Harvard Overseer
HAA Elections

Harvard Overseer and HAA Elections begin on March 31st. These are very important positions, so please vote thoughtfully. The alumni Nominating Committee has assembled a really strong slate of candidates, whose bios you can check out here .
Most alumni don’t vote in Harvard’s elections , but please do! Anyone with any Harvard degree is eligible to vote.

Vanessa Liu AB ’96 JD ’03 , who is a candidate for the Board of Overseers,
is known to the Harvard Club of Silicon Valley’s leadership through her work on the board of the Harvard Alumni Association.
She is the immediate past president of the HAA and a technology entrepreneur committed to empowering diverse leaders and helping organizations utilize digital solutions to create opportunity.

As HAA president in 2024-25 and on its Executive Board before that, Vanessa focused on bringing alumni together to pursue positive social change and kept diversity,
equity and inclusion at the core of her work: rolling out allyship programming, participating in HAA’s Anti-Racism Working Group, and galvanizing HAA and other leaders to speak out in support of affirmative action at events, in the media, and in Court filings.
She co-founded the NY chapter of Harvard Alumni Entrepreneurs and has been an alumni interviewer for over 20 years (for the Harvard Clubs of the Netherlands, United Kingdom and New York).

Vanessa is Co-Founder and CEO of Sugarwork , a tech startup helping companies hold onto an aging workforce through flexible arrangements and knowledge transfer, with a goal of tackling ageism head on.
Vanessa also serves as board director of Appen , helping ethical applications of artificial intelligence, and Goodman Group , helping develop and manage sustainable industrial properties.
Previously, Vanessa guided SAP’s venture program dedicated to accelerating software start-ups led primarily by women and members of underrepresented groups, convinced that diversity in the tech sector leads to better innovation. She spent 10 years with McKinsey’s telecom , media, and technology practice in Amsterdam and London, and was COO of start-up incubator Trigger Media, where she co-founded InsideHook and Fevo.

She has been endorsed by the Coalition for a Diverse Harvard, First Generation Harvard Alumni, Harvard Asian American Alumni Alliance, Harvard Black Alumni Society, Harvard Gender & Sexuality Caucus, Harvard Latino Alumni Alliance, Harvard South Asian Alumni Alliance, Harvard Tamil Sangam Alumni and Native American Alumni of Harvard University. More details here on the Coalition and their endorsed candidates.