HAA recognizes outstanding alumni

The Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) Awards were established in 1990 to recognize outstanding service to Harvard University through alumni activities. This year’s awards ceremony will take place during the Fall HAA Board of Directors meeting on Oct. 16.

Peter Bynoe A.B. ’72, J.D./M.B.A. ’76, of Chicago, has been very active in alumni affairs, serving as a member of the Harvard Business School Alumni Council from 1987 to 1990, as an elected director of the HAA from 1991 to1994, and as an overseer of the University from 1993 to 2002. He has been a member of the Harvard Club of Chicago, the Harvard Law School Club of Chicago, and the Harvard Business School Club of Chicago. He was also a member of his 25th reunion gift committee.

From 1988 to 1992 he was CEO of the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority, overseeing the development of the new Comiskey Park, now called U.S. Cellular Field. In 1989, he broke ground as the first minority owner of an NBA franchise, the Denver Nuggets. From 1992 to 1995 Bynoe advised the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games on its development of an Olympic Stadium for the 1996 Summer Games. For the past 13 years, he was a senior partner in the Chicago office of the law firm DLA Piper USLLP, where he built and managed the firm’s Sports Facilities Practice Group. His public service includes chairing the Chicago Commission on Landmarks, the Chicago Plan Commission, and the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority. Bynoe was recently named managing director in the Chicago office of Loop Capital Markets LLC. He is married to Linda Bynoe M.B.A. ’78.

Deborah Goldfine A.B. ’85, of Newton, Mass., is a true Harvard citizen. A former tennis captain and a longtime member of the Visiting Committee to Athletics, she is also co-chair of the Friends of Harvard Tennis. She is the executive chair of the Harvard Radcliffe Foundation for Women’s Athletics, which has greatly enhanced and broadened the programming and financial support for women’s athletics at the University since the foundation’s inception in 1981. Additionally, Goldfine served as co-chair of her 10th, 15th, and 20th reunion committees and is an associate committee member of the Class of 1985 Gifts Committee. She has been an HAA committee member since 1995 and is currently the co-chair of the Newton Schools and Scholarships Committee. She, her husband, and two children serve as a volunteer host family to Harvard freshmen.

Goldfine was formerly a senior consultant at Watson Wyatt Worldwide and former vice president of Cahners Publishing. She serves as vice president of U.S. Tennis Association-New England, Youth Tennis Foundation.

Nathaniel “Nat” Guild A.B. ’73, of Concord, Mass., has translated his enthusiasm for Harvard College into many years of service as an alumnus volunteer. Secretary of the Class of 1973, he served as co-chair of the 15th and 25th Harvard-Radcliffe class reunions. He was also an HAA-appointed director for his class and chair of the HAA Classes and Reunions Committee (1995-98). Guild is currently the chair of the HAA Chief Marshal Selection Committee and vice chair of the Happy Committee. He is also a member of the executive committee of the Association of Harvard College Class Secretaries and Treasurers and formerly treasurer of the Friends of Harvard Track and a member of the Kennedy School Institute of Politics advisory committee.

Guild is an expert in the critical analysis of competitive business strategies and the early identification of distressed companies. He is currently Partner of Short Alert, an investment research service for institutions.  He holds a graduate degree from MIT and is also a member of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists.

Susan Heath A.B. ’67, of Pound Ridge, N.Y., has long been a valuable volunteer for the Harvard Admissions Office. She has been recruiting and interviewing students for more than three decades and just recently completed her term as chair of the HAA National Schools and Scholarships Committee. She has also been chair of the Harvard Club of Westchester Schools and Scholarships Committee since 1975. A former member of her Class Reunion Gift Committee, she just began a three-year term as the HAA regional director of metro New York and New Jersey.

Heath has also been an avid volunteer outside of Harvard, serving as trustee of the Rippowam Cisqua School (1993-99), trustee and vice president of the Nantucket New School (2000-present), and co-chair of the Parents Council at the College of Charleston (2003-present). She is also a board member of the Tuckernuck Land Trust, a nonprofit dedicated to conserving the natural resources and rural character of Tuckernuck Island. She is married to Arthur Heath A.B. ’66, J.D. ’69 and has a daughter, Jenny Heath A.B. ’98, Ed.M. ’03.

Ella Smith A.B.E. ’66, of Abington, Mass., has been the ultimate Harvard Extension School Alumni Association (HEAA) activist. Shortly after she graduated she worked with administrators and fellow recent graduates to help found the HEAA and has been a member of its steering committee since 1968. She served as president of the Extension School Alumni Association from 1982 to 1985, and she chaired most of the HEAA committees in the past 40 years. Also, for many years she has been the Extension School’s HAA-appointed director and has served with distinction on the HAA Graduate Schools Committee and the Communications Committee.

She has been a director of Family Day Care Programs Inc. in Brookline, Mass., and also has been a board member of the West End Branch of the Boston chapter of the American Cancer Society. Since 1985 she has been a member of the mayor’s Commission on Elderly Affairs for the City of Boston.  In 1987 she became a member of the Senior Center Task Force for Boston. In addition, she is a member of the board of overseers for the Museum of Science.

Charles Wiggin A.B. ’68, M.B.A. ’72, J.D. ’72, of Oklahoma City, has served for three years as the HAA regional director for the South Central states and is a longtime director of the Harvard Club of Oklahoma City. A former member of the HAA Clubs and Graduate Schools Committee, Wiggin was also a member and chair of the HAA Committee to Nominate Overseers and Elected Directors and chair of the HAA Awards Committee. Additionally, he was chairman of his 10th Reunion Gift Committee.

Wiggin is also very active in numerous other civic and cultural organizations. An avid supporter of the arts, he is a trustee of the Oklahoma City Museum of Art and president of the Civic Center Foundation, whose mission is to ensure a strong and vibrant performing arts presence in Oklahoma City. He was chairman of the Mayor’s Task Force on Neighborhood Revitalization and a director of the Oklahoma City Philharmonic, Inc. Wiggin is Oklahoma’s honorary consul for the Federal Republic of Germany and is the founder and president of Wiggin Properties. His son, Sam, earned his A.B. from Harvard in 2005.