Board of Trustees Welcomes Six New Members

Kenneth J. Feld (Questrom’70) officially began his term as Board of Trustees chair this month. “Boston University is fortunate to share in the outstanding leadership and expertise of these new board members and officers,” he says. Photo by Cydney Scott

The six new trustees joining the Boston University Board of Trustees come from a range of fields, among them business, engineering, education, and philanthropy.

Newly elected to the board are William Bloom (CGS’82, Questrom’84), who had been an ex officio trustee as chair of the Board of Overseers; Ahmass Fakahany (Questrom’79), chief executive of the Altamarea Group and a former member of the Board of Overseers; Kenneth Z. Slater, principal of an asset management firm; and Malek Sukkar (ENG’92), chief executive officer of Averda International.

Also joining the board are educator Ruth A. Moorman (CAS’88, SED’89’09), who is taking an ex officio seat as incoming chair of the Board of Overseers, and J. Robb Dixon, a Questrom associate professor of operations and technology management, who holds an ex officio seat by virtue of being chair of the University Faculty Council.

All of the new trustees except Dixon, whose term started when he became Faculty Council chair in June, were elected in April and began their terms in September. At the same time, outgoing board chair Robert Knox (CAS’74, Questrom’75) and trustees Elaine Erbey (SED’72), Robert Hildreth, Ronald Garriques (ENG’86), Stuart Pratt (CAS’69), and Richard Shipley (Questrom’68,’72) completed their terms as trustees. Knox, Pratt, and Shipley were elected Trustees Emeriti for their long and distinguished service to the University and will also serve as University overseers.

Two new members have been elected to the Board of Overseers, Philip Libin and Lisa Ann Wong (CAS’00, GRS’00).

At the Board of Trustees September meeting, Kenneth J. Feld (Questrom’70) officially began his term as chairman. Feld, who had been board vice chairman since September 2014, chairs the $1.5 billion Campaign for Boston University and is one of the University’s most generous benefactors.

“It’s an honor to serve this incredible community of students, scholars, alumni, and friends as chairman of the board,” Feld says. “I hope to build upon the extraordinary work of my predecessors, Bob Knox and Alan Leventhal (Hon.’09), to meet the challenges and opportunities facing Boston University in the future.”

Feld reported at the September meeting that trustee Richard D. Reidy (Questrom’82) was elected vice chair of the Board of Trustees, and overseer William A. Kamer (LAW’78) vice chair of the Board of Overseers.

“Boston University is fortunate to share in the outstanding leadership and expertise of these new board members and officers,” Feld says. “We look forward to working with them to expand the University’s reputation as a global center for excellence in higher education and research.”

Trustees

William Bloom (CGS’82, Questrom’84) is a principal of the private investment company Jamacha LLC, and founding member, executive vice president, and former vice chairman of the Chelsea Property Group, a multi-billion-dollar, New York Stock Exchange–traded global developer of premium retail outlet centers (now a subsidiary of the Simon Property Group). He and his wife, Ruth, are trustees of the Jamacha Bloom Family Foundation, which has provided support to various educational institutions, including BU. Bloom earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Questrom and was captain of the 1984 Division I New England Champion rugby team. He is a member of the Athletics Director’s Advisory Council.

Bloom was cochair for the Campaign for Athletics, and in 2013, he and his wife established the Bloom Family Leadership Academy at BU, a leadership development program for student-athletes, coaches, and staff. They have also provided significant support for the construction of New Balance Field and for the establishment of the William and Ruth Bloom Scholarship Fund for student-athletes enrolled in the Questrom School of Business and the College of General Studies.

Ahmass Fakahany (Questrom’79) brings extensive business leadership experience to the board. As well as having been on the Board of Overseers, he was a member of Questrom’s Dean’s Advisory Board. He is the CEO and owner of the Altamarea Group, a SoHo-based hospitality company created by him and chef Michael White that runs restaurants. Before that venture, he was president and COO‎ of Merrill Lynch & Co.

