rock any party to the ground. The agency audaciously auditioned

four rock bands and 50 wannabe go-go girls in the law school dining hall during reading period. The lawyersto-be

did not rock out with glee. Clothed as gangsters and armed with plastic submachine guns, six agency

employees cruised Boston in a 1928 Packard promoting the movie The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Nobody

dared mess with the HSA gangstas in the Boston ’hood. Despite all the fun and hysteria, not enough cash

materialized, and the agency disbanded in 1968.

The sweat and toil of 70 editors and salesmen created a 1967 Let’s Go so excellent that it was pirated by the

Chou Cheng Publishing House in China and sold on the streets of Taipei for 60¢. Its 322 pages of delight

included new special sections on pubs and skiing in the French Alps as well as Italian, French, and Spanish

translations of such useful phrases as “Would you help me with my suntan oil?”, “Can I buy you a drink?”,

“What is your address?”, “Where can we be alone?”, “Scram, I’m not interested!”, “But I’m not like most

Americans!”, and “What a drag!” According to the business-reply reader-response cards inserted in the

books this year (whose results were used to sell ads), 36% of those who used the guide hitchhiked as a means

of transportation.

LET’S GO TITLES

LET’S GO TITLES



AGENCIES

AGENCIES

• Linen

• Let’s Go

• Catering


Service

• Charter Flights

• House Painting




• Europe by Car

• Rings


• Moving

• Summer Calendar

• Stationery

• Birthday Cake

• Fall Blotter

• Novelties

• Magazine


• Newspaper

• Watson Rink

• Summer Blotter

• Addressing

and Mimeograph


• Linen

• Let’s Go

• Catering


Service

• Charter Flights

• House Painting




• Europe by Car

• Rings


• Moving

• Summer Calendar

• Stationery

• Birthday Cake

• Fall Blotter

• Novelties

• Magazine

• Newspaper

• Watson Rink

• Summer Blotter

• Addressing

and Mimeograph


• Entertainment

• Invention Research Group


fy

68


AUGUST 31, 1968

PRESIDENT

Andrew

Tobias

OFFICES

4 Holyoke St.

993A Mass. Ave.

2 Trowbridge St.

LET’S GO TITLES


AGENCIES

From one book to three

Cumulative student earnings since 1957 exceeded $1

million, and annual administrative expenses neared

$60,000. Gross sales approached $1.5 million for the year, a

record mark that remained unbroken for the next 15 years.

Aided by the extra capital gained from the fundraising

campaign, HSA leased office space on the third floor of

2 Trowbridge St. for the growth and expansion of IGS.

HSA’s territory now included three separate locations

scattered about Harvard Sq., a byproduct of its success

but also, increasingly, a logistical challenge. Headquarters

at 4 Holyoke St. experienced a three-inch flood when

a member of the Porcellian Club lost his squash ball in

HSA’s drainage pipe.

Extension School student Sean Finucane started the Computer Programming and Information Service,

renting three IBM keypunch machines and employing students for the stimulating task of punching cards.

An agency to send students on safaris to New Mexico to hunt mountain lions was proposed and quickly

shot down. The Harvard Bartending Course cost $5, Pat Downey ’68 screened a 10-minute film on the “new

morality” to begin the TV Film Projects agency, and the Harvard Band made fun of HSA during halftime

of the Harvard-Lafayette football game. After ridiculing other campus organizations, the commentator

announced over the PA system: “But we really know who runs things around here.” Reverently, the band

formed “H$A” and commenced playing “Goldfinger.” In an era of social activism and a not-universal

appreciation of capitalism, HSA was not exactly beloved, so President Andy Tobias whipped up a 32-page

pamphlet explaining HSA’s non-evil raison d’être and dropped it at every door in the college.

With the help of a fundraising-induced capital infusion, Let’s Go metamorphosed into the Publishing

agency, producing not one work of editorial genius, but three. True to old-school form, HSA printed 65,000

copies of the original Let’s Go, compiled by 20 traveling editors and including a new section entitled, “The

Traveling Girl.” It was joined by 30,000 copies of the finest piece of literature ever produced by the Western

world: Let’s Go II: The Student Guide to Adventure.

Meant to be a guide to the entire world, this first Let’s Go spinoff

guide added a number of new destinations such as Albania,

Cambodia, Central Africa, “Red China,” Ethiopia, Hong Kong,

India, Japan, Kashmir, Laos, Lebanon, Morocco, Poland, and

Turkey. “This book is a thousand ideas for adventure in Europe

and on three other continents,” it proclaimed. More than 20

students roamed the earth, recounted tales of their adventures,

and passed on the how-to travel knowledge they acquired. Features

• The Student Guide

to Adventure

OTHER TITLES

• How to Earn (a Lot of)

Money in College

included “Winetasting,” “The

Trans-Siberian Railway,”

“The Amazon Jungle,” “The

Monaco Grand Prix,” and

“The Modern Troubadour:

Street Singing in Europe on

No Dollars a Day.” The Vietnam chapter aptly observed that the best way to get to Vietnam

was to join the U.S. Army and suggested that those weary of the museum circuit “keep away

from battles and swamps.” Never to be accused of speaking monotonous brochurese, the book

told it like it was: “Just about no one wants to go to Vietnam these days. Most Americans who

do travel there go with the army and leave as soon as they can.”

Publishing’s final piece of the triptych was Tobias’s brainchild, How to Earn (a Lot of) Money in

College. With the visual aid of humorous cartoons by Richard Deutsch ’69, the book detailed

the various means by which college students could reap small fortunes: financial aid, studentrun

small businesses, term-time and summer employment, shooting mutant butterflies, being

morally handicapped, etc.


Andy Tobias | ’68, MBA ’72

JOBS AT HSA: Salesperson, Rings and Student Calendar, FY65; Editorial Assistant, Let’s Go: The Student Guide to Europe, FY66;

Business Manager, Let’s Go, FY66; Manager, Let’s Go, FY67; President, FY68.

WHAT WAS YOUR TRAJECTORY AT HSA? “Freshman year I sold class rings and ads for the Calendar and worked on laying out

that publication. … Then they gave me Let’s Go to run that summer — and had misplaced the editors for Ireland, Switzerland,

and Yugoslavia, so the first thing I had to do was leave the country for the first time in my life and update those sections. …

Basically, it became my life — WAY more interesting and exciting than my major, Slavic Languages and Literatures (which

essentially meant reading War and Peace in English, in the Cliff Notes). … I loved biking up to 993A Mass. Ave. every day and

working crazy hours there — it was my home, really.”

WHAT DID YOU DO AFTER GRADUATION? “I worked at National Student Marketing Corp., whose President wanted me to

do on 2,000 campuses what we had done at Harvard. I explained that after all those years doing it at Harvard, HSA had racked

up a $27,000 deficit — which would be $54 million over 2,000 campuses. He said we’d do it smarter and hired me anyway. …

With six months to go before I could exercise my options (the stock had climbed from $6 when it went public in April 1968,

and $37 when I joined up, to $140), it turned out the ‘creative accounting’ the company was practicing was really ‘fraudulent

accounting.’ The President of the company went to jail… I went off to Harvard Business School and wrote a book about it.”

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH YOUR CAREER SINCE? “New York magazine hired me to write about money and business

when I graduated, and I’ve basically never worked a day in my life since. After New York, I had a column in Esquire, then Playboy,

then Time, then Parade, and wrote some books along the way. In 1999, President Clinton basically installed me for a two-year, $1/

year stint as DNC treasurer — which wound up lasting until February 25, 2017. I made $18.”

• Linen

• Publishing

• Catering


Service

• Charter Flights

• House Painting




• Europe by Car

• Rings

• Computer Programming and

• Information Service


• Moving

• Summer Calendar

• Stationery

• Birthday Cake

• Fall Blotter

• Magazine-Newspaper

• TV Film Projects

• Watson Rink

• Summer Blotter

• Addressing

and Mimeograph

• Entertainment

HOW DID YOU COME TO FOLLOW SUCH AN INTERESTING CAREER PATH? “I was very lucky. Nothing was planned. I

just fell into things, including that first job at HSA. I wasn’t supposed to have one, needed no financial aid; just happened to be

riding my bike the week before freshman year started, saw a friend from high school, and rode with him to this place he was going

(993A Mass. Ave.) for the job that was part of his student-aid package — and got conscripted on the spot. And loved it.”


fy

OFFICES

69


AUGUST 31, 1969

PRESIDENT

Richard

Howe

4 Holyoke St.

993A Mass. Ave.

2 Trowbridge St.

HSA wrestles with the fallout

from its rapid growth

In the euphoria of its 1960s boom, HSA had somehow overextended itself. The number of agencies began to

dwindle. National Information Services, Inc., and Sean Finucane purchased the Computer Programming

and Information Service from HSA for $53,032.09. Due to “persistent cash deficits,” the Student Calendar

agency ceased production at the end of the summer. The spotlight drifted away from the Entertainment

agency. Europe by Car was abandoned after a few logistical snafus. Yet for the second straight fiscal year,

HSA finished in the red. A second year of ambitious book-printing caused Publishing (now the progenitor

of four stately volumes) to lose close to $30,000, while IGS failed to meet sales expectations. The runaway

growth of these two agencies was beginning to call into question whether the “need for increased student

wages had exceeded the limits of student management.” A time of transition loomed nigh.

In March 1969, Dusty Burke released a proposal calling for the creation of a new corporation to house the

ballooning IGS and Publishing agencies. Using full-time professional management of these two agencies,

this new corporation would address the apparent incompatibility of two of HSA’s fundamental goals: the

seeming inability to create the scads of student wages desired using solely student management. With

professional leadership, the two agencies could potentially experience dramatic growth, affording countless

more job opportunities to students. Sparking debate over what constituted the vision of HSA, this proposal,

coupled with the gloomy year-end financial report, would lead to dramatic upheaval within the organization.

As the civil-rights movement of the

late 1960s swept the nation, HSA

undertook several related ventures

of its own. In the TV Film Projects

agency, Pat Downey produced

a second film, a 16mm color

documentary on the difficulties

minorities, especially African-

Americans, faced in obtaining jobs.

With the assistance of a $50,000

grant from the Ford Foundation,

the film was distributed by a firm

in Washington, DC, and shown

to employers and minorities

nationwide. Also in 1969, under the

authorship of Charles J. Hamilton

Jr. ’69, JD ’75, and three other

students (all black), HSA published

College and the Black Student, a 36-

page book whose purpose was “to

inform black people of the expanding opportunities available for

higher education and to explain how to take advantage of these

opportunities.” With the sponsorship of AT&T, 150,000 copies

were distributed throughout the country to predominantly African-

American high schools.

Meanwhile, the student ranks of Publishing swelled to nearly 100

for the 10th-anniversary edition of Let’s Go. Despite the political

and social upheaval being experienced across the country and world,

this edition stated, “Let’s Go is a travel guide, not a sociopolitical

tract.” The revolution would not be on a budget.

The 1969 series also saw Let’s Go publish its first book about its

homeland. Let’s Go: The Student Guide to America was a masterpiece,

with features on “Driving the Alaskan Highway,” “The Great Bike

Trek,” “Climbing Mt. Whitney,” “Lake Tahoe,” and “Trains 1969.”

The “Moving North with the Harvest” feature explained how to get a job on a combine crew in the Great Plains. “The Surf-Guru

Preaches!” section was five full pages of Hawaii’s best surf spots. To research the “New Orleans or Sink” piece, two students

purchased a used 12-foot rubber life raft and floated down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers from Cincinnati to New Orleans. For

“The Modern Wanderer,” it said, “A long hitchhiking journey is romantic travel.” Another section gave tips on how to sneak into

airport employee restaurants around the country. Finally, “if you want to know where the psychedelic scene is at you’d better get

psychedelic,” it stated in its coverage of Haight-Ashbury. “The core of your visit to the Haight should be experiencing the street

scene, easiest to do stoned.” Unfortunately for the world, the USA experiment was not to be repeated the next year.

Publishing Manager Kent Keith ’70 also composed his own book, The Silent Revolution: Dynamic Leadership in Student Council.

The 64-page book was “an attempt to describe to high school student council leaders the personal requirements and techniques for

bringing about the constructive changes they seek for their schools and student councils.” It came filled with enough inspirational

phrases to make anybody’s head burst in an orgy of motivation. “Start doing real things now; start being a real person now. Don’t

get into the habit of waiting for meaning — search it out. If you’re waiting for magic to happen, you’ll be waiting forever. Don’t

wait. Because the world won’t wait for you. You’re alive now. Don’t vegetate. Initiate.” Word up, my man.

LET’S GO TITLES

• The Student Guide to Europe • The Student Guide to America OTHER TITLES

• College and the Black Student

AGENCIES

• The Silent Revolution:

Dynamic Leadership

in Student Council

• Linen

• Publishing

• Catering


Service

• Charter Flights

• House Painting


• Rings


• Moving

• Summer Calendar

• Stationery

• Birthday Cake

• Fall Blotter

• Magazine-Newspaper

• Summer Blotter


A time of transition

In order to survive the turbulent 1970s, HSA was forced to evolve from the organization it

had been in the 1960s. At the beginning of the decade, HSA was a company in chaos trying

to respond to the difficult problems occasioned by its recent expansion. After suffering losses

in FY68 and FY69, the organization attempted to return to a positive net income by reducing

its operations over the following two years. In FY70, faced with the choice of professionalizing

its most bloated agencies or maintaining student ownership over a smaller core organization,

HSA chose to streamline. In FY71, Publishing eliminated all books but Let’s Go: Europe,

the struggling Information Gathering Service was sold, and HSA left its 993A Mass. Ave.

location. The corporation still failed to turn a profit, however, and gross sales and student wages

plummeted. Conditions did not improve in FY72. Charter Flights crumbled before the new

student airfares of major airlines, illness plagued the General Manager, and the Commission

of Inquiry investigated HSA’s operations. Gross sales dropped below $1 million, a mark that

was not again reached until FY81.

Between FY73 and FY75, General Manager Brad Howe ’63, MBA ’69, slowly brought HSA

back from the brink of destruction. Under his guidance, HSA started to operate on a regular

annual schedule with greater administrative oversight. The seasonal businesses of the 1960s

disappeared as all agencies developed into year-round operations. HSA began selecting all new

managers simultaneously in the fall, and their transitions into the office were made smoother

with the institution of the new fiscal year. Administrative control of the agencies tightened as

the company moved into a single location in FY74, and President Michael Cronin ’75, MBA

’77, held weekly manager meetings for the first time in FY75. Although HSA experienced

record losses as these changes occurred, the groundwork for future financial success was laid. In

FY75, freed of its cumbersome Laundry Plant, relieved of its lease obligations at 2 Trowbridge

St., and supported by a university subsidy, HSA ended the year in the black for only the second

time in six years.

This evolution continued in the late ’70s as HSA consistently turned a profit and gradually

reduced the number of agencies to nine, eliminating some and consolidating others. Indicative

of HSA’s shift from an entrepreneurial to a more managerial focus, only one new enterprise

was undertaken between FY74 and FY79. Under the surface, however, big plans were being

laid at Publishing. The Unofficial Guide joined the HSA family, and the signing of an outside

publisher made the permanent expansion of Let’s Go a tantalizing possibility. The first regional

guides appeared toward the end of the decade, kicking off a golden age for the company. After

beginning the era in a state of tremendous flux, HSA approached the Thayer years stable and

profitable.

1970-

1979

24


fy

70

fy

71


MAY 31, 1970

HSA doubles down on

student management

JUNE 1, 1970 –

MAY 31, 1971

Let’s Go finds its first

outside publisher

PRESIDENT

Robert

Lockwood

OFFICES

4 Holyoke St.

993A Mass. Ave.

2 Trowbridge St.o: Europe

• Let’s Go: Caribbean

HSA sat at a crossroads. What was the true embodiment of its mission: a new, professionally run corporation

that would multiply the number of jobs available to students, or a smaller enterprise that was truly studentmanaged

and led? After much infighting and discussion, HSA made several important decisions. The

proposed new corporation was not to be. Publishing returned to student management, pared down its roster

of titles, and began the search for a publisher to handle marketing and distribution of the guides. The Board

of Directors, following the recommendations of its Special Review Committee, eliminated the separate

position of Chairman of the Board so as to mitigate the problems associated with having three separate

administrative heads (President, General Manager, and Chairman). The President assumed the role of

Chairman of the Board. The Board also changed the fiscal year to run from June 1 to May 31, rendering

FY70 a short nine months long.

In the midst of these changes and tumult, Dusty Burke announced his pending retirement. After leaving

his indelible mark on HSA for more than 13 years, Burke officially left his position as General Manager on

July 1, 1970.

The only new agency on the block, Guide Tours, trained students as tour guides and organized walking

tours of Boston for individuals and groups. Altogether, the corporation lost $32,000 on the fiscal year.

FY70 marked the last year in which the entire Publishing operation,

including marketing and distribution, remained completely self-contained

within HSA. British West Indian Airways, “the unheard-of airline,”

sponsored the 200-page Let’s Go: Caribbean, which covered more than

30 islands, cays, and rocks. This one-hit wonder included special sections

on “Hitchhiking Beyond the 12 Mile Limit,” “Surfing,” and “Rum” and

encouraged readers to lose themselves in “an unreal fantasy world of

escapist, sun-and-sea fun and adventure.” In the meantime, Publishing’s

mainstay, Let’s Go: Europe, clocked in at 384 pages. Its solid green cover

easily wins the award for least creative of all time.

PRESIDENT

Charles

Talmage

OFFICES

4 Holyoke St.

993A Mass. Ave.

2 Trowbridge St.

Shortly following Dusty Burke’s departure, Andrew Nelson took the helm as General Manager of HSA. A

former District Traffic Superintendent with the New England Telephone Company and General Manager

of the Boston Fish Market, he had no previous connection with the university. Unfortunately, ill health

plagued him throughout his term, forcing him to remain absent for extended periods. The parent company

of the Orson Welles Cinema, desiring expansion, bought back HSA’s lease at 993A Mass. Ave. In June 1971,

HSA left its far-flung basement abode, reducing its empire to two offices for the first time in four years.

In the wild world of whirlwind agency happenings: after sustaining several recent fiscal losses, IGS was sold

to James Leonard, Vice President of the First National Bank of Chicago, for $15,050. After having completed

nearly 1,500 projects for more than 450 companies while part of HSA, IGS officially left the company on

January 8, 1971, although the operation remained at its 2 Trowbridge St. location until December 31, 1972.

Europe by Car reappeared for a brief test drive after a three-year absence. Birthday Cake lost $450.19, and

the agency axe claimed another victim.

HSA contracted with E.P. Dutton, a New York City publisher, to

publish and distribute the 1971 edition of Let’s Go: Europe. One hundred

and twelve pages fatter and juicier than the previous year, this 496-page

tome of joy poeticized on the saunas of Stockholm: “Your physical

endurance stretched to its sensual limits, you will emerge invigorated,

your blood circulating faster, your skin clean, your pores open, your

body sensitized… Take your girlfriend.” Oh, sweet, sensual Let’s Go.

LET’S GO TITLES

• Europe • Caribbean • Europe

LET’S GO TITLES

AGENCIES

AGENCIES

• Linen

• Publishing

• Catering


Service

• Charter Flights

• House Painting


• Rings


• Moving

• Stationery

• Birthday Cake

• Fall Blotter

• Guide Tours

• Linen

• Publishing

• Catering

• Charter Flights

• House Painting


• Europe by Car

• Rings


• Moving

• Birthday Cake

• Fall Blotter

• Guide Tours


fy

72

JUNE 1, 1971 –

MAY 31, 1972

The hits keep on coming

PRESIDENT

Michael

Ryan

OFFICES

4 Holyoke St.

2 Trowbridge St.

LET’S GO TITLES

What a rough and bruising year for HSA. With General Manager Andrew Nelson forced to take extensive

medical leaves, President Michael Ryan ’72 bore the weight of leadership for the entire company for much of

the year. Several major airlines introduced dramatically low student fares to Europe, dealing HSA’s Charter

Flights agency a crippling blow. Unable to compete with the new rates, the agency had no choice but to

cancel five of its seven charter flights to Europe and to slowly begin the process of changing its business focus.

Considering the fact that Charter Flights provided 25% of corporate overhead, ’twas a grim scene indeed.

HSA promoted a benefit showing of the movie Dealing with claims that the proceeds would go toward

financial aid. The Crimson had a field day when HSA proved unable to provide accurate statistics proving

its claims. An investigation by the Commission of Inquiry ensued when two professors complained about

concerns they had regarding HSA’s effects on academic performance, HSA’s monopoly position, and HSA’s

allocation of financial aid. A general anti-business attitude on campus dampened recruiting.

On a more positive note, the Harvard Bartending Course flung its doors open to the general public for

the first time. Now offered twice a month, the course had previously been used solely as a training ground

for Harvard students dreaming of becoming the brilliant and dashing bartending gurus employed by the

Catering agency. In its inaugural year, the Custodial agency provided janitorial services on a contract basis

to firms and individuals.

Let’s Go: Europe continued its massive weight-gaining campaign, putting on an additional 208 pages to reach

a buff, muscular 704 pages. Editor Franklin “Pancho” Huddle, AM ’70, PhD ’78, used his extensive travel

experience in places like Eastern Europe, Iceland, and North Africa to re-add seven countries that had been

farmed off to the ill-fated Adventure book. Huddle personally wrote or rewrote more than two-thirds of the

guide, and his 19 Researcher-Writers (RWs) took care of the rest, giving it an editorial revamp of a degree

not seen since Let’s Go’s founding. Fifty thousand copies were produced, with Dutton offering a guaranteed

advance on royalties for the first time.

Let’s Go: United States and Canada

reappeared in its second incarnation.

Researched in the field by 40 students

and featuring a cover of two very happy

people hitchhiking across from a Howard

Johnson’s, the 704-page book dished up

gobs of budget glee on all 50 states and

Canada as well as “the dope on dope.”

Sponsored by the Boston Phoenix, HSA

also deployed ravenous students into the field to grub heartily and to compile the 192-page Cheap Eats:

Inexpensive Dining in Greater Boston, a guide to over 100 restaurants in the Boston area.

Courtesy of the College Entrance Examination Board (and $35,000 of its money), 200,000 additional copies

of College and the Black Student came into being for national distribution.


Pancho Huddle | AM ’70, PhD ’78

JOBS AT HSA: Editor, Let’s Go: Europe, FY72; Researcher-Writer, Let’s Go: United States and Canada, FY72.

WHAT’S THE FUNNIEST STORY FROM YOUR TIME AT LET’S GO? “After I worked for Let’s Go, I flew to the Far East. I went

to Nepal, then I went to Europe. I bought, from a guy who was peeing against a wall next to an American Express, a station wagon

— a tiny hatchback, an old but serviceable car. It gradually ran down; the rear axle broke while changing the tire. … The battery was

dead, but the car was very light: you could run alongside it, push it along, then jump in! I was finishing up in Paris, flying back to the

States to be an adviser to Let’s Go: United States. I had two choices: one was to drive the car to the airport, or leave it with the motor

running and the keys in it. I decided to park it near the Sorbonne on a hill. I wrote a note in French: ‘Free car, help yourself!’ Nine

months later, while advising for Let’s Go, [I received] a letter from the French police: ‘Dear Mr. Huddle, your car is accruing storage

charges.’ They had towed it. When I came back to France 12 years later, I remember thinking, ‘Oh, Christ, I wonder if they’ll catch

me [and make me pay].’ But they never did.”

WHERE HAVE YOU WORKED SINCE LET’S GO? “I got my doctorate in Central Asian Languages and Literatures. The graduate

student union struck the university, and I was its leader. My adviser was on the other side of the barricades. After that, I wasn’t

sticking around Harvard. There were lots of worlds to conquer outside academe. I joined the Foreign Service and went from

Kathmandu to Thailand to the Philippines to Burma to India to Canada… I [was appointed U.S. Ambassador to] Tajikistan right

after 9/11; I had a reputation for lots of danger posts. In the Philippines there had been a communist insurgency, and they killed the

guy ahead of me on the list. So I went to Tajikistan to do Secret Squirrel–type stuff.”

WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN UP TO LATELY? “I train special forces on how to think — not how to fight, how to think. ... It’s like laser

tag — they shoot you with electronic guns. I roleplay as an ambassador. I’m teaching them, how do you function in an embassy, in

a sovereign country, not in a place we occupy — a country where you have to play by local rules.”

CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU ON NOVEMBER 23, 1996, ON ETHIOPIAN AIRLINES

FLIGHT 961? “We were hijacked and ran out of fuel. I thought, ‘It’s been a good ride’; I was pleasantly surprised I was taking it

like a man. … [After we crash-landed in the Indian Ocean,] I literally woke up and the plane was floating in the water in front of

me. I was in my seat, bobbing up and down in the water… [It was] the third-closest call of my adult life.”

• Europe • United States and Canada OTHER TITLES

AGENCIES

• Cheap Eats: Inexpensive

Dining in Greater Boston

• Linen

• Publishing

• Catering

• Charter Flights

• Custodial

• House Painting


• Europe by Car

• Rings


• Moving

• Fall Blotter

• Guide Tours

28


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JUNE 1, 1972 –

MAY 31, 1973

PRESIDENT

Arthur

Segel

OFFICES

4 Holyoke St.

2 Trowbridge St.

8 Holyoke St.

A year of changes and challenges

Plans were laid to sell condoms in the Union News Stand after the Supreme Court overturned a

Massachusetts law forbidding the sale of contraceptives. At a price of three for 25¢, HSA’s condoms cost

one-third as much as elsewhere and spared many an amorous freshman the schlep to the nearest pharmacy.

Concerned by the amount of controversy and attention garnered (including protests and articles in the

Boston Globe and Wall Street Journal), the Board of Directors decided to nix the venture in order to “avoid

adverse publicity.”

Still plagued by medical issues, Andrew Nelson bid farewell to HSA and was replaced by Brad Howe as

General Manager. Howe, a former Linen and Europe by Air manager, recent Harvard Business School

graduate, and at the time Harvard Director of Student Employment, took office on February 22, 1973. As

Dusty Burke had years before, Howe split his time between HSA and the Student Employment Office.

In order “to increase operating efficiency and expand or begin new agencies, thereby creating more job

opportunities,” HSA launched its second fundraising campaign. With a rather specific goal of $96,208, the

campaign’s objectives included the purchase of three floor waxers and eight vacuums.

After the university agreed to a 10-year loan of $104,000, HSA severed its 14-year-old relationship with

the Gordon Linen Company, then purchased mountains of linen, the machinery to clean it, and a truck to

deliver it. The Laundry Plant officially came into the HSA fold. Located behind Harvard Stadium at the

corner of Western Ave. and North Harvard St., the plant employed 30 students as foremen and machine

operators.

In order to consolidate operations, HSA leased office space adjacent to its traditional headquarters at 4

Holyoke St. In April 1973, HSA moved those agencies operating at 2 Trowbridge St. and opened shop at 8

Holyoke St., the previous location of a barber shop and the Tiger Eye Jewelry Shop. Travel, Europe by Car,

and Rings moved in the direction of increasing professionalism, all acquiring street-level retail space for the

first time.

A whole lotta shakin’ was going on: in the basement of the Hotel Continental, patrons grooved at HSA’s

Good Life Coffee House on weekend evenings. Catering launched its Wine Appreciation Course, teaching

the hidden arts of oenology. Charter Flights metamorphosed into Travel Services, quickly becoming the

largest distributor of ISICs on the East Coast outside New York City. Brahmin pearl-clutchers called the

police on House Painting employees who were sitting in a circle, half-naked and stoned, on the lawn of a

client’s house in tony Brookline, the door off its hinges but the paint fresh. The beleaguered agency died after

painting itself $15,000 in the red.

Unfortunately, brooding clouds of fiscal troubles darkened the skies. In its worst showing to date, HSA lost

more than $50,000 on the year. Doubts emerged as to HSA’s ability to survive as a self-sustaining enterprise.

The Oenophilist’s Lament

In its historic debut, the thumbpick logo dominated the dark-blue cover of Let’s

Go: Europe. After two years of going large, the guide slimmed down to 672 pages

but added coverage of the USSR. Production ran two months behind schedule as

HSA trusted the Crimson (for the first and last time) to typeset the finished text.

