Born said that while Grogan got off to a good start, some councillors began to feel he was taking Cambridge for granted. “Town-gown relations have had their ups and downs,” Born said. Born pointed to a meeting Summers had with councillors in August as an encouraging sign, and said she hoped Stone visits early on as well.
“There’s no substitute for personal contact with the community leaders, for putting a system in place where there’s transparency, and where you can build relationships,” Stone said.
A History Of Good Work
Co-workers said that during his tenure at Columbia, Stone revitalized the public relations of the university. Stone arrived as the first vice president of a newly integrated public affairs division, which combined government, community and communications concerns under a single roof.
Columbia’s Associate Vice President for Public Affairs Virgil Renzulli said Stone was brought in to make the most of this new structure in presenting a unified face.
“When he came the various departments were not nearly as strategically oriented, and their goals not nearly as integrated,” Renzulli said.
At Columbia, Stone dealt with the same types of complicated community issues that he will face at Harvard.
Emily Lloyd, Columbia’s executive vice president for administration, said that like Harvard, Columbia is expanding and encountering the space crunch of a crowded city. Renzulli described a wide spectrum of community activists, borough presidents, non-profit organizations and neighborhood groups that Stone dealt with in the course of his job.
Renzulli and Lloyd said they are sad to see Stone go.
“He is extremely good at what he does, but also is someone with a great sense of humor,” Lloyd said.
Rolling Stone
Stone’s professional roots are in Washington, D.C., where he served in a variety of policy advising positions.
He arrived at Columbia in 1995 fresh out of the Clinton administration, where he served as a senior speechwriter.
Stone and Summers—who was rising through the ranks of the Treasury Separtment when Stone left—are said to share mutual friends.
Stone previously worked more directly on policy as a top aide to Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) and as a top staffer on several Congressional committees.
Stone, 57, has a bachelor’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, and is a lawyer by training. After graduating from George Washington University Law School in 1969, Stone joined Volunteers In Service To America (VISTA) where he worked in Worcester, Mass. and later opened a rural legal service office in Colorado.
—Staff writer David H. Gellis can be reached at gellis@fas.harvard.edu.