Five new trustees elected to Board

by TALLEY HENNING BROWN

The Rockefeller Board of Trustees elected five new members in 2006, increasing the total number of trustees and trustees emeriti to 54. The new constituents include one lawyer, two chartered financial analysts, a private equity professional and — slightly unusual for Rockefeller — one musicologist who was also an academic administrator.
Karen M. Levy and Don Michael Randel, president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, were elected during the Board meeting in March, 2006. William E. Ford, chief executive of General Atlantic, and Paul B. Guenther, chairman of the New York Philharmonic, were elected in June. The November 15 meeting resulted in the election of AllianceBernstein chairman and CEO Lewis A. Sanders.
“These five individuals bring a diverse range of new experience to the university’s Board, and their contributions and insights in several areas will be valuable as the Board helps guide the university through the implementation of the strategic plan,” says Jane Rendall, the university’s corporate secretary.
Karen Levy was introduced to Rockefeller University through trustee Judith R. Berkowitz, a long-time friend who got her involved with events and lectures held by the Women & Science initiative. A graduate of New York University School of Law and former member of the NYU Law Review, Ms. Levy practiced law at Stroock and Stroock and Lavan from 1977 to 1979, and at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison from 1979 to 1981. Ms. Levy, who is also on the boards of Brown University, Juilliard and the American Jewish Committee, currently serves on Rockefeller’s hospital committee. “I am especially impressed by the working objective of the university, the focus on the interconnections between disciplines, the concept of the open lab and the commitment to getting the very best scientists here to expand the general knowledge base,” says Ms. Levy. “I find everything going on in medicine today absolutely astounding and I am privileged to be a part of an institution that is right on the cutting edge.”
Dr. Randel comes to Rockefeller with a background in music history and a career in academia. After earning bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in music from Princeton University, he served on the music faculty of Cornell University for 32 years and became provost of the university in 1995. From 2000 to 2006 he was president of the University of Chicago, where he led efforts to strengthen the university’s relationship with the Argonne National Laboratory, one of the largest research centers of the U.S. Department of Energy, and to restructure the university’s programs in biology and medicine. Dr. Randel directed the University of Chicago’s campaign to raise $2 billion, the largest endowment campaign in the school’s history. In 2006 he became president of the Mellon Foundation, which supports higher education, performing arts, libraries, museums and research in information technology. “For all that I am trained in the humanities and the arts, I have long been much engaged with the sciences and am therefore extremely pleased and proud to continue that engagement at one of the world’s very greatest institutions for research and teaching,” says Dr. Randel.
William Ford joined General Atlantic, a private equity firm, in 1991, after working at Morgan Stanley as an investment banker. He holds an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business. He sits on the Board’s investment committee and technology transfer committee, an assignment that takes advantage of his experience in finance. “I believe biomedicine will undergo a period of significant innovation over the next 50 years and that Rockefeller University will play an important leadership role in new advances,” says Mr. Ford, who is also on the boards of several educational and nonprofit organizations.
Paul Guenther was introduced to Rockefeller through his long friendship with Board Chair Russell Carson. A chartered financial analyst, Mr. Guenther spent most of his career with the PaineWebber Group, and was its president from 1988 until his retirement in 1995. He then turned his attention to the nonprofit sector. He was chairman of Fordham University from 1998 until 2004 and became chairman of the New York Philharmonic in 1996. He currently serves on Rockefeller’s finance and operations and development committees, where he plans to focus on increasing the visibility of the university and its research. “Rockefeller University is one of New York City’s jewels and we need to make more people aware of what a unique place Rockefeller is, what it means to New York and what it means to science,” says Mr. Guenther.
Lewis Sanders, a chartered financial analyst with a degree in operations research from Columbia University, spent 32 years at Sanford C. Bernstein and Company, an investment research firm, becoming its CEO in 1992. Upon Bernstein’s merger with Alliance Capital in 2000, he became vice chairman of AllianceBernstein, was named CEO in 2003 and chairman in 2005. His strong personal interest in cell biology was an incentive to join Rockefeller’s board, and his background as an investment analyst in medical technology-related industries will lend itself to the technology transfer committee, where he currently serves. “I hope to be a factor in insuring that the commercial potential of the university’s intellectual property is fully developed, for the benefit of the faculty, the university itself and for humankind,” says Mr. Sanders.