John Crittenden Sawhill (June 12, 1936 – May 18, 2000) was president and CEO of The Nature Conservancy and the 12th President of New York University (NYU). Born in

Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

in 1936, Sawhill graduated from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1958. He earned a PhD in economics in 1963 from New York University, where he served as professor of economics. He was named president of New York University in 1975, serving until 1979. At a trying time in NYU's history, he received widespread acclaim for bringing about an academic and financial turnaround at the country's largest private university. His research focused on the nonprofit sector, and he joined the Harvard Business School faculty in 1997 as part of the School's Initiative on Social Enterprise. His seminar Effective Leadership of Social Enterprises prepared students for leadership roles in nonprofit management. Earlier he held several government positions during the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations. Those included being Deputy Secretary of Energy; Chairman of the U.S. Synthetic Fuels Corporation; Administrator of the Federal Energy Administration (appointed by President Nixon, he resigned that position in October, 1974), and Associate Director for Natural Resources, Energy, Science and Environment in the Office of Management and Budget. In 1977, he was elected to the

Common Cause Common Cause is a watchdog group based in Washington, D.C., with chapters in 35 states. It was founded in 1970 by John W. Gardner, a Republican, who was the former Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare in the administration of President L ...

National Governing Board. During his ten-year tenure, The Nature Conservancy became the world's largest private conservation group and protected more than 7 million acres (28,000 km²) in the United States alone. Sawhill, a senior lecturer at

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA p ...

and president and CEO of The Nature Conservancy, died of complications from diabetes May 18, 2000 at the age of 63. His wife was Isabel Sawhill and his son was James W. Sawhill.

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John C. Sawhill RememberedLA Times obit
, - , - {{DEFAULTSORT:Sawhill, John C. 1936 births 2000 deaths 20th-century American businesspeople American chief executives New York University alumni Harvard Business School faculty Businesspeople from Cleveland Presidents of New York University United States Deputy Secretaries of Energy Princeton School of Public and International Affairs alumni 20th-century American academics