William R. Â Harman has been involved in the financial services industry and investment activities for over 50 years. He is a former Managing Director of Morgan Stanley, where he worked for 26 years. Following several years of corporate and securities law practice in New York, he joined Morgan Stanley as Secretary and General Counsel. He organized and managed the legal department of 40 professionals and chaired a number of financial services industry committees addressing legal and regulatory issues.
Mr. Harman also organized and managed Morgan Stanley’s government relations activities to address issues of financial services reform, taxation, and securities regulation. He spent a significant amount of time in Washington presenting the firm’s views and working with Members of Congress and staff, as well as federal departments and agencies.
Mr. Harman was active in advising the firm and its clients on legislative and regulatory developments which had a significant impact on the financial markets, particularly in the areas of trade, taxation, energy, telecommunications, health care, and financial services. He also played an active role in developing the firm’s privatization business, both domestically and internationally.
From 1998 to 2001, he was a consultant and worked with Tiger Management to help navigate potential regulation of hedge funds.
As a private investor, particularly in the health-care field, he has been involved with several companies in cancer research. Mr. Harman currently serves as Vice Chairman of a bioinformatics company that focuses on rapid identification of infectious disease for health-care providers and pharmaceutical companies.
Mr. Harman has been on the board of a number of not-for-profit institutions, including the National Archives Foundation, the American Council on Germany, the Hispanic Society Museum, the Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University, the Venter Institute, and AMDeC, a consortium of 19 New York research hospitals. He currently serves on the investment committees of several foundations, including the American Society for Microbiology.
Mr. Harman is a graduate of Princeton University and the University of Michigan Law School. He served with the United States Marine Corps Reserves from 1966 to 1972.