Kinney, a Bates trustee for 27 years, including 17 as chair, was considered a creative entrepreneur and model corporate leader who, when appointed CEO of General Mills in 1973, was praised for his “good, gutsy Maine business sense” by his predecessor.

As a corporate leader, he said that he took the advice of a business mentor back in Bar Harbor, Maine, by throwing himself into service to the nonprofit world, especially to Bates.

As Kinney received a Bates honorary Doctor of Laws degree in 1985, then-President Hedley Reynolds lauded him for being “always thoughtful for the needs of others, always ready to serve, always ready with a helping hand.”

Born in Burnham, Maine, and raised in Pittsfield, Kinney was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate who earned money for college by working and living in the home of Lewiston mill industrialist Scott Libbey Sr.

Kinney received $500 in scholarships from Bates. At the time of his death, he was the college’s most generous living donor.

He also received about $500 in scholarship support from Bates, prompting Kinney to tell Dean of the College Harry Rowe, at graduation, that “I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I’ll try to pay you back the scholarship money.”

At the time of his death, he was the college’s most generous living donor.

In 1942 while doing a Works Projects Administration study along the Maine coast, Kinney approached Matthew Highlands, a legendary University of Maine food scientist, with a crab question. Crabs could be had for a penny each — lobstermen were just tossing them from their traps — so could anything be done with them?

“You can cook them, process them and put them in hermetically sealed cans,” Highlands said. With World War II interrupting the supply of crab meat from Japan, the demand was rising.

Kinney learned the business at home, a few cans at a time. By the 1950s his North Atlantic Packing Co. was a $2 million-a-year business selling canned crab and other products and employing 400 in Bar Harbor.

Kinney then joined Gorton’s. For a society more and more eager for convenience, Kinney again used emerging food technology to lead Gorton’s to expand its frozen, ready-to-cook fish products, including the iconic fish stick and, by the 1960s, the fish for McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish.

Under Kinney, Gorton’s earnings went from $122,000 on sales of $12.1 million in 1958 to $1.44 million on sales of $71.9 million in 1968.

In 1973, he took the helm of General Mills, which had acquired Gorton’s in 1968. He served as CEO of IDS Mutual Fund Group in the 1980s.

A “compelling example that commitment to the common weal is the indelible mark of liberal learning.”

At Commencement 1985, when he received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Bates, then-Dean of the College Carl Benton Straub praised Kinney for “his compelling example that commitment to the common weal is the indelible mark of liberal learning.”

In 2008, Kinney received the college’s Benjamin Elijah Mays Medal, awarded for distinguished service to Bates and the larger community worldwide, and in 2005 he was a charter inductee into the Benjamin Bates Society, an honor accorded the college’s leading philanthropists.

Kinney provided major support for Pettengill Hall (1999), was instrumental in securing foundation grant funding for the Olin Arts Center (1986) and established an endowed professorship in history and a scholarship fund.

In Minnesota, Kinney served as a director of the Minnesota Symphony, the Guthrie Theater and the YMCA, among many others.

The commitment that I’ve had, emotionally and monetarily, was focused on Bates.”

Elsewhere in Maine, his support and service went many nonprofits, including the Bangor Theological Seminary, Maine Central Institute, Friends of Acadia National Park and The Jackson Laboratory. His Maine corporate board service included Hannaford Bros. Co., IDEXX Laboratories and Unum.

When Kinney offered his oral history to Bates’ Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library in 2005, he explained how a business mentor in Bar Harbor, a banker, encouraged him to make one or two meaningful commitments to organizations outside of business.

“The commitment that I’ve had, emotionally and monetarily, was focused on Bates,” Kinney said.

Kinney is also credited with significant reform of the Bates Board of Trustees in the 1980s when he introduced a resolution that mandated trustee retirement at age 70.

As he said in his oral history, “As smart as some people are when they’re 75 or 80 or whatever they may be…on the average you’ve got to have younger people. They stimulate the thinking…you want to renew, you need new blood.”

With support from the late U.S. Sen. Edmund Muskie ’36, among other trustees, the resolution was approved.

“Youth will keep the organization healthy,” said Kinney, who backed up that idea by mentoring at least two generations of young business leaders in Maine.

Kinney is survived by his wife, Margaret (Margee) Kinney; daughters Jeanie Small and Isabella Keating; stepdaughter Lucy Thatcher Penfield; stepson Ford Thatcher; seven grandchildren, including Samantha Kinney Leone ’93; two step- grandchildren; 10 great-grandchildren; and his sister, Elizabeth Kinney Jones ’44. He was predeceased by his son, E. Robert Kinney Jr. ’70, who is survived by his widow, Sally Greenlaw Kinney ’69.

