There’s a changing of the guard underway at the state’s most powerful business group.
Dan O’Connell is finally getting ready to leave the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership, the Boston-based group of high-powered CEOs. He had contemplated leaving once before, to focus full time on Boston’s Olympics bid. But the business group’s board members persuaded him to stay. This time, O’Connell said, it’s for real.
O’Connell has been the group’s chief executive since its inception seven years ago, and has served as a liaison between its private-sector members and government power brokers on Beacon Hill. He knows his way around the State House, having previously served in the Patrick administration as state economic development secretary.
The organization, sometimes called the “New Vault” because of its resemblance to the former group of CEOs that used to run Boston, hasn’t started searching for O’Connell’s replacement. He said he’s leaving sometime this year, but the exact timing isn’t clear.
That’s in part because of another pending departure. O’Connell doesn’t want to leave at exactly the same time as Bill Swanson, the former Raytheon CEO who currently chairs the organization’s board. Swanson is expected to step down, likely toward the end of 2017. Putnam Investments chief executive Bob Reynolds is expected to become chairman once Swanson departs.
The timing’s also unclear on other upcoming changes. Former EMC chief Joe Tucci will likely hand his seat over to Michael Dell, following Dell’s acquisition of EMC last year, and current Raytheon CEO Tom Kennedy may take over Swanson’s board seat.
The business group has launched itself into a variety of issues: community colleges, international travel, state government reform, boosting old industrial cities. Next up: helping the Baker administration address the state’s various transit issues, a task that even the state’s leading CEOs may find tough to tackle. — JON CHESTO
A house united for Texans
When the Patriots kick off in their playoff game against the Houston Texans Saturday night, developer Tom O’Brien knows who he’ll be rooting for. And it won’t be the Patriots.
Best known around town as a Menino-era chief of the Boston Redevelopment Authority and now big-time builder at HYM Investments, O’Brien also happens to be an older brother of Texans coach Bill O’Brien.
Raised in Andover, both O’Briens played football at St. John’s Prep in Danvers and then at Brown University. Tom’s career ended there, but he has watched as Bill climbed the coaching ranks up to big-time jobs such as offensive coordinator for the Patriots, head coach at Penn State after Joe Paterno resigned in scandal, and now head coach of the Texans.
Tom O’Brien likes his hometown team, but he always supports his brother. So, when asked who he’s pulling for Saturday night, there was no hesitation.
“We’re all Texans in this house these days,” O’Brien said with a chuckle. — TIM LOGAN
Partners CEO offers glimpse of Trump meeting
The week between Christmas and New Year’s was busier than expected for the chief executive of Boston-based Partners Healthcare.
Dr. David Torchiana, who runs the state’s largest health care system, hustled down to Donald Trump’s sunny Florida estate after being summoned to meet with the president-elect and other health care executives.
President-elect Trump, who has promised to throw out the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, did not bring up his plans to ditch the law during the Dec. 28 sit-down, Torchiana said: “It didn’t really come up. . . . . They didn’t raise it, and we didn’t really have a conversation about that.”
Torchiana is among many in the health care industry opposed to Trump’s plans to repeal the law, worrying the move could leave millions of Americans without insurance coverage. Hospitals have gained business from those newly insured.
Torchiana said the focus of the meeting was biomedical research and health care for veterans. As for the health care law, the Partners chief said: “He’s not going to decide what he does on that one based on talking with four guys from academic health systems, I don’t think.”
Other CEOs at the meeting included the heads of Johns Hopkins Medicine, the Cleveland Clinic, and the Mayo Clinic. Also in the room: Trump advisers Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon.
Torchiana acknowledged that he did not vote for Trump but said the president-elect seemed “very engaged” during the recent meeting, and that he’d be open to sitting down with Trump again.
— PRIYANKA DAYAL MCCLUSKEY
The Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, which has offices in Boston and Menlo Park, is a “venture philanthropy” firm, which means it applies a venture capital mind-set to funding nonprofits: rigorous vetting, supplying startup money, and providing business advice.
It favors “social entrepreneurs” tackling complex problems like health care, hunger, and education, and it recently took the somewhat unusual step of giving grants to two nonprofit journalism organizations: GroundTruth Project and Solutions Journalism Network.
Boston-based GroundTruth, located at WGBH, was founded by Charlie Sennott (a former Boston Globe reporter) to train a new generation of foreign correspondents focused on social justice issues. Solutions Journalism, headquartered in New York City, encourages reporting that covers how people respond to social problems.
Both will receive $300,000 over three years, as well as management support.
“Like many Americans, we worry deeply about the future of journalism, and in particular the lack of public trust in information sources,” explained DRK Foundation CEO Jim Bildner, founder of gourmet grocery chain J. Bildner & Sons, “so we want to help restore confidence in media institutions and support their ability to publish reliable content.”
Bildner said the foundation has funded a journalism nonprofit only once before: America Abroad Media in 2004. — SACHA PFEIFFER
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