Harold Tanner
HAROLD TANNER (BS ILR '52 Cornell; MBA '56 Harvard) 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.
Mr. Tanner has served as a trustee of Cornell University since 1982 and has been on the Executive Committee since 1986. He was chairman of the Board of Trustees from July 1, 1997, to June 30, 2002, after having served as vice chairman from 1992 to 1997. One of Cornell's most involved fundraisers, he served as co-chair of the Cornell Campaign and as chairman of the board's Alumni Affairs and Development Committee. He served as vice chair of the Presidential Search Committee that selected Hunter Rawlings to be the 10th president of Cornell, and has been a longtime member of the board's Investment Committee, including serving as vice chair at one time. He was appointed to the Board of Overseers of the Weill Cornell University Medical College in 1996 and as a life overseer in 2002. Additionally, he was formerly a member of the Advisory Councils of the College of Arts and Sciences and the Johnson Museum of Art and a chair of the Tower Club and Quadrangle Society.
As part of the Cornell Campaign, he and his wife, Nicki (Wellesley '57), endowed the Harold Tanner Deanship of Arts and Sciences. The Tanners had previously established the Pauline and Irving Tanner Scholarship Fund in the College of Arts and Sciences in honor of his parents. Mr. and Mrs. Tanner have been recognized by the Board of Trustees as Foremost Benefactors of Cornell.
In addition to his Cornell activities, Mr. Tanner is president of the Board of Trustees of the American Jewish Committee; a trustee of the Revson Foundation; a trustee of Classroom, Inc.; a member of the Council of Foreign Relations; and a former trustee of the Russell Sage Foundation. He was on the board of the Associates of Harvard Business School and is a founder of the Volunteer Consulting Group, Inc. He was honored with the Harvard Business School Alumni Achievement Award in 1992 and the Herbert Lehman Award of the American Jewish Committee in 1995.