William Huyett joins Board of Trustees

by TALLEY HENNING BROWN

William I. Huyett Jr., a director at the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company and a trustee of the Marine Biological Laboratory, has joined the university’s Board of Trustees. A senior executive in McKinsey’s pharma-medical products practice, Mr. Huyett was elected at the trustees’ fall meeting on November 11.

Though trained in electrical engineering and computer science — his bachelor’s degree and MBA are both from the University of Virginia — Mr. Huyett developed an interest in biomedicine shortly after joining McKinsey in 1987. His first year there, he was randomly assigned to participate in a pharmaceutical-industry study. “From that point, I was hooked,” says Mr. Huyett. He has since become a leader in the company’s pharma-medical products practice — comprising pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and medical devices and equipment — and spent four years in McKinsey’s Zurich office working in the European health care sector.

In his current capacity, Mr. Huyett works with one of the top three pharmaceutical companies and two of the top five medical device companies in the world, as well as with a handful of biotechnology start-ups, health insurance companies and care-delivery institutions. “My initial interest tended toward product launches and other commercial work, but about 15 years ago, I became much more interested in discovery and preclinical development,” he says.

As a leader in McKinsey’s corporate finance and strategy practice, as well as chairman of the board of the company’s investment office, Mr. Huyett also does a significant amount of work outside pharma-medical. His interest in life sciences, however, has continued to expand, even to pro bono activities. Since 2004 he has been a trustee of the Marine Biological Laboratory, which he currently serves as vice chair. “I’ve developed with both my client work and my work with MBL a pretty intense interest in how great science gets done, in the sociology of scientific discovery, if you will,” Mr. Huyett says.
D. Ronald Daniel, an emeritus trustee of the university and a retired partner at McKinsey, introduced Mr. Huyett to the possibility of joining Rockefeller’s board earlier this year. Mr. Huyett is also acquainted with current Board member Peter A. Flaherty and vice chair Richard E. Salomon, both through McKinsey & Company. “What really attracted me to Rockefeller is the distinctiveness of its people,” says Mr. Huyett. “When you serve on boards, you realize that the difference between being with the most distinctive people in their field and just pretty good ones is enormous.”

Mr. Huyett is joining the Board’s technology transfer committee and is considering other committees. “Technology has begun to completely transform some of the fundamental aspects of how people interact in the world, and that is keenly reflected in the life sciences, which has transformed from a field where individual specialists and small laboratories accounted for a huge share of the breakthroughs to a field of large international groups employing multidisciplinary approaches to problems,” he says. “I believe that Rockefeller has an opportunity to exploit that faster and better than other institutions.” Central to that goal and to Rockefeller’s success in general, according to Mr. Huyett, is the ability to attract the best possible researchers. “I believe that when you pick the best people, everything else follows. Rockefeller has a talent flow unlike any other institution I know of, but expectations among the younger generations of scientists have shifted and will continue to shift dramatically. Our challenge in the coming decades is to make sure that our value proposition to them stays current.”

In addition to Rockefeller and MBL, Mr. Huyett is active on a number of social service and university boards, including the YMCA of Greater Boston, the Concord Museum of Concord, Massachusetts, the Engineering Leadership Advisory Board of Boston University and the Darden School Foundation at the University of Virginia. He and his wife, Lauren Huyett, have five children and live in Concord, Massachusetts.