Daily Archives: November 30, 2010


Driving With No Brakes

Garden Club of the Back Bay member Harriet Lewis, with her husband Alan, published Driving With No Brakes in August, 2010, and we want our web site followers to know all about it.  The book is available through www.amazon.com, and at many local booksellers.

Driving With No Brakes is a fascinating, inspirational book about how two courageous leaders built a remarkable company that can thrive in change and succeed in an unpredictable world. The book offers important lessons for any business leader trying to create value in the 21st century.

Alan and Harriet Lewis, owners of Grand Circle Corporation, reflect on the company’s successes and failures and highlight important business strategies that have propelled it to be held by many as the world’s best travel company. Through the lens of Grand Circle, they demonstrate how they were able to achieve sustained business success amidst the tumultuous and highly competitive travel industry by fostering a values-based organization that embraces risk while maintaining focus on people and social mission.

In 1986, shortly after Alan and Harriet Lewis bought Grand Circle Travel, a competitor remarked that there was no way a bunch of hooligans from Boston could run a worldwide travel business. At the time, Grand Circle was a travel company with one office, $27M in sales, and was losing more than $2 million a year. Twenty-five years later, Grand Circle has grown nearly 20% per year into a highly profitable company with annual sales in excess of $600 million. The company owns or charters 60 ships, operates 80 trips in 100 countries, and employs 2,300 people in more than 30 offices worldwide. With social mission tightly woven into Grand Circle’s business strategy, the company has donated or pledged more than $50 million USD to educational, humanitarian, and cultural organizations worldwide since 1992.

Grand Circle is beloved by its customers (American travelers), more than 125,000 of whom travel with Grand Circle Travel and its affiliate, Overseas Adventure Travel, each year. The company has served more than 1.5 million travelers over the years and prospered through more than 300 crises, including the 9-11 attacks, the rise of online competitors, and ongoing global political, economic and environmental challenges. Despite it all, Grand Circle continues to increase its profitability and grow at a rate of nearly 20 percent per year.

It has been a wild ride, and there were times when Alan and Harriet were literally driving with no brakes. This book tells the story of Grand Circle and of a remarkable couple’s dream to build a company that would help change people’s lives and of the long, hard, and fun-filled journey they took to get there.


Saturday, December 11, 10:00 am – 2:00 pm – Introduction to Forest Measurement Tools

Participants in Introduction to Forest Measurement Tools at Garden in the Woods, 180 Hemenway Road, Framingham, to be held Saturday, December 11, from 10 – 2, will be introduced to various tools such as diameter tapes, calipers, Biltmore sticks, laser measuring devices, clinometers, angle gauges, and other tools used to measure trees and other features in the forest environment. Following classroom discussion, participants will practice using various measurement tools.

Bring a lunch and water, and dress in layers for both classroom and outdoor learning. Bring any of the following to class if you have them: a hand lens, winter tree identification field guide, compass, and/or any forest measurement tools.

Sponsored by Arnold Arboretum and N.E. Wildflower Society, this program takes place at the New England Wild Flower Society’s Garden in the Woods. $44 member, $52 nonmember. Phone 617-384-5277 to register.


Saturday, December 4, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm, and Sunday, December 5, 12:00 noon – 5:00 pm – Beacon Hill Decorating Days

Please join the Beacon Hill Civic Association and your neighbors in Decorating the Hill for the Holidays. You can help one day or both, sign up or just show up, come for the whole day or just and hour. Do your own street or help wherever needed- they’ll show you how.

On Saturday, December 4, from 10 – 4, meet at the Harrison Gray Otis House, 141 Cambridge Street.  On Sunday, December 5, from noon – 5, assemble at 160 Charles Street (next to Savenor’s.)  At 5pm on Sunday you will celebrate with a festive wrap up party for all the volunteers at 74 Joy Street. Join the Decorating Days email list by emailing: info@bhcivic.org.  One couple who met during this event have since married, so consider this an opportunity on a number of different levels.  Picture below by Charlotte Joan Sternberg.