How to Earn (a Lot of) Money in College evolved to become Making It: A Guide

to Student Finances, a 320-page extravaganza of more money-making tips for the

college student. One thousand hardcover and 20,000 paperback copies became

bound reality.

During its eight years of existence (1973–1981), the Wine Appreciation Course influenced countless lives. Here, a personal

account: “I guess it was my roommate’s fault that I accidentally dropped out of Harvard and lived the rest of my life as some

fiendish sybarite, sipping and slipping from cellar to dank, musty cellar. It was he, after all, who first inserted the HSA brochure

into my fall semester coursebook, who told me there was a new concentration in ‘wine tasting’ and, most importantly, who forked

over the 15 bucks I needed to take HSA’s three-night Wine Appreciation Course. How could I not believe? The brochure was so

convincing, the apparent rewards so unbelievable: lectures by a former member of the Oxford Wine Tasting Team that ‘last until

the wine gives out’; answers to valuable questions such as, ‘What does the cork do in the bottle?’; the opportunity to ‘learn not

to be taken by fancy phrases or pretty pictures’; and most devastatingly, I could ‘receive an 8 by 10 inch diploma, together with

a wallet-sized Master Oenologist identification card.’ The card, still besmirched with the scarlet ‘H,’ ablaze with the mythical

‘HSA,’ curled and sweaty with an oaky, buttery bouquet, still hints at who I once was. Better, though, it bellows who I am today,

to my classmates and to the world: ‘In Vino, Veritas! In Veritas, Vino!’”

LET’S GO TITLES

• Europe

AGENCIES

OTHER TITLES

• Making It: A Guide

to Student Finances

• Linen/Laundry Plant

• Publishing

• Catering

• Travel Services

• Custodial

• House Painting


• Europe by Car

• Rings


• Moving

• Fall Blotter

• Coffee House


fy

74

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75

JUNE 1, 1973 –

JANUARY 31, 1974

HSA endures its biggest loss to date

FEBRUARY 1, 1974 –

JANUARY 31, 1975

Outside benefactors

provide financial relief

In order to achieve a smoother managerial transition and avoid the logistical headaches associated with the

rapid departure of managers at the end of their terms in May, the Board of Directors voted in the spring of

1973 to shift the fiscal year four months. After a short, eight-month FY74, FY75 heralded the inception of

the current fiscal year, running from February 1 until January 31 of the following year.

In four of the previous five years, no profit had been realized. In the previous two years, around $120,000

were lost. HSAers openly questioned whether the enterprise should go on, and the Board of Directors

seriously considered dissolving the corporation. Into these dire straits of doubt strode the university, bringer

of light and loans.

PRESIDENT

Paul

Frohardt

OFFICES

4 Holyoke St.

2 Trowbridge St.

8 Holyoke St.

Agency thrills and chills: Boston Office Flowers burst into the ranks of the less colorful and fragrant agencies,

offering a complete floral service to the Boston and Cambridge business and professional community.

Purchased from a Harvard Business School student for $2,000, the agency filled many a customer’s day with

the heady aroma of florid blossoms. The price of the Harvard Bartending Course crept up to $15, although

the 75–90 people attending each class didn’t seem to mind (or remember). Following the success of the Wine

Appreciation Course, Instructional Services brought HSA’s two courses of educational intoxication under

the management of a separate agency. Travel once again sent planeloads of elated holiday revelers home on

its resurrected Christmas charter flights. Students fervently searching for typewriters, TVs, and calculators

rejoiced as the Leasing agency appeared on the scene, dealing the goods on a term-time rental basis.

HSA’s second fundraising campaign raised $40,000, allowing the purchase of some equipment and partially

mitigating operating costs. However, HSA remained saddled with 2 Trowbridge St.’s annual rent of $23,000,

even as the office sat empty for most of the fiscal year. That sunk cost, moving and renovation expenses for

8 Holyoke St., and assorted agency difficulties resulted in a continued deluge of red ink. The very viability

of HSA came into question as the corporation faced a year-end deficit of $68,017, exceeding the record loss

from the previous year.

The cover of Let’s Go: Europe blushed red, page count remained constant, and another voracious horde of

students devoured Boston for the second edition of Cheap Eats. Perhaps to atone for its typesetting fiasco,

the Crimson ran a glowing review that declared Let’s Go superior to Frommer’s.

PRESIDENT

Michael

Cronin

OFFICES

4 Holyoke St.

2 Trowbridge St.

8 Holyoke St.

As early as February, the Board of Directors had broached the idea of approaching the university for fiscal

relief. On July 31, General Manager Brad Howe formally asked the university for a loan. On August 22,

HSA received formal notice from Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Henry Rosovsky, PhD ’59, of a

two-year, $60,000 subsidy to be granted in exchange for a review of HSA’s annual budget and a universityselected

Board appointment.

By this time, HSA had also realized that the difficulties of successfully operating the Laundry Plant far

outweighed the minimal contribution to corporate overhead it provided. Harvard Vice President for

Administration Stephen Hall, MDiv ’88, a former Board member whose support and encouragement

initially made the Laundry Plant a reality, generously agreed to purchase the entire operation back from

HSA for the original amount of $104,000, $40,000 more than its depreciated value. With the Laundry

Plant washed up, HSA once again reduced its Linen operations to distribution and delivery.

At the end of the summer, HSA’s annual $23,000 obligation for its 2 Trowbridge St. location dropped to

$5,000 when Upper Story Furniture Co., the tenant occupying the bottom two floors of the building, finally

decided to live up to its name and agreed to lease HSA’s office as warehouse space. This, coupled with the

university’s assistance, allowed HSA to have a positive net income of nearly $10,000 for the year.

President Michael Cronin instituted another important reform when he began requiring weekly manager

meetings, beginning to exercise the greater oversight that came with physical and operational consolidation.

Custodial swept up and devoured the Moving agency, the Harvard Bartending Course had enrollments

in excess of 120 aspiring drinkers and drink-makers, and most of the management team spent a summer

weekend at Howe’s house in Maine.

“Let’s Go: The Student Guide to Europe” transformed

into “Let’s Go: The Budget Guide to Europe” as those

who had worshipped the early guides entered middle

age and Let’s Go increasingly enticed the entire budgetconscious

universe.

LET’S GO TITLES

• Europe

AGENCIES


• Publishing

• Catering

• Travel

OTHER TITLES



• Custodial


• Europe by Car

• Rings


• Moving

• Instructional Services

• Boston Office Flowers

• Leasing

LET’S GO TITLES

• Europe

AGENCIES


• Publishing

• Catering

As patriotic fervor slowly bubbled and frothed within

the hearts of America in anticipation of the approaching

bicentennial, HSA secured its own place in the

incipient flag-waving hysteria by acquiring the rights

to produce Boston: The Official Bicentennial Guidebook.

Penned over the summer at 2 Trowbridge St., this 320-

page doctrine for the free and independent contributed mightily to the spirit of America and the coffers of

HSA, despite the curious fact that the words “Harvard Student Agencies” appeared nowhere in the book.

OTHER TITLES

• Boston: The Official

Bicentennial Guidebook

• Travel

• Custodial


• Rings




• Leasing



Deval Patrick | ’78, JD ’82

JOBS AT HSA: Bartender, Catering, starting in FY75; Clerk, HSA Board of Directors, elected FY75.

JOBS SINCE HSA: Worked as an attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and as partner at the law firm Hill & Barlow;

appointed U.S. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in 1994; worked as General Counsel for Texaco and the Coca-Cola

Company; served as Governor of Massachusetts 2007–2015, only the second African-American elected Governor of any state; ran for

President in 2020.

WHAT WAS YOUR ROLE AT HSA? “All the cool kids were working for Let’s Go or the Travel agency. I did the bartending. It was great

money to help pay for school and my incidentals, and it was really great training in dealing with lots of different people, different styles...

You add to that liquor, and it’s an interesting brew.”

CAN YOU TELL US SOME STORIES ABOUT WORKING AT HSA? “Bartenders will tell you this: people say things to bartenders that

they wouldn’t say normally. When you’re 18, 19, 20 years old and you’re hearing these stories — some of them very funny, some of them

very tragic, sometimes compelling, always intimate — you’re learning how to manage that, how to keep your professionalism but also be

empathetic.”

HOW HAVE THE SKILLS YOU LEARNED AT HSA HELPED YOU IN YOUR CAREER? “I can still mix a great gin and tonic! But I think

most importantly… the interaction with a wide variety of different kinds of people, with wildly varying states of mind and mood, and

keeping your composure was pretty useful later on in politics.”

fy

FEBRUARY 1, 1975–

JANUARY 31, 1976

OFFICES

76

PRESIDENT

Kendall

Powell

4 Holyoke St.

8 Holyoke St.

The Unofficial Guide and Let’s Go:

Britain & Ireland herald a new era

Two years after assuming the position of General Manager, Brad Howe announced his pending resignation,

effective July 1. To replace him, HSA hired Robert Maxcy at the end of May. He promptly resigned after

seven days of work. After this underwhelming performance, HSA chose Daniel Del Vecchio as the next

General Manager. A former Director of Program Resources at Boston University with a strong accounting

and business background, Del Vecchio successfully weathered his first seven days in office without incident.

HSA gave birth to no new agencies, nor did it obliterate any. Instructional Services showed 60 students

swingin’ steps in its first ballroom-dancing course.

The first Unofficial Guide to Life at Harvard! No longer did Harvard students languish in ignorance.

Previously published by the Harvard Graduate Student Council exclusively for graduate students, HSA’s

144-page Unofficial Guide provided the entire campus with the unofficial word of truth about the strange,

wonderful, and frightening reality in which it was enmeshed. Although new to HSA, it was The Unofficial

Guide’s 24th edition. Meanwhile, another famished mob of students consumed Boston for the final time to

create the third edition of Cheap Eats.

Let’s Go: Europe remained much the same, although the cover turned blue again. Over dinner in the dining

hall one night, Publishing Manager William Slivka ’76, MBA ’78, and President Kendall Powell ’76 mused

about whether a guide to all of Europe was too unwieldy for travelers just going to one or two countries.

They tapped the previous year’s Editor, Paul K. Rowe ’76, JD ’79, to take on a new challenge: Let’s Go’s first

guide to a single destination, Let’s Go: Britain & Ireland. Permanent expansion of the series had commenced.

LET’S GO TITLES

• Europe • Britain & Ireland OTHER TITLES

AGENCIES

• The Unofficial Guide to Life

at Harvard



• Linen

• Publishing

• Catering

• Travel

• Custodial


• Rings




• Leasing

34


fy

77


Ken Powell | ’76

JOBS AT HSA: Laundry Plant worker, Linen/Laundry Plant, FY73 – FY74; Manager, Linen/Laundry Plant, FY75; President, FY76.

JOBS SINCE HSA: After graduating from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, joined General Mills in 1979; managed cereal and

yogurt brands, then spent 12 years working abroad, first in the UK and then in Switzerland; helped launch Cereal Partners Worldwide,

a joint venture between General Mills and Nestlé, in 1990, which grew into a multi-billion-dollar company under his leadership; elected

President and COO of General Mills in 2006; elected CEO in 2007; elected Chairman of the Board in 2008; retired in 2017.

CAN YOU DESCRIBE YOUR PATH FROM HSA TO GENERAL MILLS? “This was one of the things that came out of HSA: I was pretty

sure based on that experience that I was interested in general management. I didn’t pursue a career in finance or consulting; I wanted to

run something. I applied to pharmaceutical companies — places I thought I would get a career early — but decided to come to General

Mills.”

HOW DID YOU WORK YOUR WAY UP TO CEO? “I don’t know why the board gave me the job, to be honest! General Mills had been

hugely successful in North America, but most of our competitors were pretty global. There was a strong desire to expand our businesses

internationally. I had that experience through [Cereal Partners Worldwide]. Today, a third of our revenue comes from outside the U.S.,

and half of our employees live outside the U.S.”

WHAT WAS THE HIGHLIGHT OF YOUR TIME AT HSA? “The highlight of my experience at HSA was I met my wife there! Her name

is Wendy Bennett ’76; she worked in the Publishing division.”

WHAT DID YOU TAKE AWAY FROM YOUR EXPERIENCE AT HSA? “A couple things: first, I was a biology major and a premed guy, so

the first thing about HSA was it exposed me to something completely different. It really helped me realize I wanted to pursue a career in

business. … Another thing about it, thinking back, was meeting people like Brad Howe…people who were so committed to the university

and trying to get this thing off the ground for reasons beyond wanting to run a business. It was inspirational to meet people like that. We

all want to have careers where we can give back, and they were the first people I met who did that in spades.”


JANUARY 31, 1977

PRESIDENT

Stephen

Pollack

OFFICES

4 Holyoke St.

8 Holyoke St.

Hail to Hail and Farewell

On March 8, the first annual Hail and Farewell

banquet occurred at the Signet Society, honoring

the outgoing management team and welcoming

the next. Boston Office Flowers withered and

died. Travel continued its Christmas charterflight

program and sent six buses to New York

City over Thanksgiving for homebound lovers of

turkey. The Internal Revenue Service investigated

HSA’s nonprofit status — yet again — and left

it intact.

Let’s Go: Britain & Ireland blew away Dutton’s

sales expectations and left them drooling for

more. Let’s Go: Europe returned to a red cover and

General Manager Dan Del Vecchio

a hefty 704 pages. Dutton, thrilled by the ever-increasing success of Let’s Go, requested the use of the Let’s

Go logo on guides to Asia and Latin America compiled by researchers from the Council on International

Educational Exchange. The Board of Directors vetoed the proposal. With the assistance of a university

grant, The Unofficial Guide sped outward from Cambridge at the end of the summer, landing in the eager

hands of those needy and anxious incoming freshmen.

LET’S GO TITLES

• Europe

AGENCIES

OTHER TITLES


at Harvard

• Linen

• Publishing

• Catering

• Travel

• Custodial


• Rings




• Leasing

36


fy

78

fy

79


JANUARY 31, 1978

The agency count drops to nine


JANUARY 31, 1979

HSA prepares for a

move to Harvard Yard

The number of agencies reached an all-time low of nine. A major consolidation of business operations

occurred with the genesis of Direct Sales, which enveloped Refrigerator Rental, Rings, and Leasing. All

clerical services performed by HSA rallied together beneath the banner of the new Student Power agency.

The new “super saver” airfares of major airlines grinched Travel’s Christmas charter-flight program, stealing

that bit of HSA’s business for good.

Agency mania: the new Student Power agency winced under the mighty weight of its name and shrieked SOS

(Student Office Services) for the year. Instructional Services educated students in the delicate intricacies

of disco, the subtle refreshment of jazz, and the swingin’ elegance of ballroom dancing. The privilege of

taking the Harvard Bartending Course exacted $25 and one’s sobriety. The blue Linen van barreled around

Somerville looking for wine after the Wine Appreciation Course unexpectedly ran out partway through.

PRESIDENT

John

Simon Jr.

The lease for HSA’s Holyoke St. sanctuary was to expire in 1978, prompting a search for a new subterranean

home. The serene porcelain gleam belied its role as a vomiter of filth. Although normally quite placid and

tame, the toilets of 4 Holyoke St. could back up and transform without warning into a drooling, putrid

monster capable of dribbling raw sewage from its maw. The beast emerged in 1967 when a Porcellian Club

squash ball clogged its most vital artery, the drainage pipe. They tried to banish the demon in 1973 by

installing a stop valve in the sewerage line. They failed. Periodically awakened by heavy rain, the monstrosity

flared into putrescent action for its most horrific act in August 1977. The capacity of its defective drainpipe

exceeded by the runoff from a heavy storm, the vile abomination disgorged from its craw a sea of sewage so

voluminous that the entire basement floor smothered beneath two inches of squalor. City health officials

ordered an immediate evacuation of the premises until the rank terror might be sanitized.

PRESIDENT

Michael

Cohrs

In considering new locations, HSA briefly contemplated a move to South House — all the way up in the

Quad?! — before reaching an agreement with the university to occupy a large portion of the basement

of Thayer Hall. The initial lease agreement called for payments of $800 per month until the $50,000 in

basement renovations had been paid off, with HSA only responsible afterward for the expenses incurred by

its occupancy of the space. With a new location secure, HSA prepared to leap into the Thayer years.

Let’s Go: Italy joined the posse to make a gang of four. No upstart regional guide challenged the 752-page

blue goliath of Let’s Go: Europe for pack supremacy, however. The Unofficial Guide suffered through creativity

problems in the cover department.

OFFICES

OFFICES

4 Holyoke St.

4 Holyoke St.

8 Holyoke St.

8 Holyoke St.

Let’s Go: France swore allegiance and swelled

Publishing’s ranks. With a back cover devoid

of advertisement for the first time, the noworange

Let’s Go: Europe ordered readers

to “take us along [or suffer through an

unspeakable agony of longing and desire for

the book you left behind].” The expanding

156-page Unofficial Guide posed the opening

question, “Who flew home to Kansas with a

tarantula packed in an animal crackers box?”

before suggesting that the reader “please send

all corrections, suggestions, and complaints to

the Editor. Roses, the definitive disco section,

and poison pen letters will also not be refused.”

LET’S GO TITLES

LET’S GO TITLES

• Europe • Britain & Ireland • France OTHER TITLES


at Harvard

• Europe

• Britain & Ireland

• France

• Italy

OTHER TITLES


at Harvard

AGENCIES

AGENCIES

• Linen

• Publishing

• Catering

• Travel

• Custodial

• Direct Sales



• Student Power

• Linen

• Publishing

• Catering

• Travel

• Custodial

• Direct Sales

• Student Office Services




The Thayer years

On paper, not much changed during HSA’s years in the basement of Thayer Hall. Over 14

years, only four new businesses were begun that did not directly evolve from existing agencies.

Instead, HSA honed its 10 or so core agencies to managerial perfection. With the addition of

the management retreat, the annual schedule of events that had emerged during the 1970s was

honed to precise regularity.

The face of HSA did, however, change during this period — literally. Lynne Liakos ’82, MBA

’86, became the first woman elected HSA President in FY82, Herminio Llevat ’84, MBA ’88,

became the first President of color in FY84, and Vivian Hunt ’89, MBA ’95, became the first

black President in FY89. In addition, five consecutive female Presidents ruled HSA from FY86

through FY90, and Hope Spruance became the first female General Manager.

Throughout the 1980s, there was increased emphasis on the bottom line, and HSA continued

to prosper financially. When Spruance departed in 1990, she left the corporation with a surplus

of $370,000. Spruance exercised considerable control over HSA to achieve this end, however,

inspiring no small amount of internal student dissent. The push for more student power in

FY89 was in many ways a backlash against this increasing professional control. Students also

handled more of the day-to-day tasks of running the business with the appointment of the first

Vice President in FY92.

Nonetheless, revenue increased from $925,000 to $2.9 million between FY80 and FY93, led

primarily by the growth of Publishing. In one of the landmark events of this period, Let’s Go

signed with St. Martin’s Press in FY82, and Publishing spawned a new ad-sales agency that

filled the guides with glossy adverts. Readership soared from 200,000 in 1983 to 3.5 million

in 1993. Accelerated by the computerization of the editing process, by FY93 the series had

grown from six guides to 17. That year, the Board of Directors voted to create Let’s Go, Inc., a

wholly owned, for-profit subsidiary of HSA, to house its most profitable division. Yet as HSA

prepared to leave its basement home in spring 1993, even more dramatic expansion loomed on

the horizon.

1980-

1993

40


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80

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81


JANUARY 31, 1980

HSA employs a record 1,400 students


JANUARY 31, 1981

The birth of Harvard Distribution

After more than 20 years of residence, HSA bid adieu to its headquarters at 4 Holyoke St. and moved its

entire operation into the basement of Thayer Hall on February 27, 1979. With its prime location in the

middle of Harvard Yard, HSA was to call this new underground dominion home for the next 14 years.

Harvard Facilities Maintenance occupied a portion of the basement as well and initially kept HSA company.

Maura Gorman assumed the new role of Operations Manager, supplementing the existent professional

staff of General Manager and Business Manager. Student Office Services, the agency formerly known as

Student Power, changed its name one final time to Harvard Student Resources (HSR). The name stuck

to the expanding temporary-services agency. With its help, HSA employed 1,401 students in FY80 — an

all-time high.

HSR gave rise to Harvard Distribution Services, which delivered precious advertisements to student suites

throughout campus. It now cost $30 to become educationally inebriated in the Harvard Bartending Course.

George Alex ’81 campaigned for Treasurer with the slogan, “My name is really short. I can sign checks really

fast.” C. Mark Battey ’81 broke a streak of five of the last six HSA Presidents attending Harvard Business

School by matriculating at — gasp! — Stanford. Revenues returned to the $1 million mark.

THE MASTERS OF MIXOLOGY

PRESIDENT

David

Cohen

OFFICE

PRESIDENT

Mark

Battey

OFFICE

Skilled. Daring. Omnipotent. They are the graduates of the Harvard Bartending Course. They

are the Masters of Mixology. Privileged few were the early Masters, for until 1971 naught but the

students of Harvard could achieve salvation from cocktails shoddy and poor and earn the right to

enter the hallowed ranks of HSA Catering employees. 1971: the course opened to the general public,

the dawn of a new era of Masters. The masses poured in. Ninety to 120 at a time paid homage to the

great god of intoxication. In lab sessions with real liquor they did revel. Inebriated, the new Masters

departed. 1986: the arrival of the demon of liquor liability, artificial booze, a sober generation of

Masters. Today, over 50,000 roam the earth. Join us if you dare.

Thayer Hall B

Thayer Hall B

The gang of four consolidated its hold on editorial

brilliance, led by the turquoise Let’s Go: Europe,

declared for the first time by the Boston Globe to be

“the Bible of the budget traveler.” The Unofficial Guide

featured numerous archaic engravings as illustrations,

including a depiction of surgery by saw and axe.

An early Master.

A ’70s Master.

And then there were six. The sun-soaked threesome of Let’s Go: Greece, Israel & Egypt joined the third

incarnation of Let’s Go: USA in expanding the series. In Let’s Go’s final year with Dutton, Let’s Go: Europe

came sheathed in a heinous blue and brown color combo. The Unofficial Guide featured photographs from

the 1920 Harvard class album.

LET’S GO TITLES

LET’S GO TITLES

• Europe

AGENCIES


• France

• Italy

OTHER TITLES


at Harvard

• Europe

AGENCIES


• France

• Italy

• USA

• Greece, Israel & Egypt

OTHER TITLES


at Harvard

• Linen

• Publishing

• Catering

• Travel

• Custodial

• Direct Sales

• Harvard Student Resources



• Linen

• Publishing

• Catering

• Travel

• Custodial

• Direct Sales


• Freshman Union


• Harvard Distribution

Services


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82

fy


JANUARY 31, 1982

The first female President of HSA

83


JANUARY 31, 1983

A quarter-century of HSA

HSA elected its first female President. Lynne Liakos, the 25th President of HSA, gained considerable

recognition for her accomplishments, was featured as one of the “Top 10 College Women” in Glamour, and

appeared on Good Morning America.

In commemoration of its 25th anniversary, HSA celebrated with symposia,

tours, tailgates, and a roast-beef dinner at the Hyatt Regency. Nearly 150 past

and present members of HSA turned out for the merriment.

44

PRESIDENT

Lynne

Liakos

OFFICE

Thayer Hall B

LET’S GO TITLES

• Europe

AGENCIES

• Linen

• Publishing

• Catering

This is the year Facilities Maintenance vacated its portion of the Thayer cellar, allowing HSA to spread out

and to inhabit the entire basement. This is the first year of computerization at HSA. This is the year current

assets first exceeded current liabilities. This is the year Distribution offered a courier service. This is the year

the Advertising agency was formed to produce eye-catching and mouthwatering ads for HSA and outside

clients. This is FY82. Turn it up to 11!

HSA, desiring more aggressive expansion of the Let’s Go series, left E.P. Dutton and signed on with St.

Martin’s Press. As an immediate result, the hitchhiking thumb logo migrated into the “o” of “Let’s Go” and

no longer dominated the cover. Let’s Go: Europe turned orange and got 96 pages fatter, reaching a corpulent

830 pages. The Unofficial Guide quoted Mark Twain in its Unofficial Welcome: “I never let my schooling

interfere with my education.”


Lynne Liakos O’Connor | ’82, MBA ’86

JOBS AT HSA: Assistant Manager, Harvard Distribution Services, FY81; Manager, Publishing, FY81; President, FY82.

JOBS SINCE HSA: Worked in consulting and marketing for 35 years (“while I like doing hands-on business, I had a real

passion for marketing”). Started at the consulting firm Temple, Barker and Sloan, which was eventually bought by Oliver

Wyman, where she rose to Partner; in 2001, transitioned to Lippincott, “a smaller boutique consultancy”; in 2011, joined

Vistaprint as Senior Director of Client and Brand Strategy; from 2014 to 2016, established a new marketing practice at

Forrester Research; in 2017, became Associate Vice President of Marketing at Curriculum Associates.

WHAT ARE YOU UP TO THESE DAYS? “I’m doing an encore career in a totally different area now. Over the course of

the last five years, I’ve been very involved in my church community; I [just completed] a master of arts in ministry. … I’m

leading as Director of Mission Growth for Women of Grace. It’s a new role that they created.”

WHAT LESSONS DID YOU LEARN FROM HSA? “You want to be aggressive in developing new revenue streams but really

doing an honest assessment of what is our sweet spot. Sometimes there’s money to be made, but it’s not really the best fit

for us.”

WHAT ADVICE DO YOU HAVE FOR CURRENT STUDENTS? “I think it’s really important [to strike] a balance between

what’s good for business this year and setting us up for success in future years. … Trying to have a good year is important,

but you’re also trying to set yourself up for future success.”


• France

• Travel

• Custodial

• Direct Sales

• Italy

• USA



• Freshman Union


OTHER TITLES


at Harvard


Services

• Advertising

PRESIDENT

Michael

O’Brien

OFFICE

Thayer Hall B

LET’S GO TITLES

• Europe

AGENCIES

• Linen

• Publishing

• Catering

The first-ever HSA history book began, “Walk into the offices of Harvard

Student Agencies, Inc., in the basement of Thayer Hall and you’ll be struck

by a weird melange of the corporate and the bohemian. The whirr of airconditioning,

the bright wall-to-wall carpeting, the rows of IBM Selectrics

ranged on new office furniture — none of these would turn heads at IBM or

General Mills. But the sooty brick walls, the dripping pipes, and the occasional

thump and drone of a rock band practicing in one of the dorm rooms upstairs

make it clear that you’re not exactly in the warm belly of the Fortune 500. For

every employee with a suit and new shoes, there are others groggily stumbling

about in misbuttoned flannel shirts, or panting in running clothes. The effect is

an atmosphere somewhere between a New York highrise and a cave dwelling.”


• France

• Travel

• Custodial

• Direct Sales

Let’s Go: Europe retained the exact

same cover (front and back) as the

previous year and warned its readers,

“If Let’s Go is your ‘bible,’ don’t be a

fundamentalist in interpreting it.”

Let’s Go: USA sold around 30,000

copies, while overall sales topped

200,000 and raked in $2.7 million

— but HSA netted only about

$165,000 from that. The Unofficial

Guide cracked the 200-page mark

for the first time, sported the redblue-brown

cover synergy of death,

and was also made available in a

Graduate School Edition.

Responsible for the sale of

advertisements in The Unofficial

Guide and the Let’s Go series,

Sales Group surfaced as its own

agency after having been a part of

Publishing for 22 years.

• Italy

• USA



• Union Services


OTHER TITLES


at Harvard


Services

• Advertising

• Sales Group


fy

84


Pico Iyer | AM ’80

JOBS AT HSA: Researcher-Writer, Let’s Go: Europe, FY82 and FY83.

WHAT DO YOU DO FOR A CAREER? “I’m a full-time writer, as I have been since 1986, trying to support my loved ones by my pen

alone. Although most of my writing, and my interest, is in cultural life and the inner world, the fact that I began by writing about

travels (everywhere from North Korea to Paraguay and Ethiopia to Tibet) means that I am often taken to be a travel writer, and the

training for that, my only real qualification, I owe entirely to Let’s Go.”

WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR FONDEST MEMORIES OF LET’S GO? “I got to be in Rome the night Italy won the World Cup and

found myself up all night as the streets filled with people ’til they became impassable, and I felt myself caught up in a kind of Carnival

that was impromptu, extravagant, and had the excitement of something that might never get repeated; I got to taste the Camargue and

the sunlit towns of the French Riviera, places that gleam in the imagination but that I haven’t had the chance to revisit in the past 35

years; I met a stranger in a castle town in France, staying in some broken hostel, and, though we were both straight males, we spent a

rapturous 36 hours together walking up and down the narrow streets and talking about D.H. Lawrence and much else…

“Most radiant of all, though, was the month I spent in Greece, in often deserted areas, waking up at first light every morning in a

simple hotel, traveling by bus along the coast to some quiet town, all whitewashed churches and donkey paths, and then devouring

Maugham’s Of Human Bondage as I took a simple lunch — Greek salad and Coke — in the sun. I brought my girlfriend over at the

end of my trip to share some days in a tiny hotel next to the harbor in Ithaca; I spent three days in a remote cove in Kefalonia, sleeping

in a taverna overlooking the blue-green waters; I grew a beard, as almost never before or since, and felt cleaned out and lifted up by the

simple, almost monastic routine I got to observe in those largely unvisited areas where, for days on end, I’d never meet another soul

and could give myself up to the elemental intensity of rock, sun, and water.”

WHERE HAVE YOU WORKED SINCE? “I think my first summer at Let’s Go helped me, in a small way, get a job at Time, by suggesting

to the person who interviewed me that I could complete sentences and meet deadlines, and so I joined the magazine, as a writer in

New York City, almost as soon as my second Let’s Go summer was over (and corrected my Let’s Go proofs at a Time magazine desk).

“I worked for four years at Time as a writer on world affairs and as a critic (of books, plays, and TV) and then moved to Japan to write

books, though continuing to write essays for the back page of Time, and to contribute constantly, as I still do, 31 years on, to the New

York Times, Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, Granta, Vanity Fair, and many, many others.

“My first three books actually were released as travel books, and I worked for 27 years as a Contributing Editor to Condé Nast Traveler,

while also regularly writing on travel for National Geographic, Travel & Leisure, National Geographic Traveler, the Financial Times, and

dozens of others.”


JANUARY 31, 1984

PRESIDENT

Herminio

Llevat

OFFICE

Thayer Hall B

The first Hispanic President of HSA

In the 1960s, Herminio Llevat’s family fled communist Cuba with

only two suitcases and the clothes on their backs. In FY84, he became

HSA’s first Hispanic President. Indeed, he was the first President to be

anything other than white — another barrier broken for the company.

After nearly eight years, Dan Del Vecchio left the entrepreneurs of

HSA to become one himself. The General Manager departed in May

1983 to start his own business. Though the Crimson groused that it had

come at the cost of decreased student entrepreneurship, Del Vecchio

brought stability and prudence to HSA and its operations, steering the

corporation to a profit in every year of his tenure. Over the summer,

Hope Spruance.

HSA selected Hope Spruance to succeed him. A former manager of

a multi-million-dollar student center at Cornell, she took office in September. With but one course to its

name, Instructional Services got the old heave-ho. The Harvard Bartending Course subsequently found a

new home in HSR.

Publishing Manager Linda Haverty, AM ’82,

PhD ’89, masterminded Let’s Go’s expansion

to nine titles. The new kids rumbled into

town with attitude: Let’s Go: Spain, Portugal

& Morocco and Let’s Go: California & the

Pacific Northwest strutted their stuff before

888-page big daddy Europe while Let’s Go:

Greece, Israel & Egypt was hacked into two

quivering pieces. Let’s Go was pulled into

the world of international espionage for a

few swelteringly suave summer days when an

RW was arrested in Morocco on suspicion of

being a spy. Meanwhile, the gargantuan can

of Budweiser Light that graced the back cover

of The Unofficial Guide implored, “Bring out

your best, Harvard.”

HOW HAS LET’S GO HELPED YOU IN YOUR CAREER? “I often volunteer, unsolicited, that Let’s Go has really allowed me to do

just about everything that I’ve done in my life so far. …As soon as I joined Time, I realized what a great training it had been in learning

to write quickly, to gather information and to process it and never to forget about the reader at the other end, in search of practical

information (something I’d never considered when I was in grad school).

“My third year at Time, when I was 28, I took a six-month leave of absence in order to spend three months traveling, at high speed,

across 10 countries in Asia and then four months writing up my travels into what would become my first book, Video Night in

Kathmandu. I’m sure I could never have conceived of such a plan, let alone begun to execute it, without Let’s Go.”

LET’S GO TITLES

• Europe


• France

AGENCIES

• Linen

• Publishing

• Catering

• Italy

• USA

• Greece

• Travel

• Direct Sales


• Israel & Egypt

• California & the Pacific

Northwest

• Spain, Portugal & Morocco

• Union


Services

OTHER TITLES


at Harvard

• Advertising

• Sales Group


fy


JANUARY 31, 1985

OFFICE

85

PRESIDENT

Louis

Morsberger

Thayer Hall B

Let’s Go hits 10 titles

with Let’s Go: Mexico

In her first full year at HSA, Hope Spruance

inaugurated the annual retreat for the new

management teams. Held at the transition of the

fiscal year, the event allowed for team bonding and

education. Travel introduced its new line of Let’s

Go luggage to would-be travelers hankering for a

super fly pack. Catering started a new celebrations

service, delivering balloons and care packages. The

Distribution delivery crew consisted of four earlyrising

senior athletes who delighted in speeding

around campus at 5am in the HSA van launching

bundles of the Harvard Independent through the

placid morning air. Each time, the faculty and

administrators would complain to HSA; each time,

the quartet were discharged from their duties; each

time, they were hired back as the only students willing

to wake up so early.

Begun the previous year, the Let’s Go: Mexico project reached its climax by becoming the 10th member of

the Let’s Go family. The team’s first foray into budget travel outside the U.S. and Europe, the totally-fromscratch

book sold more copies than any previous Let’s Go first edition. Serieswide, Let’s Go employed 36

editorial and research staffers, chosen from an applicant pool of over 100 who had each filled out a sevenpage

job application. RWs undertook itineraries of eight to 11 weeks and, for the first time, were paid with

daily stipends that varied by the destination.

Having graduated more than 25,000 Masters of

Mixology, HSA released the first edition of The Official

Harvard Student Agencies Bartending Course. For those

whose “Golden Dreams were frightening nightmares” and

whose “kegs produced enough foam to surf in,” salvation

was at hand. The meaty 312-page Unofficial Guide let fly

an opening salvo of “Let the wild rumpus begin.” There

were no casualties reported in the ensuing bedlam, though

Cambridge resident Joe Carson received more than 300

phone calls for the erroneously listed Ching Hua Chinese

Restaurant.


Andrea Silbert | ’86, MBA ’92, MPA ’92

JOBS AT HSA: Associate, Advertising, FY84; Manager, Catering, FY85; President, FY86.

JOBS SINCE HSA: Left her first job as a financial analyst at Morgan Stanley to write case studies at INCAE, a business school

in Costa Rica; after graduate school, moved to Brazil to work for a nonprofit helping girls living on the streets start their own

businesses; returned to Boston and became Economic Development Director for Nuestra Comunidad Development Corporation;

in 1995, founded the Center for Women and Enterprise (CWE), whose mission is “to empower women to become economically

self-sufficient and prosperous through entrepreneurship”; during her nine years as CEO, boosted the CWE from a $350,000 budget

to the largest entrepreneurial training center in New England; ran for Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts in 2006.

CAN YOU DESCRIBE WHAT YOU DO NOW? “I’ve been working in philanthropy since 2007. I am President of the Eos Foundation,

a charitable foundation run by a wealthy family; I help manage their charitable giving. We focus on making investments to fight

hunger, poverty, and promote education in Massachusetts.”

WHAT ROLE DID HSA PLAY IN YOUR COLLEGE EXPERIENCE? “I was a recovering premed, so I was searching for a new

career. And I needed a summer job, and I fell on HSA. My parents are both doctors, so when I became disillusioned with premed,

I was a lost soul. I found HSA and realized, hey, business is fun! … Because I had a great experience at HSA, [when I graduated I

decided] I wanted to go into business.”

WHO WERE SOME OF YOUR STANDOUT EMPLOYEES AT HSA? [Laughs] “I laugh because some of the people I worked with

are incredibly wealthy right now. Whitney Tilson [’89, MBA ’94] worked at Let’s Go as a sales rep. He sold so much ad space, he

was going to get oodles of money. I remember the adults at HSA saying, ‘ Oh no, he’s making too much money!’ … A close friend of

mine is Jonathan Grayer [’86, MBA ’90], who ran Kaplan. … He would come into my office to shoot the breeze — and always put

his feet up! I had to tell him, ‘I’m the President!’”

HOW HAVE THE SKILLS YOU LEARNED AT HSA HELPED YOU IN YOUR PROFESSIONAL CAREER? “HSA makes you a

problem solver. It made me not afraid to take risks. I knew I could figure stuff out. I knew I would screw up along the way, because

everyone does, but you right the ship. It made me be able to think on my feet. Running Catering was an amazing job; it involved

lots of people running really important events. Stuff goes wrong, but you fix it. That’s the greatest skill you can have — fixing stuff

on the fly. [Another valuable lesson was learning] to talk to your peers, your classmates, while you’re their boss. It was an incredible

experience to have at a young age.”

LET’S GO TITLES

• Europe


• France

AGENCIES

• Italy

• USA

• Greece

• Israel & Egypt


Northwest


• Mexico

OTHER TITLES


at Harvard

• The Official Harvard Student

Agencies Bartending Course

• Linen

• Publishing

• Catering

• Travel

• Direct Sales


• Union


Services

• Advertising

• Sales Group


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86

FEBRUARY 1, 1985–

JANUARY 31, 1986

New technologies take hold

PRESIDENT

Andrea

Silbert

OFFICE

Thayer Hall B

LET’S GO TITLES

LET’S GO TITLES

The Text Processing agency was birthed to handle the modern marvels of data processing, word processing,

résumés, typesetting, and other fun. To get more people involved in all the fun, HSA created the position of

Personnel Manager. Long live the fun.

Forty-five RWs earned an average of $26 per day and

sent back a cumulative 30,000 pages of manuscript. Six

Editors and 14 Assistant Editors sculpted them into 10

beautiful books. Typewriters were out and computers

were in as Publishing Manager Robert Brennan, EdM

’85, EdD ’89, imported state-of-the-art technology to

take over production chores once reserved for skilled

professionals. Now typeset directly from wordprocessed

computer discs, the books that had previously

taken weeks to set and print could now be pumped out

in just a few days. As a result, printers churned out

440,000 paperbacks put on sale in dozens of countries

within three months of the time the last RW sent his

manuscript from a foreign post office. The Let’s Go

squad was presenting information at least six months

fresher than the speediest competitor.


Jonathan Grayer | ’86, MBA ’90

JOBS AT HSA: Manager, Harvard Student Resources, FY86.

JOBS SINCE HSA: Began working at The Washington Post Company in 1990; named Marketing Director at Newsweek after

only six months; joined Kaplan as Regional Operations Director in 1991, rising to President and CEO in 1994 at the age of 30; in

14 years as CEO, transformed Kaplan from an $80 million test-preparation business into a $2.3 billion corporation with 35,000

employees by branching out to higher education and professional training; left Kaplan in 2008 and founded Weld North in 2010,

where, as Chairman and CEO, he invests in and manages technology-driven education companies.

WHAT ARE YOU MOST PROUD OF IN YOUR CAREER?“I’ve gotten very involved in nonprofits, I sit on a cancer-research board

[Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center], I’ve done other things in underprivileged education. I’m most proud of the Kaplan

Educational Foundation scholarship [which I founded at Kaplan in 2006] — like a Rhodes Scholarship for community-college

kids. It helps them spend a year getting ready to apply to a four-year school. We’ve had 75 scholars, and over half have gone on to

Ivy League schools.”

HOW DID HSA AFFECT YOUR CHOICE OF CAREER? “I had come from a medical family and had very little business experience.

... [HSA] provided me with a first look at what it would be like to be a manager — and I liked it. It led to me applying to Harvard

Business School, where I got in two years later. Other than my academic credentials, my main asset was the experience I had

running HSR. It transformed my outlook on what professional opportunities would be best suited for me. … When I graduated

[from business school], I was at the time looking at two career paths. One was being a manager/running a business, or I could go

into the standard financial world. And I ended up choosing working at a company and becoming a manager, because I enjoyed being

a manager at HSR.”

WHAT ADVICE DO YOU HAVE FOR CURRENT STUDENTS? “There are two important things to get out of HSA. One, it gives

you an opportunity to meet people outside the classroom and traditional extracurriculars. Those relationships will turn out to be

very important in the decades to come. I would cultivate them, look out for them, and value them. Find managers that you naturally

share interests with and become friends with them.

“Two, I would look for experiences to try to replicate what you want to do in your professional life. People hiring Harvard talent

will be there no matter what. But to find a path, like I did, outside those normal avenues can be facilitated by experiences you have

in college. Think about not how to burnish your résumé or get a job, but rather find…what attracts you outside the path normally

taken by Harvard students.”

• Europe


• France

AGENCIES

• Italy

• USA

• Greece

• Israel & Egypt


Northwest


• Mexico

OTHER TITLES

• The Unofficial Guide to Life at

Harvard

50

• Linen

• Publishing

• Catering

• Travel

• Direct Sales


• Union


Services

• Advertising

• Sales Group

• Text Processing


fy

87


JANUARY 31, 1987

Harvard Bartending Course

stops serving liquor

fy

88


JANUARY 31, 1988

Let’s Go is used by

1.6 million travelers

HSA mellowed out high-strung aspiring lawyers with its Law School Cafe agency. So distracted were they

by the incipient pressures of the rest of their legal lives, however, the patrons neglected to purchase enough

stress-relieving snack items to sustain the business. Case closed. Due to the prohibitive cost of liquor-liability

insurance, the Harvard Bartending Course dried up, and only the brave did dare pound the colored waters

used as liquor substitutes.

The annual meeting of November 12, 1987, preceded HSA’s 30th-anniversary birthday fest. Held at

Memorial Hall, the ’50s-themed party drew more than 300 past and present HSAers bedecked in period

apparel with a DJ, cotton-candy machines, and carnival games.

PRESIDENT

Linda

Doyle

PRESIDENT

Debra

Graham

OFFICE

OFFICE

Thayer Hall B

Thayer Hall B

The number and type of agencies remained exactly as they had been two years prior. Travel first offered

spring-break vacations to sun-starved students, the Union agency added a yogurt machine, and HSA

switched computer systems from Fortune to System 36. Linen topped all other agencies in revenue, and

Catering sent waitstaff to an 80-guest wedding that, thanks to a tropical storm, had only enough food to

serve a dozen.

The KOA campground in Baton Rouge was vexing, Let’s Go: Europe burst with 47 maps (a whopping

increase of one map over the previous year), back covers first asked, “Did you know?”, and The Unofficial

Guide dished out its inaugural blue coupons in back.

The series reached 11 volumes as Let’s Go:

California & the Pacific Northwest was hacked and

whacked and split into two bits, Let’s Go: California

& Hawaii and Let’s Go: The Pacific Northwest,

Western Canada & Alaska. On page one of Let’s Go:

Europe, Dr. Seuss told would-be budgeteers: “From

there to here, from here to there, funny things are

everywhere.” The estimated annual readership for

the Let’s Go series reached 1.6 million, giving HSA

leverage in renegotiations with St. Martin’s.

LET’S GO TITLES

• Europe


• France

AGENCIES

• Linen

• Publishing

• Catering

• Italy

• USA

• Greece

• Israel & Egypt

• Travel

• Direct Sales


• California & the

Pacific Northwest


• Mexico

• Union


Services

• Advertising

OTHER TITLES


Harvard

• Sales Group

• Text Processing

• Law School Cafe

LET’S GO TITLES

• Europe


• France

• Italy

AGENCIES

• Linen

• Publishing

• Catering

• USA

• Greece

• Israel & Egypt

• California & Hawaii

• Travel

• Direct Sales


• The Pacific Northwest,

Western Canada & Alaska


• Mexico

• Union


Services

OTHER TITLES


at Harvard

• Advertising

• Sales Group

• Text Processing


fy

89


Ghen Maynard | ’88

JOBS AT HSA: Production Manager, Publishing, FY87; Manager, Publishing, FY88.

WHERE HAVE YOU WORKED SINCE YOU GRADUATED? “It was natural for me to go into publishing because of Let’s Go. I started

at Houghton Mifflin, which was going through the tech revolution; I was in a newly formed group to implement it. I became a business

analyst after that, but I never had a passion for it. Let’s Go was so much about the creative process, working with creative people,

making friends; publishing in the real world was interesting, but I didn’t love it. Every weekend I would buy Variety. I loved TV and

movies. I did studies in social psychology [my major in college] about how characters relate to other characters.

“I spent four and a half years in publishing; I had a good job and a good life, but I didn’t have a passion for it. My passion was in

television. It was very humbling to start there, but I was finally doing something I really wanted to do. I started as an assistant at CBS,

then a junior executive in drama development. I developed a bunch of shows as part of that team. I was number two in drama when we

developed CSI. On the side, I developed Survivor at a time no one was paying attention to shows like that. When I heard a one-liner for

it, I thought, ‘Wow, that’s exactly the type of show we need to do at CBS.’ I was the youngest executive at CBS, and I was a Real World

viewer. I asked myself, how do we bring these audiences to a big network?

“…[Eventually,] Survivor became huge, and we took over Big Brother, which started at a different department, and made it into the show

it is today. I developed The Amazing Race, which comes back to Let’s Go. In the first season finale of The Amazing Race, one of the

teams buys a Let’s Go guide. I made them get permission from St. Martin’s Press for that! So I came full circle. It’s funny how things

in college help you later in life.”

HOW HAVE THE LESSONS YOU LEARNED AT LET’S GO HELPED YOU IN YOUR PROFESSIONAL CAREER? “The alliance

between creativity and business is a thing I experienced at Let’s Go for the first time. Let’s Go was very creative, but you’re still

managing people, processes, and budgets while making the creative product good. That’s been my experience in television. It’s a very

creative world — I love working with producers, storytellers — but you’re still navigating a business. A beautiful product doesn’t do

you any good if only two people love it and it doesn’t make any money.”

WHAT ADVICE DO YOU HAVE FOR CURRENT STUDENTS? “Find what you’re passionate about and don’t do something just

because your parents tell you to. I was passionate about working at Let’s Go…so I went into publishing. It was natural, and my parents

were proud, but I realized I wasn’t passionate about publishing outside college. Seeking that old passion from Let’s Go drove me to go

into television. … Go experience something, find something that genuinely stimulates you, that you would be exploring in your free

time at night anyway.”


JANUARY 31, 1989

PRESIDENT

Vivian

Hunt

OFFICES

Thayer Hall B

Canaday Hall G

LET’S GO TITLES

The first black President of HSA

It was a year of change at HSA. In another

historic first, Vivian Hunt became the first

black HSA President. At the same time, due

to failing health, Harold Rosenwald attended

his last Board meeting on May 12 and formally

resigned in January 1989 after more than 30 years

of dedication to HSA. Board member George

Christodoulo ’71, MBA ’75, JD ’75, assumed

Rosenwald’s mantle as General Counsel and allaround

mentor to students.

Prior to the annual meeting in November, several

student members advanced a proposed change to

the corporate bylaws to combat what they called

“increasing professional control of the studentrun

corporation.” To this end, the original

amendment called for an increase in the number

of student Board members from seven to 15.

After a special meeting of the Board of Directors,

a compromise proposal calling for 10 student

Board members was agreed upon and approved at

the annual meeting by a vote of 66–1 (with one

abstention).

In other news: Advertising and Text Processing started fusing into the graphic-design goliath that was

AdVenture Graphics, Distribution started hanging its advertisements in plastic bags from freshmen’s

doorknobs, and the HSA softball team crushed the layabouts of the Harvard Independent 24–4.

At the end of May, Publishing packed up and moved into the

windowless basement of Canaday Hall G for the summer.

Leased from the Independent, the space housed Let’s Go

until the second week of September, at which point the

entire operation returned to its Thayer abode. The first new

cover design in seven years banished the hitchhiking thumb

logo from the “o,” reducing it to apostrophe status. Let’s Go:

Europe cracked 900 pages, a pack of reindeer chased one RW

up a tree, and The Unofficial Guide mentioned that “the wife

of Harvard’s first master never served the students beef, and

laced the pudding with goat’s dung.”

• Europe


• France

AGENCIES

• Italy

• USA

• Greece

• Israel & Egypt





• Mexico

OTHER TITLES


Harvard

• Linen

• Publishing

• Catering

• Travel

• Direct Sales


• Union


Services

• Sales Group

• AdVenture Graphics

54


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90

FEBRUARY 1, 1989–

JANUARY 31, 1990

HSA honors Harold Rosenwald

91


JANUARY 31, 1991

Let’s Go introduces city guides

PRESIDENT

Gina

Berardi

OFFICES

Thayer Hall B

On March 9, 1989, HSA formally honored Harold Rosenwald at the Hail and Farewell banquet. For 32

years, Rosenwald was a coach, counselor, adviser, teacher, and friend to HSA and all its members. He

drafted the original bylaws of the corporation, obtained and regularly defended HSA’s nonprofit status,

stayed up late nights proofing for libel as Let’s Go deadlines loomed, and acted as HSA’s legal counsel in

all matters great and small. From his seat at the right hand

of the President, his soft-spoken voice often strained the

hearing of those around him. But they listened, for the value

of what they heard was great.

Rosenwald passed away exactly one year later on March

9, 1990. With the help of a $500 donation, HSA created

the Rosenwald Award to annually honor one manager “for

outstanding ethics, business acumen, and concern for the

corporation and its members.”

Publishing whiled away its second summer in the dark

confines of Canaday Hall G. Same books. Same covers.

Different summer.

PRESIDENT

David

Kopp

OFFICES

Thayer Hall B

After a seven-year stint as General Manager, Hope Spruance announced her resignation, effective August

1. During her tenure, HSA turned a $43,000 deficit and retained earnings into a $370,000 surplus while

adding $1 million to annual gross sales. On June 21, HSA selected Michele Ponti as Spruance’s successor.

On the agency front, AdVenture Graphics reverted to Text Processing. Sales Group ordered hundreds of

Head of the Charles shotglasses to sell before realizing HSA didn’t own the trademark. It took two years to

give them all away.

The basement of Canaday G welcomed Publishing

back for its third summer. The hitchhiking thumb

logo, already exiled to the land of the apostrophe,

now had to contend with the warning, “Let’s Go does

not recommend hitchhiking as a method of travel.”

The series took an urban turn on its way to 13 titles,

adding the first city guides, Let’s Go: New York City

and Let’s Go: London.

Canaday Hall G

FREE VERSE IS WORTH WHAT YOU PAY FOR IT:

AN ODE TO HAROLD ROSENWALD BY ANDY TOBIAS

Canaday Hall G


LET’S GO TITLES

• Europe


• France

• Italy

AGENCIES

Gathered ’round the boardroom table

Most of us were barely able

To hear his words. (Huh? Whu’d he say?)

But if those words were barely audible

It gave them extra weight.

Right there, a lesson learned and laudable.

We craned and stretched to catch the phrases

As now we strain to phrase the praises

And the warmth and gratitude we feel.

His wisdom and his dedication

Set a tone of inspiration

(When we could hear him. Huh? Whu’d he say?)

All but unreal.

• USA

• Greece

• Israel & Egypt


For if attorneys oft are noted

For greedy eyes or egos bloated,

Here was one, let it be told,

Whose quiet honor broke the mold.

(When we could hear him. Huh?

Whu’d he say?)

And what a memory! What affection

He had for those ’neath his direction.

Well, me, for one,

Who with his earnings bought an auto

(Not asking Harold if he ought to).




• Mexico

Two decades later, he remembered

Every aspect of that car.

“A blue Mustang,” he smiled sweetly,

Wishing even then

I’d spent the money more discreetly.

So though I may have missed

a word or two,

I wish that I could be right there

with you,

Harold, and all the folks from HSA,

To say — real loud —

Hip, hip, hooray!

Ave, atque vale.

OTHER TITLES


at Harvard

LET’S GO TITLES

• Europe


• France

• Italy

AGENCIES

Darren Aronofsky | ’91

JOBS AT HSA: Researcher-Writer, Let’s Go: New York City, FY91; Researcher-Writer,

Let’s Go: California & Hawaii, FY92.

CURRENTLY: An Oscar-nominated director and screenwriter, known for Pi, Requiem for a

Dream, The Fountain, The Wrestler, Black Swan, Noah, Mother!, and The Whale.

WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR FONDEST MEMORIES OF LET’S GO? “The first year I did

NYC, which was a blast. Just meant visiting old [haunts] where I grew up and doing bar crawls

through the East Village. The second summer I did Southwest U.S. Vegas was a highlight, with

fellow alums Dan Schrecker [’91] and Colson Whitehead [’91] both doing some ghostwriting.

We used the salary for gas money.”

WHAT ADVICE DO YOU HAVE FOR TODAY’S STUDENTS? “I’m a huge proponent of traveling

while young. It becomes harder to travel the older you become.”

• USA

• Greece

• Israel & Egypt





• Mexico

• New York City

• London

OTHER TITLES


at Harvard

• Linen

• Publishing

• Catering

• Travel

• Direct Sales


• Union


Services

• Sales Group

• AdVenture Graphics

• Linen

• Publishing

• Catering

• Travel

• Direct Sales


• Union


Services

• Sales Group

• Text Processing


fy


JANUARY 31, 1992

OFFICES

92

PRESIDENT

Robert

Frost

Thayer Hall B

Canaday Hall G

Let’s Go spins out as wholly owned,

for-profit subsidiary of HSA

The position of Personnel Manager

evolved into that of Vice President,

and Eve Reiter ’92 became the first to

hold its title. Under the new General

Manager, tensions unfortunately

persisted over HSA’s professional vs.

student leadership. The bottom line

remained healthy, however, as HSA

had one of the most profitable years

in its history. The continued growth

of Publishing led HSA to seek more

spacious real estate and reexamine

the nonprofit status of the enterprise.

In November, HSA selected the third

floor of 1 Story St. as its new location

President Robert Frost ’92, Lisa Bolanz ’91, Tracy Pun ’93,

MBA ’97, and Jody Dushay ’89, EdM ’91, MD ’99, MMSc ’09.

for expansion. In January, the Board voted to create Let’s Go, Inc., a wholly owned, for-profit subsidiary of

HSA. Officially separated at the beginning of FY93, the new corporation initially housed Publishing and

Sales Group.

In the dance of agency nomenclature,

Direct Sales transformed into The Campus

Store, and Text Processing metamorphosed

into Type and Graphics. Travel included its

first hip, happenin’, four-page glossy catalog

of travel goodies in Let’s Go: Europe.

Fifteen bookteams squeezed into the

basement of Canaday G for one final

subterranean summer hurrah. Let’s Go:

Washington, D.C. and Let’s Go: Germany,

Austria & Switzerland joined the fray as 80

RWs took the field in total. The New York

Times proclaimed Let’s Go: Europe to be “the

granddaddy of budget guides,” while the

new, busy, but still-orange cover announced

the book’s status as “The #1 Bestselling

International Guide.” The Unofficial Guide

tipped the scales at 340 pages.


Mary Louise Kelly | ’93

JOBS AT HSA: Researcher-Writer, Let’s Go: France, FY91; Researcher-Writer, Let’s Go: Europe, FY92.

JOBS SINCE HSA: Started her career as a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and BBC; joined National Public Radio

in 2001, where she was a longtime national-security reporter and now anchors the daily news show All Things Considered.

