John R Craven

Associates: Patricia M Craven (mother), Katherine P Craven (sister), Laura Mari Stock (spouse), Patricia M Craven (sister)

Work: Hearing Officer at Department Of Public Utilities

School: BELMONT HILL SCHOOL

Summary:

John Craven is 46 years old and was born on 05/19/1974. Currently, John lives in West Roxbury, MA.

Hearing Officer at Department of Public Utilities is presently John’s occupation.

We know that John’s political affiliation is unknown; ethnicity is Caucasian; and religious views are listed as Christian.

John’s relationship status is married.

John has many family members and associates who include Patricia Craven, Katherine Craven, Laura Stock, Patricia Craven and Thomas Bowers.

Title: Hearing Officer
Company: Department of Public Utilities

Title: General Counsel
Company: Massachusetts Racing Commission

Title: President
Company: Checkbox Survey Solutions INC
City: Watertown, MA

Deeds
Owner: Craven, John R
Owner2: Craven, Laura S
Seller: Kryzanski, James T
Seller2: Craven-Kryanski, Katherine
Sale Price: 450000
Loan Amount: 360000
Lender: American Home Mtg

Katherine Craven’s credo: ‘Let’s make things work’

By Greg O’Brien and Thomas Mulvoy
November 7, 2014 | Republished by LIT; June 3, 2020

If you drop the name “Katherine Craven” into any discussion with key players in academic and public service circles in Massachusetts, the air is quickly filled with words like “model public servant; sound judgment; unquestioned expertise; tireless work style; advances the public interest; impeccable credentials; boundless energy; impressive creativity.” And while “saintly” doesn’t make the list, one admiring associate calls her “a Joan of Arc” for her “intellect, forcefulness, and ethical approach to her goals in life and at work.”

Taking note of those qualities in her announcement last February that Ms. Craven, at the time executive director of the University of Massachusetts Building Authority, would be leaving public service for academia, Kerry Healey, the president of Babson College, said that her “20-year track record in government and higher education, and her highly regarded approach to team building and community engagement, makes her an exceptional fit to lead our administrative and business operations during this critical time.”

The title of chief administrative officer (CAO) of Babson College is the latest in a string of high-level Katherine P. Craven appointments fetching back to her days as a manager with the men’s hockey team at Harvard. In the early years of the new century, she was, at age 23, a budget analyst for the Ways and Means Committee of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and later the director of policy for the House where she counseled then-Speaker Thomas Finneran and the membership on the financing of significant legislative initiatives born out of the state’s $23 billion operating budget. She moved on in 2004 to serve as executive director of the Massachusetts School Building Authority, where she oversaw an outlay of $3 billion spending on K-12 schools and accepted a specific challenge:

“We had to revamp the entire state school building program. With a 90 percent state reimbursement, some school districts were getting six to eight lavish schools. There was a lot of waste and huge debt. No real budgets or planning were at play. Schools were built that never should have been built. There was no consistency. You leave things open for fraud when things happen like that. So we instituted checks and controls. We changed the culture.”

In 2010, Ms. Craven added the title of deputy state treasurer to her resume while remaining at the authority. The next year, she was named to head the UMass Building Authority, in which post she and her associates took up oversight of a $3.8 billion plan to modernize the University of Massachusetts campuses in Amherst, Boston (Dorchester), Dartmouth, Lowell, and Worcester for the benefit of some 70,000 students, 5,700 faculty, and 12,000 professional and classified staff.

And the beat goes on. Late last year, the newly elected mayor of Boston, Martin Walsh, managed to persuade her to join his transition team. And in August of this year, Gov. Deval Patrick named Ms. Craven to the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, citing her experience as evidence that she and her associates “will continue to be great partners in our efforts to close the achievement gap and ensure that all of our students are prepared for future success.”

Given all the above, it seems reasonable to ask: Who is this 41-year-old wonder woman, and where did she come from?
•••

William Shakespeare once wrote, “It is a wise father that knows his own child.” The late Boston Juvenile Court Judge John J. Craven, a member of the Boston School Committee and Governor’s Council in the late 1960s and early 1970s, knew his daughter Katherine the way a literary genius knows the denouement of a great work. Through the collective wisdom of an extended family marinated in Boston politics and public service, Judge Craven passed down to his daughter the essence of the Irish: wit, a sturdy work ethic, and perseverance.

