Christopher Reichert: “I do think that our society can’t function if it’s transactional. There has to be a giving back that doesn’t have a quid pro quo associated with it, other than the desire to give back.”
Christopher Reichert: Welcome to Sloanies Talking with Sloanies, a candid conversation with alumni and faculty about the MIT Sloan experience and how it influences what they’re doing today. So, what does it mean to be a Sloanie? Over the course of this podcast, you’ll hear from guests who are making a difference in their community, including our own very important one here at MIT Sloan.
Andrew Husband: Hi, I’m your guest host, Andrew Husband, senior writer and editor with the MIT Sloan Office of External Relations, and welcome to Sloanies Talking with Sloanies on this very special episode of the podcast. I’m speaking with Christopher Reichert, a 2004 graduate of the MIT Sloan Management of Technology (MOT) program. Welcome, Christopher.
Christopher Reichert: Great to be here. It’s unusual to have the tables turned here [and] be the guest.
Andrew Husband: Indeed. So, before we begin our conversation, let me give our listeners some brief background, although I’m sure many of them already know much of this. Christopher was chief information officer for the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate before embarking on his current portfolio career, including renovating properties and expanding his podcast work, both here at MIT Sloan and with McKinsey. He’s the president of the MIT Sloan Boston Alumni Association, an emeritus board member of the MIT Sloan Alumni Board, and a longtime volunteer with the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium.
As our listeners are aware, Christopher has served as host of Sloanies Talking with Sloanies for the past five years across 50 episodes of conversations with graduates, faculty, and other members of the MIT Sloan community. That is, as we were speaking earlier before recording, Christopher, many conversations across a seemingly short but packed period of time. I’m curious, and this is a bit of a loaded question, but what stands out to you most when you think back on those five years?
Christopher Reichert: That’s a great question. I think I’m fortunate that I am an extrovert, and I’m interested in other people’s stories, and part of that might be that I’m trying to figure out what they figured out that I haven’t yet figured out. It’s also doubly fortunate that the people I’m interviewing are individually very interesting people and have interesting journeys themselves and are still in the midst of them. So, it really makes it easy to have these conversations.
We talk about obviously the time before, during, and after MIT Sloan, but it’s sometimes hard to hold back and keep going on and on into their own lives because they’re so interesting. Looking back, I would be remiss if I didn’t reflect on one of the most nerve wracking-interviews that I had. But one of the most exciting was with the late Professor Ed Roberts, because he’s such a legend and he is so much a part of my reasons for going to MIT and for so many of my classmates and the alumni that I speak to. He really touched their lives and changed their trajectory, partly because he’s so smart and had so much to contribute in the classroom, but outside of the classroom as well. So many people have reached out to me and said that they stayed in touch with him, and he always made himself available. I always found that really remarkable. I also interviewed his son [Mitch Roberts], who, I didn’t know before I interviewed him, was instrumental in Au Ban Pain, the sandwich shop. That was the beloved one that’s no longer there in Kendall Square, when I was a student. [He also brought] Panera to Boston and New England, so that was very interesting.
I would say one of the more the fun, really enjoyable conversations, [in which] I felt like an observer in a comedy sketch, was with Roberto Rigobon and Juan Pablo Armas. They were just bouncing off each other, talking about the MIT Sloan Latin America Office and getting that organized and going back and forth and somehow fitting it all into their lives and building community. I think that’s probably one of the threads that I see, and the podcast is people. I really appreciate the community that they entered when they came to MIT Sloan and want to stay engaged with after MIT Sloan.
Andrew Husband: Absolutely. Ed Roberts was chair of the Management of Technology program, and you mentioned he was a big part of why you came to MIT Sloan. Was it specifically an attraction to that program and that he was running it, and learning about him and wanting to come in and experience that?
Christopher Reichert: When I visited MIT Sloan back in 2001, I think it was actually the weekend before 9/11. I was doing a tour of graduate programs, and I came into E52 fully intending to go to the MBA office and apply for the MBA program and that sort of path that was a bit older. I don’t know that I would have gotten in, but I happened to sit down in the waiting room for the MIT Sloan Fellows and MOT office. I was waiting to talk to somebody, and I picked up this brochure and I started reading about this Management of Technology program, and it just completely resonated with me.
