Alumni-Elected Trustees

Wesleyan enabled me to be intellectually challenged in an environment that encouraged independence of thought. My time at Wes provided a foundation that shaped my leadership career in the pharmaceutical industry. The University’s interdisciplinary model prepared me to evaluate complex data and challenge assumptions. Importantly, I also learned that I could define my own path and still be successful.

Over the past three decades, I have had the opportunity to develop and license numerous infectious disease drugs and vaccines including the COVID-19 vaccine. I have led global, science-driven organizations through strategic transformation, portfolio prioritization, and organizational scaling. Over the course of my career, I have used a disciplined approach to align organizational mission with long-range planning whilst prioritizing risk oversight and adjusting to changing regulatory environments.

Over the next three years, Wesleyan has an opportunity to strengthen its strategic focus and reinforce its competitive differentiation. Key priorities should include enhancing financial resilience, continued investment in areas of academic distinction, and further deepening alumni engagement to drive institutional growth. Critical to Wesleyan’s future is the continued prioritization of diversity and inclusivity.

I am prepared to contribute meaningfully to these efforts by using an enterprise-level strategic mindset, data-driven decision-making, and governance experience to ensure measurable progress against defined goals. Wesleyan has been formative in my personal and professional life—helping me build lifelong friendships and shaping who I became as a leader. I would welcome the opportunity to serve actively in shaping its next chapter.

• National Medical Association member
• Infectious Diseases Society of American fellow
• New Medical College of Medicine lecturer
• Wesleyan Distinguished Alumni Award recipient, 2025
• Wesleyan Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching Committee member
• Active member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. for 30+ years

The moment we are in demands principled, engaged leadership. Institutions of higher education—and the core tenets of a liberal arts education—are increasingly under pressure. I strongly share President Roth’s view that universities must serve as “laboratories for freedom”: places where students learn to think independently, explore their passions, and build relationships that enable their future aspirations.

Attending Wesleyan was a game-changer for me; I was challenged everywhere—in the classroom, on the athletic fields and engaging with my classmates around campus. I learned how to think, how to debate, how to listen and how to adjust my own perspectives as I gained new information. All of that was foundational to the person and professional I have become over the last 35+ years.

My professional experience as a strategic and organizational advisor to large, global enterprises will complement the expertise already represented on the Board of Trustees. Much of my work has involved facilitating difficult, high-stakes conversations among leadership teams with diverse viewpoints, all while navigating complex decisions around strategy, resource allocation, and stakeholder needs—often in times of uncertainty or crisis. As challenges facing higher education continue to intensify, my experience advising client executive teams as well as my internal leadership roles of Chief Diversity Officer and Chair of our Responsible Use of AI Council, will allow me to contribute constructively to the Board’s collective capabilities and help Wesleyan navigate these immensely challenging times.

I am eager to tap into these experiences and capabilities to give back to our alma mater, as my time at Wesleyan absolutely turbo-charged my future.

• Bain & Company, Inc. Chief Diversity Officer and Chair, Responsible Use of AI Council
• Advisor to STEAMe LLC (workforce development start-up; Chicago)
• Integral in founding and governing Rowe Elementary School in Chicago
• Three sport varsity athlete at Wesleyan (soccer, squash, softball); two-time Jones Cup winner
• Wesleyan Athletic Advisory Council member

Having recently retired from the architectural firm I founded thirty-four years ago, I am now prioritizing giving back to the world in which we live. This is not a new goal for me; however, I see a great need at this time in our society for civil discourse and acts of kindness to be front and center in our interactions with others.  

A major strength of mine is being a consensus builder. In an architecture practice there is a need to coordinate a client's vision with their financial and schedule realities, along with consulting engineers, contractors, and the municipalities in which projects are located. Within my architectural firm itself, I provided leadership that encouraged an individual's personal growth, which resulted in the firm's overall success. Having different, if not at times, opposing views serves to enrich a project's outcome. In my practice I have had a great deal of experience with congregate housing—be it senior housing from independent living through skilled nursing and memory care, or student housing with Tufts University and Wellesley College. At Tufts I designed student housing providing dormitories that are solar ready, passive house compliant, cost efficient, and fitting into residential neighborhoods. 

I am delighted to give my time and energy to Wesleyan as an expression of how much I feel indebted to the University for my education and the people who I grew up with during my years in Middletown, who remain in my life fifty years later.  Together, we get to transition from starting our careers, growing families, experiencing personal losses along with new business joys, and retirement. It would be an honor to expand my involvement at Wesleyan by joining the Board of Trustees. I would dedicate my time on the Board, if invited, by providing the same energy, respect, and collaborative work ethic in solving the challenges that Wesleyan faces at this time. 

• Non-profit board work with the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (former board chair), Gateway Arts and the Concord Center for Visual Arts.
• Awards from: New England AIA, Boston Society of Architects, Assisted Living Facilities Association and more
• Work has been featured in the books: Houses of God by Michael Crosbie and Contemporary Boston Architects by Ashley Rooney
• Reunion committee member
• Former Wesleyan Alumni Admission Volunteer
• Long-time Wesleyan Class Secretary

This is a profound moment for higher education and civil society, one that the Wesleyan community is poised to meet with its extraordinary blend of creative and critical thinking, its rigorous engagement across a diversity of fields, and its commitment to justice. If elected as a trustee, I would use my experiences in urban planning, public policy, and institutional philanthropy to help protect Wesleyan’s bold leadership in this moment. I would also support advancement of Wesleyan’s core mission, championing engagement of alumni across all ages, innovating our curriculum, and ensuring all are welcome at Wesleyan.