My father was the center of my universe,” Ms. Craven said in an interview with the Boston Irish Reporter in November 2011, mere hours after his passing on Thanksgiving eve. “He taught me all the things a boy should know.” The loss of her father, she said, was paralyzing. He had struggled long and hard against Lewy Body Dementia, a rapid-onset Alzheimer’s variant that robs a person of memory, thinking, language, and, finally, life itself.
 Symptoms of the disease, a precursor to its final stages, were apparent after her father’s retirement in 2005, she said, but he had the will to fight on with the loving care of family members. She often took her father on trips to familiar places to jog his memory and his spirit –a father/daughter connection that has had staying power for her, she says today.

In many ways, Ms. Craven is a mirror image of her father, a Gov. Edward J. King appointee to the Boston Municipal Court bench, and a composite of her mother, Patricia: humble, resolute, and a person of great vision. 
Raised in West Roxbury, which is something of an Irish waiting room to Heaven, Ms. Craven belonged to a faith-centered family with a younger brother, John Robert, now an attorney with the Boston Water & Sewer Commission, and a younger sister, Patty, who has Down Syndrome. Katherine’s son, Joe, a precious ten year old, also is a Down child. 
For all that and more, faith and perseverance are family currency.

“Someone once described my father as relentless,” she said in the 2011 interview. “I think that’s true. Relentless in the pursuit that his children got the best education possible, and used their God-given gifts to the fullest. My dad was a life coach.”

At Harvard, John J. Craven, Roxbury Latin-educated and with roots in Roscommon, was called the “greasy grind,” a moniker for his “persistent studying; he was very much a perfectionist in that way,” she said. His father, John J. Craven, Sr., a second-generation Irish American, grew up in the “Leaky Roof” section of Roxbury, “a place where all the three-deckers leaked,” said Katherine, and was a state representative from the Roxbury district from 1930-38. His mother, Katherine “Kitty” (Kane), who with John Sr. raised 11 children, was the first woman ever elected citywide to the Boston City Council. A vociferous opponent of urban renewal, she once “tossed an ashtray at a fellow councillor who had insulted her, and called another ‘a bald-headed SOB,’ threatening to poke him in the jaw,” according to a Boston Globe story at the time.

Katherine’s mother Patricia (McCarthy), whose family came from Cork, added needed ballast, humor, and balance to a family driven to public service. The McCarthy name continues to resonate alongside the Craven record in public affairs: Ms. Craven’s cousin, Timothy McCarthy, a Hyde Park resident, served Mayor Thomas Menino as a Neighborhood Services coordinator and is now a member of the Boston City Council.

“My grandparents’ mission and focus was the political world,” Katherine said, “a response to the inability of the Irish back then to break into that line of business in Boston.”

That response was a calling passed down to her father, who served on the Governor’s Council from 1968-70, and on the Boston School Committee from 1970-74. He also ran, unsuccessfully, for numerous other elective offices: lieutenant governor, Suffolk County sheriff, the state Senate and the City Council. A man who had routine and discipline down to a Spartan science, he mentored as much as he monitored. “On the Juvenile Court, my dad always sought ways of helping people,” says Katherine. “But he was a disciplinarian if you weren’t doing the best job possible. He inspired me to go into public service, to never give up. He had a way about him.”

Early on, her dad taught Katherine how to keep Red Sox box scores —a skill of precision she has carried into professional life. “I was terrible in sports,” she conceded. “I didn’t have the eye-hand coordination going, but I knew how to keep score.”
 She has been doing that all her life.

Ms. Craven attended elementary school at Mount Alvernia Academy in Newton and high school at Boston Latin en route to Harvard where she majored in history and worked behind the bench as a manager with the men’s hockey team, a position advocated by her father when he realized his daughter was a better manager than player. While at Harvard, Katherine met her husband, Jim Kryzanski, a neurosurgeon at Tufts Medical Center. The couple has four children: Delia, 14; Joe, 10; James Henry, 6; and John Francis Xavier, 4. Katherine and Jim also lost a child, Mary Erin. “She died as a baby from West Nile virus,” said Ms. Craven in 2011 while noting that she, too, almost died of the disease.