His memorial service is at 4 p.m. on Friday May 17 at Plymouth Congregational Church in Minneapolis.

Lena Sene ’00

Savoy Magazine’s list of the most influential women in corporate America features Lena Sene ’00.

A managing director with Deer Isle Capital, Sene is responsible for overall business development and for the firm’s Africa investment strategy.

Considered an expert on global investing in African nations, Sene in 2011 told a Harvard Business School conference that private-equity investing in Africa requires a more efficient operation than in other markets — more skills, more on-the-ground knowledge and more feasibility and research studies.

Last year, Sene, who is a Bates trustee, served as campaign manager for Idrissa Seck, a former Senegal prime minister, during that country’s presidential election, won by Macky Sall.

Sene majored in economics at Bates, then earned an M.B.A. from Harvard and a master’s degree in public administration fro mHarvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Born in the U.S., she was raised in Senegal, Russia and Ukraine.

Savoy describes its list as “the most comprehensive and accomplished list of African American Women executives ever assembled in a magazine.”

• View story from Savoy Magazine

Clayton Spencer holds the symbols of office during her installation ceremony as the eighth president of Bates College. The symbols are the keys, the presidential collar and the record book.

Bates formally installed Ava Clayton Spencer, a woman described by her former boss as the “embodiment of Bates values,” as its eighth president before a gathering of 2,500 in Merrill Gymnasium on Friday afternoon.

Spencer, who officially began work at Bates in July, was ceremonially installed as president in a celebration marked by glowing good wishes, a few tough facts and just enough pomp. Filling the gym were students, faculty, friends, Spencer’s predecessors as Bates president and 72 delegates representing colleges and universities from as far away as England.

Also on hand were Spencer’s family and friends — including her parents, who got a briefly teary shout-out from their daughter as she held the cap her father Sam had worn as president of Mary Baldwin and of Davidson colleges.

With a sleek stage, complete with giant video screens, the usually utilitarian Merrill was transformed for the occasion into a stunning ceremonial showcase. Michael Bonney ’80, chair of the Bates Board of Trustees, presided over a festivity that included music written and performed by faculty and students, formal greetings from diverse quarters and the ritual presentation of the symbols of the college — collar, record book and keys.

Complete video of the installation ceremony:

Bringing greetings from the students, for instance, Jacquelyn Holmes ’13 assured Spencer that “we will always be here for you — please lean on us, use us and keep us in the loop.”

Greetings from the Twin Cities came from mayors Jonathan LaBonté, of Auburn, and Robert Macdonald, of Lewiston, who offered a gracious verbal hand of friendship.

Representing the Academy, Williams College president and physics professor Adam Falk provided a useful reminder of Spencer’s contributions to higher education even before she got to Bates, as an aide to U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, and as vice president for policy at Harvard.

Falk, who has seen Spencer in action through her service as a Williams trustee, told her that “you understand as well as anyone I know what makes colleges and universities work.”

Perhaps the deepest dish on the new president came from her former boss, Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust. She shared a droll summary of Spencer’s contribution to Harvard in the words of William Fitzsimmons, that university’s dean of admissions and financial aid: “Anything good that happened at Harvard from 1997 to 2012 was because of Spencer, and everything bad was something she objected to.”

Clayton Spencer speaks during her installation ceremony as the eighth president of Bates College on Friday, October 26, 2012.

More seriously, though, Faust traced Spencer’s bedrock dedication to justice to a Southern childhood lived during the height of the civil rights era, and named Harvard initiatives, such as the Crimson Summer Academy, through which that dedication has borne fruit. Through education, Faust said, Spencer has bent Martin Luther King Jr.’s moral arc of the universe a bit further toward justice.

Bates’ new president, she said, is the “embodiment of Bates values.”

Spencer began her own address with her predecessors at Bates, who faced their own exigent landscapes of change, crisis and opportunity. In our time, she said, the turbulence is driven by technology that is transforming both how colleges do their work, and how that work is evaluated outside academe.

“These qualities are in the DNA of Bates College.”

She used Benjamin E. Mays ’20, the great educator, theologian and civil rights leader, as a both a metaphor for the founding Bates ethos, and an illustration of applying that ethos in the coming times. Coming to Bates, she explained, Mays both benefited from and expanded Bates values.

