Chairman, Harte-Hanks Inc; former Publisher, Minneapolis Star Tribune
Austin, TX
Christopher (Chris) Harte is chairman of the board of Harte Hanks Inc. (a NYSE-listed direct marketing company) and has served on its board since 1993. He spent much of his career in the newspaper business, most recently as publisher of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and previously as publisher of the Portland Press Herald, Akron Beacon Journal, and Centre Daily Times. Chris began his newspaper career as managing editor of the Stanford Daily and was a reporter for the Associated Press bureau at the Texas Capitol, and a manager at the Miami Herald, Knight-Ridder’s newspaper division, and the Austin American-Statesman.
He has served as a director of two other public companies, Crown Resources Corp. and Geokinetics Inc., and numerous private companies. Chris is a director of the Austin Community Foundation and was previously a director of Outward Bound USA, the National Audubon Society, and the Stanford Alumni Association. He is a member of the University of Texas Development Board and its past chairman, and a member of UT’s College of Natural Sciences advisory council.
Chris has a BA from Stanford and an MBA from The University of Texas. He was an associate at McKinsey & Company in Dallas before entering the newspaper business. Chris has also been an active private equity investor in other industries, involved in more than a dozen acquisitions and turnarounds.
He has been restoring prairie and savannah at his ranch west of Austin for 25 years. His son, Will, Stanford ’10, MS ’11, is a project manager at Lime Lab in San Francisco; stepdaughter Lily owns and manages a CrossFit gym in Rockport, Maine, and stepdaughter Julia is completing a year in Boston’s City Year program.