•••
Now it’s back to campus for a woman who apparently sees no sense in slowing down to a moderate pace. There’s always much to be done wherever she finds herself. Asked in a recent interview to compare and/or contrast public life with her few months in academia at Babson, CAO Craven went directly to the positive:

“Working with the people in Legislature and at public authorities made for a proving ground for work in a campus culture,” she said in noting that her responsibilities include oversight of facilities management, information technology, human resources, and community relations. “It’s like running a small town where meetings follow meetings with various constituencies in search of a consensus on what to do about important issues.”

Ms. Craven was asked in 2011 how one goes from being a history major to budget analyst in one swift leap, and she replied: “History is the predictor of the future. You fall back on that skill. That’s the trick of it. You don’t have to be an accountant to be a budget analyst – at the state government level, at the intersection of budgets and policy.”

You apparently also have to be a good juggler of priorities: “She’d come in carrying two briefcases and a baby under her arms,” former Speaker Finneran recalled in a 2010 Globe feature story on his erstwhile counselor. Asked recently to appraise Ms. Craven the person, Finneran replied that she is “sui generis,” a Latin phrase that in her case means you really can’t compare her to anyone else.

Robert K. Sheridan, retired head of SBLI and the author of the “Joan of Arc” designation, seconds the Finneran motion, saying, “Having Katherine Craven on the job is, simply, the best form of insurance any institution can have to ensure its success.”

Today, Katherine Craven looks in the rearview mirror with the training of a historian and to the future with the eyes of the community visionary and the relentlessness that defined her father’s approach to life. “I always strive,” she has been quoted as saying, “to keep my priorities straight, as my dad taught me: family first. I hope in the end that I can make a difference. I hope I can help a lot of people, figure things out, and make things work.”

Katherine Craven P’22 Named Chair of Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education

By Andy Tiedemann March 27, 2019 | Republished; June 3, 2020

Katherine Craven P’22, Chief Administrative and Financial Officer at Babson since 2014, has been appointed Chair of the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education by Gov. Charlie Baker.

The mission of the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education is to strengthen the Commonwealth’s public education system so that every student is prepared to succeed in postsecondary education, compete in the global economy, and understand the rights and responsibilities of American citizens, and in so doing, to close all proficiency gaps.

“Katherine is an experienced educational leader who cares deeply about expanding opportunity for every community and every child in the Commonwealth. Her deep knowledge of state government and her commonsense approach to policymaking and problem solving will be a tremendous asset to the Board and the Department in her new role. I am so thankful for Katherine’s willingness to accept this new challenge,” said Secretary Education Secretary James Peyser in a press release.

Craven currently serves as the chief administrative and financial officer of Babson College, the top-ranked college for entrepreneurship education. She began her career in state budget analysis, planning and policy, helping deliver more than 10 state budgets for the Massachusetts House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means.

“Katherine is an accomplished and experienced leader with a long history of supporting and championing education at all levels,” said Babson President Kerry Healey. “I am so pleased and proud that she has been named Chair of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, and I know that she will be a valuable advocate and resource for Massachusetts schools, families and communities.”

“I am honored and grateful for the support of the Baker-Polito administration. I look forward to continuing the great work of Chairman Sagan and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to promote forward-thinking policies providing educational opportunity for nearly 1 million children of all different learning styles and socio-economic backgrounds across the Commonwealth to succeed in an ever-changing world,” Craven said.

In 2004, Craven was appointed as the founding executive director and chief executive officer of the Massachusetts School Building Authority, where she won plaudits for her effective management and leadership.

While leading the School Building Authority, Craven was also named First Deputy Treasurer of the Commonwealth. Craven left the School Building Authority and the Treasurer’s Office in 2011 when she was appointed executive director of the UMass Building Authority and assistant vice president for capital finance for the University of Massachusetts.

She is a member of many local government and community organization boards, such as the Dorchester Boys and Girls Club, the Massachusetts Down Syndrome Congress, the Committee for Public Counsel Services, the Massachusetts Business Roundtable, and Women in Public Finance. Craven received a Bachelor of Arts in History from Harvard University. She lives in Brookline, with her husband and five children.