WHAT’S A FUNNY STORY FROM YOUR TIME ON THE ROAD FOR LET’S GO? “I was so excited when I got to Brussels; the

Grand Place was breathtaking. I thought, ‘This is the life. I’m going to splurge and buy coffee and a croissant at the nicest cafe on

the Grand Place.’ They brought out my coffee and this huge basket of all different types of croissants and rolls, and I said, ‘Ah! No

wonder it’s so expensive.’ … The guy brings me the bill, and it turns out you were only supposed to eat one! … So I had eaten my

entire food budget for the week.”

HOW HAS LET’S GO HELPED YOU BECOME A BETTER JOURNALIST? “One, so much of being a journalist is chutzpah —

being willing to walk in somewhere you don’t necessarily belong, but acting like you belong and asking the right questions. …

Having the courage to do that when you’re a young journalist isn’t easy; you get in situations that are intimidating. … Writing for

Let’s Go, I think there’s a certain type of confidence you build — not from knowing the situation will go according to plan, but

knowing it certainly won’t go according to plan and having the experience to deal with it. … [Two,] you take away some lessons

about copyediting and about writing fast. … I lived in terror of those deadlines. I didn’t know what would happen if I missed them,

if lightning would strike me down or something, but I’ve carried that with me — I do not miss a deadline.”

WHAT ADVICE DO YOU HAVE FOR CURRENT STUDENTS? “Try anything, particularly the first few summers of college. Junior

summer, you have to do something that looks respectable for grad school or job applications, but to me the summers after freshman

and sophomore years were truly about exploring. I felt so lucky to go to a college that gave me the opportunity to do that. I got to

backpack across France, taste the croissants on the Grand Place, and someone paid me to do that! There are a million opportunities

like that at HSA and Harvard.”

LET’S GO TITLES

• Europe


• France

• Italy

AGENCIES

• USA

• Greece & Turkey

• Israel & Egypt




• Spain & Portugal

• Mexico

• New York City

• London

• Washington, D.C.

• Germany, Austria

& Switzerland

OTHER TITLES


Harvard

• Linen

• Publishing

• Catering

• Travel

• The Campus Store


• Union


Services

• Sales Group

• Type and Graphics


fy


JANUARY 31, 1993

OFFICES

93

PRESIDENT

Brian

Goler

Thayer Hall B

1 Story St.

Once again, HSA searches

for a new home

Due to approaching Yard renovations, HSA’s days in Thayer were

numbered. In March, the university announced that HSA needed

to depart its basement home by June 1993. August rolled around,

Michele Ponti resigned from her position as General Manager, and

HSA identified 53A Church St. as a prospective new location. In

November, HSA hired Richard M. Olken ’67 to be the next General

Manager.

An Entrepreneurial Program

for the generation of new

business ideas spawned

the unsuccessful Friends of

Harvard mail-order catalog.

Richard Olken.

For the first time, the presidential election for the following fiscal year

took place before November. Travel acquired its first SABRE systems

to become a fully functioning travel agency, and Type and Graphics

developed a new division, Out-House Testing. It tested software, not

toilets.

Newly joined in wholly owned matrimony, Publishing and Sales

Group eloped from Thayer basement to brighter offices at 1 Story St.

Anne Chisholm.

in April, and Anne Chisholm was hired as the new office manager for

Let’s Go, Inc. Due to political turmoil abroad, several RWs

unexpectedly found themselves in Rome as plans for Let’s Go:

Thailand were scrapped at the last minute. On the bright side,

the city guides Let’s Go: Rome and Let’s Go: Paris expanded the

series to 17. For the first time, the thumbpick logo appeared at

a 45° angle on all front covers, turning the increasingly taboo

hitchhiking symbol into a more positive thumbs-up. Back

in Cambridge, a new computer network bound the office

together in a blissful union of email, the guides were first

typeset in-house, and The Unofficial Guide first helped train

RWs on a blustery, gray Saturday in April. Readership hit 3.5

million, and profits from royalties neared $800,000.


Julie Cotler Pottinger | ’92

JOBS AT HSA: Researcher-Writer, Let’s Go: Greece, FY91; salesperson, Sales Group, FY92; receptionist, Publishing, FY93.

CURRENTLY: Writes romance novels, including the bestselling Bridgerton series, under the pen name Julia Quinn.

HOW DID YOU FIRST GET HIRED AT LET’S GO? “My first year I was an RW in Crete and Cyprus. I was hired to go to Britain

and Ireland and then at the last minute, they were like, ‘Oh, we’re sending you to Greece!’ I was like, ‘I don’t speak Greek,’ and they

said, ‘We don’t have anyone who speaks Greek, it’s fine!’ Once I signed the contract, they were like, ‘By the way, Cyprus is a war zone,

did you know that?’ I did not know that!”

WHAT WAS IT LIKE BEING A RECEPTIONIST FOR LET’S GO? “That was a super fun time — that was the year after Israel

& Egypt forgot the entire chapter on the Pyramids! I don’t really know how it happened; I think because of a miscommunication

between the editors and St. Martin’s Press, they deleted the wrong chapter. We got a lot of hate mail that summer.”

WHAT ROLE DID LET’S GO PLAY IN YOUR PATH TO BECOMING A WRITER? “I wrote the first four chapters of [my first

novel] the summer I sold the advertising [for Let’s Go]. It was a job you didn’t have to take home with you. … I was living with my

boyfriend (now husband). He was an EMT, so he had weird hours, and there was no internet then, so you can’t be there surfing the

web. So I started writing a book.”

WHAT LIFE SKILLS DID LET’S GO GIVE YOU? “It helps you become more resourceful. … I got this horrible, horrible rash [while

traveling as an RW]. Everything I owned got infested with fleas; it turns out I’m allergic to Mediterranean fleas. I’m in a foreign

country, I’m clearly dying — what do you do? Again, there was no internet, so you learn to deal.”

WHAT ARE YOUR BEST STORIES FROM THE ROAD? “The time I got propositioned by a monk. That was shocking.”

LET’S GO TITLES

• Europe


• France

• Italy

• USA

AGENCIES

• Greece & Turkey

• Israel & Egypt





• Mexico

• New York City

• London


• Germany, Austria

& Switzerland

• Paris

• Rome

OTHER TITLES


at Harvard

• Linen

• Publishing

• Catering

• Travel



• Union


Services

• Sales Group



Into modernit y

Years of physical stability in Thayer Hall had spoiled HSA, which in FY94 again found itself

crammed into two separate rental properties. In FY96, under the stewardship of now–Board

member Michael Cronin, HSA kicked off a $3.5 million capital campaign to buy a place of

its own. A gift from Robert McCoy seeded the purchase of the former Manter Hall School

at 67 Mt. Auburn St. On February 5, 1997, a gleaming, remodeled Burke-McCoy Hall was

dedicated as HSA’s new permanent home. With four entire floors dedicated to carrying out

the business of HSA and Let’s Go, managers and editors could stop worrying about cramped

quarters and expiring lease agreements and could focus on maintaining and passing on their

services to future generations of HSAers.

As it leapt into the 21st century, HSA developed many of the characteristics that define the

company today. The senior executive team and Board of Directors were restructured, the role

of the professional staff was more clearly defined, and company bylaws were adapted to modern

needs. HSA said goodbye to several longtime agencies (Catering, Travel, and Union), but

modern fixtures such as the Center for Enterprise and the retail storefront of HSA Cleaners

seamlessly stepped in to take their place. Then, in FY02, HSA made a pivotal decision for the

company’s future: it purchased a tiny storefront at 52 JFK St. known as The Harvard Shop.

But nothing transformed HSA as much as the technological revolution. In FY96, www.

letsgo.com launched, followed quickly by www.hsa.net in FY97. Throughout the following

decade, both websites were continuously improved and new services were added for customers,

managers, editors, and anyone anywhere in the world who plugged into the information age.

In FY01, HSA made the critical move of making all its products and services available for

purchase online. By FY08, HSA’s business practices had gone from predominantly mail-in to

over 90% online.

HSA crested $5 million in revenue in FY01 as agencies like Cleaners and Distribution hummed

along as profitable campus staples, but no agency could compete with the explosive growth of

Let’s Go. In FY94, Let’s Go consisted of 20 books, covered four continents, and employed

just under 100 RWs. By the time the series reached its peak in FY03, the agency produced

41 guidebooks, covered six continents, shipped off over 200 RWs, hired 100 office staffers,

released 20 map guides, debuted a pilot television program, and shared its content in print,

online, and on the Palm platform. But as the travel industry suffered in the wake of September

11 and print media bowed under the pressure of the World Wide Web, leaner times were on

the horizon.

1994-

2005

62


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94


JANUARY 31, 1994

A new crest logo debuts

fy

95


JANUARY 31, 1995

Let’s Go’s exponential

growth continues

PRESIDENT

Martin

Escobari

OFFICES

Thayer Hall B

53A Church St.

1 Story St.

HARVARD

STUDENT

AGENCIES

HSA decamped to 53A Church St. in May.

Around the corner at 1 Story St., Publishing

and Sales Group were joined by Distribution

and Type and Graphics, which introduced

graduation announcements to the senior class.

Anne Chisholm and Cynthia Lingley became

Assistant General Managers, Catering had its

inaugural summer barbecue season, and the

Union store was renamed “The Crib.”

To display its connection to the university and

bring its mission statement to life in pictoral

The FY94 management team.

form, HSA designed a new shield logo in 1993.

Three open books across the top spell out “VE RI TAS,” and three quills stand upright in the base. The first

represents a writer’s implement and the academic pursuits of the students of HSA, the second symbolizes

the ancient recording instrument of accounting and the business aspects of HSA, and the third denotes the

goods and services provided by HSA to the university, the community, and the world.

Twenty books! Let’s Go: Thailand finally became reality, Let’s Go: Ireland

quaffed Guinness on its own, and Let’s Go: Austria struggled to meet its

contracted length of 430 pages. (The final version included 108 pages of

General Introduction and a 30-page appendix that listed a recipe for pig

knuckles and how to say “liver dumpling broth” in German, Hungarian,

and Czech.) Photographs graced the new neon-yellow covers, and Let’s

Go provided its first scholarships to RWs on financial aid. No fewer

than 361 students applied for the 95 RW positions; the total office

staff numbered 44. The Unofficial Guide digitized onto CD-ROM with

help from a struggling tech company called Apple Computer, Inc.

The CD, billed as “the first

electronic book produced by

Harvard students,” included

QuickTime videos and

searchable content.

53A Church St.

PRESIDENT

Lucienne

Lester

OFFICES

53A Church St.

1 Story St.

HARVARD

STUDENT

AGENCIES

Volume I, Number 1 of The Entrepreneur, HSA’s alum

newsletter, landed in mailboxes around the world.

Despite the existence — finally! — of natural light

in the new offices, talk of a fundraising campaign and

permanent home surfaced. Out-House Testing matured

into its own agency and disseminated spreadsheet fun

in a course on Excel. Distribution provided a coupon

book to the discount-craving student masses. HSA ran

the Currier House Grill and rescued many a resident

from the agony of late-night hunger.

Generations of students cried out in unison when the

university announced it would gut the Freshman Union

and turn it into the Barker Center. Long plagued by

poor fiscal health, the Union store was finally put out

of its misery. HSA’s second-oldest agency (1958–1994)

closed its doors forever on August 19.

As Let’s Go began to look less like a student rag

and more like a full-fledged publishing company —

complete with in-house designers, publicists, and legal

readers — Publishing Director Peter Keith ’94, JD ’99,

realized his baby needed the resources to match. Under

his reforms, salaries were raised, Associate Editors were

given more prominent roles, and Managing Editors

acquired specialized roles in fields like production and

finance. More than 100 RWs traveled the world, and

two employees shaved their heads during a summer

staff meeting. On the shelves, Let’s Go: Eastern Europe

joined the gang to make 21. The Official Harvard Student

Agencies Bartending Course appeared in its second

edition for the next wave of aspiring mixologists.


The 1995 Let’s Go staff.

LET’S GO TITLES

• Europe


• France

• Italy

• USA & Canada

AGENCIES

• Linen

• Publishing

• Catering

• Greece & Turkey

• Israel & Egypt


• Alaska & the Pacific

Northwest


• Mexico

• Travel



• New York City

• London


• Germany & Switzerland

• Austria

• Paris

• Rome

• Union


Services

• Ireland

• Thailand

OTHER TITLES


at Harvard

• Sales Group


LET’S GO TITLES

• Europe


• France

• Italy

• USA & Canada

• Greece & Turkey

AGENCIES

• Linen

• Publishing

• Catering

• Israel & Egypt

• California


Northwest


• Mexico

• New York City

• Travel



• London


• Germany

• Austria & Switzerland

• Paris

• Rome

• Ireland

• Union


Services

• Thailand

• Eastern Europe

OTHER TITLES


at Harvard

• The Official Harvard Student

Agencies Bartending Course

• Sales Group


• Out-House Testing


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96


JANUARY 31, 1996

The first Asian-American

President of HSA

PRESIDENT

Larry

Cheng

OFFICES

53A Church St.

1 Story St.

LET’S GO TITLES

• Europe


• France

• Italy

• USA

AGENCIES

• Linen

• Publishing

• Catering

HARVARD

STUDENT

AGENCIES

Another barrier broken: Larry Cheng ’96 became HSA’s

first Asian-American President. After a disappointing

spring-break sales season, Travel joined Publishing and

Sales Group in Let’s Go, Inc. Michael Cronin agreed

to chair the newly formed fundraising committee,

a feasibility study was undertaken for the incipient

$3.5 million capital campaign, and the receipt of an

early lead gift from Robert McCoy boded well for the

project’s success. Type and Graphics continued its game

of musical nameplates and became Harvard Graphic

Design. And the whole posse sang karaoke on its way

to Provincetown.

Let’s Go continued its global expansion, adding Let’s Go:

Central America, expanding Let’s Go: Thailand into Let’s

Go: Southeast Asia, and commencing work on the twoyear

project of Let’s Go: India & Nepal. A new breed of

guides also jumped aboard as Let’s Go’s first series of six

Map Guides hit the streets, offering coverage of New

York City, Boston, San Francisco, London, Paris, and

Washington, DC. Wizened grandma Let’s Go: Europe

boasted 928 pages, went for $18.99, and sold 125,000

copies. In total, Let’s Go sold $5 million worth of books

on the year.

A new contract with St. Martin’s Press allowed for in-house map revisions and publicity, leading to the hire

of the first Cartography and Publicity Managers. American Express sponsored Let’s Go’s internet debut at

www.letsgo.com. The new website boasted that the approximately 130 RWs traveled 5,557 days (or 15 years)

in one summer, came from 13 different countries, traveled to

70 different countries, accumulated enough frequent-flier

miles to circumnavigate the world almost four times, spoke

a total of 24 languages, received seven marriage proposals,

broke only two limbs, and got interrogated by the Ukrainian

and Egyptian secret police.

Closer to home, The Unofficial Guide peaked at 432 pages.

Working with Elizabeth “Ibby” Nathans, Dean of Freshmen,

HSA also produced The Little Instruction Book to Life at

Harvard, a free book of advice from seniors to freshmen about

how to enjoy Harvard to its fullest.

• Greece & Turkey

• Israel & Egypt

• California


Northwest

• Travel




• Mexico

• New York City

• London


• Germany

• Switzerland & Austria

• Paris

• Rome

• Ireland

• Southeast Asia

• Eastern Europe

• Central America


Services

• Sales Group

The first Let’s Go website.

OTHER TITLES

• The Unofficial Guide

to Life at Harvard

• The Little Instruction

Book to Life at Harvard

• Harvard Graphic Design


Vice President Robert Giannino ’95, Publishing

Director Sean Fitzpatrick ’95, and Larry Cheng.


Larry Cheng | ’96

JOBS AT HSA: Manager, Linen, FY95; President, FY96.

The 1996 Let’s Go staff.

WHERE HAVE YOU WORKED SINCE YOU GRADUATED? “When I first graduated in 1996, I worked at a growth-strategy

consulting firm called Corporate Decisions. After a short stint there, I entered the venture-capital industry in 1998 by joining

Bessemer Venture Partners, then Battery Ventures, then Fidelity Ventures, which we spun out in 2010 to become Volition

Capital. ... I actually first learned about the venture-capital industry while I was at HSA from speaking with Andrew Tobias and

Michael Cronin.”

CAN YOU DESCRIBE WHAT YOU DO NOW? “I run a technology growth-equity fund in Boston called Volition Capital.

We invest in high-growth principally bootstrapped software and internet companies. … My work life is a mix of finding new

companies to invest in, working with the companies that I’ve already invested in, and helping to lead Volition.”

WHAT IS YOUR FONDEST MEMORY OF HSA? “I greatly appreciate the relationships that started during my HSA years that

continue until this day. I am still good friends with many of the HSA team members I worked with, including the HSA Linen

manager who I succeeded. HSA Board members continue to be significant mentors in my life on both personal and professional

fronts. ... You could say my HSA memories are still being made.”

HOW HAS YOUR HSA CAREER HELPED YOU IN YOUR PROFESSIONAL CAREER? “You can study business and finance out

of a textbook, but none of it is real until you run a business. You feel a financial statement differently when you’ve actually owned

every number on a P/L by running an agency. You feel strategies differently when you’ve had the experience of actually trying to

implement some of your own in an actual business. You think about products differently when you’ve actually had to sell some to

real customers. I’ve often said that I majored in HSA during my time at Harvard — it was easily the best education I got during

my college years.”


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97


JANUARY 31, 1997

A new home — and home page

PRESIDENT

Matthew

Heid

OFFICES

53A Church St.

1 Story St.

67 Mt. Auburn St.

HARVARD

STUDENT

AGENCIES

In HSA’s last year at 53A Church St. and 1 Story St., planning and renovations for Burke-McCoy Hall (see

p. 69–70) consumed extraordinary amounts of time. The capital campaign proceeded apace, sponsoring

alum breakfasts, lunches, open houses, and a marathon daytrip to New York City in the fall. With its old

leases about to expire, HSA finally moved to 67 Mt. Auburn St. in December, but the building wasn’t quite

finished yet — forcing Let’s Go to squeeze into the Vice President’s office for a few weeks and Distribution

to run its entire operation out of two drawers in a filing cabinet.

On January 2, HSA drew the eyeballs of students circumnavigating the Holyoke Center by opening a retail

space at 17 Holyoke St., which housed Linen, The Campus Store, and Let’s Go Travel. HSA also gained

a new address in cyberspace with the launch of its very first website. With Out-House Testing’s new webdesign

service, other companies too could enjoy the tacky goodness of Web 1.0. President Matthew Heid

’96-’97 and Sarah Cannizzo ’98 compiled the company’s chaotic mass of archives into a 50-volume corporate

library for posterity — a.k.a. you.

The now-three agencies of Let’s Go, Inc., rebranded accordingly to

Let’s Go Publications, Let’s Go Ad Sales, and Let’s Go Travel. On

its way to 24 guides, Let’s Go completed Let’s Go: lndia & Nepal and

tackled South America for the first time, introducing Let’s Go: Ecuador

& the Galapagos Islands. Visitors to Chicago, Los Angeles, Rome,

Madrid, New Orleans, and Berlin rejoiced as the next installment

of Map Guides hit the streets; to handle the load, Map Editors hung

their hats for the first time. Let’s Go contracted with CNN to be

the basis for the eight kickoff segments of its “Travel Guide” series.

RWs gave miniature tours of four cities

to CNN cameras and filled the clips with

signature Let’s Go tips and wisdom.

Past Presidents and General

Managers reunite at Hail and Farewell

on February 7, 1996.

Burke-McCoy Hall

Manter Hall School occupied the building at 67 Mt. Auburn St. from the day it was built in 1927.

Established in 1884, the private school helped students prepare for Harvard’s entrance exams during the

1930s and offered four- and eight-hour review sessions before every major Harvard midterm and final

exam. During World War II, the school assisted countless students in gaining an edge on the entrance

exam for aviation cadets. After the war, Manter Hall School developed into a standard prep school for

grades nine through 12, catering to students with special educational needs. The top floor was occasionally

used as living quarters for students. Although enrollment reached a peak of 250 in the late 1940s, by 1993

only 19 students were registered. At this time, Robert Hall, the owner of the building and manager of the

school for 57 years, turned 83 and began talking to HSA.

After being displaced from its longtime residence in Thayer Hall, HSA faced greatly increased rent,

dilution across two separate offices far from the center of student activity, the pressures of continued

growth and expansion, and leases that expired at the end of 1996. Thus began the search for a permanent

home. Finding no suitable locations on the market, General Manager Richard Olken headed to Cambridge

City Hall to research the size, status, and ownership of all property in Harvard Sq. Identifying the Manter

Hall School building as having the most potential, Olken initiated conversation with Hall in the fall of

1993. Not interested in selling to the university, Hall was averse to selling to an organization that would

not use the building for educational purposes. Over the course of several meetings, however, Hall came

to understand the unique educational opportunities HSA afforded to students and decided to sell the

property to HSA in the spring of 1994. Hospitalized less than a year later, Hall passed away in the summer

of 1995.

In December 1994, Elsie’s Sandwich Shop shut down. After serving the community for more than 30

years from its corner location beneath Manter Hall School, the Harvard Sq. landmark was no more. In

1995, HSA selected Solomon and Bauer as architects, sought a new tenant to replace the departed Elsie’s,

and renamed the building Burke-McCoy Hall. Renovations commenced shortly after Manter Hall School

ceased operations in May 1996. Throughout the process, HSA dealt with the Harvard Sq. Defense Fund,

#2 heating oil, lead paint, asbestos, and brains once housed in the Manter Hall School’s biology lab. Despite

all, HSA successfully moved into the (mostly) completed building on December 8, 1996. Burke-McCoy

Hall was dedicated on February 5, 1997, and the dream of a permanent home for HSA was a reality.

The dedication of Burke-McCoy

Hall on February 5, 1997.

Dusty Burke.

LET’S GO TITLES

• Europe


• France

• Italy

• USA

AGENCIES

• Greece & Turkey

• Israel & Egypt

• California

• Alaska & the

Pacific Northwest


• Mexico

• New York City

• London


• Germany

• Switzerland &

Austria

• Paris

• Rome

• Ireland

• Southeast Asia

• Eastern Europe

• Central America

• India & Nepal

• Ecuador & the

Galapagos Islands

The first HSA website.

OTHER TITLES

• The Unofficial

Guide to Life

at Harvard

HSA is constantly improving Burke-McCoy Hall — even expanding within it. In 2009, the fourth floor

was converted into the Innovation Space and provided a workspace for student startups;

currently, HSA shares the floor with the wildly popular CS50 course. In 2017, the pods

on the fourth floor were blown apart to form one large event space. In the spring of 2017,

the second and third floors were totally redone, lending HSA’s main offices a more open

floor plan, new carpeting, and several coats of fresh paint. New computers, furniture,

and a wood-paneled statement wall adorn the new workspace. In August 2015, HSA

Cleaners moved into the first floor of Burke-McCoy Hall with a new retail location at

69 Mt. Auburn St., the storefront formerly occupied by the Tennis and Squash Shop.

After a succession of burrito joints, Playa Bowls now occupies the old Elsie’s space. The

basement houses the stockroom of The Harvard Shop, and enough space exists behind

the building to accommodate construction of a substantial annex for future expansion.

Robert McCoy.

• Linen

• Let’s Go Publications

• Catering

• Let’s Go Travel




Services

• Let’s Go Ad Sales



The interior of Burke-McCoy Hall as it

looked from 1997 to 2017.

68


fy

98


JANUARY 31, 1998

The Unofficial Guide

becomes its own agency

The old Manter Hall School is renovated in 1996.

Why “Burke-McCoy”?

In the summer of 1995, Robert

McCoy pledged a substantial lead

gift to HSA’s capital campaign

and requested that the renovated

building be named Burke-McCoy

Hall. The name honors Dusty

Burke, the first General Manager

of HSA; Hester Bell McCoy, who

joined HSA in 1961 as Corporation

Secretary; and Robert McCoy

himself, who served HSA as

manager of Europe by Car for two

years, Assistant General Manager

under Burke, and Let’s Go Business

Manager upon his graduation from

business school. HSA is proud to

honor these three individuals whose

past and continuing contributions

have helped make HSA the

dynamic and thriving organization

it is today.

PRESIDENT

Amit

Tiwari

OFFICES

67 Mt. Auburn St.

17 Holyoke St.

HARVARD

STUDENT

AGENCIES

The flag of HSA waved gallantly above the entrance to Burke-

McCoy Hall. The Unofficial Guide, Let’s Go Ad Sales, Out-House

Testing, and Distribution inhabited the basement; the second

floor housed most of the professional staff, the President, the Vice

President, Harvard Graphic Design, HSR, and Catering. Let’s Go

resided on the top two floors.

The Unofficial Guide departed from Let’s Go to become its own

agency, replete with sales force and manager. After the 571st toilet


joke, Out-House Testing flushed its old name and became Computer Services. The Harvard Bartending

Course cost $130, Karen Lau ’98 served ably as Vice President, the 40th-anniversary history book was written,

and the HSA softball team achieved a record number of wins.

Let’s Go: Australia and Let’s Go: New Zealand put another continent in the bag. Two new Map Guides, to

Amsterdam and Florence, joined the party. It was also the 1998 versions that officially dropped “The Budget

Guide to” from all their titles.


Amit Tiwari | ’98, MBA ’04

JOBS AT HSA: Manager, Let’s Go Ad Sales, FY97; President, FY98.

JOBS SINCE HSA: Began his career in investing at Morgan Stanley, KKR, and Ziff Brothers

Investments; launched a proprietary trading business for Morgan Stanley, then served as Head

of Equities at the Lakshmi Mittal Family Office and Head of International Developed Equities at

Harvard Management Company; now Managing Director at Vitruvian Partners, considered the

leading European growth equity investment fund.

The interior of Burke-McCoy Hall today.

HOW HAS HSA INFLUENCED YOUR CAREER? “It gave me exposure to lots of businesses. As

President, you got to see lots. That was, at that age, certainly enlightening. … I spent a lot of my time

on the road with Michael Cronin, raising our $6.5 million campaign haul to pay for Burke-McCoy

Hall. … The real catalyst for [my career] was seeing Michael and his career and my experience with

him; that really shaped my thinking.”

WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR MOST FUN MEMORIES FROM HSA? “I loved the softball team,

loved our softball T-shirts, loved our barbecues. … The Let’s Go parties were famous. [Our offices]

had this open plan; they were kind of grungy; there was Weezer and Radiohead playing in the

background. It was fantastic.”

LET’S GO TITLES

• Europe


• France

• Italy

• USA

AGENCIES

• Greece & Turkey

• Israel & Egypt

• California

• Alaska & the

Pacific Northwest


• Mexico

• New York City

• London


• Germany

• Austria &

Switzerland

• Paris

• Rome

• Ireland

• Southeast Asia

• Eastern Europe

• Central America

• India & Nepal

• Ecuador & the

Galapagos Islands

• Australia

• New Zealand

OTHER TITLES

• The Unofficial

Guide to Life

at Harvard

70

• Linen


• Catering

• Travel



• Harvard Distribution Services



• Computer Services



fy

99


JANUARY 31, 1999

The Center for Enterprise brings

business school to undergrads

fy

00


JANUARY 31, 2000

Two longtime agencies exit stage left

PRESIDENT

Catherine

Turco

OFFICES

67 Mt. Auburn St.

17 Holyoke St.

LET’S GO TITLES

• Europe


• France

• Italy

• USA

• Greece

AGENCIES

• Linen


• Catering

HARVARD

STUDENT

AGENCIES

• Turkey

• Israel & Egypt

• California

• Alaska & the

Pacific Northwest


Changes were afoot at HSA! Richard Olken left

after six years of service, and longtime Board

member Blair Brown ’62, MArch ’67, who since

the early ’90s had hosted a summer retreat for

managers at his seaside home, graciously stepped

in as interim General Manager. Student and

professional Board members worked together

to alter the corporate governing structure of the

Board and senior executive levels. Their reforms

added the position of Chairman of the Board,

formal reporting structures, and annual reviews

for the professional staff. The Center for Enterprise

emerged as its own agency and began the Business

Leadership Program, a one-week training program

taught by Harvard Business School professors and

sponsored by Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, Trilogy,

and Fidelity. Over 100 eager students were accepted

into the program and were provided with a threering

binder full of case studies, Harvard Business

Review articles, study questions, company literature,

and letter-size nametags designed to facilitate the

dreaded cold-calling practices of Harvard Business

School professors.