My background: I had been living in Australia for 13 years. I started an IT consulting company down there almost by accident because my college background is in the classics. I went to a tiny place called St. John’s College, which reads the 100 greatest books of western man.
We started with Greeks and go through Romans and then European history and the New World with the Declaration of Independence and those kinds of things, but also art and science and music. Not very business oriented. So, going to Australia, I almost by accident started this IT consulting company selling faxes. That was the hot thing back then. I was working illegally as a waiter in Australia, and my business partner, the owner of the café, said, “You kind of suck as a waiter, but I have the rights to sell Cannon faxes and HP lasers. Do you want to go do that instead?” And I said, “Anything but being a waiter.” So, we started a price war in Sydney selling fax machines door to door, out of the back of my car. I had an old Honda Civic and I would drive to restaurants and businesses and showcase it. Anyway, we got really big with that. We got caught the eye of a radio station who asked if we could network them, which was way back before any Windows networking.
I said, “Sure, I can do that,” though I had never done that before, so I spent the next three months crash course learning how to do computer networking. I still remember the moment when it worked, it actually turned on, and there was [the prompt to] enter your login name. It was such a relief, but I think that’s a kind of a thread. It was just like, I’m willing to just try it, and so I started this IT consulting business and we just migrated through technologies to the internet and Windows and whatnot. Everyone thought I was on a first name basis with Bill Gates because I had an American accent, and this was Australia, so I didn’t make any efforts to say that I didn’t know him but used it as a slight edge in sales. Let them think that whatever. But after 13 years or so, it was time to come home, and I thought, “What’s the best way to come back to America?” Not having been here since almost before when I had just left college, I thought graduate school. I had organically learned a lot of things running my business, and I thought this is time to put some framework around it, so an MBA seemed like the right way to go.
When I saw this MOT program, it spoke to me on a lot of different levels. One was that it had an entrepreneurial component to it. It really was talking about how technology in a business was so important and since I had been doing that, it seemed like such a perfect, natural step for me to come in and do that. I mean, having Ed Roberts as the godfather of the program was an extra special bonus because he made time for us and appreciated where we were coming from.
Andrew Husband: I know MIT News spoke about this in their writing about him, and the Boston Globe spoke about this in their writing about him as well. They confirm the things that we’ve seen in our office and heard from alumni across the board—not just MOT alumni, but across all programs and all years. The number of people who have said similar things in terms of either his willingness to connect with them and stay connected with them, both when they were here at MIT Sloan and well beyond, suggests that was the norm and not an outlier.
Christopher Reichert: Yeah, I feel very fortunate. I mean, most of my classmates and I think this is probably true for MIT Sloan Fellows, maybe, and probably with MBAs as well, but generally speaking, people come to Kendall Square, they go to MIT, they drink from the fire hose, and then they disperse to wherever they came from or wherever they’re going. I feel fortunate that I’m almost within eyeshot of MIT, and I can go down there pretty much any time. I’ve stayed connected with MIT, I would say, for a variety of reasons. One of which is, come graduation day, it’s always a moment of elation that you made it through, but also sadness that somehow there’s all these things that you didn’t get a chance to do. But being in Boston and being near Cambridge gives me an opportunity to dip in and dip out a little more than others, perhaps, so I feel fortunate.
Andrew Husband: Speaking of drinking from the fire hose, it makes a lot of sense. That’s very much, across the board at MIT and especially at MIT Sloan, the mentality and almost the lifestyle of everyone from students and faculty to alumni. In terms of the courses you take, the activities you pursue, just across the board. It sounds like you were already kind of doing that a little bit, even before you came to MIT Sloan, and since coming to MIT Sloan, you still very much do that. We were speaking before recording about how it’s just one of the many things you’ve done, both professionally and in your volunteer work. It is a very packed list. On the one hand, I don’t know how you have the time for it. On the other hand, I’m just amazed by all the many things that you dip your toes into, one of them being the CIO Symposium, because you’ve been involved with that since 2006, I believe.