Obituary: The Honorable John J. Craven, Jr.

By Lorraine Emanuel, Neighbor
Nov 27, 2011 2:08 am ET

The Honorable John J. Craven, Jr. 76, of West Roxbury, died from complications of Lewy Body Dementia on Tuesday, November 22, 2011.

Beloved husband of 41 years of Patricia (McCarthy) Craven.

Adored father of Katherine Craven Kryzanski and her husband, Dr. James Kryzanski of Chestnut Hill;

John Robert Craven, Esq. and his wife, Laura Stock Craven, Esq. of West Roxbury;

and his beloved special daughter, Patricia Mary Craven of West Roxbury.

Devoted “Grandfafal” to Delia Mary Kryzanski, Joseph John Kryzanski, James Henry Kryzanski, John Francis Xavier Kryzanski, Jane Elizabeth Craven and Rose Charlotte Craven, and the late Mary Erin Kryzanski. Beloved son born in Roxbury on February 27, 1935 to the late state representative John J. Craven, Sr and the late former Boston city councillor Katherine (Kane) Craven.

Cherished “Brother” of Patricia Ross of Dedham, Maureen Slade of Hyde Park, Sheila and James Middleton of Milton, Kathleen Passanisi of Quincy, Barbara Ellen and Jay Broderick of Quincy, Brendan Michael and Diana Craven of Quincy, Timothy and Nina Craven of Dedham, and the late Pauline Qazilbash, Francis Xavier Craven, and Susan Borek. Beloved Uncle John to over 50 nieces and nephews, and many grandnieces and grandnephews and cousins. The “Judge” was a great friend and mentor to many.

Retired judge after 23 years of the Boston Juvenile Court, former Clerk of the Boston Municipal Court, former Boston School Committee member and Governor’s Councillor, former Massachusetts Assistant Attorney General, former teacher at Boston State College and Woburn High School. Proud graduate of the Roxbury Latin School Class of 1952, Harvard College Class of 1956 and New England School of Law Class of 1962. Admitted to Massachusetts Bar in 1962. Member of the Harvard Club of Boston for over 55 years. Owned Park League baseball teams in the late 1960’s. Avid booster of the Harvard University Marching Band, season ticket holder of Harvard Football and Harvard Hockey. Met 17 Governors of Massachusetts in his lifetime, receiving two gubernatorial appointments. Devoted Roman Catholic with special dedication to Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Veteran, United States Army.

The Craven family welcomes friends and loved ones to celebrate his life on Monday, Nov. 28, 2011, in the Gormley Funeral Home, 2055 Centre Street, West Roxbury from 3 – 9 p.m. A Funeral Mass will be celebrated on Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2011 at 10 a.m. at St Theresa of Avila Church, West Roxbury. Burial will follow in Mt. Benedict Cemetery.

John J. Craven Jr.; anchored city’s Juvenile Court

By J.M. Lawrence Globe Correspondent, December 20, 2011, 12:00 a.m.

JOHN JOSEPH CRAVEN JR.

In 23 years on the bench in Boston Juvenile Court, Judge John Joseph Craven Jr. saw scores of troubled families and children. In one case, he ordered a child taken away from a drug-addicted mother and counseled her to get well. Though she never conquered addiction, she sent the judge a large portrait of Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

“She never blamed my father for taking her son away, but came to visit my father in court to hear him tell her that she could turn her life around,’’ said Judge Craven’s daughter, Katherine.

Judge Craven, who had been an assistant attorney general and a clerk of the Boston Municipal Court and served on the Boston School Committee in the early 1970s, died Nov. 22 in Epoch Senior Healthcare of Chestnut Hill of complications of Lewy body dementia. He was 76 and had lived in West Roxbury.

“I found him to be one of the dearest, kindest, most compassionate people I’ve ever crossed paths with,’’ said Chief Justice Roderick Ireland of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, who worked with him for 13 years. “He was a hard-working guy, a decent man, a great friend, and a wonderful colleague. He lifted everybody up.’’

Born in Roxbury in 1935, Judge Craven could recall listening to John F. Kennedy’s grandfather, John “Honey Fitz’’ Fitzgerald, sing “Sweet Adeline’’ at the piano in the Parker House when Boston’s Irish Americans made their way up the ladder of success through the voting booth.