After a seven-year marriage, Let’s Go: Greece & Turkey divorced

into two separate guides. Let’s Go continued its continent-hopping

with the addition of Let’s Go: South Africa to the ranks, which now

numbered 28. Closer to home, Map Guides to Seattle and Prague

became available. For the first time, RWs lugged around laptops to log

their discoveries.

On March 20, 1998, Let’s Go was also absolved from a libel suit filed in

1990 by Itzik Shaari, the owner of an Israeli hostel. That year, Let’s Go:

Israel & Egypt had warned readers away from his hostel because Shaari

had been charged with sexual harassment. Upon dismissing the litigation, the Massachusetts Supreme

Judicial Court called the Let’s Go team “the modern equivalents of Thomas Paine or John Peter Zenger.”

It was a victory for Let’s Go’s core tenet of honesty.

• Mexico

• New York City

• London


• Germany

• Austria

& Switzerland

• Travel



• Paris

• Rome

• Ireland

• Southeast Asia

• Eastern Europe

• Central America

• India & Nepal


Services



President Catherine Turco ’99, MBA ’03, AM ’09,

PhD ’11, Harvard President Neil Rudenstine, PhD

’64, and Vice President Jon Sakoda ’99.

The 1999 Let’s Go Managing Editor team.

• Ecuador & the

Galapagos Islands

• Australia

• New Zealand

• South Africa

OTHER TITLES

• The Unofficial

Guide to Life

at Harvard

• The Unofficial

Guide to Life

After Harvard


• Unofficial Publications

• Center for Enterprise

PRESIDENT

Noble

Hansen

OFFICES

67 Mt. Auburn St.

17 Holyoke St.

LET’S GO TITLES

• Europe


• France

• Italy

• USA

• Greece

• Turkey

AGENCIES

• HSA Cleaners


• Catering

• Travel

HARVARD

STUDENT

AGENCIES

• Israel

• Middle East

• California

• Alaska & the

Pacific Northwest


• Mexico

HSA closed out the millennium in style. Summer rentals

of microfridges, TVs, and fans were strong enough to merit

the status of an independent agency as HSA Rentals spun

off from The Campus Store. The jobs of the age-old Catering

agency, supplying barbecues and wedding receptions since

FY62, were subsumed into HSR, where Manager of the Year

Brian Joseph ’01 effectively managed a burgeoning bartending

business while blocking and tackling the less exciting basics


like collecting receivables (finally taking credit-card numbers

from customers!). HSA also bid bon voyage to Travel, 40 years after it first took flight as Europe by Air. On

the bright side, Distribution was restored to its status as a cash cow after several subpar years.

In March, HSA welcomed Bob Rombauer as its new General Manager. Rombauer came to HSA with 25

years of professional experience in the biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and investment industries.

Let’s Go celebrated its 40th anniversary with classic new covers,

and the thumbpick was finally reawarded a place of prominence.

Let’s Go: Israel & Egypt was partitioned into Let’s Go: Israel and

Let’s Go: Middle East. The company’s sole South American guide

hiked the Andes to become Let’s Go: Peru & Ecuador, and Let’s

Go’s first venture into China guided travelers on a journey from

the Forbidden City to the Tibetan frontier. Hong Kong and

Sydney became the latest cities to fall to Map Guide domination.

Back home in the cozy comfort of Burke-McCoy Hall, the first

Editor-in-Chief, Ben Harder ’99, managed affairs inside the books

and inside the office, while Publishing Director Ben Wilkinson

’98 continued to work with

• New York City

• London


• Germany

• Austria

& Switzerland

• Paris

• Rome




Services

the outside world, including contract-renewal negotiations with St.

Martin’s. Ad sales were strong, thanks to a great team and a bubbly

economy (yes, Let’s Go had dot-com advertisers!). And the company

saw an unprecedented spike in the number of Editor applicants — 102,

up from 45 the previous year.

• Ireland

• Southeast Asia

• Eastern Europe

• Central America

• India & Nepal

• Peru & Ecuador

• Australia

• New Zealand





President Noble Hansen ’00 and Vice

President Tricia Wencelblat ’00.

• South Africa

• China

OTHER TITLES

• The Unofficial

Guide to Life

at Harvard

• The Official

Harvard Student

Agencies

Bartending Course

• The Unofficial

Guide to Life

After Harvard


• HSA Rentals


fy

01


JANUARY 31, 2001

The dawn of e-commerce

fy

02


JANUARY 31, 2002

A Harvard Square institution,

The Harvard Shop, joins HSA

PRESIDENT

Andrew

Murphy

OFFICES

67 Mt. Auburn St.

17 Holyoke St.

HARVARD

STUDENT

AGENCIES

Entering FY01, prospective customers surfing

the internet still had to pick up a phone or visit in

person to do business with HSA. That all changed

when Vice President Brian Joseph spearheaded

the effort to allow customers to access HSA’s

products and services online. By midway through

the year, savvy parents were already logging on

and ordering laundry services for their helpless

progeny from their desktops. In a cruel twist of

irony, the Computer Services agency shut down

around the same time.

Michael Cronin successfully closed the $3.5

million capital campaign that he had started

five years earlier, and, together, the Board and

members of the corporation worked to rewrite the

corporate bylaws, providing a structure for HSA

that was more consistent with its modern needs.

Bob Rombauer, George Christodoulo, and

Publishing Director Kaya Stone ’00 signed a

new five-year publishing agreement with St.

Martin’s Press that also returned ownership of

multimedia rights to Let’s Go. Editor-in-Chief

Kate McCarthy ’00 led the redesign of Let’s Go’s

now-seven city guides, which featured a Let’s

Go novelty: photographs. The team continued to bend the internet to its

mighty will as guidebook content was posted on the web for the first time.

The 2001 series brought RWs from both coasts closer to home with the

first editions of Let’s Go: Boston and Let’s Go: San Francisco. As Let’s Go:

Europe broke 1,000 pages, Peru & Ecuador expanded to include Bolivia.

Let’s Go: Western Europe was added to its Eastern European counterpart,

rounding out the number of fully updated titles to 33. The Map Guides

added their last siblings, Dublin and Venice.

FY01 student Board members.

Bob Rombauer.

PRESIDENT

Cindy

Rodriguez

OFFICES

67 Mt. Auburn St.

17 Holyoke St.

52 JFK St.

HARVARD

STUDENT

AGENCIES

The Technology Management Program was attempted as a

new beta-testing agency, and the Center for Enterprise trained

aspiring entrepreneurs in the first Entrepreneur Bootcamp,

held in March. Toward the end of the summer, HSA’s web

presence went gangbusters with the online version of The

Unofficial Guide, a new recruiting website, and an online voting

forum for student Board elections.

When Board member Paul Corcoran ’54 announced his


retirement in 2001, an uncertain fate awaited his labor of love,

a retail fixture of the old Harvard Sq.: The Harvard Shop. Upon hearing that the store was available for

sale, Vice President Brian Clay ’02, MBA ’06, immediately went after it, seeing it as a golden opportunity

for both HSA’s mission statement and bottom line. Clay worked with Michael Cronin on the valuation of

the business and George Christodoulo on the legal logistics of an acquisition. Ever the gentleman, Corcoran

recused himself from Board discussions and eventually resigned to avoid any potential conflict of interest.

Clay crafted a five-year business plan for The Harvard Shop, focusing on modernizing the storefront,

business practices, and launching an e-commerce presence. The deal finally closed at the end of the summer,

and The Harvard Shop officially became HSA’s newest agency, replacing The Campus Store. Students were

hired to staff the storefront, and inventory and sales records were moved to Excel instead of paper. The store

at 52 JFK St. mostly remained the same, but the groundwork was laid for future bounty.

The spring of 2001 brought the first Let’s Go roadtrip, driven by three alums who toured eastern colleges

for two months giving away free Let’s Go guides and information. Part of a cross-promotion with Student

Universe, the roadtrip spread the gospel of Let’s Go with the help of a rented RV named “Big Daddy.” Come

summer, nearly 200 RWs wandered the globe from Alaska to Zimbabwe, some of whom were accompanied

by a student film crew that produced a Let’s Go TV pilot. New guides included Let’s Go: Amsterdam, Let’s

Go: Barcelona, and Let’s Go: Egypt, while Let’s Go: Southwest USA became the first in a new outdoor adventure

series. The nine city guides, “pocket-sized and feature-packed,” became available on Palm

PDAs for the high-tech budget traveler. The summer ended on a strong

note with a deal with Student Universe to revamp the Let’s Go website.

The 2002 series was dedicated to the memory of RW Haley Surti ’01,

who died in a bus crash just as she was beginning her route in Peru. The

tragedy shook the Let’s Go staff to the core and inspired tightened safety

precautions such as the “no night transportation” rule.

LET’S GO TITLES

• Europe


• France

• Italy

• USA

• Greece

AGENCIES

• Turkey

• Israel

• Middle East

• California

• Alaska & the

Pacific Northwest


• Mexico

• New York City

• London


• Germany

• Austria

& Switzerland

• Paris

• Rome

• Ireland

• Southeast Asia

• Eastern Europe

• Central America

• India & Nepal

• Peru, Bolivia

& Ecuador

• Australia

• New Zealand

• South Africa

• China

• Boston

• San Francisco

• Western Europe

OTHER TITLES

• The Unofficial

Guide to Life

at Harvard

LET’S GO TITLES

• Europe


• France

• Italy

• USA

• Greece

AGENCIES

• Turkey

• Israel

• Middle East

• California

• Alaska & the

Pacific Northwest


• Mexico

• New York City

• London


• Germany

• Austria

& Switzerland

• Paris

• Rome

• Ireland

• Southeast Asia

• Eastern Europe

• Central America

• India & Nepal

• Peru, Ecuador

& Bolivia

• Australia

• New Zealand

• South Africa

• China

• Boston

• San Francisco

• Western Europe

• Amsterdam

• Barcelona

• Egypt

• Southwest USA

Adventure Guide

OTHER TITLES

• The Unofficial

Guide to Life

at Harvard

• HSA Cleaners





Services






• HSA Rentals

• HSA Cleaners




Services





• HSA Rentals

• The Harvard Shop

74


THE LEGEND OF THE HARVARD SHOP

The Harvard Shop had a storied legacy in Harvard Sq. well before HSA acquired it in 2001. Paul Corcoran, then a member of the HSA

Board of Directors, had run the storefront at 52 JFK St. since 1983. Two of Corcoran’s classmates, Robert Weiss ’54 and George Abrams

’54, JD ’57, had the idea to sell Harvard merchandise and reached out to their retail-savvy friend to ask him if he wanted to run the store.

It was like asking a mouse if he wanted to run a cheese shop. On its first day open to the public, The Harvard Shop brought in $67. By the

time Corcoran sold it to HSA, it was making over $600,000 per year.

PAUL CORCORAN ’54

On June 7, 2022, Paul Corcoran passed away at the ripe old age of 90. Corcoran is best

known to the HSA community for his years of service on the Board of Directors and for

co-founding The Harvard Shop in 1983. Since he sold the shop to HSA in 2001, the agency

has employed more than 2,000 students and paid out more than $4 million in wages. But

Corcoran also left behind a legacy that radiates far beyond HSA.

Born and raised in Cambridge, Corcoran was destined to go into retail from a young age. His

family ran the legendary Cambridge department store J.H. Corcoran & Co., founded by his

grandfather in 1881. Corcoran took over managing the store’s two locations upon his father’s

death in 1974. At its height, Corcoran’s had 23 departments, but skyrocketing rents and

lower demand for general-merchandise stores took their toll. The Central Sq. location closed

in 1984, and the Harvard Sq. location closed in 1987. (Corcoran made sure to offer its downon-their-luck

employees jobs at The Harvard Shop.)

Corcoran was active in the community too. He was a member of the Harvard Club of Boston

since 1956 and served as a Director and Vice President on its Board of Governors for several

years. In 1989, he became the club’s 29th President. After retiring from The Harvard Shop,

he also selflessly volunteered at the Jordan Boys & Girls Club in Chelsea, where he spent two

or three afternoons a week tutoring underprivileged youths, with whom he often maintained

relationships for years. And of course, he left a legacy with his own family as well: four

children and 10 grandchildren. He will be sorely missed by all.

With decades of experience in retail and

a reputation as “the mayor of Harvard

Sq.,” Corcoran was able to leverage his

connections with manufacturers and Harvard

administrators in order to grow the business.

The product lines and revenue grew quickly, as

sales increased by nearly 20% each month until

a small recession hit in 1989. Partnerships

formed with executive-education programs

at the Kennedy School of Government and

the Graduate School of Education, which

once yielded over $10,000 in two hours

when groups from the two schools happened

to drop in at the same time. Corcoran also

launched the traditional T-shirt giveaway

for incoming freshmen in order to introduce

undergraduates to the store.

Requests for custom apparel from within

the administration soon came pouring in.

The athletic department and varsity coaches

commissioned pewter mugs and team jackets.

Dean of Harvard College Harry Lewis ’68,

AM ’73, PhD ’74, even charged Corcoran

with creating and sending Harvard gift boxes

to important alums and friends, including Bill Gates’s first child, Whoopi Goldberg, and Martha Stewart. Seeking additional ways to

expand, The Harvard Shop opened up a location in Copley Sq. in 1986 as well as pushcarts in Boston Common and Salem. Eventually,

the new locations closed down, and only 52 JFK St. remained.

Around the turn of the millennium, Corcoran decided it was time for him to step away from the business. One deal to sell The Harvard

Shop was lined up and nearly closed, but it fell through at the last minute. After casually mentioning this to a fellow HSA Board member,

Corcoran was soon approached by HSA about the possibility of buying the shop. After negotiation and planning, HSA purchased The

Harvard Shop in the summer of 2001.

When Corcoran sold The Harvard Shop to HSA, he had two main stipulations: that The Harvard Shop keep its name and that HSA

retain Doris Jones, who had been an assistant to Corcoran for 21 years and handled much of the shop’s accounting. Relocated from the

back room of 52 JFK St. to Burke-McCoy Hall, Jones brought invaluable experience to HSA, as the new student leadership struggled to

understand the complicated processes of inventory accounting. Known as the “Accounting Detective,” Jones was famous (or infamous) for

her willingness to track down any outstanding payments and untangle any financial knot that the managers may or may not have created.

76


fy

03


JANUARY 31, 2003

PRESIDENT

Bradley

Olson

OFFICES

67 Mt. Auburn St.

17 Holyoke St.

52 JFK St.

HARVARD

STUDENT

AGENCIES

The height of Let’s Go: 41 guides

and over 200 Researcher-Writers

Unofficial Publications branched out with a new book, The Guide to Getting In, which St. Martin’s Press

released nationally to strong sales on August 2, 2002. HSR collaborated with Unofficial Publications to

launch a college-admissions course to accompany the book. The office of the Vice President moved to 17

Holyoke St., where Rosa Wu ’03 reigned over the newly renovated storefront. Students, alums, staff, and

friends celebrated HSA’s 45th anniversary in October with a tailgate luncheon followed by the Harvard-

Northeastern football game. By the time Hail and Farewell rolled around, HSA had paid out over $2.7

million in student wages, tops in company history.

In The Harvard Shop’s first full year as an HSA subsidiary, the corporation attempted to bring it into

the 20th century, let alone the 21st. Inventory was now tracked with Retail Pro software (rather than

Paul Corcoran’s unfailing memory), checkout procedures were done with a computer and barcode scanner

(rather than a 1960s cash register), and an e-commerce presence was launched. Corcoran and Doris Jones

trained the agency’s first student managers, and Jones stayed on at 52 JFK St. to handle the bookkeeping.

Despite Jones’s “ justifiable daily urge to throttle” the two managers, The Harvard Shop posted record sales

in FY03, a 15% increase over the previous year.

A wave of backlash against Let’s Go’s success crashed ashore. As critics griped and competitor guides began

to eat into sales figures, St. Martin’s began to sour on the Let’s Go brand and prescribed a massive series

relaunch. The books’ tone, format, and covers were revamped in an attempt to broaden their consumer

base. It marked the birth of series mainstays like Price Diversity, features, and the Alternatives to Tourism

chapter, offering conscientious travelers ways to study, work, and volunteer abroad. Devastatingly, however,

the sleek black covers replaced the classic thumbpick with a nondescript textual logo.

The reinvented series debuted in November 2002 and included four new

titles: Let’s Go: Hawaii, Let’s Go: Chile, Let’s Go: Costa Rica, and Let’s Go:

Thailand. Let’s Go now sat at a high-water mark of 41 guides and more than

200 RWs. One hundred office staffers crammed the basement, third floor,

and fourth floor of Burke-McCoy Hall to the gills. Uncle!


Adam Grant | ’03

President Bradley Olson ’03, MBA ’08, and

Vice President Rosa Wu.

JOBS AT HSA: Senior Advertising Associate, Let’s Go Ad Sales, FY01; Director of Advertising Sales, Let’s Go Ad Sales, FY02;

Marketing and Publicity Manager, Let’s Go Publications, FY03; Clerk, HSA/Let’s Go Board of Directors, FY02 – FY03.

JOBS SINCE HSA: Received his PhD and MS in Organizational Psychology from the University of Michigan in 2006; spent two

years as an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; moved to the University of Pennsylvania’s

Wharton School in 2009, where he became the youngest tenured professor in Wharton history at age 28; now host of the

WorkLife podcast and author of four New York Times bestsellers, Give and Take, Originals, Option B (with Sheryl Sandberg),

and Think Again.

HOW HAS LET’S GO INFORMED YOUR RESEARCH ON WORKPLACE PSYCHOLOGY? “Working at HSA and Let’s

Go was life-changing in many ways. One of them was, I was interested in studying team effectiveness, and I thought, ‘What a

fascinating place to do it.’ … I basically surveyed all the Editors and Associate Editors at the beginning of the summer, looking

at their perceptions of their work, the project they were working on, and the people they were working with, trying to get a sense

of what was motivating them and what the team was focused on. Then I got data at the end of the summer on the quality of the

books they produced. … It turns out that the single strongest predictor of creating a high-quality book was the belief at the start

that their work made a difference. … That was the first seed of my doctoral dissertation and the research that became my first

book, Give and Take, which is that a lot of people do jobs that have an impact but they don’t know who’s benefiting and how.”

LET’S GO TITLES

• Europe


• France

• Italy

• USA

• Greece

• Turkey

• Israel

AGENCIES

• Middle East

• California

• Alaska & the

Pacific Northwest


• Mexico

• New York City

• London


• Germany

• Austria & Switzerland

• Paris

• Rome

• Ireland

• Southeast Asia

• Eastern Europe

• Central America

• India & Nepal

• Peru, Ecuador

& Bolivia

• Australia

• New Zealand

• South Africa

• China

• Boston

• San Francisco

• Western Europe

• Amsterdam

• Barcelona

• Egypt

• Southwest USA

Adventure Guide

• Hawaii

• Chile

• Costa Rica

• Thailand

OTHER TITLES

• The Unofficial Guide to

Life at Harvard

• The Guide to Getting In

WHAT’S ONE GOOD MEMORY YOU HAVE FROM LET’S GO? “Brad Olson and I were managers the same year; he was

running Unofficial Guide ad sales. … We were trying to improve the hiring process, and Brad came up with a crazy idea: we should

do a demo. Let’s have them sell us something, but why not have them sell something that’s even harder to sell than an ad? We

ended up asking them to sell us rotten apples. … One [candidate] came in and said, ‘It may look like I’m selling rotten apples, but

I’m really selling antique apples.’ … We ended up hiring him, and he was the best Ad Associate I had ever seen.”

WHAT’S ONE BAD MEMORY YOU HAVE FROM LET’S GO? “I remember panicking when we got a letter from a writer who

said that he had gotten gangrene and had to amputate his own toe. I’m not even sure if it was true or not, but it was kind of a

shock.”

WHAT ADVICE DO YOU HAVE FOR CURRENT STUDENTS? “Don’t take advice from strangers. Seriously. Advice is meant to

be tailored to you, and people who don’t know you are not well tailored to give you recommendations that could shape your future.

Whatever decision you’re grappling with, I think the best thing you can do is find someone with a similar dilemma and give them

advice, and you will generally find that the advice you gave to others is the advice you need to take for yourself.”

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Services





• HSA Rentals



fy

04


JANUARY 31, 2004

HSA’s biggest agency

begins to contract

The new HSA Storage agency assisted Harvard students with their futons and boxes during the frenzied

move-out period. Although Harvard Graphic Design met an abstract end, HSA Water gushed forth from

HSA Rentals. HSR franchised the Bartending Course and laid the groundwork for a college-prep course.

Manager of the Year Matthew Salzberg ’05, MBA ’10, customized HSA Cleaners’s offerings for student

groups and athletic teams. Distribution started a new care-package service, and Unofficial Publications

added the prefrosh guide. The Center for Enterprise held the Expansion Contest, an early incubator for new

ideas for HSA agencies. With Chief Financial Officer Lorraine Facella at the helm of the business office,

outstanding accounts receivable reached a record low.

contamination that sealed off the basement until mid-August. Six bookteams

and 18 staffers were forced to seek refuge upstairs, bringing the staff closer

together than ever and making for a high-energy, fun-filled year.

The FY04 management team at Blair Brown Day,

the annual summer retreat at Board member Blair

Brown’s South Coast home.

PRESIDENT

Abhishek

Gupta

OFFICES

67 Mt. Auburn St.

17 Holyoke St.

52 JFK St.

LET’S GO TITLES

• Europe


• France

• Italy

• USA

• Greece

AGENCIES

HARVARD

STUDENT

AGENCIES

• California

• Alaska Adventure

Guide

• Pacific Northwest


• Mexico

After having modernized The Harvard Shop’s business practices the year prior, HSA turned its attention

toward modernizing its product offerings. Additions included shotglasses, American Apparel items, more

fitted styles, and cheer shorts with “Harvard” lettered across the derrière — though the last of these was

quickly nixed by the Harvard Trademark Office. The shop’s Custom Orders division began to grow and was

established as a formal revenue stream rather than just a side business, expanding its offerings and reaching

out to more Harvard-affiliated groups. Plans were also laid to begin selling Balfour class rings as a part of

the One Ring Program, modeled after MIT. The Harvard Shop discussed coordinating ring sales with the

Coop, but HSA’s legal team eventually advised against it to avoid price-fixing allegations down the road.

With resources spread wafer-thin and Burke-McCoy Hall bursting at the seams, it was obvious to even

the most ambitious student traveloguer that Let’s

Go was overextended. Caught between quantity

and quality, Let’s Go made the obvious choice.

For the first time in the modern era, the 2004

series rotated out some titles to make room for

others. Let’s Go conquered Brazil and Japan for

the first time and added more domestic titles

with Let’s Go: Puerto Rico, the meiosis of Let’s

Go: Alaska & the Pacific Northwest, and the

conception of a new guide to roadtripping across

America. Let’s Go Ad Sales expanded to online

advertising, and online content hit the internet

in force, revitalizing the Let’s Go website. Back

on Mt. Auburn St., a century-old pipe burst

in May, causing recurrent flooding and mold

• New York City

• London


• Germany

• Austria

& Switzerland

• Paris

• Rome

• Ireland

• Eastern Europe

• India & Nepal

• Australia

• Boston

• San Francisco

• Western Europe

• Amsterdam

• Barcelona

• Southwest USA

Adventure Guide

• Hawaii

• Brazil

• Japan

• Puerto Rico

OTHER TITLES


Life at Harvard


to Prefrosh Weekend


Irin Carmon | ’05

JOBS AT HSA: Associate Editor, Let’s Go: Italy and Let’s Go: Spain & Portugal, FY03; Researcher-Writer, Let’s Go: Amsterdam, FY04.

JOBS SINCE HSA: Started her career as a freelance writer, including on travel, for outlets such as the Boston Globe and Village

Voice; got a “Devil Wears Prada–esque job” as a media reporter for Women’s Wear Daily (2006–2009); narrowed her focus to gender

politics, feminism, and the law as a reporter at Jezebel (2009–2011), Salon (2011–2013), MSNBC (2013–2016), and the Washington

Post (2017–2018); in 2015, published the acclaimed book Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg; currently a

Senior Correspondent for New York magazine and a Contributor for CNN.

WHAT’S THE FUNNIEST STORY FROM YOUR TIME AT LET’S GO? “As a Let’s Go researcher, Lonely Planet is always the elephant

in the room; everyone you meet says, ‘Oh, is it like Lonely Planet?’ By chance, I met the Lonely Planet RW at a hostel in Groningen. He

told me he just couch-surfed and pocketed his stipend money — he was basically scamming the readers. I was like, are you kidding

me? The whole point is you stayed in the places you reviewed! But few people know what it’s like to do this kind of job, so I gave him

my number and agreed to get a drink with him and my roommates back in Amsterdam. But a day or two later, he called and asked,

‘Can I crash on your couch?’”

WHAT LESSONS DID YOU LEARN AT LET’S GO THAT YOU’VE CARRIED WITH YOU IN YOUR CAREER? “As an editor, it was

incredible to figure out what it means to create a book… You think of a book as a magical thing that just appears, but we were involved

in every part of the process. That was exhilarating. It was the first time I saw my name in a book. I’m known among my friends as

obsessed with itineraries and travel logistics, so [Let’s Go] was a training ground [for that]. There’s a hubris that goes into thinking,

as an 18- or 19-year-old, you can just show up in a country and tell people what they should do there, but at the same time it fosters a

fearlessness and an adaptability that is a quality I hope has served me well as a journalist. You research the hell out of it and show up

and hope for the best.”

WHAT ADVICE DO YOU HAVE FOR CURRENT STUDENTS? “Be humble; be curious; listen more than you talk. Take very good

notes, and learn as many languages as you can.”

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fy

05


JANUARY 31, 2005

PRESIDENT

Ryan

Geraghty

OFFICES

67 Mt. Auburn St.

17 Holyoke St.

52 JFK St.

HARVARD

STUDENT

AGENCIES

An HSA legend retires

Ladies and gentlemen, FY05 proudly

presents… HSA’s new and improved

website! Director of E-Services

Kristopher Tillery ’06 modernized the

company’s web presence and marketing

materials with a beautiful redesign,

replete with even more online services

and opportunities for e-commerce.

HSA Rentals and HSA Cleaners

moved to a single-touch digital

ordering system that was light-years

ahead of even most major retailers. The

overflowing filing cabinets and carboncopy

lease agreements for purchasing

laundry plans and microfridges were

replaced with new online services and

personalized accounts.

Members of the Board of Directors at Brad Howe’s farewell dinner.

On April 30, 2004, HSA honored Brad Howe at a farewell dinner. Beginning in 1959, Howe served HSA

for 45 years in the roles of student manager, General Manager, member of the Board of Directors, mentor,

and friend. In other exciting agency news, the Harvard Bartending Course explained the difference between

cabernet and pinot grigio in its new Introduction to Wine Tasting course that offered a sampling of over 30

vintages, Unofficial Publications expanded The Unofficial Guide to Tufts and MIT and published the first

Harvard Guide to Summer Opportunities, and Cleaners carried out a suggestion from its quality survey by

offering mesh bags for socks and delicates to squelch the epidemic of lost unmentionables.

For the first time, The Harvard Shop broke half a million dollars in revenue thanks to strong sales of its

stuffed animals, caps, and other sundry new products. One major source of success was the 300% year-overyear

growth of Custom Orders. The Harvard Shop began the quest for one student-sponsored ring design

to rule them all with the launch of the One Ring Program in conjunction with the Undergraduate Council.

After a two-year researching and editing effort, Let’s Go: Roadtripping USA

hit the shelves. Let’s Go: Vietnam was also new to the 2005 series, and Peru,

Ecuador & Bolivia was divvied up into Let’s Go: Peru and Let’s Go: Ecuador.

