U. names nine new trustees

The University has named nine new members to the Board of Trustees, effective July 1, according to a statement on June 18.

According to the statement, the new trustees are Heather Gerken ’91, Anthony H.P. Lee ’79, Brad Smith ’81, Sumir Chadha ’93, Bob Peck ’88, Anthony Yoseloff ’96, Amy Alving GS ’88, Terri Sewell ’86, and Sarah Varghese ’19.

The trustees whose terms will be ending on June 30 are Tumi Akinlawon ’15, Lori Fouche ’91, Arminio Fraga GS ’85, Kathryn Hall ’80, Paul Maeder ’75, Anne Sherrerd GS ’87, and Doris Sohmen-Pao ’93.

Charter trustees Gerken, Lee, and Smith will serve for eight years, and term trustees Chadha, Peck, and Yoseloff will serve for four years. Charter and term trustees are elected by the board.

Alumni trustees Alving and Sewell were elected by alumni to serve four-year terms.

Varghese, who graduated in June with a degree in computer science, was elected to the Young Alumni Trustee (YAT) position this spring. Each year, the junior, senior, and two youngest alumni classes elect one member of the senior class to serve as an alumni trustee.

Varghese believes the position is important in many ways for representing student opinions.

“I was happy, I was humbled, and excited to be able to bring student voices into these discussions,” Varghese said.

Alving, a director at mortgage loan company Fannie Mae, a board member for IT company DXC Technology, and a board member for advanced materials corporation Arconic, earned her Ph.D in mechanical and aerospace engineering from the University. She served as a White House Fellow at the U.S. Department of Commerce and worked at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for seven years. She served for eight years on the University’s advisory council for mechanical and aerospace engineering.

Chadha is the co-founder and managing director of WestBridge Capital as well as the co-founder and former managing director of Sequoia Capital India. In 2018, he helped establish the M.S. Chadha Center for Global India, a part of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS), to bring scholars of various disciplines together to study contemporary India. Chadha is a member of the PIIRS advisory council. He earned a B.S.E. in computer science from the University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Gerken is the Dean and Sol & Lillian Goldman Professor of Law at Yale Law School and a leading expert on constitutional law and election law. She earned a degree in history from the University and a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School. Last year, she interviewed Supreme Court justices Sonia Sotomayor ’76 and Elena Kagan ’81 for the “She Roars: Celebrating Women at Princeton” conference.

She was also an alumni trustee at the University from 2014–18.

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In an email statement to The Daily Princetonian, Gerken said that she is “honored and grateful to have a chance to serve.”

Lee, a private investor and director of Aberon Pty Ltd., graduated from the University with a degree in mathematics and earned an MBA from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He was a term trustee from 2014–18 and has served on various University committees. In 2008, he established the Anthony H.P. Lee ’79 Fund for the Study of Jazz.

Peck is a managing director at San Francisco-based investment firm FPR Partners, which he founded in 2003. He earned a degree in history from the University and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. The first person in his family to attend college, he established the Bob Peck ’88 Family Fund for the Freshman Scholars Institute in 2014, which allows incoming first-year students to gain lab-based training in the sciences and engineering.

Sewell, who earned a degree from the Wilson School, a master’s degree from Oxford University, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, has served as a U.S. Representative for Alabama’s 7th congressional district since 2011. At the 2018 “She Roars” conference, she spoke of being Selma High School’s first black valedictorian and the first student from her school to attend an Ivy League Institution.

Smith has been the president of Microsoft since 2015 and served as a term trustee for the University from 2014–2018. He earned his degree from the Wilson School and a J.D. from Columbia University. Smith has served on multiple committees at the University. Last fall, the University partnered with Microsoft on a microbiology and computer modeling research collaboration.

Varghese participated in the Novogratz Bridge Year program in Kunming, China, working with an anti-human trafficking NGO. Some of her activities at the University include serving as an Orientation leader, an Outdoor Action leader, a peer tutor and learning consultant at the McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning, and a fellow with the Fields Center. She will join Digital McKinsey’s New York location as a business analyst while applying to master’s programs.

Yoseloff graduated from the University with a degree from the Wilson School, earning a J.D. from Columbia Law School and an MBA from the Columbia Graduate School of Business Administration. He is the co-executive managing member of global institutional investment management firm Davidson Kempner Capital Management LP and has volunteered in the Princeton community for over 20 years. Recently, Yoseloff served on the Executive Committee of the University’s five-year Aspire campaign, which raised funds to strengthen the University’s teaching and research programs.

Alving, Chadha, Lee, Peck, Sewell, and Smith had not responded to request for comment at the time of publication. Yoseloff declined to comment due to Davidson Kempner Capital Management LP’s general media policy.