Christopher Reichert: Yes, I feel like I’m rusted on. That’s what I say to the to the board, is I feel like I’ve rusted on here. Not that I intended to. I graduated 2004 and I immediately went up the river to the Harvard Kennedy School to do a master's in public administration because I considered running for public office. I do think that serving a public service can be a higher calling, and it should be a higher calling. I think that our civilized society, or any civilized society, needs good governance. I guess I was driven towards that area of public service by some models that my parents infused me with, and, I think quite frankly, as a reaction to their childhood. Really briefly, my father was born in Germany in 1925, and he fought in World War II. I joke about it, but it was the losing side, not that he had any choice in the matter, but he really suffered in his life, in addition to millions of others from dictators and fascism and nationalism. So, he very acutely infused me with this notion that service should be greater than individual gain. It’s not about the individual. And my mother had to flee Franco in 1936. She was born in Spain. My grandfather was serving in the in the government in Catalonia, and Franco did not like him. He was an intellectual, he was an economist, so they had to flee very quickly over the mountains into France. Both of them really were, I would say, progressive and liberal in ways that were not just capital L liberal, but also in a kind of lowercase l liberal, just in how they viewed the world and how they infused us with the values of service to others.
So, I spit out of MIT and went straight to up the river to Harvard and then, at the end of it, I was looking for community as I was going to stay in Boston, and I was drawn back to MIT, and I volunteered for the CIO Symposium. I think it was like the second year of it, and I ran sponsorship. And then, it’s kind of like that joke of who would like to volunteer for something, step forward, and everyone else steps back and I forgot to step back. But I then became chair of it, and it’s very, very satisfying. It’s a lot of work. It’s going to be its 21st or 22nd year, and I still serve on the advisory board. It grew to the level that we hired someone to run it as opposed to it being a volunteer role, although everyone who serves there is volunteer. I’ve moved into more of a board advisory role, which I find very satisfying.
I don’t have the day-to-day stress of profit and loss on that event, but it’s fantastic to see it continue. I feel very proud that it’s in its place in the MIT Sloan pantheon of events, with our sister event, the MIT Sloan CFO Summit, which focuses on chief financial officers. My wife used to say, “Why do you spend so much time doing this? You don’t get paid for it.” My response to her was, “That’s true, but I’m learning so many skills.” I joke that over the 10 years that I ran it, some years I was a dictator, some years I was laissez-faire, some years I was hands off, and some years I was very hands on, trying out different ways of motivating a volunteer team. I think that’s just a lesson that’s more valuable than anything, really. I was learning how to engage people on a mission that wasn’t motivated just by pay or compensation. Yes, I wasn’t getting paid specifically for the CIO Symposium, but through that, I got a role at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum as the director of web technology, and that eventually led to the Edward M. Kennedy Institute as the inaugural chief information officer. It really does come down to what we always talk about: The network and the community that you build and nurture really does pay and have rewards that are hard to fathom when you first start.
Andrew Husband: I want to focus on this thread of volunteerism a little bit more, because on the one hand, there’s this aspect of it you just spoke about where that desire to serve, to be a contributing member of society, can lead to things like your work at the Kennedy Institute. There’s also an aspect of it, like you were telling your wife, where you keep learning. In the case MIT Sloan specifically, you graduated in 2004, but for the past 20 years—in these various roles, volunteer and otherwise—you have had that same component of service. There are still opportunities to learn, to advance, not just for the sake of keeping tabs on what’s happening, but really for that sense of personal progress, as well as greater contribution to something bigger than yourself. I think that’s an aspect, too, of that drink from the fire hose mentality at MIT that maybe isn’t thought about as much but is still very much a part of it. I see it in your example and in the example of many other MIT Sloan alumni who continue to come back and volunteer and be involved.
Christopher Reichert: I think that’s right. Maybe it’s a characteristic of Sloanies and maybe MIT brings it out of people. Maybe it’s both. When you’re at MIT or at MIT Sloan or across the campus, you’re exposed to so many different topics and people and paths that it can be overwhelming. Somehow, you have to find your own, [or] what resonates with you because you can’t do everything. I volunteered when I was asked to join the MIT Sloan Alumni Board. In some ways I wondered why, but I think my volunteerism was one of the elements. That was one of the reasons why I was asked to join, because I think that a lot of the work that gets done on the alumni board does take an initiative on the members of the boards. There’s not a huge staff that’s going to… the board can somehow say, “Let’s do this initiative,” and then they go back to their day jobs and then, somehow, it’s left for MIT Sloan to pick up and run with.
