John D. Macomber

Senior Lecturer of Business Administration at Harvard Business School

John Macomber is a Senior Lecturer in the Finance unit at Harvard Business School. His professional background includes leadership of real estate, construction, and information technology businesses. At HBS, Mr. Macomber’s work focuses on climate adaptation and the future of cities, particularly as aided by the private finance and delivery of public infrastructure projects in both the developed and emerging worlds. His teaching combines infrastructure finance (including public-private partnerships), investing in resilience (notably in the face of sea rise in some areas and drought in others), economic development, and the impact of new technologies in delivering new infrastructure and making old infrastructure more efficient. His most recent book is Healthy Buildings: How Indoor Spaces Drive Performance and Productivity (Harvard University Press, 2020)

Mr. Macomber is the Faculty Chair of the HBS Africa Research Center. He is also engaged in the Business and Environment Initiative and Social Enterprise Initiatives at HBS and is a member of the Executive Committee of the Harvard University Center for African Studies. He teaches Finance, Real Estate, Urbanization, and Entrepreneurship courses in the elective curriculum and in Executive Education.

Mr. Macomber is the former Chairman and CEO of the George B H Macomber Company, a large regional general contractor. He remains a principal in several real estate partnerships. He is the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, MA, and he serves or has served on the boards of Young Presidents Organization International (YPO), Boston Private Bank, and the WGBH Educational Foundation.