About ClassACT HRX8
A practical network for alumni impact
Who We Are
ClassACT HRX8 is an independent nonprofit organization founded by members of the Harvard-Radcliffe Class of 1978.
We help classmates and Harvard alumni apply trusted relationships, professional experience, and practical skills to meaningful nonprofit initiatives.
HRX8 supports initiatives founded, sponsored, or championed by classmates when targeted guidance, expertise, introductions, or board-level support can strengthen the initiative.
We maintain lightweight infrastructure that supports visibility, communication, organizational knowledge, participation, and continuity.
Why Classes Matter
Alumni classes are more than reunion groups or social networks. Over a lifetime, classmates build trust, experience, expertise, perspective, goodwill, and lasting relationships. Most organizations must build those assets from scratch, whereas classes already have them.
The class provides the community. Relationships are the asset. Meaningful initiatives create opportunities for impact.
HRX8 exists to help those relationships become useful in service of meaningful work.
What HRX8 Does
Many nonprofit initiatives need advisors, board members, mentors, professional expertise, introductions, and practical support. At the same time, many alumni want to contribute but are unsure how their experience can help.
The challenge is often not a lack of goodwill. It is a lack of connection.
HRX8 reduces friction by connecting nonprofit initiatives with classmates and Harvard alumni who can contribute in practical ways.
How We Help:
Guidance and problem-solving
Professional and technical expertise
Board and advisory support
Relationships and introductions
Communications and visibility
HRX8 enables connections and contributions but does not own, govern, manage, staff, or operate its initiatives. Initiative leaders are responsible for their organizations, programs, fundraising, infrastructure, and sustainability.
How Alumni Participate
HRX8 is designed to be simple and flexible. Participation does not require dues, formal membership, quotas, or a prescribed level of involvement. Alumni participate where and when they can be helpful.
Offer professional expertise
Make introductions
Advise initiative leaders
Serve on boards or advisory groups
Support a specific initiative
Stay connected until the right opportunity arises
The model is designed to make participation easier, not more complicated
Built by ’78. Open to the ’8s.
The Class of 1978 founded HRX8 and currently leads it.
HRX8 welcomes ideas, initiatives, leadership, expertise, and participation from every Harvard and Radcliffe class ending in 8.
HRX8 will organize its next phase around Class of 1988 leadership, building on five years of participation and an established partnership. Members of ’78 will remain active, useful, and supportive. HRX8 is also beginning to develop a working relationship with ’98 and potentially other classes to foster continuity through shared work.
This approach supports continuity without limiting participation by other ’8 classes or requiring any class to surrender its identity, culture, priorities, or autonomy.
Independent and Alumni-Led
HRX8 is independent of Harvard University, the Harvard Alumni Association, CPSES, and other Harvard entities. It values those relationships and may cooperate on specific opportunities, referrals, programs, or initiatives when mutually beneficial, without implying affiliation, endorsement, agency, or an ongoing commitment unless one has been expressly established.
The objective is practical cooperation without integration or any implied affiliation.
Our Core Principles
Classes Are the Vehicle
Class identity provides a natural and durable foundation for participation, continuity, and engagement.
Relationships Are the Asset
Trust, experience, expertise, and long-standing personal connections are the network's most valuable assets.
Initiatives Create Impact
People engage most naturally through meaningful work that enables their contributions to make a practical difference.
Participation Should Be Easy
HRX8 seeks to reduce friction between people who want to help and opportunities to do so.
Engagement Is Voluntary
Participation is voluntary and occurs at the level each individual finds meaningful.
Initiative Leaders Lead.
HRX8 supports the people closest to the work. Our role is to strengthen initiatives, not to direct them.
The Work Is Nonpartisan
HRX8 supports nonprofit and civic work without advocating for partisan political outcomes.
Looking Ahead
HRX8 was not created to build a large institution or to add another layer of cost and complexity to the nonprofit sector.
Its purpose is simpler: to help classmates and Harvard alumni turn trusted relationships, experience, and judgment into useful support for meaningful nonprofit work.
HRX8 should remain deliberately lightweight. Technology, remote communication, shared digital records, web services, and limited outside assistance enable it to maintain the infrastructure for visibility, accountability, and continuity without substantial permanent overhead.
Its sustainability should stem from a clear, repeatable model; practiced leadership; preserved relationships and organizational memory; and continuity across classes—not from staff size, property, program ownership, or organizational complexity.
The goal is not activity. The goal is usefulness.
Board of Directors
David Boghossian
Kate Felsen Di Pietro
Martin Grasso
Don Guiney
David Miller
Ginnie Muller
Margarita Montoto
Julie Sakellariadis
John Tuke