Bob Krim - Biography for June 2006

Probably hard for me to see sitting in Mr. Brisbois’s History class in the fall of 1964 glancing out from the second story classroom at the cars endlessly circling the old rotary in front of the Main school that what I was enjoying in that class would lead to a  professional career 40 years later, but so it is.

I enjoy my work, and my family– not that both don’t have their hourly challenges.  I married Dr. Kathy Anderson, a feisty red-headed pulmonologist in June ’97.  In May of ’98, a bit after my 50th birthday, our (and my) first child, Sarah, was born.  Ben, our red-headed nearly 6 year-old comedian, was born two years later.   For better or worse, I face a very different life for my 60’s than will probably most of my old friends.  I hope that others will bring their late in life kids along .


I spent twenty-five years in three careers:

1. Reporting on the anti-war movement and the “60’s”  (Woodstock, etc.) Washington Post/Harvard Crimson,


2. Teaching Economics at Roxbury Community College and doing community and union organizing;


3. Founding and heading up – the Boston Management Consortium – a consulting partnership – which worked to help make Boston city government innovative (and particularly succeeded on community policing)

I left management consulting and the world of politics, which had been my home for three decades, in early ’96.  I spent 18 months at the Kennedy School as a Probably hard for me to see sitting in Mr. Brisbois’s History class in the fall of 1964 glancing out from the second story classroom at the cars endlessly circling the old rotary in front of the Main school that what I was enjoying in that class would lead to a  professional career 30 years later, but so it is.  Visiting Fellow.

In August of ’97 I founded the Boston History & Innovation Collaborative with Boston leaders in business, tourism and history, to help re-invent how Boston presents its rich history.   After spending six years in the public history/tourism worlds, we have focused the Collaborative on what had made the Boston area innovative for four hundred years.  We help to work on an agenda to keep Boston innovative, based on analyzing the past.   Really just my excitement in history with Mr. Brisbois updated 40 years.     I have written a few shorter books on Boston and innovation.     What the funnest results of this work, was being an awarded a Fulbright Senior Specialist to work with the New Zealand Historical Trust last August.   I took the family.   It actually got up to the adventure level on a helicopter in a late August snowstorm shortly after the accompanying picture was taken near Milford Sound, one of the most beautiful places in the world.

I have moved quite a bit from the activist serial single guy who lived in a Jamaica Plain three-decker for two decades to a family man, living in an old Newton Center Victorian, close to the home where I was raised, dressing in a suit, driving to work, and spending evenings working with my 2nd grader on reading.

Family is more important to me than work at this time; I take off an afternoon each week (as well as all that time my wife is on call) to be a very active Dad.  Sarah is truly the love of my life at 8; Ben is the trickster of my life at nearly 6.  Boston history is truly fascinating to me.   With a small cardiac problem a few years back helping to keep me focused, I look forward for the next chapters of my life to unfold, or for me to help unfold them.  It has been intriguing to re-meet BBN ’66 people along my journey like Ben, Larry, Ricky, Mike C, Basia, and Alex from ‘66


Telephone etc.

Bob Krim
42 Oxford Rd.
Newton, MA  02459
617/332-9596
r.krim@comcast.net.

Executive Director
Boston History & Innovation Collaborative
650 Beacon St.
Boston, MA  02215
617/350-0358x10

.