William J. Poorvu is a successful real estate investor and developer and heads the real estate program at the Harvard Business School as Class of 1961 Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship. His research has been in the areas of the entrepreneurial process in real estate companies, international real estate and capital formation for real estate. From 1968 to 1977, Poorvu was Senior Lecturer for Harvard Graduate School of Design's Department of City Planning.
Poorvu has been managing partner in a number of real estate companies and Chairman of the Board of Advisors for The Baupost Group, L.L.C., an investment firm. He is a Trustee/Director of the Massachusetts Financial Services Group of Mutual Funds and a Trustee of CBL & Associates Properties, Inc. He was formerly a director of Connecticut General Mortgage and Realty Investments, Trammell Crow Realty Investors, and Sonesta International Corporation. He was a member of the Yale University investment committee. Poorvu has also served as a consultant for various organizations in the private and public sectors.
In 1963, Poorvu became one of the founders and owners of WCVB-TV, Channel 5 in Boston, where he served as Treasurer, Vice-Chairman, President and Director until the sale of the station in 1982.
Poorvu serves on the board of numerous nonprofit and community groups including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and the National Public Radio Foundation.
In addition to authoring many articles in various professional publications, Poorvu is the author of Real Estate: A Case Study Approach (Prentice Hall, 1992) and The Real Estate Challenge: Capitalizing on Change (Prentice Hall, 1996).
Poorvu earned his BA from Yale University in 1956 and his MBA from Harvard University in 1958. He currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
