Member
Bill Meserve is a retired partner from the Boston law firm of Ropes & Gray, where he served for a time as head of the firm’s litigation group. He has been a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers for over 35 years and was recognized as one of the Best Lawyers of America while actively practicing. Prior to Ropes & Gray, Bill worked as a staff counsel on the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce. Bill served for eighteen years as a Trustee of Tufts (where he chaired the Administration and Finance Committee and served on the Executive Committee for several years) and is now a Trustee Emeritus.
He served for over thirty years on the Board of Visitors to The Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, was a Trustee and Governor of the New England Medical Center (now Tufts Medical Center) for about twenty years, was a Trustee for many years and former Board Chair of AFS Intercultural Programs (an international student exchange program) as well as its U.S. affiliate, AFS-USA, was Board Chair for about ten years of Earthwatch Institute and was a Director for forty years and Board Chair for about half that time of United South End Settlements (a large social service agency in Boston) among other non-profit activities.
He recently moved to Maine where he currently is a Director and Treasurer of the Natural Resources Council of Maine among other activities. Bill has traveled extensively around the world and has spent significant time on all seven continents as well as the world’s largest island (Greenland). He has lived in a tent or under the stars for about a year of his life, has worked within a few hundred mikes of both the North and South Poles and has a glacier named for him in the Antarctic. In his youth, he twice hitchhiked across the U.S. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Tufts, an honors graduate of Harvard Law School and has a degree from the London School of Economics, which he attended under a Knox Fellowship from Harvard.
“I have been on the IGL Advisory Board for over twenty years, serving as co-chair for over half that time, and regard it as one of the most exciting and innovative educational programs with which I have ever been associated. Its transformative impact on many bright and motivated students is remarkable as are their subsequent careers as leaders in a wide range of activities from governmental and non-governmental organizations to positions in academe and the private, for profit, sector. The programs of the IGL challenge its participants intellectually, teach them to question, analyze and “think beyond [the] boundaries” of prior beliefs and ideologies, expose them to different cultures and countries around the world, and build the self-confidence necessary to address seemingly intractable challenges throughout their lives. Its impact is truly extraordinary.”