Robert Kinloch "Bob" Massie IV (born August 17, 1956) is an American activist, author, clergyman and early pioneer in the fields of corporate accountability, finance, sustainability, and climate change. He has created or led several organizations, including Ceres,[1] the Global Reporting Initiative, the Investor Network on Climate Risk, the New Economy Coalition and the Sustainable Solutions Lab. His early activism centered on opposition to South Africa's apartheid regime, writing about the relationship between the U.S. and South Africa in the apartheid era.[2]
Massie was born with severe classical hemophilia, also known as "Factor VIII hemophilia", a genetic disease that prevents the blood from clotting. Though many associate hemophilia with uncontrolled external bleeding through cuts, the most severe consequence was internal joint bleedings. Such bleedings cause rapid and extremely painful swelling. Recovery and reabsorption of blood took weeks, during which the internal joints surfaces were corroded. As a result, Massie used leg braces and a wheelchair from the ages of 5 to 12.
Until 1968 the only treatment was regular intravenous transfusions of blood factors that were both extremely expensive and difficult to store and administer. The development of more affordable and easily administered blood factors greatly improved Massie's care but his childhood joint damage was not reversible.
As a result of this experience, his father, Robert Massie Sr., wrote Nicholas and Alexandra (1967), a biography of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, whose son and heir Alexis also had hemophilia. Massie's understanding of the impact of the disease led to a dramatic reinterpretation of the influence of the Russian monk Rasputin and of the flawed actions of the royal couple that led, in part, to the Bolshevik revolution. Massie's book was a bestseller and spent nearly a year on the New York Times' bestseller list and was made into a film Nicholas and Alexandra. Bob Massie's parents also wrote a more personal account of their son's challenges, titled Journey.[7]
From 1968 to 1972 the family lived in France, where better and more accessible health care helped Massie regain the ability to walk [8] This experience shaped Massie's political views, including his lifelong advocacy for national health insurance in the United States.
After completing his high school requirements a year early, Massie took a gap year to work as an intern for US Senator Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson on the Senate Investigations Subcommittee, continuing his employment during the summers of 1975 and 1976.
Though only 17 years old, he wrote a ground-breaking report for Senator Jackson in which he warned of the dangers of the contamination of the blood supply by dangerous viruses such a hepatitis A and B. Senator Jackson launched an early investigation into these practices but was blocked by US Senator Charles Percy (R-IL) on behalf of the pharmaceutical manufacturers in the state of Illinois.
The delay in blood screening eventually led to more than 8,000 thousand deaths in the U.S. along (footnote needed). Massie himself eventually contracted HIV and Hepatitis from tainted blood transfusions before effective screening was put in place.
In 1974 Massie entered Princeton University, graduating magna cum laude in 1978 with a degree in history. While at Princeton he was active in the student movement for Princeton's divestiture from South Africa,[9] and campaigned for equal access to university dining clubs, many of which did not admit women as members.[10]
Later, as an officer of his alumni class he established the Class of 1978 Foundation, one of the first university foundations to fund direct summer service for students.[11][12]
After graduating from Princeton, he received his Master of Divinity (M.Div.) degree from Yale in 1982.[13] He took one year off from his theological studies to work for Ralph Nader at Congress Watch, where he was the research director for a project called Big Business Day, which took place on April 17, 1980. In conjunction with Mark Green He also compiled and edited The Big Business Reader [New York: Pilgrim Press, 1980] This experience sparked a deep interest in the role of business in American society, which led him to obtain a Doctor of Business Administration from Harvard in 1989.[14]
Professional career
After completing school, Massie was ordained as an Episcopal priest, and became a chaplain at New York City's Grace Episcopal Church, where he founded a homeless shelter.[15] He later served as a chaplain at Christ Episcopal Church in Somerville, Massachusetts.
From 1989 to 1996 Massie lectured at Harvard Divinity School,[16] and served as Director of the Project on Business Values and the Economy there.[17] His teaching and research led him into the field of sustainability before the term existed.
In 1993 Massie received a Senior Fulbright Research Award to spend time in South Africa,[18] where he taught at the University of Cape Town.[19] In 1994 he also served as an official international observer during the first democratic elections in South Africa.[20]
His book Loosing the Bonds: The United States and South Africa In the Apartheid Years was completed over the next four years, and published by Doubleday in 1997. It won the Lionel Gelber Prize for the Best Book on International Relations in 1998 and was reviewed favorably across the United States, including the New York Times.[21]
From 1996 to 2003 Massie served as the executive director of Ceres,[22] a coalition of environmental groups and institutional investors in the United States.
