On March 5, the Dartmouth Board of Trustees elected three new trustees — Neal Katyal ’91, Joyce Sackey ’85 Med’89 and Scott Stuart ’81 — whose terms will begin July 1. Current Board member Elizabeth Cahill Lempres ’83 Th’84 will replace Laurel Richie ’81 as the new chair of the Board on June 14.
Additionally, current Board members Richard Lewis ’84 and Elizabeth Mahoney Loughlin ’89 have been reelected to a second four-year term.
Incoming chair Lempres, who has served on the Board since 2018 and is currently a senior partner emeritus at the consulting firm McKinsey & Company, said she hopes to focus on three areas that the current Board already prioritizes: applying lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic to the College’s education model moving forward, increasing diversity and inclusion and providing more support to Dartmouth’s graduate schools.
“Dartmouth has always had a special place in my life...and I bet many many people would tell you the same thing,” Lempres said. “It’s such a transformational experience. In my case, it turned my life into something different than I expected.”
Lempres said that her experience as a first-generation college student influenced her decision to become more involved in the College.
“Doing things for Dartmouth over time is an easy choice because I’ve had this sense of gratitude,” she said. “I’ve always had this acute sense that Dartmouth sort of took a bet on me, and that if and when I had the chance in whatever form that took, I hoped I could return that favor to the College.”
Richie voiced support for Lempres as her successor, citing Lempres’s background in consulting, involvement on the Thayer advisory board and numerous other corporate boards as experiences that will contribute to her success in the role.
New trustee Katyal, a litigation lawyer with expertise in patent and constitutional law, served as deputy solicitor general of the United States in 2011 and is currently a partner at the law firm Hogan Lovells. At 51, he has argued 44 cases before the Supreme Court — more than any other minority attorney in U.S. history.
As a new trustee, Katyal said the most important items on his agenda are preserving Dartmouth’s academic and social experience for undergraduate students and expanding the College’s accessibility to minority students.
According to Katyal, another agenda item that he is particularly interested in is helping the College forge new connections with the U.S. government and introducing more students to law and public interest litigation, something that he said College President Phil Hanlon brought up when he first called and asked if Katyal was interested in joining the Board.
“Right now I’m special prosecutor in the Derek Chauvin trial, and the very first time I’m allowed to publicly talk about it — which might be a long time from now — I want to do that at Dartmouth,” Katyal said. “I want to bring folks together to talk about these issues because Hanover, geographically, can be a little bit far from some of this, so I want to try and bridge that gap.”
Sackey is a new trustee with experience in higher education, medicine and the space of diversity, equity and inclusion. She serves on the Board of Advisors for the Geisel School of Medicine and is the associate provost and chief diversity officer for Tufts University’s Health Sciences Schools. Sackey has also served as an alumni interviewer and is a frequent guest speaker at the College and Geisel.
“First of all, I think it’s an honor,” Sackey said about being selected to the Board. “Dartmouth has always had a special place in my heart. It’s exciting that a school that has opened so many doors for me is now also tapping into my input, expertise and experiences as a member of the Board of Trustees.”
Originally admitted as an international student from Ghana, Sackey said her financial aid award from the College was crucial in providing her numerous educational opportunities.
“There’s no way that I would’ve been able to afford Dartmouth on my own, so the fact that I got a generous financial aid package enabled me to attend such an elite college and is definitely something that I’ll forever be grateful for,” she said.
As someone whose career has focused on diversity, equity and inclusion, Sackey said she envisions promoting and being able to provide input on issues of health equity and justice. Additionally, because engaging with graduate schools remains a priority for the Board, Sackey said she is “uniquely placed” to help bridge the gap as someone with experience at Geisel.
Stuart, a co-founder of Sageview Capital, said that the first item on his agenda is to “arrive and listen” to the Board to determine the key issues the Board of Trustees is focused on. He added that he plans to bring to the role his experience serving on around 30 different boards in his career for both for-profit and nonprofit organizations.
Byron Boston ’81, a member of the Presidential Commission on Financial Aid that was established to address the College’s financial aid challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, said he appreciates the diverse backgrounds, thought and people represented on the incoming Board of Trustees.
“When you look at the faces of the new trustees, they represent the world, and that’s very exciting at this point in history,” Boston said. “After all, Dartmouth is a global institution. It continues to have global influence and its largest influence is through the students and the people of Dartmouth.”
