Joseph J. "Joe" O'Donnell 1967
Son of an Everett policeman, Joe is a native of Massachusetts who attended Malden Catholic High School and Phillips Exeter Academy before attending Harvard College as a scholarship student. During Joe's Harvard athletic career he won three letters in football and three in baseball. In 1965 Joe earned all East and All Ivy honors in baseball, which he captained in 1967. In 1996, the Harvard baseball field was named O'Donnell Field after Joe endowed the baseball program.
After Harvard College Joe attended Harvard Business School (1969 - 1971) and from 1971 - 1976, was Associate Dean for the MBA program and later the Director of the Program for Management Development both at HBS.
In 1976 Joe founded Boston Culinary Group, and grew it into a foodservice company which served the leisure and recreation markets throughout the U.S. These venues included college and professional sports arenas and stadiums, convention centers, ski areas, movie theatres and restaurants. Over the years, the company also owned and operated a number of these venues. In 2009, Boston Culinary merged its 16,000 employees with Centerplate to become the nation's largest foodservice operator of professional sports teams, convention centers, movie theatres and ski areas. Joe is currently Chairman of Centerplate, a billion dollar enterprise with over 50,000 employees nationwide.
For the past twenty seven years Joe has also owned Allied Advertising Agency, the nation's leading print advertising agency in the motion picture industry.
Joe has always been active in non-profits both locally and nationally. He is a Trustee of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and is currently Chairman of the National Milestone Campaign for the C.F. Foundation which this year met its $175,000,000 fundraising goal. In 1986 Joe and his wife Kathy founded the Joey Fund, named after his 12 year old son Joey, who died of C.F. in 1986. The Joey Fund has raised over $100,000,000 for C.F. research over the past 25 years and Joe has received The Outstanding Service Award from the C.F. Foundation in 1983, 1986 and 1989. Additionally he was awarded the Breath of Life Award in 1994, the Foundations highest honor.
For the past 40 years Joe has been an active volunteer at Harvard University and has established scholarship programs at Harvard College and HBS. He was a member of the Board of Overseers at Harvard University (1999 - 2005); for the past 25 years has been a Director of the Associates of Harvard Business School and a member of various Visiting Committees at Harvard College. Joe received The Richard T. Flood Award from Harvard College in 1992 and 1997, has served as an elected Director of the Harvard Alumni Association and in 2005 he received the Alumni Achievement Award from the Harvard Business School, its most important honor.
Joe serves as a Trustee of the Children's Hospital Trust, an Overseer at the Boston Boys & Girls Club, is a member of the Genetics Advisory Board at Massachusetts General Hospital and is a Board of Associates Member for Whitehead Institute. Mr. O'Donnell also serves as a Trustee for The Perkins School for the Blind Trust Board. In 2001, Mr. O'Donnell was appointed by President Bush to the President's Advisory Committee on the Arts.
Mr. O'Donnell lives in Belmont, Massachusetts with his wife Kathy and two daughters, Kate, 23 and Casey, 21.