He also proposed and led the creation of the Investor Network on Climate Risk (now known as the Ceres Investor Network on Climate and Sustainability) and the Institutional Investor Summit on Climate Risk, a gathering of public and private sector financial leaders held every two years at UN Headquarters in New York City.[23]
In 1998, in partnership with the United Nations and major U.S. foundations, he co-founded the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) with Allen White.[24] According to the most recent 2017 database, 10,613 organizations have produced 40,155 reports of which 26,675 are GRI reports.[25]
In 2002, Massie was named one of the 100 most influential people in the field of finance by CFO magazine.[26]
In the same year, he learned that he had contracted hepatitis C from contaminated blood medications used to treat his hemophilia. Ironically, this was the exact danger about which he had drawn attention in his Senate report 28 years earlier. He resigned from Ceres in order to pursue medical treatment.[27] As his condition degraded, he was put on the national list for a liver transplant.
In 2010 he was awarded the Damyanova Prize for Corporate Social Responsibility[28] by the Institute for Global Leadership[29] at Tufts University, and in April, 2009 he received the Joan Bavaria Innovation and Impact Awards for Building Sustainability in Capital Markets.[30]
His autobiography, A Song in the Night: A Memoir of Resilience, was published in 2012 by Nan Talese/Doubleday books.[31]
In March 2012, Massie became the president of the New Economy Coalition, then called the New Economics Institute,[32] an organization dedicated to moving the American economy toward greater justice and sustainability. He stepped down as president in October 2014.
In November 2015 Massie became the executive director of the Sustainable Solutions Lab at UMass Boston.[33] That same year, he also wrote and published a small book on financial literacy for the Divinity School called A Handbook on Faith and Money, which is available to be read or downloaded for free on the Yale Divinity School website.
In 2022 Massie gave the opening address in New York City at a ceremony marking the 25th anniversary of the creation of the Global Reporting Initiative. He subsequently was invited to serve as a senior strategic advisor to the current chief executive, Eelco van der Enden.
He also has been releasing his writings, including "Fading to White" - a 100-page essay on his relationship with his father, on a Patreon site, Bob Massie's Workshop.
In 1994, spurred by a sense of the urgent need for early action on climate change and sustainability, he ran for Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, won the statewide primary election, and became the Democratic candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts. The Democratic ticket was defeated by incumbent Republican governor Bill Weld.
On May 16, 2017, Massie began a campaign for the Democratic nomination in the Massachusetts gubernatorial election in 2018. His platform focused on climate change initiatives, workers' rights and economic equality.[39] He lost the primary election on September 4, 2018.
Personal life
In 1984 he was diagnosed with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), contracted in 1978, from tainted injections of his clotting factor. By 1994, before any treatments were available, he was one of the longest HIV survivors, with virtually no symptoms. Extensive study of Massie's case by Dr. Bruce D. Walker at Massachusetts General Hospital[40] contributed to research and treatment studies around the world, and was the subject of a NOVA documentary in 1999.[41]
In 1996, 2002 and 2020 Massie had surgeries to replace or revise his knee joints, damaged from the repetitive joint bleeds.
In June 2009, Massie received a liver transplant, in a procedure performed at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, which cured not only his hepatitis C, but also his hemophilia. The clotting factor in blood is produced in the liver.[42]
Family
In 1982, while at Yale Divinity, he met Dana L. Robert, a graduate student in American religious history. They married in November, and had two sons together, Samuel (born 1987), and John (b. 1989). The couple divorced in 1995.
In 1997 Massie married Anne Tate, an architect and professor at Rhode Island School of Design, with whom he has a daughter, Katherine (b. 1998).
Related Research Articles
Haemophilia, or hemophilia, is a mostly inherited genetic disorder that impairs the body's ability to make blood clots, a process needed to stop bleeding. This results in people bleeding for a longer time after an injury, easy bruising, and an increased risk of bleeding inside joints or the brain. Those with a mild case of the disease may have symptoms only after an accident or during surgery. Bleeding into a joint can result in permanent damage while bleeding in the brain can result in long term headaches, seizures, or a decreased level of consciousness.
