HGSC Board Member Profile
Adam Robbins (AB '02, he/him)
What’s your background, in a couple quick sentences?
Starting from small-town Maine, my life and career wound through Harvard to UT Austin’s LBJ School of Public Affairs, a year in Taipei, a decade in Minneapolis, back across the Pacific to Beijing and Shenzhen, then New York City since 2022. I’ve trained as a dancer (tap, jazz, ballet and more), biked the five boroughs and the perimeter of Hainan, married my college sweetheart (Jesse Field ’02) and said goodbye to the sweetest little curmudgeon of a cat while chronicling covid in China.
What brought you to Harvard and what did you study?
I never thought I’d attend an Ivy League college, but my principal encouraged me to apply. Princeton may have turned me down, but Harvard turned out to be the ideal destination: just far enough away from home, with the best resources and the best community I’ve ever encountered. I studied history with an IR concentration, with vague notions of diplomacy that were scuttled by a lackluster summer in the State Department.
Where are you now in your career?
I’m now in the third chapter of my career. For a decade I worked behind the scenes at non-profits, helping to organize the communities who voted for marriage equality in Minnesota.
My second chapter took me to China for eight years, as a trailing spouse to my educator husband. I volunteered with local LGBT community groups and promoted their work in my role as editor for English-language magazines (pictured at right with Iron, executive director of the Beijing LGBT Center, receiving an award for my reporting in 2015).
Now I work in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at a Big Law firm (one of the “capitulators”), using my communications and logistics skills to build community in a very different setting.
Why did you join the HGSC Board?
When I returned stateside in 2022, happy hours co-hosted by HGSC were my first real experience of community in this big, impersonal city. I kept returning and encountered the Hon. Michael Sonberg (JD ’71), who had co-led the NYC group since the year of my birth. He was ready to retire and anointed me successor… or at least the person in charge of the NYC newsletter. After a year serving as NYC Coordinator and advisor to the HGSC Board, I was invited to run. I found out just today that I was elected, and I am proud to serve.
What are you excited for in 2025?
In this year of disruption, I’m excited by the new urgency I hear in my friends and colleagues. People want to connect and take action against myriad injustices that are now too plain to ignore. Crisis is a catalyst and I’m excited to connect with fellow alums who are eager to join Harvard in resisting the lawless dictates of a demented bigot and his careless cronies.
What’s one food you miss most from your Harvard days?
Chicken parm sub from Noch’s. I’ve never had it better.
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