To promote and support the Alternatives to Tourism sections of the guides,

www.beyondtourism.com went live. The good: Let’s Go moved out of the

basement of Burke-McCoy Hall and began working exclusively on the sunnier

third and fourth floors. The bad: this meant another wave of classic Let’s Go

titles were discontinued, including the handy-dandy Map Guides. The ugly: just

as HSA did when it expanded too rapidly in the late 1960s, Let’s Go was now

losing money after an era of huge gains. It was a double whammy: in the wake of

September 11, people weren’t traveling as much as they used to, and when they

did, they were using the internet, not travel guides, to plan their trips. Despite

24 years of partnership, St. Martin’s Press — grappling with the web-related

decline of its own industry — appeared to throw in the towel when it amended

the publishing agreement to restrict the title line and cut the Let’s Go staff.


Jesse Andrews | ’04

JOBS AT HSA: Researcher-Writer, Let’s Go: Germany, FY02; Editor, Let’s Go: Germany, FY03; Personnel Manager, Let’s Go

Publications, FY04; Editor, Let’s Go: Vietnam, FY05.

WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN UP TO SINCE GRADUATION? “I spent most of my 20s writing unpublishable novels and playing in bands with

no fans. In 2012, I finally got a book published and have been working ever since as a novelist and screenwriter. I’ve had two New York Times

bestsellers (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl; The Haters) and written movies that have won the Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize

(Me and Earl and the Dying Girl) and been nominated for an Academy Award (Pixar’s Luca). Currently I’m working on my fourth book

and writing my second movie for Pixar.”

HOW HAS LET’S GO HELPED YOU IN YOUR CAREER? “I wouldn’t have my career without Let’s Go. Speaking practically, Let’s Go

taught me the editorial skills I used to support myself as a textbook and magazine editor in the years before my writing career took off.

Speaking spiritually, Let’s Go ushered me toward a life in which I might actually have things to write about — it gave me the confidence

and taste for adventure I needed to go out into the strange enormous world, and engage it.”

LET’S GO TITLES

• Europe


• France

• Italy

• USA

• Greece

AGENCIES

• California

• Pacific Northwest

Adventure Guide


• New York City

• London

• Germany

• Austria

& Switzerland

• Paris

• Ireland

• Southeast Asia

• Eastern Europe

• Central America

• Peru

• Ecuador

• Australia

• New Zealand

Adventure Guide

• China

• Western Europe

• Hawaii

• Chile

• Costa Rica

• Thailand

• Vietnam

• Roadtripping US

OTHER TITLES


Life at Harvard


to Prefrosh Weekend

• The Harvard Guide to

Summer Opportunities


Life in Cambridge

WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR BEST MEMORIES FROM LET’S GO? “This is hard to convey but one of my dearest memories is my very

first encounter with Let’s Go, the information session I went to as a first-year — sitting near the back of the Science Center auditorium,

listening to the stories of these witty savvy globe-trotting elders who were so unlike me (and yet whose company I had the chance to join),

I had a spooky arm-hair-raising feeling of encountering this threshold to somewhere unknown and life-changing, which turned out to be

absolutely true.”

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Services




• HSA Rentals


• HSA Storage


Recession and revival

A perfect storm hit HSA during the late 2000s that posed the company’s biggest challenge

since the 1970s. The struggles of the publishing industry hit Let’s Go hard, depriving HSA of

what had for decades been its most reliable moneymaker. Let’s Go switched publishers from

St. Martin’s Press to Avalon Travel and, in FY14, returned to self-publishing for the first time

since the 1960s. To adapt, Let’s Go reemphasized its student pedigree, developed e-books and

special-edition PDFs, and branched out into social media and the blogosphere, but a dwindling

title line kept it from being the jobs and revenue engine it once was.

The Great Recession was the second shoe to drop. Just when HSA could least afford them,

financial losses began piling up, forcing the organization to reevaluate and reinvent. From FY07

to FY11, agencies cut costs, and the number of employees fell to its lowest level in decades. But

the trying times were also an opportunity to get creative and test new initiatives. Cutting-edge

agencies, like Mt. Auburn Productions and an outlet for web and app developers, were added

to the stable thanks to the Harvard College Innovation Challenge (better known as i3); others,

like HSA Dorm Essentials and the agencies formerly known as HSR, reshuffled into more

efficient versions of their former selves. Under a new corporate structure, Managing Directors

oversaw multiple agencies at once, lessening the burden on both senior management and the

agency managers.

Throughout this dark period, General Manager Jim McKellar was a shining light, brainstorming

new business ideas for HSA while preserving its essential agencies and character, placing a

premium on institutional memory and student-alum connections. In the early 2010s, a new

HSA Alumni association was founded to bring HSA closer in touch with its impressive

history. Alums now regularly return to HSA to teach seminars in business education and host

student managers at their companies for brief summer apprenticeships in their chosen fields.

HSA Cleaners (whose revenue increased every year from FY11 through FY17) came into

its own during the 2010s, and new agencies HSA Tutoring and The Academies experienced

explosive growth. But the most important development of this period was The Harvard Shop

becoming a force to be reckoned with. Its FY09 expansion to a second storefront in the Holyoke

Center opened up an endless frontier of possibilities for the flourishing agency. Each new year

brought a new sales record, from $1 million in FY11 to $3 million in FY16. In FY14, a spacious

third location opened next door to Burke-McCoy Hall, and in FY17 a new store in The Garage

replaced the Holyoke Center location.

Fifty years after its students first went door to door selling Harvard paraphernalia, HSA had

again found stability and success in the retail racket. As a result, by FY12, HSA had regained its

financial footing and emerged from the recession stronger than ever. The organization posted

sizable profits with regularity as it zoomed through the 2010s, topping out at $7.3 million in

revenue in FY20.

2006-

2020

84


fy

06


JANUARY 31, 2006

St. Martin’s Press slashes

the Let’s Go title line

fy

07


JANUARY 31, 2007

Financial storm clouds gather

PRESIDENT

Caleb

Merkl

OFFICES

67 Mt. Auburn St.

17 Holyoke St.

52 JFK St.

HARVARD

STUDENT

AGENCIES

LET’S GO TITLES

Wow! Talk about a whirlwind, roller-coaster year. HSA said goodbye to Anne Chisholm, who ended her

12-year reign as Assistant General Manager in September. Vice President Nahu Ghebremichael ’06 headed

up a massive project at Cleaners by completely revamping the freshman linen program. The old system of

outsourcing for a percentage was dropped, and the entire program was brought in house. Rentals pioneered

a successful grocery-delivery service that brought snacks in bulk to students’ doors — only to see its manager

and three other students abruptly quit to start a direct competitor. When DormAid announced plans to

provide laundry- and grocery-delivery services to the same Boston-area colleges HSA was planning to

expand to, HSA accused the mutinous cabal of breach of contract.

Simultaneously one of the most exciting and most devastating ventures, HSA’s planned mega-concert

fell just short of realization. The Board’s approval of $200,000 in funding along with the college’s and the

Harvard Concert Commission’s cooperation made the idea of a concert at Harvard Stadium seem like a

possibility. Interest on the part of the preferred performer, the Dave Matthews Band, made the project seem

even more promising. However, in one quick and painful blow, the effort collapsed: an offer popped up in a

competing time frame from the difficult-to-top venue of Fenway Park.

Still, all was not lost for FY06 and bold entrepreneurial projects. Unofficial Publications expanded the

successful Guide to Summer Opportunities to other New England schools. The Harvard Fun Czar also

approached HSA about initatives to make Harvard fun again; displaying the keen business acumen typical

of HSAers, someone suggested alcohol may be a winning solution. HSA thenceforth hosted a series of “Pub

Nights” in Loker Commons, drawing up to 1,000 revelers per weekend with bunches of kegs, a DJ, and

endless amounts of Noch’s pizza. After several weeks of successful events, the college agreed that alcohol

was in fact the solution and plopped down the funds to renovate Loker into a permanent pub.

At The Harvard Shop, the One Ring Program gained momentum and saw student interest in rings double

from FY05. Major changes were made to the stock system, as inventory moved to the basement of Burke-

McCoy Hall to allow for greater storage and fewer stock outages in the store. Product offerings included the

ever-popular Vineyard Vines Harvard tie for the first time.

After only three years of the rebooted Let’s Go, St. Martin’s opted to pull the plug and rebrand Let’s Go

once again. The covers donned a more youthful, artsy-craftsy collage motif, and the series stabilized to a

manageable number of guides. A new business model called for only 24 of the most profitable guides to be

updated going forward — six annually, nine in even years, and nine in odd years. RWs avoided unfamiliar

territory as Let’s Go did not introduce any new titles for the first time in several years. Instead, Let’s Go

unveiled an improved website, complete with RW blogs and forums for travelers to connect. One blog, for

example, answered the all-important question, “Why you should always stop to talk to Czechoslovakian

ex-pats permanently residing in Australia but currently planning to spend the night curled up on a patch of

dirt near a 13th century cathedral.”

PRESIDENT

Brian

Feinstein

OFFICES

67 Mt. Auburn St.

17 Holyoke St.

52 JFK St.

HARVARD

STUDENT

AGENCIES

After years of prosperity from thriving Let’s Go

sales, HSA found itself in leaner times. In what

was dubbed a rebuilding year, nearly every agency

cut unnecessary expenses and sought new sources

of revenue. HSR dished up a new summer course

for eager high-school students: the first SAT

SOS Course. Undergrads could be seen sporting

backpacks with the bright Leadership in Law

Conference logo, a recurring new sibling to the

Center for Enterprise’s flagship Business Leadership

Program. Not content with dry-cleaning and

laundry, Cleaners gave seniors a cheap alternative

to the Coop’s monopoly over cap and gown rentals.

The FY07 management team at Blair Brown Day.

The agency also swallowed up HSA Storage, which

caused some heartburn: the outside company HSA contracted with, Collegeboxes, lost some student items

and didn’t deliver others on time, sparking a rash of complaints.

A tech team led by IT Director Patrick Carroll ’08 worked furiously to keep HSA on the cutting edge.

In just a single year, they revamped The Harvard Shop’s website, brought The Unofficial Guide online, and

upgraded the IT infrastructure in Lorraine Facella’s well-oiled back-office machine. Despite the Cleaners

and Rentals storefront’s resemblance to a warehouse, Carroll’s striking new HSA website helped push

Harvard Summer School sales to record highs.

By the end of the year, the FY07 team had brought HSA closer to breaking even. With Bob Rombauer’s

tenure approaching its end, the Board of Directors began its search for a new General Manager and

introduced a Long-Range Planning Committee to sniff out ways for HSA to return to its days of heady

profits.

The Harvard Shop continued its steady growth. Classrooms from Pound Hall to Longwood echoed with

the sound of metal tapping on tables, thanks to the expansion of class rings to Harvard’s many graduate

schools. Sales from the One Ring Program hit 500, a significant milestone in only the third year of the

program. The Harvard Shop struck partnerships with the Square’s omnipresent tour buses, convincing

some to pull over directly in front of 52 JFK St. in exchange for a tidy commission. Still, one of the greatest

successes on the year was convincing Doris Jones not to quit despite the team’s endless pranks on her.

Let’s Go sales continued to decline, spurring St. Martin’s Press to remarket the redone guides. However, its

mostly ineffective strategies just further soured the relationship between Let’s Go and its publisher. On the

road, the 71 RWs kept on trucking, producing 15 more guides to everywhere from Australia to Vietnam.

• Europe

• Britain

• France

• Italy

• USA

• Greece


AGENCIES

• Mexico

• London

• Ireland

• Eastern Europe

• New Zealand

• Western Europe

• Amsterdam

• Puerto Rico

OTHER TITLES


at Harvard

• Bartending 101: The Basics

of Mixology


Prefrosh Weekend




in Boston

LET’S GO TITLES

• Europe

• Britain

• France

• Italy


AGENCIES

• New York City

• Germany

• Paris

• Australia

• Western Europe

• Hawaii

• Costa Rica

• Thailand

• Vietnam

• Roadtripping USA

OTHER TITLES


at Harvard


Prefrosh Weekend



• HSA Cleaners




Services




• HSA Rentals


• HSA Storage

• HSA Translation

• HSA Cleaners




Services




• HSA Rentals



fy

08


JANUARY 31, 2008

PRESIDENT

William

Hauser

OFFICES

67 Mt. Auburn St.

17 Holyoke St.

52 JFK St.

HARVARD

STUDENT

AGENCIES

LET’S GO TITLES

The end of a 28-year partnership

between Let’s Go and its publisher

Both the good and the bad came with FY08. The beloved Bob Rombauer departed after more than eight

years of mentorship as General Manager, but Jim McKellar began his tenure in July. McKellar was the

hiring committee’s unanimous choice out of over 100 applicants. In October, HSA turned 50 years old with

a celebration attended by alums from across the country. The dinner was highlighted by a keynote speech

from Thomas Stemberg ’71, MBA ’73, and capped by a tribute to Michael Cronin with the rechristening of

the Cronin Center for Enterprise (CCFE).

Facing serious budgetary pressures, HSA

continued to experiment with new ways

to generate revenue. Distribution had a

banner year thanks to several new businesses

like the shuttle-advertising service. HSR

reintroduced HSA Translation, the Wine

Course, and Graphic Design. Cleaners saw

record profits as Collegeboxes atoned for

its sins of the previous year by serving 600

happy packrats.

The tradition of catering to the Harvard

Summer-School began in earnest, as

Rentals, Cleaners, and The Harvard Shop

set up shop in the Yard on move-in day. The

Center for Enterprise debuted a condensed

version of its Business Leadership Program

for summerschool students, and the SAT

SOS Course surpassed its budgeted annual

Vice President AJ Tennant ’08 at one of the weekly barbecues. No

managers were harmed in the taking of this photograph.

revenue in June alone. On one particularly sweltering day, Rentals got a call from the dean requesting to

rent 800 fans for $15,000; despite possessing a grand total of zero fans, HSA took the order and cobbled

together the inventory from stores around Boston.

HSA also laid the foundation for several future new agencies by co-founding the Harvard College Innovation

Challenge. Better known as i3, this incubator for student startups lassoed budding entrepreneurs on

campus with the promise of prize money and the support to make their business idea a reality — in other

words, HSA. Under the feet of noshing freshmen, HSA hired, trained, and completed payroll for the first

staffers of the Cambridge Queen’s Head pub; unfortunately, a licensing issue kept HSA from any long-term

involvement with the sudsy social space. Finally, HSA hit upon a recurring moneymaker by partnering with

the College Events Board to provide shuttles to New Haven for the Harvard-Yale Game. Amid a flurry of

school spirit (and extensive marketing), HSA sold out all 32 shuttles.

Members of the FY08 management team at the

winter ski retreat in Maine.

The Harvard Shop continued to modernize practices in the

storefront and expand the product line. With an aggressive

Google AdWords campaign and the improvements made

to the website the previous fall, online sales more than

tripled, representing 15% of The Harvard Shop’s business.

The success almost caught the shop flat-footed — initially,

operations struggled to keep up with demand — but by the

end of the year no fewer than five associates were specifically

designated to fill online orders. Novelty shirts, notebooks,

backpacks, and keychains were among the new products

introduced — low-cost, high-margin items all. Despite

multiple sewage leaks in its basement stockroom during the

fall semester, revenue hit a new record high, and the agency

shattered its budgeted net income by more than $40,000.

On May 4, Rombauer received the long-awaited call from

St. Martin’s Press informing him that Let’s Go’s publishing

agreement would not be renewed past 2009. The Board’s new

Let’s Go Strategy Committee worked all summer to chart a

course for Let’s Go’s uncertain future.

With the search for a new publisher underway, Let’s Go staffers worked to update 15 guides for the 2008 series, and Let’s Go

experimented with more direct control over The Unofficial Guide. At the end of the summer, four staffers hit the road again to

promote Let’s Go, this time at Midwestern universities.

• Europe

• Britain

• France

• Italy

• USA

• Greece


• Mexico

• London

• Ireland

• Eastern Europe

• New Zealand

• Western Europe

• Amsterdam

• Puerto Rico

OTHER TITLES


at Harvard


Prefrosh Weekend



AGENCIES

• HSA Cleaners




Services




• HSA Rentals


88


fy


JANUARY 31, 2009

OFFICES

67 Mt. Auburn St.

17 Holyoke St.

52 JFK St.

09

PRESIDENT

Timothy

Creamer

Holyoke Center Arcade

HARVARD

STUDENT

AGENCIES

LET’S GO TITLES

The Harvard Shop’s second location

portends a profitable future

To close the budget gap, President Timothy Creamer ’09, MBA ’14, aimed to increase HSA’s visibility and

improve its sagging on-campus reputation. Removing the beleaguered microfridge-rental program and

replacing it with a new product line better targeted toward student needs — futons, coffee tables, minifridges

— HSA Rentals regenerated into HSA Dorm Store. Vice President Pavlo Kononenko ’09, MBA ’13,

destroyed a microfridge with a baseball bat on YouTube to advertise the change. The makeover continued

with the refurbishment of 17 Holyoke St., where Cleaners also plotted its conquest of Harvard’s graduate

schools. Meanwhile, the CCFE’s first careers-in-tech conference drew 30 participants. The renamed HSA

Publications expanded its reach across the river, adapting The Unofficial Guide to Life at Harvard to suit

other Boston-area schools. The Unofficial Guide also provided inspiration to i3 winner Rover, a mobile app to

deliver searchable and GPS-enhanced Unofficial Guide content. While these initiatives worked PR wonders,

the financial crisis that struck in the fall sent HSA reeling.

Under Manager of the Year Daniel

Lee ’10, The Harvard Shop got both

a new look and a new store. The

Harvard Shop logo and branding got

a significant makeover, producing the

ivy-draped Harvard Shop emblem

emblazoned upon storefronts today.

But the most pivotal moment of

FY09 came with the decision to open

a second location of The Harvard

Shop in the Holyoke Center Arcade.

After a radical renovation of the

space, the store opened for business

in July. Though it was the smallest

location The Harvard Shop has had,

it would soon become the highestgrossing

one thanks to its strategic

HSAers and Let’s Goers at the farewell dinner for

retiring Board member Blair Brown.

placement next to the Harvard Information Center. Its instant success pushed The Harvard Shop to a

record year: revenues increased by 30%, the student staff doubled, and net profits skyrocketed by more than

400%. Overall, The Harvard Shop grew faster than any other agency — cementing its central role at HSA.

After a 28-year relationship, the 2009 series marked the last Let’s Go books published by St. Martin’s Press.

Like anyone coming off a breakup, Let’s Go experimented. While pulling off the usual near miracle of

updating 14 old guides, the team replaced Let’s Go: Vietnam with the first brand-new title in four years:

Let’s Go: Buenos Aires. A coven of magical wizards, IT Director

Lukáš Toth ’09 and Production Associate Alex Tremblay ’10,

slew the demon of Adobe FrameMaker and converted the entire

series to Adobe InDesign. And, on May 27, a sparkling new

www.letsgo.com went live, loaded with videos of Europe from

Let’s Go’s first dedicated video RW.

New website, new program, new book — all that was left was

a new publisher. A team headed by Publishing Director Inés

Pacheco ’08 spent the year exploring and negotiating potential

deals. The distribution of a detailed publishing proposal in

February yielded two interested publishers by the end of the

summer — one for print rights and one for digital rights. By

January, Let’s Go had signed two new publishing agreements:

one with Avalon Travel to continue printing the books, the other

with Travel Ad Network (TAN) to manage the website.


Claire Saffitz | ’09

JOBS AT HSA: Researcher-Writer, Let’s Go: Hawaii, FY09.

WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN UP TO SINCE GRADUATION? “I moved to New York and had a few internships, but nothing that felt

like a good fit for me. All I wanted to do during that time was cook, so after a couple of years, I decided to go to culinary school.

… After that, I moved back to New York and got a job testing recipes at Bon Appétit magazine. After five years of working as a

food editor at Bon Appétit, I went freelance in 2018 and wrote my first cookbook, Dessert Person, which was published in 2020.

My second book, What’s for Dessert, is due out this fall.”

• Europe

• Britain

• France

• Italy


• New York City

• Germany

AGENCIES

• HSA Cleaners



• Paris

• Australia

• Western Europe

• Hawaii

• Costa Rica

• Thailand


• Buenos Aires


Services


OTHER TITLES


at Harvard


Prefrosh Weekend



• HSA Publications

• Cronin Center

for Enterprise


in Cambridge


in Boston


• HSA Dorm Store

WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR FONDEST MEMORIES FROM LET’S GO? “I have so many great memories of traveling for Let’s

Go. I spent a couple of months on Oahu researching for the Hawaii guide. I loved exploring a small island and being able to

experience that contrast between city and nature. Some of my favorite experiences were checking out the shrimp trucks on the

North Shore and visiting the famous surf breaks, trying the pineapple whip at the Dole Plantation, and snorkeling in Hanauma

Bay. One brief stay that stands out was the night I spent at a ‘unique’ B&B on the windward coast run by an older couple. The

interior was filled with nude paintings by one of the owners, and my particular room was circus-themed, featuring floor-toceiling

pictures of clowns and dolls hanging from the ceiling. The couple was lovely, though, and served me fresh papaya in the

morning on their lanai.”

WHAT ADVICE DO YOU HAVE FOR CURRENT STUDENTS? “Try to think openly and expansively about your future. When I

was an undergraduate, I found it very easy to fall into a closed way of thinking about career options — I didn’t even know that

the job I have now existed! There are so many ways to pursue your interests, and don’t stress out about trying to draw a straight

line from your undergraduate education to the career you want. It’s OK to try different things and pivot.”

90


fy

10


JANUARY 31, 2010

PRESIDENT

Daniel

Lee

OFFICES

67 Mt. Auburn St.

17 Holyoke St.

52 JFK St.


The financial crisis hits HSA like

a ton of bricks

If the late 2000s were one long night, FY10 was its darkest

hour. The Great Recession forced many already-strained

agencies to immediately contract — or else go under.

Senior management went through every line of the HSA

budget, from building contracts to phone lines, with a

fine-toothed comb. The CCFE was among the hardest hit,

unable to rustle up its usual sponsorship contributions

from the floundering finance industry. (In 2007, Lehman

Brothers was one of the biggest sponsors of the Business

Leadership Program; in 2009, not so much.) HSA

Publications and Distribution also struggled as pennypinching

clients turned away from print advertising.

A day at the beach at the Maine home of

Vice President Heather Furman ’11.

Despite strong term-time laundry plans, HSA Cleaners was hit hard by Harvard’s decision to cut the

number of summer sessions from two to one, slashing the number of customers for lucrative laundry

and linen services. On the bright side, the agency gained a new website and, after ill-fatedly bringing the

freshman-linen program in house the previous year, found a new outsourcing partner that agreed to buy

up the existing inventory. After pursuing ventures that ultimately proved unfruitful, HSR focused on

rebuilding its websites and reining in costs. Overall, though, HSA’s cost-cutting could not keep up with

the plummet in revenue, and the corporation suffered its steepest net losses of the era. To add insult to

injury, HSA’s websites all mysteriously went

down in March, forcing HSA’s tech wizards

to overhaul the entire back-end architecture.

Oliver Koppell speaks at Let’s Go’s 50th-anniversary

celebration in January 2010.

won the i3 and took up residence on the fourth floor of Burke-McCoy Hall,

newly dubbed the Innovation Space; although it didn’t become an HSA

agency, it remains a thriving business today. Another i3 winner took flight

as Rover made its App Store debut with full Unofficial Guide content for the

iPhone and iPod. Its sights set on future development projects, Rover officially

gained agency status this year.

By far the biggest success of the year came from The Harvard Shop, which launched several partnerships that would form the

bedrock of the agency’s success for years to come. Chief among these was a partnership with Unofficial Tours, which agreed to

drop tourists off at the shop at the end of its popular “Hahvahd” tour — a blockbuster deal that attracted tens of thousands of

new customers per year. The Harvard Shop also reestablished an existing relationship with the Harvard Kennedy School while

launching a new one with the Graduate School of Education, for which The Harvard Shop became the official vendor. Sure, there

were setbacks — the website crash was particularly dire for The Harvard Shop’s web sales — but nothing could stop the Harvard

Shop juggernaut; Lukáš Toth cast his reparo spell and built a new site from the ground up in just a few days. Add it all up, and The

Harvard Shop officially became HSA’s largest agency in FY10. (Oh, and a full year of revenue from the Holyoke Center location

certainly didn’t hurt.)

The 2010 series marked the beginning of a new era at Let’s Go. In tandem with Avalon and TAN, Let’s Go rebranded itself —

this time voluntarily — as “the student travel guide” for the first time since the 1970s. After a 41-year hiatus, the hot-air balloon

soared once again to the top of the new, red-accented vintage covers. Thanks to the new publishers and the magical conjurings

of Alex Tremblay, full book content hit www.letsgo.com for the first time ever in June, joining RW blogs, videos, and a regular

e-newsletter. Another new partnership, with outside ad-sales agency Edman & Company, spelled the end of Let’s Go Ad Sales

after several years of bleeding advertisers and money.

HARVARD

STUDENT

AGENCIES

There were a few bright spots. Dorm Store

squeezed out some extra revenue with

Round 2 of the Harvard-Yale shuttles and by

absorbing Cheapside Foodery to create HSA

Market Day, a service to deliver preordered

food and snacks in bulk to Harvard houses.

Distribution signed a deal to deliver the

Harvard Crimson, and Her Campus, an online

magazine targeted at female college students,

Bittersweetly, a more efficient business model allowed Let’s Go to up its book

output while also downsizing its office staff, which welcomed the new positions

of Research Managers and Staff Writers (via Let’s Go’s first comp process!) to

the fold. As a result, the 29 employees and 37 RWs now frolicked exclusively

on the third floor. A flurry of book-making churned out 25 guides, the most

since 2005, including six new titles (although an epidemic of swine flu nixed

the proposed Let’s Go: Baja California). The Unofficial Guide, now once again

firmly in Let’s Go’s editorial clutches, was also reformatted to resemble a Let’s

Go city guide and expanded to Boston University.

Furman and managers Austin Chu ’10 and Priya Karve ’12 assist

excited prefrosh at HSA’s prefrosh-weekend open house.

LET’S GO TITLES

• Europe

• Great Britain

• France

• Italy

• Greece

• Israel


• New York City

AGENCIES

• Germany

• Paris

• Rome

• Central America

• Boston

• Western Europe

• Barcelona

• Costa Rica

• Thailand


• Buenos Aires

• Berlin, Prague & Budapest

• Costa Rica, Nicaragua

& Panama

• Florence

• Guatemala & Belize

• London, Oxford,

Cambridge & Edinburgh

• Yucatán Peninsula

OTHER TITLES


at Harvard


Prefrosh Weekend




in Boston


at Boston University

• HSA Cleaners




Services


• Cronin Center

for Enterprise


• HSA Dorm Store

• Rover


fy

11


JANUARY 31, 2011

PRESIDENT

Meagan

Hill

OFFICES

67 Mt. Auburn St.

17 Holyoke St.

52 JFK St.


HARVARD

STUDENT

AGENCIES

The Great Recession takes its toll

on revenues and employment

In the grip of the recession, HSA aimed

simply to break even. A push to banish

inefficiencies helped to hold down net

losses, but revenues ($2.8 million) and the

number of student employees (371) hit

their lowest levels in decades. The Board

of Directors dove into the effort to secure

HSA’s future with five strategic-planning

committees that encouraged continuity in

a time of tumult.

The agency laboratory popped and sizzled

as HSA’s chemists of commerce raced

to discover a winning formula. A twomonth

internal innovation challenge was

conducted to identify the best new agency

ideas from the current managers. HSA

showered more attention on the impish

tykes of Harvard Summer School with an

expanded Summer Leadership Program

and their own Unofficial Guide. Rover had

to hire seven new developers to handle

an outpouring of outside projects: three

apps for Moon travel guides and 10 for

Rick Steves. HSR added private tutoring

to its stable of temp jobs to complement

the SAT SOS Course. HSA Cleaners

expanded to Tufts, Boston College, and

Manager Ethan Waxman ’12 heads up the

HSA Cleaners tent at freshman move-in.

