Our Founder: Alan E. Lewis
Grand Circle Corporation
1948-2022
Alan E. Lewis, founder of Grand Circle Corporation, was a social entrepreneur, business leader, and philanthropist with a lifelong vision to help change people’s lives.
Alan and his wife, Harriet, acquired Grand Circle Travel in 1985 and transformed the $23 million travel company that was losing $2 million a year into a fast-moving, global enterprise with gross sales exceeding $600M, more than 35 offices worldwide, and in 85 countries have 3,000 associates, guides, and ship crew. Today, Grand Circle Travel is joined by two other travel entities: Overseas Adventure Travel, acquired in 1993, and Grand Circle Cruise Line, which Alan established in 1998. The family of travel companies make up Grand Circle Corporation, the leader in international travel, adventure, and discovery for Americans aged 50 and older.
In addition to founding Grand Circle Corporation, Alan and Harriet created Alnoba, a leading place for nonprofits to develop and honor daring leaders on the frontline for equity and justice around the world.
He also founded the the Kensington Investment Company for the Lewis Family’s real estate holdings, investments and philanthropic activities in 1983. Today, KIC is primarily focused on real estate operations and development with various properties in Boston, Utah and across New England with more than one million square feet of residential and commercial property. They have alternative investments around the world, including more than 80 companies in Israel.
Alan was deeply committed to use his leadership, life experience, and business success to advance his passion to develop and support strong activist leaders; fight for social justice for the young and indigenous peoples; and help save the earth we share.
His True North was in Kensington, New Hampshire a small town that his maternal ancestors helped settle in the 1600s and where he spent his boyhood summers. Its 600-acre landscape with 10 miles of trails, wildlife habitats, sculptures and unique gathering places is a sacred place where it inspires daring leaders to change the world. It is also the base for the family’s charitable endeavors through the Alnoba Lewis Family Foundation and its entities, which include Pinnacle Leadership and Team Development, Grand Circle Foundation, and Eastman’s Corner. Since 1981, Alnoba Lewis Family Foundation, together with Grand Circle Foundation, has pledged or donated $250 million for more than 500 projects in 50 countries, as well as closer to home in Boston and New Hampshire.
Believing you can lead from anywhere and that strong leaders make strong companies and communities; Alan was especially devoted to leadership development. In 1993, he founded Pinnacle Leadership and Team Development, which has trained hundreds of nonprofit and business leaders from more than 60 countries. He had a lot of first-hand experience in crisis leadership, having successfully navigated his companies through more than a hundred world events, natural disasters, and other calamities, including the Gulf War, 9-11, the 2008-09 financial downturn and the COVID 19 pandemic. He has authored, Leading through Turbulence: How a Values-Based Culture Can Build Profits and Make the World a Better Place, published by McGraw Hill, and his 10 Keys of Leading in Crisis provide hard won wisdom and guidance to other leaders.
Alan has been recognized for his philanthropic leadership, including by the late Paul Newman’s Committee to Encourage Corporate Philanthropy for “CEO Leadership and Innovation in Philanthropy” and as Ernst & Young’s New England “Social Entrepreneur of the Year.”
Alan passed away on November 2, 2022. He was an avid traveler, loved work, was a persistent reader of history and biographies, a lover of risk, and a lifelong fan of all Boston sports teams — no matter how they were playing. Above all else, he was a family man, committed to his wife, Harriet, their children, Edward and Charlotte, and their three granddaughters.