[At] the MIT Sloan Boston Alumni Association, we like to think of ourselves as a flagship alumni club, partly because we’re here in Cambridge and Boston, so we’re close to the mothership. We have those advantages, but I also think that having had a consistency in our membership, of board members, is maybe too long. I’ve been on the board since 2006, and I often think that I should leave because that’s a long time. At the same time, there’s a real consistency in the work that we do and the mission that we have. We’re very clear on the mission that we have, which is to advocate and create opportunities for community, for professional and personal engagement with alumni in New England. And by doing the CIO Symposium and the CFO Summit, our career series, and our Women and Wine Wednesdays, we’re very much an executive board. The alumni board put together and organized by the dean and the Office of External Relations is along the same lines, the same model. We all meet on campus—or pre-covid met on campus, though maybe post-covid on campus as well—to convene and talk in-person about initiatives. Then, when you disperse again to your communities, you stay engaged and actually advance the initiatives. The podcast, Sloanies Talking with Sloanies, is a good example of that. When one of the board members suggested it, I thought, “That seems like a crazy idea. And who would care and all that? Who was going to do it? Who would host it?” Originally, he was going to host it, and then for some reason at the last minute, he couldn’t make it from New York up to record it, and so they just they said, “Hey, Christopher, do you want to do it?” And I said, “Sure. Why not?” I have to go back and listen to some of the early ones. I wonder what they’re like, whether I’ve changed my style a bit or not.
I do think that our society can’t function if it’s transactional. There has to be a giving back that doesn’t have a quid pro quo associated with it, other than the desire to give back. And I do believe that that’s one of the secrets of the success of the United States, whether it’s philanthropic efforts with people who have deeper pockets or it’s volunteerism at schools or churches or communities or whatever, up and down the strata. It’s really what makes the difference in closing the gap between what you’re doing at your job and what your local, state, or federal government can possibly accomplish in your in your community. There has to be that part in between, which I think is volunteerism.
Andrew Husband: Absolutely. You’ve been doing this already throughout our conversation, but I’m curious how, whenever this subject comes up, you speak about volunteerism and volunteering, especially with your fellow alumni. What is the driving force for you in those conversations? What drives that for you whenever that subject is broached?
Christopher Reichert: I think it’s finding your joy. I think it’s finding what’s meaningful. I think that’s probably one of the underlying [things]. I will say it’s a couple of things. One is building on the skills that you have, whether it’s organizational skills or financial skills or strategic skills or technical skills. Flexing that muscle in a way that’s not your day-to-day job or in your day-to-day life. Also, for me, I think a lot of it is building community, creating a community. When I moved to Boston 20 odd years ago, and I didn’t know anybody here, there was a certain self-interested component of building a community or building on a community. The MIT Sloan Alumni club was a great avenue for that for me.
I also do some other things. I used to sing. I mean, I’ve sung all my life, but I sang in Australia for years with a choir. We were the house choir for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and we sang in the Sydney Opera House. My secret reason for joining the choir was, well, I like to sing, that’s for sure, but I got to perform in the Sydney Opera House, which is just a magical place and a magical spot in a magical city with people who made beautiful noise. So, again, the kind of the community that was made available to me as an expat living in Australia. Building another community out there was worth the price of admission to learn very difficult music, but also just really [to] make great friends. It opened other paths. I mean, we would not only sing with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, but we would sing with visiting artists. When Barbra Streisand visited Australia, we were her backing choir on her performances, which was so exciting.
She loved us so much that she asked us to record in the studio for one of her albums. Somewhere on there is the choir singing. We got to sing in the Olympics a couple of times, and that took us to England to sing at the U.K. Proms, which is sort of the height, a great orchestral concert series, and [we got to] meet really interesting people.
