Discovering a Mentor

For Josh O’Harra ’97, shifts as a student worker on Skillman’s circulation desk led to a tradition of exploring the stacks on Friday nights. He ran across an article in a 1994 edition of the journal Society authored by Harold Hochman, then Simon Professor of Political Economy, who became O’Harra’s mentor and friend. “That was the happiest accident of all,” O’Harra recalls. “I spent years learning from him and working for the journal he edited. Though he was a tough old bird, he loved opera, ballet, summer at his lake house in New Hampshire, and big Italian wines from the Piedmont. He invited me to participate in all these things with his family and always treated me like an equal. A real mensch that Hochman—the man who madea man of me.”

Josh O’Harra ’97

• A.B., economics & business and government & law
• M.S., economics, University of Michigan
• J.D., Georgetown University Law Center
• Assistant general counsel, Eli Lilly and Company, Washington, D.C.