Both of Judge Craven’s parents held office. His father, John Sr., was a state representative and his mother, Katherine, had 11 children before she became, in 1963, the first woman ever elected to the Boston City Council on a citywide vote. Judge Craven was their third child and their first son.

A baseball fan from a young age, he could recall going to Fenway Park with his father for the 1946 All Star Game and seeing Ted Williams hit the only home run ever hit off of the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Rip Sewell’s famously slow “eephus pitch,’’ his family said.

He graduated from Roxbury Latin School in 1952 and from Harvard College in 1956.

Judge Craven cleaned trolley cars at night to help pay for his legal education at what is now the New England School of Law, from which he graduated in 1962. He also served in the US Army.

“He really made my parents proud,’’ said his sister, Sheila Middleton of Milton. “He just wanted to learn. He was a great student, and he always was involved, always learning, always asking people what did they think. He was a great student of all of these long-gone politicos.’’

His favorite date on the calendar was Election Day, his family said, though he lost bids for lieutenant governor, Suffolk County sheriff, Boston City Council, and state Senate over the years. He was elected to the governor’s eight-member Executive Council in 1966.

As Judge Craven lobbied for appointment as clerk of the Boston Municipal Court, some political columnists nicknamed him Doughnuts Craven for his habit of visiting the Dover home of Francis W. Sargent, then the governor, with a dozen fresh doughnuts on Sundays. Sargent appointed him Municipal Court clerk in 1973.

“He accomplished his goal by literally waylaying the governor every day and begging for a job,’’ Globe columnist David Farrell wrote that year.

Governor Edward J. King appointed him to the Juvenile Court bench in 1982.

“My baby clothes have many pin holes from where a button for a particular candidate once adorned the dress,’’ his daughter, Katherine, who is executive director of the University of Massachusetts Building Authority, said in a eulogy at her father’s service late last month.

“My father cared deeply about Boston and making it a better place, particularly through politics,’’ she said.

He never went anywhere without donning a shirt and tie. One of his familiar bits of advice to his children and grandchildren was: “You’ve got to look good, talk good, and smell good, and only then will people give you some credit for having some brains.’’

Judge Craven, who retired in 2005, enjoyed joking and telling stories about all the politicos he had known, friends said. He met 17 Massachusetts governors in his lifetime.

“He taught me quite a bit about politics, but the thing that impressed me was what a decent human being he was,’’ Ireland said.

From the bench, he often would tell juvenile defendants they needed to get an education and should master math and English.

His rulings were sometimes controversial. In 1992, he took a boy out of foster care and sent him to live with his father, who had already abused him and lost custody to the state Department of Social Services. Judge Craven cited the recommendation of a court-appointed investigator as the basis for his decision to return the child to his father. “The bottom-line goal is to try and unify the family,’’ Judge Craven said.

He was married 41 years to the former Patricia McCarthy. They met when he was doing pro bono legal work and handled the probate work for the estate of one of her relatives, according to his family. They had three children.

Judge Craven was deeply devoted to his daughter Patricia Mary, who was born with Down syndrome. He and his wife resisted doctors’ advice in 1976 to place her in an institution, said Katherine.

At family parties, Judge Craven could be found laughing and joking with Patty and helping her eat dinner. “She was the light of his life,’’ his sister said. “They went every place together.’’

Deeply religious, Judge Craven liked to listen to radio broadcasts of the Rev. Joseph E. Manton from Roxbury’s Mission Church, formally known as the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. At his home, his frequent kisses on statues and pictures of the Blessed Mother left marks, according to his family. “His first instinct was to trust God in all things,’’ Katherine said.

In addition to his wife, daughters, and sister, Judge Craven leaves a son, John R. of West Roxbury; four other sisters, Patricia Ross of Dedham, Maureen Slade of Hyde Park, Kathleen Passanisi of Quincy, Barbara Broderick of Quincy; two brothers, Brendan of Quincy and Timothy of Dedham; and six grandchildren.

A funeral Mass was said at St. Theresa of Avila Church in West Roxbury. Burial was in Mount Benedict Cemetery in West Roxbury.