End of Week Reflection from Dean Slaughter
April 9, 2021
Dear Students and Colleagues,
My reflection this week is not so much for you and me, but for our partners. I would like to thank all the partners – husbands, wives, parents, children, and the many other kith and kin – who support our efforts to bring our best selves to Tuck.
The week before last, Dave McCormick (CEO of Bridgewater) and Dina Powell McCormick (Global Head of sustainability and inclusive growth at Goldman Sachs) joined us for our first-ever joint husband-wife “View from the Top” conversation. They shared how much their professional success owes to the time and encouragement that they provide each other. They acknowledged that this mutual support is not effortless: that it involves a lot of “messiness of the moment,” from hard trade-offs to the cookie-batter mess of their daughters that needed tending to 15 minutes before joining us. But it was so clear that their professional success owes so much to all this messiness that they work through with and for each other.
On Wednesday of this week, advocate and award-winning actor Michael J. Fox visited us at Tuck, for a talk moderated by Debi Brooks T’86, co-founder and executive vice chairman of the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. I was struck by how much gratitude Michael voiced for those who have supported his journey with Parkinson’s. He is very thankful for Debi, whose wise partnership and decisive drive, he said, will have contributed as much as he to discovering a cure to this disease. He is most thankful for his wife, Tracy Pollan, and most of all for how she time and again has reminded the world of his basic humanity.
None of us ever succeeds, professionally or personally, without the support of others. This has been especially true in the pandemic. I have often voiced my gratitude for the creative resolve that we have summoned to continue living our distinct Tuck mission amidst the pandemic. And yet, behind that creative resolve of every one of us has been the support of our partners.
So, let me here offer my deepest gratitude to all these partners. And let me invite all of us to do the same. Think of how you contribute to Tuck’s mission. And then think of those—Tuck Partners, Tiny Tuckies, and all the rest—who support your contributions. I could not have been dean of our School this past year without the constancy, patience, and good humor of my wife, Lindsey. Oh, and without the unfailing walk-readiness of Teddy and Ollie, our dogs.
Please make it a great weekend. And please make part of it thanking your partners for their love and their support.
Dartmouth has formed a high-level task force to plan for and manage possible disruptions related to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak, monitor federal and state recommendations, implement guidance, and communicate with our community.