Y2Y Harvard Square:  A Student-Run Emergency Shelter for Homeless Young Adults Ages 18-24
Working with undergraduates to create and open a homeless shelter in Harvard Square.

Bob Heckart is currently a Senior Fellow in Harvard’s 2016 Advanced Leadership Initiative and a member of the Senior Common Room at Adams House.  He is also a member of the Advisory Board of Y2Y Harvard Square Homeless Shelter, a student run emergency shelter for young adults aged 18 to 24 that opened December 22, 2015.

Bob was a Fellow in Harvard’s 2015 Advanced Leadership Initiative, which was a calendar year program for about 45 people from ten countries retiring from their primary careers and transitioning into organizing and operating social service enterprises or otherwise addressing public policy issues.  With homelessness as the issue he wished to address, Bob worked with a Kennedy School student to develop a business plan for her idea of providing housing, counseling, life coaching and on-the-job training in sustainable agriculture to youths aging out of foster care, which was one of 4 finalists out of 54 entries in the Harvard Business School’s New Venture Contest last spring.

During 2013 and 2014, Bob was Senior Counsel for US Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) working on implementation of the Dodd-Frank Act and the Volker Rule, tax reform legislation, abuse of corporate tax loopholes, securities markets regulation and other financial policy issues.  During 2011 and 2012, Bob was Senior Adviser for Economic and Financial Policy for US Senator Kirsten Gilibrand (D-NY) and her liaison with Wall Street.

Bob was a partner in Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP from 1973 to 2010 working on complex international and domestic financing transactions, including rescheduling the sovereign debts of Turkey, Poland and several South American countries, leveraged buyouts, cross-border acquisitions, global note issuances and other securities offerings, the bankruptcy of Delta Airlines and Frontier Airlines and the restructuring of AIG as counsel for the US Treasury Department and the New York Federal Reserve Bank in 2008 to 2010.

Bob is a graduate of Harvard Law School in 1973 and Yale University and Yale’s Army ROTC program in 1970.  As an officer in the Air Defense Artillery Branch, he was in active reserve status until honorably discharged as a Captain in 1978.