I’ve kept that up here in Boston. I sing, I’m a ringer for some choirs, and I got to sing with Andrea Bocelli recently. I joke that I made my Carnegie Hall debut a year ago when we performed with the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and Ben Zander at Carnegie Hall. My nickname in graduate school was MacGyver, partly because I was willing to kind of try anything and see if it worked, and it didn’t really matter if it didn’t work, but it was more like, “Let’s try it.”
When they asked me to host the podcast, for example, it was like, “Sure, why not? Right. How badly could it go?” I think it plays to my strengths of liking people and enjoying people and enjoying hearing about their stories. I think that permeates a lot of the volunteer work that I do, which is to try and learn a new skill or develop a new skill or help an organization in their own mission. I don’t know if it’s on my LinkedIn profile, but I was the treasurer for a political organization here in Boston to help that cause for a little while. It just gives meaning to life.
Andrew Husband: I am absolutely going to go on a Google hunt to see if I can find references to you on Barbra Streisand’s albums after this.
Christopher Reichert: But look for Sydney Philharmonic Choirs. Not me particularly, although I do joke that I sang with Andrea Bocelli, and me and 45 other people had a solo with him, but [it’s] not quite the same.
Andrew Husband: You were talking about your reasons for, and the circumstances of, coming in and doing the podcast, and you’ve mentioned a couple of times throughout about the joy of hearing and learning about the stories of others through all the different things that you’ve done. It’s your Reunion year, 20 years, and with Reunion coming up, you have this big annual gathering of your fellow alumni, of all the participating years and programs that come. A lot of it old and known, but also brand-new stories get shared when Reunion happens later in May. So, I’m curious what kinds of stories do you look forward, or are you excited, to hear from Reunion? What kinds of stories do you like to hear?
Christopher Reichert: Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. I mean, I’m not looking forward to the fact that it’s 20 years, but I’ve come to a few Reunions. Again, I’m local, so it’s easy for me to roll down the hill and join, even if it’s not my year. I get a lot of energy from those connections, the shared experience, even if they’re not in your class. We’re not part of the class of 2004 or whatever, but the shared experience of having gone to MIT Sloan is, and this is true for my undergraduate as well. I started going back to my undergraduate reunions, and having lived overseas for so long, I didn’t go for 15 years or 20 years or whatever it was. I every time I go back, you get a little bit nervous. It’s kind of like, “Oh this is going to be a lot of effort to get there, and what am I really getting out of it?” and all that. I always come back thinking, “Wow, too bad it didn’t last longer” or “Too bad we can’t do this more often.”
Or it’s that feeling of being wrapped in this blanket of community that is so soul-nourishing in ways that are impossible to anticipate. I had a conversation just over the weekend with a classmate of mine who I realized we hadn’t spoke since 2006, and it was shocking. We caught up, and he was talking about Reunion and wanted to hear from me, his class community communicator, about Reunion. We ended up going down memory lane about catching up over the last 20 years. What was amazing was we fell right into that deep conversation that you have with people you’ve known for a long time, even if you haven’t been in contact for a while. I suspect that military veterans have that same feeling when they get together with their band of brothers. I totally understand the underlying feeling that was captured in that, in that particular show, Band of Brothers. The whole idea of knowing someone so well that you don’t have to be in contact all the time, but when you do get together, it’s so special. So, for me, the 20th is a big year. We have a very active WhatsApp group for my class that’s trying to get engagement. The difficulty is that people are in various stages of their lives, right? Whether their children are young or wherever they are in the parenting cycle, they’re spread around the seven seas, so it’s hard to come back for that period, but I can’t encourage it enough. Let’s put it that way, because I think that for all the effort it is to get here, the rewards are greater.
Andrew Husband: Based on your professional work and your volunteer work and talking about this need for and encouragement of engagement with your fellows keeping in touch, I’m curious if you have any parting advice for either current students, soon to be graduates, recent alumni, or your fellow alumni—any and all classes. If you have any general parting advice for Sloanies.
