Six alumni will join Princeton’s Board of Trustees this July, the University announced Tuesday, June 27. Kamil Ali-Jackson ’81, Nandi Leslie GS ’05, and Mutemwa Masheke ’23 will join the Board as elected alumni and young alumni trustees, as previously announced in May. Gordon Ritter ’86, Kimberly Johnson ’95, and Joshua Bolten ’76 were nominated by the Board and will also start their terms. Bolten, a Bush-era White House Chief of Staff, and Johnson both previously served on the Board from 2018 to 2022.
Eight trustees see their terms ending and will leave the Board: Amy Alving GS ’88, Sumir Chadha ’93, Laura Forese ’83, Bob Peck ’88, Congresswoman Terri Sewell ’86, Sarah Varghese ’19, James Yeh ’87, and Anthony Yoseloff ’96. None of the trustees were eligible to be immediately reappointed nor to have their term extended.
Only six trustees were elected to the Board, replacing eight, meaning that the size of the Board will shrink from 39 to 37.
The University’s longest-serving trustee, Louise “Weezie” Sams ’79, also had an expiring term. Yet Sams was reelected Chair of the Board. By the bylaws of the Board of Trustees, if a member’s term on the Board will expire before their four-year term as chair does, their term may be extended so they can serve four years as chair. This move is notable given that Sams’s term as trustee appears to expire simultaneously with the start of her term as chair.
With the extension of four years, Sams’s tenure on the Board will stretch to over two decades. Her tenure is already far longer than the next longest tenure, that of Henri Ford ’80, who has spent 11 years on the board. Sams once served as general counsel to CNN’s sister company. She left that role in 2019.
Ritter was elected by the Board to a four-year term as a Term Trustee. A former heavyweight rower at Princeton, he has since been a venture capitalist investing in a number of successful technology companies. The University’s release highlights his support of entrepreneurship and the University’s Keller Center for Innovation. He is a parent of a member of the Class of 2020.
Johnson was elected by the Board to a six-year term as a Charter Trustee. Serving in a number of high-profile roles at the government-sponsored mortgage financier Fannie Mae in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, she now serves as COO of the investment firm T. Rowe Price. Johnson is also a Princeton parent, with a child joining the Class of 2027.
Bolten, who will be a four-year Term Trustee, served in a number of roles at Princeton, including President of the Class of 1976, President of Ivy Club, and Chair of the Honor Committee. He was a prominent figure in the George W. Bush administration, serving as White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and White House Chief of Staff.
The three trustees previously announced, Ali-Jackson, Leslie, and Masheke, will serve four-year terms.
Of the new trustees, four graduated with A.B. degrees in social science fields, while one graduated with a B.S.E. in Computer Science and another with a Ph.D. in Applied and Computational Mathematics. The composition of the Board will shift slightly away from STEM fields in terms of numbers: half of the outgoing Board members studied STEM subjects as opposed to one-third of the new members. However, Leslie’s background in artificial intelligence adds important new expertise as AI-related issues gain prominence.
Three of the six new trustees are from the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. Masheke will be the Board’s only member from the African continent. Notably, four of six appointments are Black.
In regards to eating clubs, Cap and Gown Club’s representation on the Board will decline slightly from seven to five trustees, while Ivy will gain a second trustee. Three of the five new trustees who attended the University as undergraduates were not members of eating clubs.
Despite the departures, the new additions to the Board did not make it meaningfully younger. The median graduation year of the Board of Trustees remains unchanged at 1988, while the average graduation year, through rounding, moved slightly younger from 1991 to 1992.
The terms of the new trustees will begin on July 1, 2023.
Ryan Konarska is a News contributor for the ‘Prince.’
Please send corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
Correction: A previous version of this story did not note Johnson’s previous term as a trustee and incorrectly stated that she was the first charter trustee in three years. The story also incorrectly dated Sams’s departure from Turner. The ‘Prince’ regrets these errors.
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