Bates was founded, she said, “because, somehow, from our very beginnings, we encountered individuals in their full humanity. We took as our task educating them with intellectual rigor, ethical responsibility and care for their fellow human beings.”

“These qualities are in the DNA of Bates College, and they define us to this day. They also point the way forward.”

Mays’ example, too, illustrates both the focus on individual growth in the liberal arts model, and the role of community in nurturing that growth. “The most complete kind of human learning takes place in community, with the solidarity of companionship and the challenge of truth,” she said. And the most open and diverse community is the best kind of community to support learning.

“At Bates, we claim this union of excellence and opportunity as a core element of our identity, and we need to continue to build on this deep aspect of who we are.”

Bates’ eighth president concluded her inaugural address with a reference to the late Steve Jobs, who once told a group of graduating students that “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

“Likewise, at Bates, we don’t have time to waste,” she said. “But we are not in danger of living someone else’s life.  We know who we are and what we stand for, and we stand ready – together — to challenge ourselves and to engage the world.”

President-elect Clayton Spencer (left) talks with interim President Nancy Cable and Trustee Karl Mills '82 before the Reunion Address. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

“It’s not enough simply to circle the wagons and insist that small is better, or that nothing can replace the human factor in education,” Spencer told enthusiastic listeners on the Friday evening of Reunion, June 8.

Complete Reunion 2012 coverage

“How do we think about Bates and places like Bates in the context of this challenging world?” she asked. “How do we make a case that we’re still important, that it’s still worth it to come to Bates, that the education you got here is still worth something?”

Sharing the podium with interim President Nancy Cable at an event launching Reunion Weekend, Spencer was candid in her views about the world for which Bates is educating students, as well as the strengths and the needs the college brings to that work.

Sharing the Reunion Address podium with interim President Nancy Cable (right), President-elect Spencer was candid in her views. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

Culminating in a standing ovation, the alumni welcome was warm for the leader who will take office July 1. The “standing O” was preceded by whoops of enthusiasm about points she made and appreciative laughter at Spencer’s humor.

Her address followed an opening presentation, likewise warmly received, by Cable, who has led Bates since July 2011. Bates Trustee Karl Mills ’82 introduced the presidents.

Cable looked back at a year that was anything but a placeholder between “real” presidents: a year marked by the implementation of a dance major, the opening of the renovated Hedge and Roger Williams halls, the emergence of a reinvigorated Bates Career Development Center, and an excellent run in athletics.

But if Cable offered the year in review, Spencer looked ahead to the future of Bates in an address shot through with optimism, offering two initial recommendations.

Two keys to the future

“We need to make a virtue of our particularity, our distinctive history and identity,” Spencer said. “To engage the large, complex, dizzying forces that are coming at us, we have to stand somewhere, and we have to stand somewhere firm.”

At the conclusion of the Reunion Address, alumni begin to rise for a standing ovation. Photograph by H. Lincoln Benedict '09.

That solid foundation comprises Bates’ founding values, its location and its reputation. In a world that, more than ever, demands that liberal arts colleges justify the investment that families and society make in them, these qualities — in particular, Bates’ bedrock egalitarianism — confer institutional significance and distinctiveness.

Bates, she said, practices “not a vague kind of politically correct inclusiveness, but instead the inclusiveness that says, we are here to encounter each other as humans with potential, with gifts; and the greatest opportunity that anybody can have as a human is the opportunity to realize those gifts.

“That’s in the fabric of who we are.”

She added, “We have been ahead of our time since 1855. And that puts us in a great position to look at a world that is changing very fast.”

Spencer drew especially warm applause as she cited Maine and Lewiston as advantages to Bates. “There is no place that I would rather find myself than in Maine, which embodies ruggedness and self-sufficiency, the elemental and the substantial,” she explained.

“And that includes Lewiston,” which she described as a fascinating community “that gives our students amazing opportunities to interact with the complicated world around them on a very granular level.”

Spencer said that "the fact that our rigor and our tough-mindedness are encompassed within a community that is kind and respectful is a phenomenal strength." Photograph by H. Lincoln Benedict '09.

The third factor in establishing particularity, she said, is an outstanding reputation — which Bates has. But the college must also address the fact that “our reputational capital far exceeds our financial capital.” That’s a serious problem for a college whose educational quality, “with the kind of personal attention at every level that we give, is expensive. It is not going to get fundamentally cheaper in our lifetimes.”

