DATE: June 12, 2014
TO: THE NYU COMMUNITY
FROM: Martin Lipton, Chair, NYU Board of Trustees

 

I am pleased to inform you that the NYU Board of Trustees has elected William Berkley as the Chair-Designate of the Board. The next 16 months will serve as a transition period, and he will take on the responsibilities of Chairman at the end of my term in October 2015.

Bill -- who is the Chairman and CEO of W.R. Berkley Corporation and a 1966 graduate of NYU's Stern School -- has a long history of involvement with the University. He was named a member of the Stern School's Board of Overseers in 1987 (and chair in 2000), has been a member of the NYU Langone Medical Center Board since 2007, and has been an NYU Trustee since 1995 and a Vice Chair of the Board since 2004. He is respected by his fellow Board members for his intelligence, his leadership, and his long-range outlook. And he is liked and admired by them for his deep and longstanding involvement with NYU, his generosity and devotion to the University, and his clear commitment to seeing NYU continue to make the kind of great strides that has carried it so far over the last three decades.

Those who know him know that the success of the University -- its faculty, students, administrators, and staff -- is never far from the forefront of his thoughts. He is a loyal supporter and champion of the Stern School and has been enthusiastically involved in NYU's efforts to foster entrepreneurship and innovation across the University. On the most prominent matters affecting NYU -- our global efforts, the importance of maintaining NYU's academic momentum, strengthening our academic enterprise, the importance of the faculty role in governance, etc. -- he has been an active contributor to the discourse. As a Trustee, he has been tireless in seeking to better know and understand the University and the views of its various constituencies, and he has been deeply involved with me in the work of both the Special Committee on Governance and the Joint Committee of NYU Stakeholders, which have done so much to foster dialogue.

On behalf of my Board colleagues and the entire NYU community, I offer Bill our congratulations. The coming years will be important ones for NYU -- indeed, for higher education in general -- and I am confident the future of the University will be in superb hands under his leadership.