News » Bates College Board of Trustees

Five alumni elected to Bates Board of Trustees

Bates News — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:25:46 +0000

President Elaine Tuttle Hansen has announced five appointments to the Bates College Board of Trustees: Robert E. Burke of Boston, Mass.; Marjorie Northrop Friedman of Dallas, Texas; Jennifer L.Guckel of Charlestown, Mass.; Dana Petersen Moore of Baltimore, Md.; and Quoc K. Tran of Omaha, Neb.

Burke is executive vice president and chief operating officer of Boston Properties Inc., one of the nation’s largest real estate investment trusts listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Prior to his appointment to this position, in 1998, he served 12 years as senior vice president and co-manager of the trust’s office in Washington, D.C., where he started his career with Boston Properties in 1979.

Previously, Burke spent more than seven years with the Kennedy Library Corp., where he directed the development of the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. He has also held engineering and management positions with General Electric, SCM Corp. and Harvard University. Burke is a 1959 graduate of Bates’ dual degree program: He spent three years at Bates and two years at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, earning bachelor’s degrees in science and civil engineering, respectively.

Friedman is a 1995 honors graduate of Bates who majored in geology. She earned her law degree from Vermont Law School in 1999 and was an attorney at Holland & Knight in New York City until the birth of her first child, in 2001. As a Bates alumna, Friedman chaired her 10th Reunion Gift Committee and volunteers for Alumni-in-Admissions.

Friedman and her husband, Peter Friedman of the Bates class of 1992, were members of the Bates College New York Council until moving to Dallas. They are committee members of The Campaign for Bates, which has a fund-raising goal of $120 million, and co-chairs of the Mount David Society, an organization of annual donors who put the college first in their philanthropy. In October 2004, the Friedmans received the Distinguished Young Alumni Award, presented for exceptional volunteer service to Bates and for career distinction to people who graduated 15 or fewer years ago.

Guckel, a 1988 Bates graduate who graduated summa cum laude with a major in economics, is a managing partner in the consulting firm Spencer and Bean LLC. Previously she served as chief operating officer for Sentient Jet, a private jet service, and for Circles Inc., a firm that provides life-management services that major corporations extend to their employees. She was also an operations executive for Einstein Bros. Bagels.

After Bates, Guckel earned a master’s degree in business from Stanford University. She is active in Bates alumni affairs as a career services volunteer, a member of the Alumni Council, a subcommittee co-chair for The Campaign for Bates and chair of the Bates Boston Business Networking group.

Moore, a 1979 Bates graduate who majored in English, is a partner in the Baltimore law firm of Whiteford, Taylor & Preston. She practices in the areas of product liability, asbestos personal injury litigation and general corporate defense. She received her J.D. degree in 1982 from Washington and Lee University.

Moore was named one of “Maryland’s Top 100 Women” by The Daily Record in 1997 and 2000, and this year was named to that publication’s “Circle of Excellence.” She served as president of the Baltimore-based Monumental City Bar Association and has been honored by the Alliance of Black Women Attorneys and the National Bar Association. She has served on the Alumni Board of Washington and Lee University School of Law, as well as the Board of Visitors for the University of Maryland School of Law. In Bates affairs, Moore has served as class president and an Alumni-in-Admissions volunteer, and is a member of the Alumni Council and the College Key, an honorary service society.

Tran, a 1995 Bates graduate who majored in rhetoric, is an executive at the investment firm Wallace Weitz & Co., Omaha. Previously he worked as an analyst for Northwest Airlines and for Zurich Kemper Investments, where he was prominently involved in launching and managing the Kemper Aggressive Growth Fund. He has also worked at Goldman Sachs Group.

At Bates, Tran was a nationally ranked debater with his Brooks Quimby Debate Society teammate Chris Tiné. He was nationally ranked among the top five in American Parliamentary Debate and competed in championships in the United States, England and Australia. He received a master’s degree in business from the University of Chicago in 1999. As a Bates alumnus, he has been active in alumni affairs and fund raising, and as an admissions and career services volunteer.