Still, Spencer said, “I would much rather sign up for a job at a college with a fantastic reputation, based on excellent fundamentals, but with money to raise, than a college with lots of money without great fundamentals or a great culture.”

For her second overall prescription, Spencer told the Reunion gathering that “we need to make a virtue of our scale.”

Smallness enables Bates to educate each student “in a community…that takes as its project the development of the whole person, and situates the search for knowledge in a framework of values. This is something I think Bates does incredibly well.”

Rigor, kindness, engagement

“There are many parts of this world where respect for other human beings is low, where kindness is really undervalued,” Spencer said.

“I think kindness is not to be underestimated. The fact that our rigor and our tough-mindedness are encompassed within a community that is kind and respectful is a phenomenal strength.”

Pursuing the theme of Bates progressiveness, Spencer also reminded her listeners that Bates is ahead of the game in both interdisciplinarity and in robust engagement.

Students go out into the community and the world, she said, and “they learn. They bring that back into the classroom, and they go out again with an intellectual framework taken from the classroom. It’s a virtuous cycle,” and “we are ahead of the game in recognizing that.”

“We need to be porous to the world, we need to be intentional about what we’re doing here and we need to make sure our students go out and get the broadest possible experiences they can,” Spencer concluded.

“Our graduates need to be global participants in a highly competitive world, and it’s our job to make sure that we prepare them for this reality.”

A longtime Bates trustee who retired from the board in May, Stangle received the new Alumni Association award during the spring trustees meeting, this year held in conjunction with the Volunteer Leadership Summit.

Family and friends toast Bruce Stangle '70 (second from right) and Emily Siegel Stangle '72 (third from right) on the occasion of Bruce being the first to receive an award honoring him: the Bruce Stangle Award for Distinguished Service to the Bates Community. Photograph by Jose Leiva.

The Stangle Award will annually recognize outstanding contributions to Bates career development — exactly what Bruce Stangle has provided for more than a generation.

Indeed, since co-founding the Boston-based consulting firm Analysis Group Inc. in 1981, Stangle has been personally and professionally committed to the success of Bates graduates.

Analysis Group has recruited many young alumni into the firm through the years and, in partnership with the Bates Career Development Center, has sponsored countless Bates student interns. Stangle himself has hosted or spoken at many Bates career-related events.

“Bruce is a truth-teller.”

A 14-year Bates trustee, Stangle is considered a valuable, engaged liaison between Bates and the business community. “Bruce is a truth-teller who provides crucial feedback to Bates about how our students are faring,” says Trustee Jennifer Guckel Porter ’88.

“That includes what additional preparation they need and how they can be competitive in the job market.”

This cycle of feedback helps students and alumni while raising the value proposition of business, consulting and finance careers at Bates, says Porter, a managing partner for The Boda Group, a Boston-based leadership development firm.

Jennifer Guckel Porter '88 laughs with Bruce Stangle '70 at the Museum of Art reception honoring Stangle. He is the inaugural recipient of a new annual alumni award named in his honor: the Bruce Stangle Award for Distinguished Service to the Bates Community. Photograph by Jose Leiva.

In 2003, Stangle was the driving force behind the creation of the Boston Bates Business Network, formed to bridge a gap in Bates’ on-the-ground efforts to support alumni in their career trajectories.

The Bates Regional Networks, since extended to a number of U.S. cities, offer dynamic programming while helping participants meet, connect and learn from one another on a personal and professional level.

Porter, a beneficiary of Stangle’s “incredible generosity and wisdom” in her own career, says her mentor always makes time when it comes to guiding Bates students and young alumni. “When people want his help, he meets with them, takes their phone calls and steers them in the right direction,” she says.

He’s an equal opportunity mentor, too. “It doesn’t matter if the person is an uncertain current student who sends him an email, a mid-career acquaintance considering a career shift or an entrepreneur with a new idea,” Porter says.

“Bruce can be counted on to listen, offer thoughtful and straight counsel, make an introduction, and give endless encouragement.”

Stangle is married to Emily Siegel Stangle ’72, and their daughter Alissa Stangle O’Shaughnessy is a member of the Class of 1996.

As a major Bates philanthropic contributor, his and Emily’s gifts include funding of the Stangle Family Fund for faculty and student research in economics and law; the Betty Doran Stangle Professorship in Applied Economics, named for his mother; and the Frank Stangle Lounge in the 280 College St. Residence, named for his father.

He’s also one of the six best corporate leaders in the country, in the view of MarketWatch, a leading financial news source published by Dow Jones & Co., which also publishes The Wall Street Journal.