Hepatitis C is an infectious disease caused by the hepatitis C virus (HCV) that primarily affects the liver; it is a type of viral hepatitis. During the initial infection period, people often have mild or no symptoms. Early symptoms can include fever, dark urine, abdominal pain, and yellow tinged skin. The virus persists in the liver, becoming chronic, in about 70% of those initially infected. Early on, chronic infection typically has no symptoms. Over many years however, it often leads to liver disease and occasionally cirrhosis. In some cases, those with cirrhosis will develop serious complications such as liver failure, liver cancer, or dilated blood vessels in the esophagus and stomach.
Biogen Inc. is an American multinational biotechnology company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States specializing in the discovery, development, and delivery of therapies for the treatment of neurological diseases to patients worldwide. Biogen operates in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, and Switzerland.
The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth is a public research university in Dartmouth, Massachusetts. It is the southernmost campus of the University of Massachusetts system. Formerly Southeastern Massachusetts University, it was merged into the University of Massachusetts system in 1991.
Massachusetts General Hospital is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, Harvard University located in the West End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. Massachusetts General Hospital houses the world's largest hospital-based research program, the Mass General Research Institute, with an annual research budget of more than $1.2 billion in 2021. It is the third-oldest general hospital in the United States with a patient capacity of 999 beds. Along with Brigham and Women's Hospital, Mass General is a founding member of Mass General Brigham, formerly known as Partners HealthCare, the largest healthcare provider in Massachusetts.
The tainted blood disaster, or the tainted blood scandal, was a Canadian public health crisis in the 1980s in which thousands of people were exposed to HIV and hepatitis C through contaminated blood products. It became apparent that inadequately-screened blood, often coming from high-risk populations, was entering the system through blood transfusions. It is now considered to be the largest single (preventable) public health disaster in the history of Canada.
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In the 1970s and 1980s, a large number of people – most of whom had haemophilia – were infected with hepatitis C and HIV, the virus that leads to acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), as a result of receiving contaminated clotting factor products. In England, these were supplied by NHS England. Many of the products were imported from the US.
Thomas Harold Massie is an American politician, entrepreneur, and engineer. A member of the Republican Party, Massie has been the United States representative for Kentucky's 4th congressional district since 2012, when he defeated Bill Adkins in the special and general elections. The district covers much of northeastern Kentucky, but is dominated by the Kentucky side of the Cincinnati area and Louisville's eastern suburbs.
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The Memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth Regiment is a bronze relief sculpture by Augustus Saint-Gaudens opposite 24 Beacon Street, Boston. It depicts Colonel Robert Gould Shaw leading members of the 54th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry as it marched down Beacon Street on May 28, 1863 to depart the city to fight in the South. The sculpture was unveiled on May 31, 1897. This is the first civic monument to pay homage to the heroism of African American soldiers.
The 2018 Massachusetts gubernatorial election took place on November 6, 2018, to elect the governor and lieutenant governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Republican Governor Charlie Baker and Lieutenant Governor Karyn Polito sought reelection to a second term in office, facing Democratic challengers Jay Gonzalez and Quentin Palfrey, respectively. Candidates were selected in the primary election held on September 4, 2018.
Jonathan Lee Walton is an author, ethicist and religious scholar. He is the President of Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey. He was previously Dean of Wake Forest University School of Divinity, Presidential Chair in Religion & Society and Dean of Wait Chapel. He is the author of A Lens of Love: Reading the Bible in its World for Our World.
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The National Bleeding Disorders Foundation (NBDF) is a United States patient advocacy organization for the care and treatment of inheritable blood and bleeding disorders such as hemophilia and von Willebrand disease. Founded in 1948, NBDF, then known as the National Hemophilia Foundation, helps secure funding for treatment centers, and develops national guidelines for treatment and health care policy. The organization also serves as a central point for information on the disorders.
↑ Glenn, Justin (September 30, 2016). The Washingtons. Volume 8: Generations Twelve to Fifteen of the Presidential Branch. Savas Publishing. p.165. ISBN9781940669335.
↑ "Damyanova Award to Robert Massie". Tuftsgloballeadership.org. Archived from the original on 2012-03-17. Retrieved 2017-05-09.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
↑ "Bob Massie, President and CEO". New Economics Institute. Archived from the original on 2015-04-28. Retrieved 2017-05-09.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
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