About Harold Tanner
HAROLD TANNER BS ILR '52 and MBA '56 from Harvard Business School, is president of Tanner & Co., Inc., a private investment banking firm founded in New York in 1987. He was formerly a managing director of Salomon Brothers Inc., where he had responsibility for the Corporate Finance Department and has spent his entire career in the investment banking business.
A Trustee of Cornell University since 1982, Mr. Tanner served as Chairman of the Board from 1997 until 2002. He is currently a Presidential Councillor, co-chair of the Major Gifts Committee, and a Life Overseer of the Weill Medical College & Graduate School of Medical Sciences Board of Overseers. One of Cornell's most respected and active alumni volunteers, Mr. Tanner served as co-chair of the Cornell Campaign from 1990-95, helping to raise a record $1.5 billion for the University. He was vice chair of the Presidential Search Committee that selected Hunter R. Rawlings III to be the tenth president of Cornell, formerly served on the Advisory Councils of the College of Arts and Sciences and the Johnson Museum of Art, and is a former chair of the Tower Club and Quadrangle Society. The School of Industrial and Labor Relations honored Mr. Tanner in 2002 with the Jerome Alpern Distinguished Alumni Award.
A Foremost Benefactor of Cornell, Mr. Tanner and his wife, Nicki Tanner, Wellesley '57, endowed the Harold Tanner Deanship of Arts and Sciences and established the Pauline and Irving Tanner Dean's Scholars Fund in the College of Arts and Sciences. Mr. Tanner's support has touched virtually all corners of the campus to include, in addition to Arts and Sciences, Athletics, the Johnson Museum of Art, the Jewish Studies Program, Hillel, the Medical College, the Cornell Library, the Johnson Graduate School of Management, the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, and the Veterinary College.
In May 2005, Mr. Tanner was elected Chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations. In May 2004, he completed a three-year term as president of the American Jewish Committee. In this capacity, he led an AJC delegation in February 2004 at a private audience with Pope John Paul II at which he paid tribute to the Pope's historic contribution to Christian-Jewish reconciliation and his leadership in the struggle against anti-Semitism and bigotry. In 1995, Mr. Tanner was the recipient of the AJC's Herbert H. Lehman Human Relations Award. He is a Trustee of the Revson Foundation, a former Trustee of the Russell Sage Foundation, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. A former director of the Associates of the Harvard Business School and a former chairman of the Harvard Business School Fund, Mr. Tanner received the Harvard Business School's Alumni Achievement Award in 1992. Together, Mr. Tanner and Mrs. Tanner, a Trustee Emerita of Wellesley College, received the 1996 Ernest T. Stewart Distinguished Alumni Service Award from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education.
The Tanners have three children, including Karen AB '83 and seven grandsons.
More Information
To learn more about the Dean's Scholar Program, please contact Clare McMillan.