The new Bates trustees will serve five-year terms. Guckel and Tran were nominated by the Bates Alumni Association and confirmed by the trustees. Burke, Friedman and Moore were elected by the Bates College Board of Trustees. Bates trustees serve a maximum of two terms.

Four alumni elected to Bates Board of Trustees

Bates News — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 14:25:10 +0000

President Elaine Tuttle Hansen has announced four appointments to the Bates College Board of Trustees: Jamie P. Merisotis of Washington, D.C.; Karl-Olof Mills of San Francisco, Calif.; Mary Henderson Pressman of Kansas City, Mo.; and Valerie A. Smith of Princeton, N.J.

Merisotis, a 1986 Bates graduate who majored in political science, is the founding president of the Institute for Higher Education Policy in Washington. A champion of the idea that society and individuals reap rich rewards from higher education, Merisotis has focused much of his work on improving access to higher education for low-income, minority and other underrepresented populations.

Prior to founding the Institute, Mr. Merisotis served as executive director of the National Commission on Responsibilities for Financing Postsecondary Education, a bipartisan commission appointed by the president and congressional leadership.

He authored the commission’s heralded final report, “Making College Affordable Again,” many of whose recommendations became national policy during the 1990s. He also assisted in the creation of the Corporation for National and Community Service (AmeriCorps).

Merisotis is past president of the Bates Alumni Association and has volunteered often in admissions and alumni programs. He has received numerous awards and honors in the higher education field, and was named one of the top young leaders (under the age of 45) in American higher education by Change magazine.

Mills, a 1982 Bates graduate who majored in English, is co-founder of JKM Investment Partners, a private investment partnership in Oakland, Calif.

Mills has an extensive background in business and investing, as well as community service. In 2003 he co-founded JKM with William Jurika, with whom he has worked since 1987. Previously Mills served as vice chairman and portfolio manager at Jurika & Voyles, Inc., an investment management firm also based in Oakland.

With a longstanding passion for the arts, and opera in particular, Mills joined the board of the San Francisco Opera Association in 1998. He was elected its vice president in 2001 and president in 2002.

After graduating from Bates, Mills earned a master’s degree in management from Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management in 1984, with majors in marketing and finance. Mills was awarded the Chartered Financial Analyst charter by the Association for Investment Management and Research in 1992.

Pressman, a 1978 Bates graduate who majored in psychology, has lived throughout the United States and overseas, and has interviewed prospective students for Bates everywhere she has lived. Her commitment to community service has remained constant while she has raised her three children. During her years in England, she served on the board of the Junior League of London, and as a resident of New Canaan, Conn., she served on “New Canaan Cares,” an organization dedicated to promoting alcohol awareness, drug awareness and healthy choices for teens.

Pressman currently serves on the boards of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Kansas City, and the Kansas City Ballet. Pressman also is active at Pembroke Hill School, where her children are entering fifth, eighth and eleventh grades.

As a Bates alumna, Pressman has been a class agent, co-chair of her 20th Reunion Gift Committee, chair of her 25th Reunion Committee, and active in Alumni in Admissions. She has worked on behalf of the alumni fund and was president of her class.

Smith, a 1975 Bates graduate who majored in English, is the Woodrow Wilson Professor of Literature in the Department of English at Princeton University and director of the university’s Program in African American Studies. A Princeton faculty member from 1980 to 1989, she joined the Department of English at UCLA in 1989, where she also chaired the interdepartmental program in African American studies and co-directed the Cultural Studies in the African Diaspora Project. She returned to Princeton in 2000.

Smith’s teaching and research interests are in the areas of African American literature and culture, feminist studies and film studies. She lectures nationally and internationally, and has taught for several summers at the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College. Smith has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Ford Foundation and the Bunting Institute.

In February 2004, Smith gave a Black History Month lecture at Bates titled Memory and the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. She is the author and editor of several books, and is currently writing a book on the cultural memory of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement.

Mills and Smith were elected by the Bates College Board of Trustees to fill five-year vacancies. Merisotis and Pressman were nominated by the Bates Alumni Association and confirmed by the trustees to serve five-year terms. Bates trustees serve a maximum of two consecutive terms.