DONALD OGILVIE REMEMBRANCE

Donald Hamilton Ogilvie, a member of the SOM Charter Class, an advisor to Fortune 500 executives and leaders of major non-profit and government organizations, who helped establish Afro-American studies as a respected field of university scholarship, died of a heart attack on Sunday, July 27th, 2003. He was 57.

Don entered Yale University as a freshman in 1964 where he was a founder of the Yale Discussion Group on Negro Affairs, later renamed the Black Student Alliance at Yale (BSAY). BSAY was responsible for organizing a Black Studies in the University Symposium, which led to the establishment of Yale's interdepartmental Afro-American Studies major. Don helped edit the book, Black Studies in the University, published by Yale University Press in 1969, which has been cited regularly by other universities that followed Yale's lead in establishing majors in Black Studies.

After graduating in 1968, Don became director of Yale's Office for Community Affairs Development, working closely with both the City of New Haven and members of the inner-city neighborhoods located near Yale. Don is credited by community leaders with changing the dynamics between Yale and the predominantly minority and low-income communities in the shadow of the University.

During that time, he also served as President of the local branch of the NAACP, First Vice President of the Connecticut NAACP and Board Secretary of the United Way of Greater New Haven.

Don entered SOM in 1976 and is remembered by his classmates as "looming larger than life, with a confident presence befitting a leader," "self-assured and destined for great things," "strong, wise and understood people so well," " having wit, energy and an intensity in challenging both conventional and unconventional thinking."

William Donaldson, Founding Dean of SOM said "Don Ogilvie made an outstanding contribution to Yale in his years before entering the School of Management and then added enormously to the character, spirit and accomplishment of the school and its principles." He was a summer associate at Salomon Brothers in 1977 and upon graduation in 1978, joined McKinsey & Co.

At McKinsey & Co., Don helped establish the media and communications practice and was instrumental in formalizing the recruitment program at SOM. In 1984, Don became a director of Redding Consultants in Wilton, Connecticut and later established an independent consulting practice, Ogilvie Management Consulting of Emerson, New Jersey.

As a consultant Don served clients as diverse as A.C. Nielsen, Mabelline Cosmetics, Schering Plough, The New York Times, and Verizon. He took a two-year leave from consulting to be Senior Vice President for Growth Initiatives at AXA Financial.

Don was equally effective in the not-for-profit world, helping to develop programs for Howard University, the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C., and The U.S. Agency for International Development in Mogadishu, Somalia.

His children--Samantha, Donn and Kathleen--as well as an extended family of relatives and close friends, survive Don. He was a devoted father, a loving friend and a truly special individual. He will be missed, and his absence at the 25th Reunion of the Charter Class will be clearly noted with bittersweet remembrances.

-- Pamela Bronk Farr, Class of '78