Michael Bonney '80, chair of the college's Board of Trustees, was recently named a top U.S. CEO by MarketWatch.

On Jan. 17, MarketWatch announced the results of its 2011 CEO of the Year award, profiling not only winner Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com, but also the other five finalists: Bonney; Dell Inc. CEO Michael Dell; Whole Foods Market’s co-CEOs John Mackey and Walter Robb; and Electronic Arts’ CEO John Riccitiello.

In its profile of Bonney, MarketWatch writes that since joining Cubist in 2002, “Bonney has ended up having a tremendous impact on the Lexington, Mass.–based firm, which specializes in antibiotics for so-called superbugs, bacterial strains that have grown resistant to traditional antibiotics and have emerged as a significant threat to public health in recent years.”

The online publication lauds Bonney for “his leadership in safeguarding Cubist’s primary money maker, for moves that bolstered the company’s product pipeline, and for his open and encouraging management style.”

“Cubist executives say much of Bonney’s success can be credited to his low-key demeanor and informal management style,” MarketWatch adds. “Bonney, they say, frowns on game playing and encourages employees to voice their opinions.”

The MarketWatch articles do not delve into the undergraduate educations of the executives profiled, but Bonney is happy to say how his Bates education helped develop his talents and contributed to his success.

“My experiences as a student at Bates really established my interest in learning as well as provided me the opportunity to expand my horizons beyond Maine,” Bonney says.

Mike Bonney '80 presents a symbolic key to Roger Williams Hall to Spanish professor Claudia Aburto Guzmán during dedication festivities for Roger Williams and Hedge halls. Photograph by Rene Minnis.

In a November 2011 interview with New England Cable News, Bonney explained how that interest in learning has influenced in his business career.

“Early in my career I was offered what would have been considered to be nontraditional opportunities,” he said. “Many of my peers would have said, ‘I don’t want to do that,’ because those jobs took you out of the silo of a traditional path. I said, ‘This is an opportunity to learn something new, to have a new perspective on the business.’ That has allowed me to develop a greater breadth of understanding of how our business works, how we interact with regulators and with physicians and patients, which ultimately has been very helpful.

“I ask a lot of questions. I am a lifelong learner…. I will dive into any subject matter even though I have no reason to expect that I can learn it. And I try to figure out what it all means. Depth of experience is important. But for my money, having a broad perspective on the world is more important.”

Bonney has been a member of the Bates board since 2002 and was elected to chair the board in 2010.

He and his family have many strong connections to Bates. His grandfather attended Bates and his father, sister, wife and oldest daughter are all Bates graduates. Another daughter is a member of the Class of 2012 and his son is a member of the Class of 2015. Both Bonney and his wife, Alison Grott Bonney ’80, have been very active in service to Bates.

After graduating from Bates with a degree in economics, Bonney began his career with Maine-based Hannaford Brothers, working in the supermarket chain’s pharmacy operation. He later joined Zeneca Pharmaceuticals, holding positions of increasing responsibility in sales, marketing and strategic planning over the course of 11 years.

In 1995 he joined Biogen Inc., ultimately serving as vice president for sales and marketing. He joined Cubist as president and chief operating officer, and has been president, chief executive officer and a member of the Board of Directors since 2003.

In 2010, the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council recognized Bonney’s accomplishments in his professional field by presenting him its second annual Innovative Leadership Award, which honors an industry executive who represents a company with a strong presence in and commitment to growing in Massachusetts.

Bonney is a director of the biopharmaceutical company NPS Pharmaceuticals Inc. and a member of the board of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. He is a former board member of the Biotechnology Industry Organization.

Merisotis is president of the Lumina Foundation, which works to increase access to higher education. In October at Bates, he moderated the college’s Leadership Symposium on College Cost, Price and Financial Aid.

Jamie Merisotis '86, a Bates trustee and a dedicated advocate for improved access to higher education, spoke at the Bates-hosted Leadership Symposium on College Cost, Price, and Financial Aid in October.

Merisotis tells Times reporter Tamar Lewin that there seemed to be some consensus at the White House meeting that the federal government should develop policies on financial aid, its biggest tool, to spur a higher graduation rates.

Inside Higher Ed reports that the White House meeting “appears to mark a shift in policy for the administration, which will focus more on college affordability in the coming months.”

• View story from The New York Times, Dec. 6, 2011.