Boston University under the name Campus Cleaners. A literal talent agency (yet another i3 winner) was

formed to promote those Harvard musicians shrewd enough to retain HSA’s services. HSA Market Day

was upsized but quickly discontinued, plagued by a number of problems, including a U-Haul accident. And

the most dramatic change was the elimination of HSA Dorm Store, which had been marred by inefficient

inventory practices and difficult delivery logistics. The agency’s more profitable sectors, such as box sales and

water coolers, were incorporated into Cleaners, while HSA struck a new outside partnership with Student

Logistic Services to take over the furniture racket.

Finally, a rebranding initiative literally made HSA the

company we recognize today. HSA worked with graphic

designers to create fresh new agency and corporate logos, and

a new style guide and design templates ensured that HSA’s

diverse projects would always be unified by a common look.

Before long, the 17 Holyoke St. storefront and the HSA

website were both redesigned in quintessential HSA style.

In The Harvard Shop’s first full year of partnership

with Unofficial Tours, the arrangement brought almost

19,000 tourists into the stores. The number of managers

doubled to handle the floods of traffic. The team began

designing their own products, working closely with Quality

Graphics, and storing some of those products off-site. The

commencement, summer-school, and move-in tents logged

record revenues thanks to an inventory tracker developed

by Rover. What a 12 months it was — the first year that the

store broke the $1 million revenue marker.

Assistant Manager Colleen Glenn ’11 and Manager Elizabeth Shuman ’12

tent for The Harvard Shop at prefrosh weekend.

The insides of Let’s Go were completely reinvented, with a more modern graphic design, more user-friendly listings, a more

intuitive organization, and — praise Hermes — photos. The squad also threw the previous manuscripts out the window and

wrote every word from scratch to maximize wit and irreverence. Despite initial staffing hurdles, 23 office staffers and 30 RWs

eventually stitched together 16 books, including five new titles, between sloshball games and psychotic hostel guests. Campus

cartographers wept as Let’s Go shipped its map-making services out of house, but the 2011 tomes were the first to be published

as e-books under a new deal signed with Avalon specifically for the creation, promotion, and distribution of e-books. Using

Let’s Go editing prowess, HSA also published Inside Harvard, the Crimson

Key Society’s Harvard history book, which was a smash hit at college events and

bookstores around the Square.

LET’S GO TITLES

• Europe

• Great Britain

• France

• Italy


• New York City

• Germany

AGENCIES

• ParisBoston

• Berlin, Prague & Budapest

• London, Oxford, Cambridge

& Edinburgh

• Amsterdam & Brussels

• European Riviera

• Istanbul, Athens

& the Greek Islands

• Madrid & Barcelona

• Rome, Venice & Florence

OTHER TITLES


at Harvard


Prefrosh Weekend

• The Unofficial Guide to Student

Life in Boston

• The Unofficial Guide to Summer

at Harvard

• The Unofficial Guide for Parents

• Inside Harvard

• HSA Cleaners




Services


• Cronin Center

for Enterprise


• Rover

• HSA Talent


fy

12


JANUARY 31, 2012

A new Tutoring agency helps

HSA finally make a profit

PRESIDENT

Ethan

Waxman

OFFICES

67 Mt. Auburn St.

17 Holyoke St.

52 JFK St.


LET’S GO TITLES

• Europe

• Israel

• Europe Top 10 Cities

• Budget London

AGENCIES

HARVARD

STUDENT

AGENCIES

After years of cuts, expenses were as low as they could go,

and still the company had not turned a profit in recent

years. It was time to focus on growing revenue. Two ideas

from FY11’s internal innovation challenge moved ahead.

President Ethan Waxman worked for six months to bring

a late-night food truck to campus, but after granting

preliminary approval, the university got cold feet. (Two

years later, Harvard finally invited food trucks to vend in

Science Center Plaza — without HSA’s involvement. They

proved wildly popular.) HSA also gained a marketingconsulting

agency as HSA Publications (whose ad-salesbased

business model, it had become apparent, was a relic

of a bygone era) metamorphosed into HSA Marketing.

The HSA Marketing account managers.

The agency partnered with Distribution to help outside

businesses craft holistic packages to best reach Harvard students. The Marketing crew dished out the

rebranded Best of the Unofficial Guide to Harvard and seven other colleges, redesigned its other publications,

and won the office award for “Most Patriotic Team” for their all-American summer barbecues.

• Budget Paris

• Budget Berlin

• Budget Prague

• Budget Rome

• Budget Florence

The trend of modernizing agencies caught on. HSR formally split into three different agencies: HSA Bar

Services, HSA Tutoring, and HSA Translation. (Profitable temp services such as research and serving

were folded into Bar Services.) As a result, managers no longer divided their attention between the various

components of HSR, and the sovereign agencies were free to focus on their own growth. The split was instantly

successful, especially for the Tutoring agency, the fastest-growing segment of the company. Originally just

a small slice of HSR, a newly unencumbered Tutoring added courses to fill every weekend, began private

subject-test tutoring, and quintupled its revenue to $100,000. Rover also grew rapidly, branching out from

iPhone apps to become a full-service development agency for iOS, Android, and the web. HSA Dorm Store

rose from the dead as HSA Dorm Essentials, reanimated by a new pact that allowed HSA to resume selling

dorm furniture but delegated inventory and delivery to Student Logistic Services.

Two entirely new agencies also had their premieres. After a two-year effort, HSA.tv finally brought cable

TV to Harvard dorms thanks to technology developed by Tivli, a startup founded by two recent grads that

was now incubating on the fourth floor. The online streaming service took its first paid customers in the fall,

but Tivli soon became Philo and packed up for more silicon-colored pastures. The i3 gave HSA Video its

big break, and HSA’s 14th agency began offering video services to local clients. Three Hasty Pudding actors

crooned, “If you liked it, then you should have put a [One Ring] on it,” in one of their first projects, a Harvard

Shop promotional video that went viral across campus.

• Budget Madrid

• Budget Barcelona

• Budget Istanbul

• Budget Amsterdam

• Budget Athens

OTHER TITLES

• Best of the Unofficial Guide

to Life at Harvard


Prefrosh Weekend



• Best of the Unofficial Guide

to Student Life in Boston

• Unofficial Guide to Summer

at Harvard

Waxman, Vice President Libby Shuman, and

Publishing Director Joseph Molimock ’11.

The early 2010s were not a pretty time for HSA’s online presence. Its websites had been moved to different platforms for three

consecutive years, and the company was losing revenue from recurrent crashes, the result of its patchwork of websites across

four platforms. At last, HSA said enough was enough and migrated its more than 10 sites to one third-party gateway without

interruption.

FY12 also introduced a new position to HSA: the Managing Director. Instead of the President and Vice President supervising

every agency themselves, managers now reported to a handful of “super-managers” who each oversaw their own cluster of agencies,

such as Cleaners and Dorm Essentials, Marketing and Distribution, and the ex-HSR agencies.

The result of all these changes? Revenue leapt forward by more than $1 million over

FY11. Incredibly, the company had made a profit — and a sizable one at that. After years

of losses, HSA was back in the black.

After three years of breakneck growth, The Harvard Shop had outgrown the management

size and structure of a traditional agency. This year, The Harvard Shop nearly doubled

its corps of managers to seven and got its own Managing Director to oversee them.

After years of volatility, the Harvard Shop website was finally endowed with a clean user

interface and smoother functionality. A new five-year agreement with Trademark Tours

(formerly Unofficial Tours) was negotiated, and the shop broke $1.5 million in sales for

the first time, turning its highest profit to date. The influx of cash funded a much-needed

facelift of 52 JFK St. The original Harvard Shop closed for a full month in December

and emerged almost unrecognizable, with new flooring, lighting, signage, and colors. A

decadent bash at Weld Boathouse toasted both Doris Jones’s retirement and the 10th

anniversary of The Harvard Shop joining HSA.

Lauren Xie ’13, Gorick Ng ’14, MBA ’18

Andre Gonzalez ’14, and Ali Evans ’13, MBA ’19.

Doris Jones and seven former

Harvard Shop managers.

Let’s Go did something it hadn’t accomplished in years — it came in under budget! Seventeen RWs shot reinvigorated copy back

to 18 staffers at Let’s Go headquarters. Full color returned to the covers of the series’s 14 books, which included the new Let’s Go:

Europe Top 10 Cities and a new line of pocket-sized, red-and-yellow Budget Guides to 11 cities. Eleven were part of the new line of

budget guides — pocket-sized, more colorful, and devoted to individual cities. The

web also got its own dedicated team of RWs who traversed the U.S. and Canada in

search of the hottest blog content and the most awkwardly hilarious videos. With

help from Rover, Let’s Go dipped its toe into the world of mobile in the fall with

five free city-guide apps for the iPhone or iPod Touch.

• HSA Cleaners



• Cronin Center for Enterprise


• Rover

• HSA Talent

• HSA Marketing

• HSA Dorm Essentials

• HSA Bar Services

• HSA Tutoring

• HSA Translation

• HSA.tv

• HSA Video

The renovated Harvard Shop at 52 JFK St.


fy

13


JANUARY 31, 2013

HSA’s alum network

formally organizes

fy

14


JANUARY 31, 2014

The Harvard Shop adds a

third store and its own Board

PRESIDENT

Kirk

Benson

OFFICES

67 Mt. Auburn St.

17 Holyoke St.

52 JFK St.


HARVARD

STUDENT

AGENCIES

As snow fell on the first days of FY13, HSA staffed an ice rink in Science Center Plaza, renting skates,

selling hot chocolate, and hosting events. Rover’s first comp attracted 60 computer-science students; they

hired “only” 14. The weather warmed, spring sprung, and a once-again blossoming HSA set out to rebuild a

company that had suffered years of cutbacks. Seventy-seven more students were hired than the previous year,

for a total of almost 500. The reorganization of HSR was refined with the return of HSA Temp Agency,

which buoyed a waterlogged HSA Translation. After a successful pilot program in FY12, Cleaners began

offering all its customers the option to have their laundry delivered right to their door for a nominal fee.

By the end of the year, over half of laundry-plan-holders were taking advantage of the new delivery service.

An internal need for a designer revived the long-dormant idea for a design agency. HSA Design shared

Harvard students’ mad Adobe skills with outside clients for the first time since FY04. Rover released new

Unofficial Guide apps and reworked the Unofficial Guide website. A new comp process for vetting prospective

managers attracted scads of wannabe HSAers and kept the outgoing team engaged. After years of discussion,

five alums finally wrote bylaws and partnered with the Harvard Alumni Association to found HSA Alumni,

a formal organization of HSA alums. Nine alums were elected to the inaugural Graduate Board.

A timeless emblem of school tradition, the H sweater returned to The Harvard Shop and quickly became a

Harvard Shop signature product. The team also launched the branded Vineyard Vines clothing line, added

student models to the website (creating quite the buzz on Facebook), and grew Custom Orders by over 30%.

Rover refined the Harvard Shop website to feature all-new product pages and custom sites that made it

easier than ever for student groups to order custom apparel.

It was the final year of Let’s Go’s partnerships with Avalon and Travora (formerly TAN). A year-long

collaboration with Rover yielded 25 free “Explore” iOS apps, which teased fans with walking tours of

individual cities. Soon, the Explore apps expanded to Android and Nook, but the crème de la crème of the app

line was the official Let’s Go iOS app, through which globetrotters could purchase full guides and interact

with them on their phones. Nook users got in on the fun with 15 city-specific apps that also featured full

book content. Rover followed that up with an overhaul of the Let’s Go website, which gained a fresh look,

more intuitive navigation, and Facebook integration. Visitors to the new site also found PDF copies of the

print guidebooks on sale for the first time.

PRESIDENT

Patrick

Coats

OFFICES

67 Mt. Auburn St.

17 Holyoke St.

52 JFK St.


65 Mt. Auburn St.

HARVARD

STUDENT

AGENCIES

HSA continued to hum along, posting its third straight profit and

putting the dark days of the recession farther in the rearview mirror.

Revenues once again topped $4 million, and the ranks of student

employees swelled again, to nearly 600. Success never tasted so

good: HSA brought liquid-nitrogen ice cream to crowds and rave

reviews on Science Center Plaza. The Harvard Bartending Course

celebrated its 50th anniversary with cake and (real!) booze at the

Cambridge Queen’s Head, the course’s classroom; the alums who

made it back also participated in HSA Alumni’s first alum weekend, which included panel discussions and

a reception with students. Marketing hosted an advance premiere of season three of Game of Thrones, which

ended much better for HSA than it did for the Starks. HSA Cleaners augmented its delivery offerings to

include a full pickup and delivery service; thankfully, Cleaners was able to handle the resultant huge spike in

demand with a workforce now 100 students strong.

It was a decisive year for HSA’s youngest agencies. HSA Talent took its final bow and exited stage left,

where HSA Temp Agency managed its lingering gigs for one more year. HSA Design hitched up with

Marketing; their shotgun marriage lasted two more trips around the sun. Rover buckled under the weight

of costly preexisting contracts and stopped pursuing outside clients. Reduced to an internal web and mobile

development role, the agency went into hibernation at the end of the year. The winner in this game of

Survivor: HSA was HSA Video, which had grown from two friends with a camera to dozens of student

employees. This year alone, they added a live-event service for recording lectures and performances, signed a

contract with Pfizer, and produced some LOL-worthy Housing Day videos.

The irrepressible Harvard Shop conquered its third domain. On September 5, the new location opened in

a spacious storefront at 65 Mt. Auburn St. — right next to Burke-McCoy Hall. The store was designed to

evoke an idyllic Harvard dorm (the kind no one actually has) and inched the stores closer to those ever-sovaluable

tour buses. Additionally, The Harvard Shop changed its inventory-accounting and sales system

to a cloud-based point-of-sale system called

Vend, making operations more efficient and

accurate.

It was a digital-heavy year for Let’s Go as the print series slimmed down to a trim seven titles. Only eight

RWs ventured forth from Cambridge, but the Let’s Go gospel was still spread thanks to the campus teams

initiative. Recruits from colleges around Boston and the Northeast set up their own local Let’s Go fan clubs

whose members got famous blogging on www.letsgo.com. Only one new guide (Let’s Go: Paris, Amsterdam

& Brussels) joined the stable, but all seven now sported the red-and-yellow covers of the previous year’s

Budget Guides.

All the changes paid off, as The Harvard Shop

broke $2 million in revenue for the first time.

With record holiday sales, online revenue grew

year over year by more than 40%. The Harvard

Shop’s own distinct Board of Directors became

active and welcomed its first unique member.

LET’S GO TITLES

Past and present Harvard Shop honchos at the opening of the new store.

Rose Wang ’13, Ryley Reynolds ’15, MBA ’21, Meagan Hill ’11, MBA ’16, and Caroline Davis ’14.

• Europe

• Italy


• Ireland

AGENCIES

• London, Oxford & Cambridge

• Rome, Venice & Florence

• Paris, Amsterdam

& Brussels

OTHER TITLES

• Unofficial Guide to Life

at Harvard

• Unofficial Guide to Visitas



• Unofficial Guide to Student Life

in Boston


at Harvard

• The Unofficial Parents’ Guide

to Visitas

• Inside Harvard

LET’S GO TITLES

• Europe

• Budget London

• Budget Paris

AGENCIES

OTHER TITLES

• Unofficial Guide to Life

at Harvard




• Unofficial Guide to Student Life

in Boston


at Harvard


to Visitas

• HSA Cleaners

• Let’s Go




• Rover

• HSA Talent

• HSA Marketing


• Harvard Bartending Course

• HSA Tutoring

• HSA Translation

• HSA Video

• HSA Temp Agency

• HSA Design

• HSA Cleaners

• Let’s Go




• Rover

• HSA Talent

• HSA Marketing



• HSA Tutoring

• HSA Translation

• HSA Video

• HSA Temp Agency

• HSA Design


fy

15

A low point for Let’s Go


JANUARY 31, 2015

HSA’s title of coolest place to work on campus was in danger of being usurped. Other campus employers

and summer internships were draining HSA’s talent pool, so Harvard’s original startup struck back. To

kick off FY15, HSA raised the company-wide minimum wage to $12 an hour. Over the summer, managers

took the business world by storm with the first externships, hosted by select HSA alums. The students who

stayed behind were treated to HSA’s first structured business-education curriculum. HSA alums, friends,

and other all-stars taught seminars on everything from finance to Excel.

CCFE’s latest brainchild, Business School Night, helped juniors and seniors connect with representatives

from top-tier graduate programs in business. Cleaners developed Clothespin, a mobile app on which

students could schedule laundry pickups and track deliveries. Signups for pickup and delivery skyrocketed,

and twin sister HSA Dorm Essentials also broke sales records. Interactive videos were the main draw of

ACT Bootcamp, a new online test-prep course. A new Creative Director coordinated the company’s physical

and digital branding, including a redesign of the corporation’s motley assortment of websites.

With the expiration of its contracts with Avalon and Travora, Let’s Go began

FY14 with no guaranteed revenue. For the first time since FY70, Let’s Go

self-published its print guides, and the title line consequently shrank to three,

including two Budget Guides and good ol’ Let’s Go: Europe.

With the support of the Office of Career Services, Let’s Go got creative and used

funding from the David Rockefeller International Experience grants to help

send its 10 RWs abroad. As the office staff shrank to the size of a single pod, the

traditionally separate company reintegrated both physically and operationally

into the rest of HSA. Most strikingly, Let’s Go’s traditional September-to-

September hiring schedule was shifted to coincide with HSA’s fiscal years, and

Publishing Director Michael Goncalves ’14 served an extended 16-month term.

100

PRESIDENT

Ryley

Reynolds

OFFICES

67 Mt. Auburn St.

17 Holyoke St.

52 JFK St.

Smith Campus Center

65 Mt. Auburn St.

TITLES

• Let’s Go: Europe

AGENCIES

• HSA Cleaners

• Let’s Go


HARVARD

STUDENT

AGENCIES

The Unofficial Guide got an update for the BuzzFeed generation with a new website and two reimagined

books: 112 (for Harvard) and 82 (for Boston) Things to Do Before You Graduate. Collected from a survey of

nearly 1,000 students, the hilarious entries on these bucket-listicles included “Catch the Mather Turkey”

and “Date Someone.” A new volume also joined the library: Life in Crimson, a 200-page coffee-table book

of student photographs sold exclusively at The Harvard Shop. Having found that HSA always pays its

debts, HBO bent the knee again to Marketing with another Game of Thrones pre-screening. Under a new

marketing initiative, Giftbox, HSA partnered with national and local businesses to deliver product samples

and coupons to freshmen during move-in week. HSA Video was renamed Mt. Auburn Productions and

branched out to offer photography services.

Harvard gave notice that Cleaners and The Harvard Shop would be evicted from the Holyoke Center in

March 2016, when ground broke on renovations for the new Smith Campus Center. The ghosts of Thayer

Hall and the Freshman Union nodded gravely as the omnipotent university again cast humble HSAers out

of a warm and welcoming home. The move set off a scramble at HSA HQ to relocate not one, but two core

storefronts in the span of 18 months.

With the goal of expanding its customer base beyond Harvard, Custom Orders rebranded as GroupGear,

a new online platform where groups could create their own custom merchandise for members. GroupGear

was quickly named one of the 2014 Best Businesses of Cambridge. The Harvard Shop also launched a new

online-only division, Boston Apparel Company, that sold MIT- and Boston-themed merchandise. As revenue

climbed to $2.7 million and 100 students staffed the three stores, the Board of Directors recommended the

addition of The Harvard Shop’s own permanent staffer. After an extensive search process, Retail Manager

Sarah Miller was hired, bringing years of retail experience to her new domain.

For the first time in years, Let’s Go made a profit as Let’s Go: Europe 2014 sold out its (admittedly diminished)

press run. The strong sales convinced the now-five office staffers, who had considered going all digital, to

print a Let’s Go: Europe book for 2015 as well. However, on July 18, 2014, tragedy struck Let’s Go for the

second time. RW Haley Rue ’17 drowned in a freak accident while hiking in Germany. In the words of her

blockmates in a memorial tribute, the vivacious and talented member of the Let’s Go family passed away

“doing what she loved: traveling and writing.” A poignant dedication to Rue filled the first two pages of Let’s

Go: Europe 2015.

• The Unofficial Guide Presents:

112 Things to Do Before

You Graduate




• HSA Marketing




82 Things to Do Before

You Graduate



• HSA Tutoring


at Harvard


to Visitas

• Life in Crimson

• HSA Translation

• Mt. Auburn Productions

• HSA Temp Agency


fy

16


JANUARY 31, 2016

The first Summer Business Academy

fy

17


JANUARY 31, 2017

The Harvard Shop finds

a new home in The Garage

PRESIDENT

Patrick

Scott

OFFICES

67 Mt. Auburn St.

17 Holyoke St.

52 JFK St.

Smith Campus Center

65 Mt. Auburn St.

69 Mt. Auburn St.

TITLES


AGENCIES

HARVARD

STUDENT

AGENCIES

• HSA Cleaners

• Let’s Go



A record 112 applications were submitted for manager

positions. The doyens of FY16 ended up hiring 640

students in total, paying them almost exactly $1 million

in wages. Revenues once again flirted with $5 million.

Amid one of its most unsettled years, Cleaners became a

$1 million agency. In August, Cleaners bid a fond farewell

to 17 Holyoke St. and moved to 69 Mt. Auburn St. —

joining the rest of the agencies in Burke-McCoy Hall. The

block became an impregnable bastion of HSA goodness:

managers could now pop down from their offices for a

meeting at Cleaners, then shuttle The Harvard Shop

inventory between the basement and the newest Harvard

Shop — all without walking more than a few feet.

HSA Temp Agency shed moving from its menu of moving, bartending, and research services. Down to

just two shticks, it made more sense to rename the agency HSA Research and combine serving jobs with

the Harvard Bartending Course. HSA Tutoring grew to $250,000, gained a Managing Director, and

rolled out a fancy custom-built scheduling platform on which tutors, managers, and clients could interact.

Tutoring’s first Summer Business Academy — two weeks of crash courses on the basics of business and

entrepreneurship — attracted 70 high-school students and grossed $40,000.

But wait, there’s more! HSA acquired College Copywriters, a startup that matched college students with

copywriting jobs. Harvard students again had their Game of Thrones theories confirmed or debunked before

the rest of the world, and The Unofficial Guide retitled itself yet again. CCFE held the first Law School Night,

a sequel to the now-annual Business School Night. Thunderstorms pelted the HSA tent at summer-school

move-in, and, in another sign of the apocalypse, the Crimson wrote a favorable 6,000-word profile on HSA.

The Harvard Shop broke $3 million in sales for the first time, accounting for over 60% of HSA’s revenue.

The oodles of cash were a result of securing lucrative partnerships with international tour groups and

the dramatic growth of GroupGear (nearly doubling its business from FY14). A majority of houses used

GroupGear for their Housing Day swag, GroupGear and Boston Apparel Company graduated to become

their own agencies, and the Harvard Shop website got yet another update. The company began fulfilling

orders via Amazon, wooing new customers by combining awesome products with sweet Amazon Prime

shipping. The success of this groovy year put The Harvard Shop in good stead as it braced for its biggest

setback to date. With demolition of the Smith Center store imminent, The Harvard Shop raced against the

clock to find a replacement.

Six RWs pounded the pavement for the 56th edition of Let’s Go: Europe, and three more roamed Australia,

Brazil, and Cuba cranking out special web-only coverage. Let’s Go experimented with new ways of funding

its errant escapades by having RWs teach workshops (e.g., on college-essay writing) as part of their routes.

Back in Cambridge, the two remaining office staffers revived the regular e-newsletter and made it possible

for outside students to blog on a remade www.letsgo.com.


Comp Harvard


• HSA Marketing






and Bar Services

• HSA Tutoring

• HSA Translation


• Inside Harvard


• HSA Research

• GroupGear

• Boston Apparel Company

PRESIDENT

Stephen

Xi

OFFICES

67 Mt. Auburn St.

52 JFK St.

Smith Campus Center

65 Mt. Auburn St.

69 Mt. Auburn St.

34 JFK St.

TITLES


AGENCIES

HARVARD

STUDENT

AGENCIES

• HSA Cleaners

• Let’s Go



After 15 years of incredible service

to HSA, Lorraine Facella departed

for a well-earned retirement. It

was a big year for Tutoring, which

went from two Summer Business

Academies to four and 70 enrollees

to 125. It doubled its number of

outside partnerships, coordinated

up to 13 workshops in a single day,

and drafted up a College Essays

program. Fifty Singaporean high

schoolers flocked to Tutoring’s

first-ever program abroad, the

Ivy Summit, a series of courses in

personal enrichment and applying

to college. By July, the agency had already surpassed the

previous year’s revenues en route to a $400,000 year.

With the help of new Board member David Malan

’99, SM ’04, PhD ’07, HSA closed on a major new

partnership with CS50, Harvard’s introductory

computer-science course. The fourth floor of Burke-

McCoy Hall transformed into a sleek new tech space

shared between HSA and hundreds of CS50 students

attending office hours. The CS50 final project gained an

HSA “track,” giving students the option to enhance one

of the 14 agencies through code (the genesis of a new app

for Cleaners). The top students got to take their hacks in

a three-week DEV Bootcamp with HSA and CS50 over

J-term — the gestation of a new agency.

In other news, HSA created the Investment Committee, a group of students and non-student advisers who

made investments on behalf of HSA. More than 160 students registered for CCFE’s first annual Interview

Bootcamp — practice for the rigorous recruiting wringer with feedback from corporate sponsors in finance,

consulting, and tech. Giftbox became Gifted as HSA Marketing delivered packaged coupons to every

undergrad at the college. Beer aficionados could now pair pints and provisions thanks to the Bartending

Course’s new Beer and Food Tasting Course. HSA spearheaded management of Harvard Skate in Science

Center Plaza for the fifth straight winter — it was to be the last, however.

After searching every nook, cranny, and corner in Harvard Sq., The Harvard Shop signed a lease for a

new location in The Garage. With a soft opening on February 5 but a grand opening on April 2, 34 JFK


Surviving Your Freshman Year

at Harvard


• HSA Marketing




and Bar Services

• HSA Tutoring

• HSA Translation

• Navigating Summer

Opportunities


• HSA Research

• GroupGear

• Boston Apparel Company


fy

18


JANUARY 31, 2018

Burke-McCoy Hall gets a facelift

St. briefly (and unofficially) became The Harvard Shop’s fourth location before the Smith Center store finally

closed its doors in March. Even with the new property secure, The Harvard Shop fretted about the loss of its

most profitable location. They need not have worried; 34 JFK St. became The Harvard Shop’s highest-grossing

storefront by the end of the year, and, amazingly, the company concluded FY17 with yet another year of growth. A

redesigned website yielded a 50% increase in web sales, which accounted for a full one-fifth of The Harvard Shop’s

total revenue — a longtime goal of the staff. New deals were also struck with the Graduate School of Education

and businesses in the Square.

GroupGear doubled its management team and acquired the exclusive rights to market and sell Old College Ties, a

custom knit-tie brand. Sales soared as Boston Apparel Company took a page out of The Harvard Shop’s book and

made its core products available on Amazon.

Though it was still self-publishing, Let’s Go got a new partner for the 2017 series: PlacePass, a Cambridge-based

travel startup co-founded by a former RW. Armed with GoPros, this year’s RWs — including a few specifically

devoted to PlacePass — provided written and multimedia content for the PlacePass website, a digital marketplace

for tours and activities. Despite a more-harrowing-than-usual editing crunch, Let’s Go: Europe burst off the

bookshelf with a tweaked cover design and 24 vibrant pages of color photos.

PRESIDENT

Angelina

Massa

OFFICES

67 Mt. Auburn St.

52 JFK St.

65 Mt. Auburn St.

69 Mt. Auburn St.

34 JFK St.

HARVARD

STUDENT

AGENCIES

HSA turned 60 years old, but it didn’t look a day over 25: Burke-McCoy Hall underwent its first major

renovation. A giant HSA logo welcomed visitors to the new open-concept third floor, and new furniture,

computers, and carpeting were all installed. More than 250 guests attended the 60th-anniversary celebration,

which included a “60 Years in 60 Minutes” panel discussion and, of course, a sick rager at the Harvard Club

of Boston. But the year ended on a sad note: Ellen Hoffman, MBA ’76, a member of the Board of Directors

since 1982 and leader of the Board’s Nominating Committee, announced her retirement.

