Harold Tanner
Harold Tanner (born in 1932) is an investment banker and philanthropist. Tanner graduated from the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations in 1952 and earned an MBA from Harvard University in 1956.
Tanner, an investment banker, is a former managing director of Salomon Brothers, where he headed the firm's corporate finance department. He currently is president of Tanner & Co., a private investment banking firm founded in New York City in 1987. He served as a director of TIG Inc.
Tanner and his wife live in New York City and Scarsdale, New York and have three children and eight grandsons.
Charitable Activities
Tanner is a longtime member of the American Jewish Committee's Board of Governors, and served the human relations organization as Chair of its Board of Trustees, Member of its Executive Committee, and from 2001 - 2004 as its President. In 2004-5 he served as Chairman of the Transatlantic Institute. From 2005-7 he served as Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations.
Tanner has served as a Cornell trustee since 1982, including as vice chairman of the board and Chairman from 1997-2002. He served on the Trustee Executive Committee from 1986-2002. One of Cornell's most successful fund-raisers, he served as co-chair of the $1.5 billion Cornell Campaign, which when it concluded in December 1995 set a record for the most money raised in a university campaign. He also chaired the board's Committee on Alumni Affairs and Development.
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 Investment Committee, serving a term as vice chair. He was appointed to the Board of Overseers of the Cornell University Medical College in 1996. He is a former member of the Advisory Councils of the College of Arts and Sciences and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art and a former chair of the Tower Club and Quadrangle Society.
He and his wife, Nicki, endowed the Harold Tanner Deanship of Arts and Sciences. The Tanners previously had established the Pauline and Irving Tanner Scholarship Fund in the Arts College in honor of his parents.
He also serves as a Director for the Charles H. Revson Foundation, a Trustee of Classroom Inc., and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and is a former Trustee and Chairman of the Finance Committee of the Russell Sage Foundation and co-Founder and Director of the Volunteer Consulting Group.
Awards
Tanner a recipient of:
- Herbert Lehman Award of the American Jewish Committee in 1995.
- A Foremost benefactor of Cornell.
- Harvard Business School Alumni Achievement Award in 1992.
- Cornell ILR Jerome Alpern Distinguished Alumni Award in 2002.