Alumni Elect Five New Overseers

The Harvard Alumni Association announced the election of five new members of Harvard’s Board of Overseers—the University’s second-highest governing body—at its annual meeting on Commencement Day on Thursday.

The five alumni, who will serve six-year terms as Overseers, are R. Martin Chávez ’85, Fernande R. V. Duffly, Brian Greene ’84, Beth Y. Karlan ’78, and John Silvanus Wilson Jr.

The new members were selected from a slate of eight candidates nominated by an Alumni Association committee. Harvard graduates submitted 26,400 ballots to vote for five candidates who will join the 30-member board.

Harvard Overseers are charged with advising University leaders and reviewing schools and departments. The Board also works closely with the Harvard Corporation—the University’s highest governing body—to approve major University decisions.

With a diversity of skills and qualifications, the new Overseers join their peers of top professionals in business, law, and academia, among other fields. Chávez is the chief information officer at Goldman Sachs, and Duffley, a Harvard Law School graduate, is an associate justice at the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. The other three new members come from scholarly backgrounds. Wilson, who holds degrees from Harvard Divinity School and the Graduate School of Education, is the president of Morehouse College in Atlanta; Greene is a physics professor at Columbia; and Karlan is a obstetrics professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Also at Harvard’s 364th Commencement, the Alumni Association also named six new directors, who will each serve for three years: Paige Ennis, Ellen M. Guidera, Andrew Herwitz ’83, Sharon E. Jones ’77, Tracy Moore II ’06, and Ariel Zwang ’85.

—Staff writer Mariel A. Klein can be reached at mariel.klein@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @mariel_klein.