The 45-minute teleconference, open to all, will touch on the college’s financial health and endowment performance; offer updates on campus facilities and program improvements; and recap the recent announcement of Clayton Spencer, Harvard vice president for policy and a U.S. higher education leader, as the college’s eighth president, to begin her term July 1.

In addition, Cable and Bonney will field questions from call participants about Bates today.

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It’s a “nontraditional career progression,” says Bonney, who chairs the Bates board of trustees.

• Video: Mike Bonney ’80 talks about his career path from drugstore manager to CEO

Bonney tells host Peter Howe about his first job, managing a drug store in northern Maine. “I found I spent a lot of my time in the pharmacy asking the pharmacist, ‘What’s this used for, what’s that used for?’”

Board chair Mike Bonney '80 presents a symbolic key to Roger Williams Hall to Spanish professor Claudia Aburto Guzmán during dedication festivities for Roger Williams and Hedge halls. Photograph by Rene Minnis.

Then, Bonney took a sales position with a pharmaceutical firm that would become Zeneca, and “part of the interview process was a study guide, and we had to learn about the anatomy, physiology and biology of the systems that our drugs addressed. I liked that; I had started as a biology major [at Bates]. And I liked the people.”

Bonney spent 12 years with U.K.-based Zeneca, “and every 18 months I had a different role. It gave me a broad perspective on the industry.” He became Zeneca’s U.S. business director by 1994.

In the early 1990s, the Massachusetts-based startup Biogen was anticipating the launch of Avonex, a drug to treat multiple sclerosis. To build a national sales force, Biogen turned to Bonney. “It was a green field opportunity,” he says.

Interviewing with Biogen, Bonney says that he “really liked the technology, I liked the people and I liked the risk-reward nature of that business. I felt like I had some pretty good mistakes in me, and in that environment they were going to encourage that, to try new things.”

He held various positions at Biogen, including vice president of sales and marketing, before joining Cubist in 2002.

For Bonney, career advancement has depended less on maintaining business networks than on “not being close-minded about where opportunity might show up.”

He explains how “early in my career at those two firms” — Hannaford Brothers in Maine, then Zeneca — “I was offered what would have been considered to be nontraditional opportunities. Many of my peers would have said, ‘I don’t want to do that,’ because those jobs took you out of the silo” of a traditional path.

“I said, ‘This is an opportunity to learn something new, to have a new perspective on the business.’ That has allowed me to develop a broader breadth of understanding of how our business works, how we interact with regulators and with physicians and patients, which ultimately has been very helpful.”

How does Bonney maintain that adventurous spirit?

“I ask a lot of questions,” he says. “I am a lifelong learner and I love to learn new stuff. I will dive into any subject matter even though I have no reason to expect that I can learn it. And I try to figure out what it all means.

“Depth of experience is important. But for my money, having a broad perspective on the world is more important.”

• Video: Mike Bonney ’80 talks about what’s in Cubist’s product pipeline

Cubicin treats certain blood or serious skin infections, and is especially effective against bacteria that have become resistant to traditional antibiotics, specifically Staphylococcus aureus, which became endemic in many hospitals in the 1990s.

In recent years, Bonney has guided Cubist’s efforts to “build a pipeline” of new products behind the highly profitable Cubicin, both by acquiring products that “we think we have the expertise to develop,” and expanding “our internal discovery efforts to bring our own products into human development.”

In 2009, Cubist purchased the startup Calixa, developer of the antibiotic CXA-201. While Cubicin treats Gram-positive bacterial infections, CXA-201 fights certain Gram-negative bacteria. “We believe these are the next wave of superbugs,” Bonney says. CXA-201 advanced into Phase 3 trials in August.

Interviewer Howe asks Bonney if successful development of one drug makes developing another easier. “Is it a replicable process?”

“Let’s separate out discovery from development,” Bonney answers. “On the development side, absolutely it helps” to have successfully developed a drug. “We understand how to interact with regulators and what they want to see from an new antibiotic that has activity against resistant bacteria.

“On the discovery side, you’re talking about an incredibly complex set of problems that you have to deal with. I’m not sure that having one success means you will have a string of them. We have expertise, so we increase the odds, but finding new antibiotics, keeping ahead of the bacteria, is really hard work.”

• Cosmin Ghita ’12 of Bucharest, Romania, president of Student Government
• Michael Bonney ’80, chairman of the Board of Trustees
• Paul Marks ’83 (below), CEO of the global aerospace technology firm Argosy Inc.
• Nancy Cable, president of Bates

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