My professional experience is anchored in institutions serving their communities. As an urban planning consultant, that meant helping to advise government agencies and civic institutions alike on economic development, public policy, and community engagement. And now at Trinity Church, that means serving as part of a 328-year-old philanthropic operation that not only gives more than $30 million a year but also walks alongside grantees as they navigate newfound financial and legal challenges.

At Wesleyan, I served on the Wesleyan Student Assembly, wrote for the Argus and a campus blog, and embraced several student groups. Since graduating, I have continued to find meaningful ways to serve Wesleyan, including through the Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship. Today, I serve on boards and advisory committees for efforts as diverse as a nonprofit newsroom, a funder collaborative, and a political party.

I am the child of immigrants, the first in my family to complete high school. I would not have the opportunities that I do without my Wesleyan education. As we approach our bicentennial milestone in 2031, it would be an honor to bring what I have learned back home to Wesleyan, where I once served as a student representative to the Board of Trustees.

• Board Member & Treasurer, Next City
• Co-Chair of the Brooklyn Chapter & State Committee Member, Working Families Party
• Former Senior Analyst at HR&A Advisors
• Former Digital Communications Manager at FoodCorps
• Former Advisory Board Member, Wesleyan Patricelli Center for (Social) Entrepreneurship
• Former Community Outreach Committee (COCO) Chair and Information Technology Committee Chair, Wesleyan Student Assembly
• Wesleyan University Service Award (2023) and Edgar Beckham Helping Hand Award, (2013)

Wesleyan didn’t just educate me—it expanded my sense of what was possible. Academically, I was challenged to think with rigor and curiosity. Socially and personally, I found community, voice, and confidence I hadn’t known I was capable of. By the time I graduated with honors in Sociology, I left not just with a degree, but with a fundamentally different understanding of who I could become.

My first professional opportunity in communications came through a Wesleyan connection—a reminder that this institution’s reach extends far beyond Middletown. From that foundation, I have spent the better part of twenty years building a career in strategic communications across some of the most complex and high-profile organizations in the country.

I have spent my professional life helping institutions define who they are, navigate moments of uncertainty, and communicate their value to the world. I know what it means to advise senior leadership on positioning and reputation. I understand governance, have managed crisis communications, led cross-functional strategy and translated complex ideas for diverse communities, amplifying voices that might otherwise go unheard.

I have benefited immensely from what Wes provided and continues to provide to the students who walk the paths on campus—the intellectually rigorous liberal arts education, a powerful network, and the doors that Wesleyan can open.

Serving as an Alumni Elected Trustee would be, without question, the most meaningful contribution I could make to the institution that gave me so much.

• Global communications leader
• Former Communications positions at McDonalds, Early Start and Kemper
• AbbVie President’s Award Recipient
• Hispanic Scholarship Fund Advisory Council
• Wesleyan Alumni Class Secretary
• Former Admission volunteer, Reunion committee member, Fundraising volunteer and Young Alumni Council member
• Wesleyan Class President, Equestrian team member, House Manager and co-chair of Ajua Campos

Educational institutions have historically provided access to information and expertise. What is the value of a Wesleyan education when information is commoditized and emerging technologies possess inhuman processing power? Students and families logically seek guaranteed return on their education investment. Paradoxically, a constantly changing world values discernment of signal from noise, exploratory discomfort from conformist comfort, and calculated risk from guaranteed reward. Wesleyan forges bold, rigorous curiosity.

I have navigated my own pathless career path with a Wesleyan compass, arcing from investment banking to healthcare operations to innovation consulting to leadership development. No linear route directed me from capitalizing businesses to cultivating strategic human development. It emerged following a curiosity increasingly valuable in a world of decreasing certainty.

As an Alumni-Elected Trustee, I will champion Wesleyan’s mission as a practitioner. I have board experience to know when and how to evangelize and challenge. I have professional experience meeting organizational objectives with development and capital strategies. I spend my days with executive teams translating the gray space between academic idealism and real-world application.

I am a proudly Southern, queer man. Wesleyan equipped me with skills to navigate the world and supportive relationships to find myself in it. The world needs more Wesleyan, and I would be honored to serve its future.

• ConnectUsHealth Board Member and Chair of Finance Committee
• Wesleyan Omicron Delta Epsilon honors society, Beta Theta Pi Fraternity President & Treasurer, John A. Decker Scholar
• Former Wesleyan Patricelli Center for Entrepreneurship Mentor
• Lecturer at Wesleyan, Stanford, Vanderbilt, & Middle Tennessee State Universities
• Former Head of Innovation & Financial Strategy at Stoked
• Former Director of Culture & Strategy at e+CancerCare
• Eight-year Big Brothers Big Sisters Mentor