C. Joseph LaBonté
Go in early and leave late. That’s the motto Joe LaBonté, founder and chairman of venture capital firm the Vantage Group, used to get ahead after receiving his Harvard MBA. Hard work is second nature to him—“It was instilled in me to get out there and do something,” he recalls of his childhood—but it’s his education at Northeastern that LaBonté says got his career going in the first place. “I think it made the major difference,” he says. “I never would have gotten my foot in the door at Harvard if it weren’t for Northeastern.”
With a résumé that includes presidencies at Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Reebok International, Ltd., and Jenny Craig International, as well as leadership roles with numerous philanthropic organizations, LaBonté points to the global human rights program he developed at Reebok as one of his proudest achievements. During this time, he and his wife Donna became deeply involved with human rights issues relating to apartheid in South Africa. LaBonté created the annual Reebok Human Rights award, which recognizes young activists from around the world, and enlisted support from American business leaders for a free, nonracial, democratic South Africa. Meanwhile, Donna spearheaded a textbook recycling effort that resulted in the delivery of more than 125,000 books to schoolchildren in South African schools (she also was responsible for delivering several thousand books to juvenile detention camps in Los Angeles county).
LaBonté, a member of Northeastern’s governing board, has been a strong supporter of the University throughout the years. He’s particularly excited about sponsoring a Torch Scholar (www.northeastern.edu/admissions/torchscholars), who will start at Northeastern this summer. “It’s a leadership program that more schools should do,” says LaBonté, adding that after hearing some of the recipients speak at a recent Torch function, he was both moved and impressed. “They have the drive,” he says of the students he met. It’s a trait he knows well.