Highlights and hijinks: when the soccer team A.S. Roma came to town in July, they trusted Cleaners

with precious cargo — their uniforms, which managers hand-washed and folded themselves to make sure

nothing went wrong. CCFE invited four startups with Harvard student founders to participate in a Startup

Masterclass with expert judges. To appease the thirsty, uncaffeinated masses, Dorm Essentials began

offering a door-to-door coffee delivery service. Marketing held a “Free Stuff” event in The Harvard Shop’s

new Garage location, attracting scads of Boston-area vendors and even more students. Finally, a The Officethemed

promo video for HSA’s Visitas event was almost too good, as prefrosh packed every floor; to avoid

fire-code violations, prospective HSAers had to wait in a line that stretched around the corner.

Tutoring continued its astonishing growth, breaking $500,000 in revenue. The agency introduced a

Leadership Seminar for summer-school students and added a fifth Summer Business Academy, topping

150 enrollees. Demand was so high that Tutoring also debuted Weekend Business Academies, two-day

business workshops taught by Harvard students at high schools around the country.

Survivors of the programming bootcamp from January 2017 inaugurated a new agency: DEV, a software

engineering and design agency that built web and mobile products for clients. Its first projects included a

physical-therapy-management tool for a startup, a content-management tool for Let’s Go, and two mobile

apps. HSA also created two new internal agencies: HSA Strategy, an internal consulting agency, and a

centralized Internal Marketing team to standardize the company’s branding.

The Harvard Shop in FY18 established new all-time daily, monthly, and yearly ($4 million!) sales records.

Despite heavy rain and unusually cold temperatures, the agency also broke its Class Day and commencement

sales records. Boston Apparel Company was re-absorbed into the broader agency, but GroupGear kept

humming along, bedecking attendees of the Harvard Alumni Association’s annual reunions.

For the first time in years, Let’s Go hired a full-time Marketing Director and more than one editorial staffer.

To regain the institutional memory that had been lost when Publishing Directors had ceased to be Let’s

Go veterans, they also conscripted two Let’s Go alums to advise the new team. Editor-in-Chief Kristine

Guillaume ’20 had her RWs write every word of Let’s Go: Europe from scratch, and Creative Director Austin

Eder ’20 gave the inside of the book a complete visual makeover. The new font and the two-column page

layout were easier on the eyes, but what really made the 2018 book pop was the conversion from black and

white to full color printing. To signal the change to readers, the blues and oranges of the Grand Canal in

Venice exploded off the first full-color front cover in almost a decade.

TITLES


AGENCIES


Surviving Your Freshman

Year at Harvard


Opportunities

• HSA Cleaners

• Let’s Go




• HSA Marketing



and Bar Services

• HSA Tutoring

• HSA Translation


• HSA Research

• GroupGear

• DEV

104


fy

19


JANUARY 31, 2019

Campus Insights and Studio 67

join the stable of agencies

fy

20


JANUARY 31, 2020

HSA reaches new heights

PRESIDENT

Ali

Dastjerdi

OFFICES

67 Mt. Auburn St.

52 JFK St.

65 Mt. Auburn St.

69 Mt. Auburn St.

34 JFK St.

HARVARD

STUDENT

AGENCIES

The agency carousel continued to turn: HSA Research and HSA Translation said sayonara, while HSA

Marketing and Mt. Auburn Productions joined forces to become Studio 67, a marketing consultancy

focused on helping companies reach — surprise! — college students. HSA also acquired Campus Insights,

a consumer-research outfit previously run by students at Boston College. Campus Insights provided

companies like Google, Airbnb, and GoFundMe with user-experience and user-interface feedback based on

interviews of millennial and Generation Z customers.

DEV, er, developed a completely new web and mobile platform for Cleaners and Dorm Essentials. Thanks

in part to a new private tutoring and mentoring service, Tutoring edified more than 4,000 students on

the year. The Summer Business Academy reproduced asexually, spawning Summer Politics Academy and

Summer Coding Academy spinoffs. HSA ran 11 summer academies in total, which were branded separately

from Tutoring for the first time.

These were heady times to work at HSA. The number of student employees crested at 930 — the most

this century — and 65 managers stayed over the summer. HSA also gained a new Chief Financial Officer:

Fabienne Devaris, who had ably served the corporation as Assistant Director of Finance for 14 years.

GroupGear became HSA’s fastest-growing

agency, almost doubling in size. Its new Alma

Mater brand catered to alums who weren’t

satisfied with swag that just said “Harvard” on it

and who preferred to tote gear representing their

specific school, class, or house. Meanwhile, every

Harvard student became a literal card-carrying

member of The Harvard Shop, which began

providing student discounts.

A gorgeous color photo of the Greek islands

graced the cover of Let’s Go: Europe 2019, which

was half updated from the previous year. Some

RWs were also specifically assigned to PlacePass

in the final year of that partnership. The Let’s

Go Board of Directors, which was previously identical

to the HSA Board, was reconstituted with alums and

businesspeople with more specific expertise in the travel and

publishing industries.

PRESIDENT

James

Swingos

OFFICES

67 Mt. Auburn St.

52 JFK St.

65 Mt. Auburn St.

69 Mt. Auburn St.

34 JFK St.

HARVARD

STUDENT

AGENCIES

HSA reached a high-water mark (unadjusted for

inflation) of $7.3 million in revenue. The company

was growing so much that 70 managers were needed

to oversee the massive operation — the largest

management team in its history.

It was a year of big-picture thinking on Mt. Auburn

St. In February, the Board of Directors spent a day

brainstorming and emerged with a company-wide

strategic plan, with six priorities like employee

satisfaction, brand presence on campus, and

diversity and inclusion. HSA also co-founded and

hosted the first annual conference of the Student-

Run Business Association, a national organization

of student-run businesses just like HSA.

There were smaller wins, too. Chief Operating Officer Amy Zhang ’21 saved the company hundreds of

thousands of dollars by eliminating inefficiencies like the old stamping machine. President James Swingos

’20 made his subjects do dance sessions during commencement in an effort to set the HSA tent apart from

the Coop’s; scientists have yet to determine whether it attracted customers or scared them away.

The Academies officially became its own agency — and promptly doubled in size once again. A whopping

850 students attended FY20’s 30 academies, including a new Pre-Med Academy. After losing money for a

couple years running, DEV restructured: engineers became hourly, and

the agency got more selective in the projects it took on. DEV broke even as

a result, saving the agency from an uncertain fate. Finally, Dorm Essentials

introduced the “Roomy Bed” — an add-on that turned Harvard’s twinsized

dorm beds into full-sized beds. HSA: the ultimate wingman.

It was a tough year for The Harvard Shop: web traffic was low, and

GroupGear lost the Harvard reunions as a client. On the bright side, a

chair, bookshelf, and “Harvard” sign were installed in the Garage store,

where customers were urged to take their picture and post it to Instagram

for a 10% discount.

For the 60th edition of Let’s Go: Europe, the cover returned to the classic

red and white style of 2017. A holy trinity of staffers held down the fort in

Cambridge, while RWs fanned out across 16 different countries.

TITLES


AGENCIES

• HSA Cleaners

• Let’s Go



at Harvard





Opportunities


and Bar Services

• HSA Tutoring

• GroupGear

• DEV

• Studio 67

• Campus Insights

TITLES


AGENCIES

2000 AGENCIES

• HSA Cleaners

• Let’s Go



at Harvard





and Bar Services

• HSA Tutoring

• GroupGear

• DEV

• Studio 67

• Campus Insights

• The Academies at Harvard


Brave new worl d

The coronavirus pandemic changed everything for HSA. For over a year, most students

attended Harvard remotely, forcing the closure of several in-person agencies and the remainder

to go virtual. A student-run business with no students around to run it — and no students

around as customers — HSA hemorrhaged cash for the first several months of the pandemic,

and uncertainty over its duration raised questions about how long the company could hold out.

In-person operations slowly resumed in late 2020 and 2021, and while the company recovered

financially, many agencies would never be the same. Let’s Go and the Harvard Bartending

Course, HSA mainstays since the 1960s, sat idle. But the pandemic also presented opportunity.

Some agencies found that a virtual business model was even more profitable than an in-person

one. Still others doubled down on in-person commerce with the opening of a fourth Harvard

Shop and the acquisition of Trademark Tours. While these represented gambles amid the

pandemic, time has proven them to be the latest in a long line of HSA’s savvy business moves.

Since 1957, HSA has experienced astronomical growth, employing thousands of students,

building dozens of businesses, and cultivating leaders in industry from business to politics

to the arts. Today, HSA’s 13 agencies do $6 million in business every year and provide jobs to

600+ students — almost a tenth of the student body. HSAers continue to mix the effective

management of their stalwart agencies with a healthy dose of the entrepreneurial and creative

spirit of HSA’s founding fathers.

Though so many generations of students have come and gone, HSA has remarkably endured

as a constant presence at Harvard for the past 65 years. We salute the many students, alums,

Board members, permanent staffers, and friends who have helped us grow from a ragtag team

of dorm-room visionaries to the world’s largest student-run corporation.

2021-

2022

108


fy

21

fy

22


JANUARY 31, 2021

The coronavirus poses

an existential threat


JANUARY 31, 2022

In-person work resumes, and

HSA digs out from the pandemic

PRESIDENT

Akanksha

Sah

OFFICES

67 Mt. Auburn St.

52 JFK St.

65 Mt. Auburn St.

69 Mt. Auburn St.

34 JFK St.

Around the world

HARVARD

STUDENT

AGENCIES

HSA was on pace for another banner year when the coronavirus pandemic hit in full force. On March 10,

Harvard took the unprecedented step of ordering students to vacate the campus by the end of the week. In

just a few days, the FY21 team had to pack up their dorms and find new places to live while also closing down

HSA’s physical operations — without any indication of when they would return.

Some agencies, like Cleaners, Dorm Essentials, and the Harvard Bartending Course and Bar Services, were

forced to shut down completely; Dorm Essentials scrambled to remove all its products from students’ dorms

before they closed, and Cleaners issued $300,000 worth of refunds for laundry plans. Others, like Tutoring

and The Academies, had to transition to virtual business models. Campus Insights and DEV were, however,

able to continue normal operations remotely.

While almost all student managers worked from home over the summer, the permanent staff heroically

shouldered the remaining in-person operations. But what had once been a flood of revenues had slowed to

a trickle, and still-high expenses burned through HSA’s cash reserves. To stanch the bleeding, HSA sought

deferrals on its rents and received $300,000 in government loans through the federal coronavirus relief bill.

By the end of the year, the damage was evident: revenues were only $3.1 million — less than half the previous

year — and the number of student employees plunged from 754 in FY20 to 494 in FY21.

Despite all the setbacks, though, HSA’s can-do spirit shone through. The coronavirus’s shock to the system

forced the company to embrace more modern and efficient business models. For instance, The Academies

went completely online and actually exceeded the previous year’s revenues, despite costing customers just

a fraction of the price of the in-person programs. And HSA’s good friends Slack and Zoom kept the team

connected from afar, such as with the first-ever virtual Hail and Farewell, featuring an online mixology

course. Still, in hopes of giving them the traditional Cambridge summer they were denied, HSA graciously

offered every FY21 manager the chance to stay on for a redo in FY22.

All three storefronts of The Harvard Shop sat empty during the first few months of the pandemic, dealing

a massive blow to revenues. The Garage location finally reopened over the summer, and the Mt. Auburn

and JFK St. locations reopened in the fall. However, the university’s ban on hiring

Harvard students for in-person work meant that The Harvard Shop had to recruit

an entirely new team of hourly workers — and, for the first time, the shops were

staffed by non-Harvard students. As in-person retail slowly resumed, the team

also established protocols to keep everyone safe and healthy while doing their jobs.

One silver lining to all this, however, was that The Harvard Shop’s online sales

reached record highs this year.

With the pandemic raging, the summer of 2020 became the first summer in almost

60 years that no RW roamed the earth — and as a direct consequence, FY21

became the first year since Let’s Go’s founding that the agency did not publish a

single book. HSA, however, did compile and publish What Harvard Really Taught

Me: 30+ Accepted College Application Essays & Reflections on Life at Harvard.

PRESIDENT

George

Guarnieri

OFFICES

67 Mt. Auburn St.

52 JFK St.

65 Mt. Auburn St.

69 Mt. Auburn St.

34 JFK St.

Around the world

HARVARD

STUDENT

AGENCIES

Harvard stuck to a hybrid learning model in spring 2021, continuing to depress the company’s spirits and

bank account alike. HSA started the year teleworking — including training a new management team

completely remotely — but with COVID-19 vaccines available to all by April, the university happily greenlit

HSA’s circumspect plan to return to Burke-McCoy Hall over the summer, which included proof of

vaccination and regular testing. Students were given the option to continue to work from home if they

wanted, but about 80% of the FY22 team worked in person at some point in the year. The reunion led to

many warm embraces, new introductions, and at least one manager telling President George Guarnieri ’22,

“Whoa, you’re shorter than I thought!”

In March, HSA also began discussions

to acquire Trademark Tours, a longtime

partner of The Harvard Shop that ran

popular tours of Harvard’s campus

and its surroundings. The deal was

consummated in September, adding a

projected $1 million to HSA’s revenue and

more than 100 student jobs to its payrolls.

The acquisition also brought three new

permanent staffers into the HSA family,

including founder Daniel Bodt ’07.

Harvard finally returned to in-person instruction in fall 2021, allowing Cleaners and Dorm Essentials (now

branded together after years of effectively functioning as a single agency) to resume operations after more

than a year off. While some agencies, like the Harvard Bartending Course and Bar Services, remained

dormant all year, Distribution and Studio 67 also hit restart. In addition, The Academies reached its highest

revenue and net income in history, and Campus Insights turned a profit for the first time. All in all, revenue

and employment numbers rebounded to $5.7 million and 589 student employees — not as high as before

the pandemic, but enough to make HSA’s head honchos breathe a big sigh of relief.

The Harvard Shop fully redesigned its website to capitalize on the pandemic-induced spike in web sales.

All the cool kids took notice as the shop introduced a new, trendier line of products to appeal to a younger

demographic. GroupGear reopened after a year off and achieved the highest profit margins the agency had

ever seen. Most importantly, though, HSA signed a lease for a planned new Harvard Shop at 1380 Mass.

Ave., in the former Starbucks space in the heart of Harvard Sq., to open in 2022.

By spring of 2021 — when RWs needed to be hired

and travel plans set — travel bans were still in place,

and Let’s Go was forced to forgo another summer’s

worth of globetrotting. With non–Let’s Go titles on

hiatus too, it was the first year since FY59 that HSA

published no books whatsoever.

TITLES

• What Harvard Really

Taught Me

AGENCIES

AGENCIES

• HSA Cleaners

• Let’s Go






and Bar Services

• HSA Tutoring

• GroupGear

• DEV

• Studio 67

• Campus Insights

• The Academies at Harvard

• HSA Cleaners and Dorm

Essentials

• Let’s Go





and Bar Services

• HSA Tutoring

• GroupGear

• HSA DEV

• Studio 67

• Campus Insights

• The Academies by HSA

• Trademark Tours


fy

23

CURRENT AGENCIES

THE TALE OF TRADEMARK TOURS

Daniel Bodt loved to give tours of Harvard. He did it for the Crimson Key Society, he did it for the Harvard Information Office — but

he couldn’t do it over the summer, when neither of those outfits was operating. So he and fellow tour guide Jordan Jones ’07 sat down at

John Harvard’s Brew House one day in spring 2006 and literally sketched out a business plan on the back of a napkin: if they could get 20

tourists a day to pay them $10 each to give them a tour of Harvard, they could make enough money to get through the summer.

On the first day of summer, the pair went out into Harvard Sq. with handfuls of brochures and their college IDs hanging from lanyards

around their neck — and tourists responded in droves. The tours were free to join (people paid at the end if they decided to stay for the

whole thing) and mixed reverent Harvard lore with fun anecdotes about student life. The pair experimented with different stories and

lines and, by the end of the summer, had developed a script that tourists loved.

Despite the tour saying only good things about

Harvard, the university initially did not embrace

the young entrepreneurs, ordering them to stop

using the “Harvard” name and requiring them to

register as a student business. In response, “The

Harvard Tour” became “The Unofficial Hahvahd

Tour” and then simply “Unofficial Tours.” Having

reached a truce with the administration, the pair

began recruiting other students to give tours using

the same script. Six new tour guides joined the team

in fall 2006; the following summer, they hired 15

guides and rented out a house in Brighton for them

all. Suddenly, the company had gone from 15–20

tours and 700 customers per week to 70–100 tours

and thousands of customers per week. From that

point until 2020, tours ran seven days a week, 365

days a year.

With business flourishing, the company now

known as Trademark Tours honed its operation

year after year. The original crude brochure

became a professionally produced map. Tours were

added of MIT and, briefly, the Freedom Trail.

Bodt bought out his original business partners but

hired three full-time staffers. In 2013, the Boston

Marathon bombing forced the company to cut back as tourism dried up, but when visitors returned, profit margins were higher than

ever. By 2017, Trademark Tours had tripled the size of the full-time staff, including one dedicated specifically to the Chinese market.

The company even developed a business within a business: week-long simulated college experiences for students from Asia who were

considering coming to college in the U.S.

As it professionalized, Trademark Tours struck partnerships with several Harvard Sq. businesses, including HSA. Trademark Tours

had been running a makeshift souvenir store of its own, but in FY10, the two companies agreed that Trademark Tours would simply end

its tours at The Harvard Shop. It was the start of a long and productive relationship that was consummated in FY22. The coronavirus

pandemic obviously hit Trademark Tours hard; tours were limited even when business reopened, but the company survived thanks to the

Paycheck Protection Program. Faced with the prospect of rebuilding his business alone from the ground up, Bodt approached HSA about

deepening their partnership. HSA “was so excited, and that got me excited,” Bodt says today. In September 2021, HSA officially acquired

Trademark Tours, which became the company’s 13th agency.

HSA CLEANERS & DORM ESSENTIALS (EST. 1957) provides the Harvard community with

efficient, high-quality laundry services as well as everything students need to live comfortably

on campus. Dorm Essentials has partnered with the university to provide linens, drink delivery,

furniture, refrigerators, fans, and packing boxes to students as well as to alums and summerprogram

participants.

LET’S GO (EST. 1960) is the only travel guide created exclusively by students for students.

Run entirely by Harvard students, Let’s Go offers a fresh, young perspective on hundreds of

travel destinations around the globe and has become one of the most popular hubs of travel

information, tips, and know-how through its guides, mobile apps, and website. Built around the

unique viewpoint of energetic, budget-minded explorers, Let’s Go’s firsthand, insider knowledge

of the student-travel experience entices adventure lovers of all ages.

HSA BARTENDING COURSE (EST. 1963) provides TIPS certification and mixology training

for aspiring bartenders in the Boston area. Popular among both students and community

members, the one-day course has trained more than 50,000 participants, giving graduates the

certification and skills to bartend at any restaurant, bar, or club.

HARVARD DISTRIBUTION (EST. 1980) offers campus postering, mailbox stuffing, and doordropping

services to connect businesses with students at Harvard and MIT. The Harvard

Distribution team distributes inside student dormitories, putting advertisers as close to the

undergraduate community as possible.

CRONIN CENTER FOR ENTERPRISE (EST. 1998) plans and funds cutting-edge educational

forums and career-development programs to spur undergraduate interest in business and to

bridge the gap between education and professional careers. The Cronin Center for Enterprise’s

capstone program, the Business Leadership Program, provides select undergraduates with a

unique educational experience combining lectures from Harvard Business School professors

with corporate presentations and networking events.

THE HARVARD SHOP (EST. 1983, JOINED HSA IN 2001) offers Harvard merchandise and

apparel for students, affiliates, and visitors alike at its four Harvard Sq. locations and an online

store. The Harvard Shop is the exclusive supplier of the One Ring, the only Harvard University

class ring officially sponsored by students.


BOARD MEMBERS AND ADVISERS

HSA TUTORING (EST. 2006) provides comprehensive SAT and other standardized-test prep as

well as private in-person and online academic tutoring. In addition to offering tutoring packages

and the SAT and ACT SOS Courses, HSA Tutoring offers summer programs based on academic

tutoring and leadership.

STUDIO 67 (EST. 2011) is an advertising agency that combines technical multimedia experience

with a strategic mindset focused on providing companies with insight into the largest consumer

base in the U.S.: millennials. Studio 67 specializes in brand strategy, videography, photography,

social media, and marketing partnerships. Recent projects include branding for an educational

startup that assesses students' professional strengths and a crowdfunding equity company.

GROUPGEAR (EST. 2014) offers custom apparel and accessories to organizations at Harvard

and around the country. With an expansive catalog as well as collegiate and Greek licensing,

GroupGear is dedicated to serving small student clubs and national companies alike.

Functionalities such as online custom stores allow individual group members to buy and pay for

products online, saving GroupGear customers time and money.

THE ACADEMIES BY HSA (EST. 2015) are intensive enrichment programs for high-achieving

high-school students. Its Weekend and Summer Academies offer an unparalleled and challenging

academic experience in an accessible virtual setting, allowing students from across the globe to

form valuable connections among themselves and with Harvard undergraduates. Program topics

include business, business consulting, coding, politics, pre-law, and premed.

HSA DEV (EST. 2017) provides comprehensive web and app development and design consulting

or a variety of businesses. Projects include a new web app to streamline the publication process for

Let’s Go, a mobile physiotherapy app for a growing startup, and a complete rebranding and web

redesign for a venture-capital firm.

CAMPUS INSIGHTS (EST. 2014, JOINED HSA IN 2018) is a user-interface/user-experience

testing and marketing research firm that provides insights through moderated, in-depth interviews

of users and customers interacting with a company’s product. After conducting interview-based

research, Campus Insights delivers analysis with actionable insights in addition to both raw and

edited interviews. Recent projects include testing for Airbnb, market analysis for Chegg, and

recurring projects for GoFundMe and VSCO.

HSA BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Student Directors

Alexander Kim ’23, President

Alexander Mazzella ’23, Clerk

Arul Kapoor ’23, Treasurer

Joanna Bai ’24

Jasmine Chan ’23

Kevin Chew ’23

Eddie Landzberg ’24

Amy Lu ’23

Rory Pan ’24

Daniyal Sachee ’23

Iris Su ’23

Jonathan Zhang ’23

Alum Directors

Michael Cronin ’75, MBA ’77,

Chairman of the Board

Larry Cheng ’96

Patrick Chung ’96, MBA ’04, JD ’04

Gary Fortier ’94

Lynne Liakos O’Connor ’82, MBA ’86

Scott Randall ’84, MBA ’87

Jackie Shoback, MBA ’93

University Directors

Jim McKellar, General Manager

Jen Amaya

Deb Carroll, EdM ’11

Kristen DeAmicis, EdM ’05

David Malan ’99, SM ’04, PhD ’07

Kristin Mugford ’89, MBA ’93

Sheila Thimba

Legal Counsel

George Christodoulo ’71, MBA ’75, JD ’75

THE HARVARD SHOP

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Daniel Bodt ’07

Larry Cheng ’96

Michael Cronin ’75, MBA ’77

Fabienne Devaris

Gary Fortier ’94

Laura Johnson ’94

Alexander Kim ’23

Andy Krantz ’12


Jenny Leight ’21

Jim McKellar

Sarah Miller

Lynne Liakos O’Connor ’82, MBA ’86

Rory Pan ’24

Luna Pham ’24

Daniyal Sachee ’23

Sophia Wang ’25

Jonathan Zhang ’23

Christina Zhao ’24

LET’S GO BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Patrick Carroll ’08


Fabienne Devaris

Rheede Erasmus ’22

Michael Goncalves ’14

George Guarnieri ’22

Alexander Kim ’23

Jim McKellar

Inés Pacheco ’08

Brammy Rajakumar ’23

Nathaniel Rakich ’10

PERMANENT STAFF

Jim McKellar, General Manager

Fabienne Devaris, Chief Financial Officer

Cedric Anglade, Financial Administrator

Sarah Miller, Retail & Operations Manager

Daniel Bodt ’07, Trademark Tours Chief of Staff

Nathaniel Williams, Trademark Tours

Operations Manager

Adam Schofield-Bodt, Trademark Tours

Product Manager

GRADUATE BOARD

Akanksha Sah ’21, President

Laura Johnson ’94, Vice President

Kirk Benson ’13, MBA ’19, Secretary

James Swingos ’20, Treasurer

Rebecca Braun ’92, MBA ’97

Wesley Cash ’20

Meagan Hill ’11, MBA ’16

Matthew Hillery ’00, JD ’04

Richard Olken ’67

TRADEMARK TOURS

ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Daniel Bodt ’07

John Byrne


Fabienne Devaris

Jeffrey Dunn ’77, MBA ’81

Alexander Kim ’23


Jim McKellar

Bob Schwartz

Beth Stehley

Amber Zhang

Sammi Zhu ’25

TRADEMARK TOURS (EST. 2006, JOINED HSA IN 2021) has become the most successful and

well-respected visitor services company in Harvard Sq., employing hundreds of Harvard students

as experienced guides on in-depth tours of campus as well as the surrounding Cambridge area.

Now, under HSA, Trademark Tours continues to offer an engaging, high-quality introduction

to Harvard for visitors from around the world.


BOARD MEMBERS AND ADVISERS CONT.

EDUCATION COMMITTEE

Joanna Bai ’24

Deb Carroll, EdM ’11

Jasmine Chan ’23

Alexander Kim ’23

Alexander Mazzella ’23

Jim McKellar

Scott Randall ’84, MBA ’87

Jackie Shoback, MBA ’93

Iris Su ’23

Ashley Wang ’23

Lisa Wang ’16

Bryant Yang ’17

INVESTMENT COMMITTEE


Andy Janfaza ’88, MBA ’94

Amit Tiwari ’98, MBA ’04

Arianna Zhang ’18

YOUNG ALUM MENTORS

Nick Allain ’16

Molly Alter ’16

Kelley Babphavong ’20

John Boyan ’17

Jadyn Broomfield Bryden ’21

Nick Bunn ’19

Wesley Cash ’20

Grace Chen ’19, AM ’19

Harrison Choate ’17

Ali Dastjerdi ’19

Milton Dorceus ’19

Karina Dubrovskaya ’21

Jullian Duran ’18

Leo Fondriest ’19

Allie Freiwald ’18

Jocelyn Fu ’17

Kristine Guillaume ’20

Arman Hassan ’18

Matt Hawkins ’18

Hasani Hayden ’19

Annelise Hillmann ’20

Helen Huang ’21

Ronia Hurwitz ’18

Anthony Kenny ’20

Jada Lee ’21

Jenny Leight ’21

Dara Li ’20

Jess Li ’17

Jasmin Liu ’19

Elizabeth Lively ’21

Angelina Massa ’18

Ed Masterson ’19

Kaitlin McGovern ’18

Bardi Moradi ’18

Humphrey Obuobi ’18

Riya Patel ’17

Sam Pelletier ’20

Rameen Rana ’20

Alejandra Resendiz Torres ’19

Will Rowley ’21

Akanksha Sah ’21

Dominique “Nicki” Sanders ’17

Patrick Scott ’16

Max Shen ’18

Serhiy Sokhan ’21

James Swingos ’20

Daniela Veloza ’18

Stephen Xi ’17

Bryant Yang ’17

Allison Zhang ’20

Amy Zhang ’21

Amy Zhao ’18

116

HARVARD

STUDENT

AGENCIES, INC.

the charter

December 13, 1957

. . . to conduct and supervise enterprises for the benefit of students of Harvard

University who are in need of financial assistance to defray the expenses of their

education; to provide opportunities for such students to be gainfully employed; to

study cultivate, promote, and encourage new business ventures to afford additional

employment opportunities for such students; to provide experience for its members

in the practical management and conduct of business affairs; to foster, encourage,

and inculcate in its members qualities and habits of work, thrift, and self-reliance;

all in close collaboration with said Harvard University without profit to any of its

members or any other person.

HSA 65th Anniversary Book

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