Alumni Spotlight: Meredith Lauren “Max” Hodges ’03

Meredith Lauren “Max” Hodges ’03 currently serves as the Executive Director of the Boston Ballet, the first professional repertory ballet company in New England. Right after earning an Anthropology degree from Harvard, Hodges worked for Bain & Company. Instead of continuing on in the consulting firm, Hodges took the skills she acquired from Bain and applied them to her passion for the arts. The Harvard Crimson sat down with Hodges to discuss her time at Harvard and how her experiences as an undergraduate influenced her career.

The Harvard Crimson: What was your involvement in the arts like at Harvard?

Meredith Lauren “Max” Hodges: The biggest influence for me was that I was the director of CityStep …I loved spending hours and hours in service of CityStep's mission, using dance as a tool to inspire Cambridge public school kids. That was meaningful to me deeply because it was arts-based. But I also just sort of discovered that I liked to run stuff. And so that had a really big influence on some career decisions that I made later on.

THC: While an undergraduate student at Harvard, did you foresee yourself being involved with the arts in some capacity?

MLH: I think that career paths make much more sense when you're looking back at them in your rear-view mirror … I'm sure a few times I said to myself “'I wish I could just run CityStep as my job!” But it would have been among a thousand other things that I said to myself and among a thousand other interests. I definitely didn't have that certainty when I was in school.

THC: What experiences at Harvard have significantly impacted your life and career?

MLH: It's a place of high expectations and incredibly brilliant peers. And that just encourages you to raise your game in a way that other environments may not do. I would say that's something that I've looked to replicate in my career.

THC: Going from a consulting firm like Bain & Company and ending up as Executive Director of the Boston Ballet is kind of an unexpected career trajectory. How and why did you make that transition?

MLH: It's been really important for me to actually go out and try [different careers] and see. So, for me, that was leaving Bain and taking a job in the finance department in the Museum of Modern Art. … After a number of years at MoMA, I was in business school and I was thinking that maybe film would be interesting. I spent a summer working for an amazing independent film production company, but it wasn't a match for me. It wasn't. And then I spent some time in the summer working for the executive director of the public theater Shakespeare in the Park. And I said, “Oh yeah, I want his job. That's the match for me.”

But if you don't use these opportunities, whether it's a summer internship or a special project or just changing jobs, to kind of test some of these ideas, they wind up staying just that—just ideas.

THC: I know you have a new program—“Obsidian Tear” —opening in November. Can you speak a little bit about that?

MLH: We have co-commissioned a new ballet with The Royal Ballet in London … Another trend that's happening in the arts world, and certainly in the ballet world, is collaboration between companies all over the world. This is the first time that The Royal and Boston Ballet have partnered in this way. There is an artist named Wayne McGregor, a choreographer that both companies are very interested in. We came together to commission a new ballet by him…

It's really exciting to make new art. You know there's risk in it, more risk than other kinds. And, I think in this case, I can say that we are very, very pleased with how this work has come out. It's a really brilliant work for nine dancers—nine men. And it is a more modern piece. So more abstract. There is not necessarily a storyline, although I think that it sort of suggests some narrative qualities as you're watching. You can kind of put a story onto it, and the story you put onto it may not be the same as the person sitting next to you.