Harvard Club of Southern California

2025 Harvard Club Annual Meeting and Awards Dinner

Spend an evening with the Harvard Club at our Annual Awards Dinner. All club members and their guests are invited to attend the club’s Annual Dinner on Sunday, June 29, at the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.

Sunday, June 29, 2025 @ 5:30 P.M.
Huntington Library, Art Collection, and Botanical Gardens, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino, CA  91108

Click here to register now!

Our Annual Dinner is always one of our most popular events, where we bestow the John Harvard Award and our Club’s Educator of the Year Award, install our new board members, and recognize alumni who have contributed to our vibrant community. Event attendees are welcome to tour the Huntington on their own in the hours prior to our event’s start at 5:30 pm (note: you will need to purchase a separate ticket through the Huntington website if you wish to do this).

Date and time: Sunday, June 29 at 5:30 pm
Location: Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino, CA 91108
Event Pricing: $150.00 (Members and their guests); $175.00 (Non-Members and their guests); $190, to join the Club AND attend the Annual Dinner, eligible Non-Members only; $80.00 (Recent Graduates, Classes of 2021 – 2025 and current students)
Contact: Sonia Molina, soniamolin@aol.com

The event price includes a three-course meal with dessert and coffee. There will be a cash bar. Admission to the Huntington Library and Gardens during its operating hours is not included. Parking is available at no charge.
 

The 2025 John Harvard Award for Distinguished Community Service will be presented to Senator Ben Allen.

Senator Ben Allen is in his eleventh year in the State Senate, representing the Westside, Hollywood, and South Bay communities of Los Angeles County. Senator Allen chairs the Senate Budget Subcommittee #2 (Resources, Environmental Protection, and Energy) and serves as vice-chair of the Legislature’s Joint Committee on the Arts, in addition to serving on standing committees focused on elections, energy and utilities, judiciary, and natural resources and water. He has been recognized by CalMatters and Politico as one of the Legislature’s foremost leaders on environmental policy, and has gained a reputation as an honest broker of complicated bipartisan compromises on a variety of important issues; on one of his efforts, the Sacramento Bee editorial board stated, “If only Congress could work out such compromises.”

Senator Allen’s groundbreaking SB 54 (2022) was widely recognized as the nation’s strongest policy to address plastic pollution, and he recently led a $10 billion climate bond effort that was eventually passed by the voters in 2024 as Proposition 4. The California Clean Money Campaign has ranked Senator Allen at the top of the Legislature for ten years running due to his commitment to clean money, transparency, and political reform. He authored the landmark Voters Choice Act of 2016 to implement more flexibility in how and where to vote, creating the vote-by-mail and vote center model used in the 2020, 2022, and 2024 elections. Senator Allen earned his bachelor’s degree in history magna cum laude from Harvard (Kirkland House), a master’s degree in Latin American Studies from the University of Cambridge, and a law degree from UC Berkeley. He and his wife Melanie have two little children.

The 2025 Excellence in Education Award will be presented to Mike Romero, Los Angeles Unified School District.

For the past 36 years, Mike Romero has served the Los Angeles Unified School District as a teacher, principal, Director of District Reading Programs, Director of Elementary Schools, Executive Officer - Office of Educational Services, Chief Strategy Officer, Local District Superintendent, and Chief of Transitional Programs overseeing the Early Education Division, Division of Adult and Career Education, Educational Options and the Virtual Academy. Mike led the District’s team at Harvard’s Public Education Leadership Institute, which works to improve the management and leadership competencies of preK-12 public school leaders to drive greater educational outcomes.

Through his leadership, Mike built the capacity of school principals and District leadership teams to ensure that students received a quality education in a safe learning environment for the over 100,000 students in the 210 PreK-12 schools that he served. Mike’s initiatives, together with the efforts of many outstanding District educators, led to accelerated growth in student outcomes related to daily attendance, English language arts and math proficiency levels, graduation rates, gifted and talented identification, and the reduction of suspension rates. Mike received his Bachelor of Arts in Economics from California State University, Fullerton and his Doctorate in Educational Leadership from the University of Southern California.

REFUND POLICY: We do not provide refunds for any of our events.

The Harvard Club of Southern California reserves the right to use any photograph/video taken at any HCSC event without the expressed written permission of those included within the photograph/video.