Christopher Reichert: Yeah, the tables are turned. I always ask this question. Right. Here it is, my turn. Let's see; let me think for a minute. I think one of the most important pieces of advice that is hard to hear, and maybe hard to follow, is when choosing any kind of graduate program, whether it’s MIT Sloan or any other, to really go in with a clear idea of that of what your goal is for it. Some of the stories that I’ve heard, both through the podcast and just generally in life, are “I went to that school because it had a good brand name and jeez, that really didn’t pan out because I ended up not doing anything that I studied there.” Now my thoughts are that, yeah, that’s true, and I think it’s hard—particularly when you’re an undergraduate—to be very clear on what you’re trying to do in life. I think when you’re investing in an MBA or a master of science or any other kind of higher degree, that takes on a greater importance because the people that I’ve interviewed through the podcast and my classmates that I’ve kept in touch with, or I’ve observed and we’ve discussed are the ones who have really leveraged what MIT Sloan offers. [They] have done that because it’s a natural inflection point for what their goals are, and I think that that’s an important piece of advice: When you’re looking, yes, brand name is great, it’s good, but if that’s the only reason, you are going to MIT Sloan, then you’re not going to be happy. You might get lucky, and it’ll be a nice thing to put on your wall, but it’s not really going to deliver what you hope. From a recipe for happiness, I would think [you should] reflect on that before you apply to graduate school, MIT Sloan included.
I think the second part is, and this is true for life—we all kind of know this, so it’s not a great insight, but I'll just say it—that what you get out, what you put in. I think that that’s true. For my volunteer work and the trajectory of my career, there are so many doors that have opened for me, opportunities that have opened for me. [They] are in some ways serendipitous. What’s that old saying? That luck favors the prepared? Maybe that’s right. Sounds close. I think that a lot of the tinkering I do offline, whether it’s… I’m a frustrated architect, so a lot of the tinkering I do [comes from] learning about architecture and architectural design. I have an artistic background, but I’m not very good drawing, so I’ve tried to use tools like Illustrator and Photoshop and all those sorts to improve my skills and somehow bring what’s in my head in some form that’s acceptable, or at least meets what’s in my head.
I’ve learned a lot of those things, and then all of a sudden, people need that skill and there I am. I said, “Oh, I can do that” a lot. For example, the property renovation work that I’m doing right now in some ways [comes] full circle, because I before I embarked on my yearlong backpacking trip, which led me to live in Australia for 13 years, I had renovated and added an addition to my parents’ house because, even though my father was an architect, my mother commissioned me to do it… and I loved it. My brother now lives in that house, and it’s the center of the house, and people spend a lot of time in there. I get a lot of joy out of that, but coming full circle now, since Covid, I’ve started a property renovation business. For me, it brings together a lot of the skills that I had been tinkering with as a hobby, if you will, and now this a central part of what I do.
And people say, “Well, how do you know how to do that?” In some ways my answer to that is because I’m always thinking about learning something new. I’m not scared to click on that thing on the computer or pick up a tool and try to make something happen in the physical world, not just the digital world. I think that’s [what] I would say. Steve Jobs obviously said it better and it will always say it better but stay young and foolish or hungry and foolish. I think that that’s really so important, to not let yourself be pigeonholed.
Andrew Husband: Fantastic. Well, I think we’ve come here to the end. I just I want to thank Christopher Reichert, MIT Sloan Class of 2004, for joining us on this special episode of Sloanies Talking with Sloanies. You can learn more about Christopher on his LinkedIn page, here on the Sloanies Talking with Sloanies podcast, or if you happen to see him at MIT Sloan Reunion this year from Thursday, May 30th, to Sunday, June 2nd. Christopher, this has been an absolute pleasure. Thanks for letting us turn the tables on you today.
Christopher Reichert: Thank you very much. It’s been a lot of fun. I think I’m probably more comfortable being a host, though, I will admit.
Andrew Husband: Well, we’ll only make you do this again in five years.
Christopher Reichert: See you in May. Thank you.
Christopher Reichert: Sloanies Talking with Sloanies is produced by the Office of External Relations at MIT Sloan School of Management. You can subscribe to this podcast by visiting our website, mitsloan.mit.edu/alumni, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Support for this podcast comes in part from the MIT Sloan Annual Fund, which provides essential flexible funding to ensure that our community can pursue excellence. Make your gift today by visiting giving.mit.edu/sloan.
