HSA 65th Anniversary Book
• 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 enterprises.
• 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 enterprises.
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
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
HSA 65th Anniversary History Book 109
Change language