Email This PageA Lifetime Spent Cultivating Diversity in Business Leadership—Howard Turner ’33
There is much to be written about the career of my late father, Howard Turner ’33, and the Bulletin kindly made special notice of it in the July issue. The Turner School of Construction Management, established by Turner Construction Company, which he led, was mentioned but not that it was formed to support businesses owned by minorities and women who sought to become project partners and subcontractors to his company. Until his death on April 24, he kept an active interest in the company and met with Peter Davoren, current president and CEO, at least once a year. According to Davoren, my father’s questions were not about what the company earned, but rather about how many new employees had been hired, which colleges and universities the company had visited to find promising new engineers, and the diversity breakdown of the company’s workforce. He received special recognition from the NAACP for his work. Little did they know that his grandfather, Richard Turner, was known to have helped slaves escape to the North by providing a stop for the Underground Railroad on his farm on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.
Sue Turner ’60
Cambridge, Mass.