‎Fakahany, who developed a passion for restaurants and hospitality in his teens, moved from a successful career in finance to become an entrepreneur in the hospitality sector. In a few short years, the Altamarea Group has been touted by Michelin, the James Beard Foundation, the New York Times, Forbes, Zagat, and many others. With 16 restaurants currently, Altamarea has developed brands included in several locations in the United States and in London, Istanbul, and Hong Kong.

As Merrill Lynch president and COO, Fakahany managed 63,000 employees in 40 countries and was instrumental in building the company’s global footprint. Prior to that, he was vice-chairman and chief administrative officer‎, executive vice president and chief financial officer (in this position he was named Best CFO’s in America by Institutional Investor), chief operating officer for the Global Markets and Investment Banking Group, and held several senior international assignments, including Asia Group CFO.

After graduating from BU, Fakahany earned an MBA from the Columbia‎ Graduate School of Business.

Kenneth Slater is a principal of asset management firm Tremont Partners LLC in Palm Beach, Fla., where he oversees a global investment and real estate portfolio. A former overseer and a former member of the College of Arts & Sciences Leadership Advisory Board, he is a member of the University’s International Advisory Board. He has a number of family ties to the University, including his father, Alvin Slater (CAS’40), who was a recipient of a CAS Distinguished Alumni Award, his brother, Richard Slater (CAS’71), and his daughter, Jacqueline Slater (Questrom’12). To date, the Slater family has given nearly $4 million to the University, primarily in support of the Alvin J. and Shirley Slater Professorship in Jewish Holocaust Studies at the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies and the Slater Family Professorship in Behavioral Economics, both at CAS.

A graduate of McGill University and the New England College of Law, Slater is on the national board of directors of Operation Homefront, a veterans aid group, and a director of the Palm Beach Fellowship of Christians and Jews.

Malek Sukkar (ENG’92) joined Averda, the largest sustainable environmental solutions provider in the Middle East and North Africa, after graduating from BU. Since 1993, he has held a number of positions in the company, among them vice president of services, managing the company’s human resources, IT, procurement, finance, and administrative services divisions. In 2000, he was named Averda’s chief executive officer, running all divisions of the Lebanon-based company and expanding its waste management, recycling, and water treatment operations to the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Morocco, Ireland, and South Africa, among other countries. Sukkar also is a director of Growthgate Capital and the founder and director of Quanon Capital, a London-based, single-family office investment company.

Sukkar, who earned a bachelor’s in manufacturing engineering at the College of Engineering, is a member of the BU International Advisory Board as well as of the University’s Campaign Steering Committee. Among his other nonprofit affiliations, he and his wife, Maria, an art patron and collector, have supported the Tate Galleries, the British Museum, the Beirut Art Center, and the Whitechapel Gallery.

Ruth Moorman (CAS’88, SED’89,’09) is an educator who began her career as a secondary special education teacher for students with learning disabilities and behavior problems. Her current areas of interests include educational leadership, supporting university and community partnerships, increasing opportunities for students in higher education, and funding early stage medical research. She earned a BA in political science, a master’s in teaching, and a doctorate in special education at BU. She is a member of the Boston University Academy Advisory Board and the CAS Leadership Advisory Board. Additionally, she is a member of the Harvard Graduate School of Education Dean’s Leadership Council, the Stanford Graduate School of Education Advisory Board, and the Visiting Committee of the Susan F. Smith Center for Women’s Cancers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Moorman is married to Sheldon N. Simon, a partner and equity analyst at Adage Capital Management and a member of the BU School of Public Health Advisory Board. The couple established the Moorman-Simon Interdisciplinary Career Development Professorships at BU, which support faculty engaged in interdisciplinary work and with appointments in more than one school or college. They have been advocates and supporters of higher education and cancer research, establishing the Moorman-Simon Program for Education and Schooling for Democracy and Citizenship at various research universities and helping to found the Men’s Collaborative to Cure Women’s Cancers at the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. They have two daughters, one a 2015 graduate of the BU Academy.

J. Robb Dixon is a Questrom associate professor of operations and technology management and the chair of the Faculty Council. Since joining BU in 1987, he has held a number of faculty positions. He received Questrom’s Broderick Prize for Excellence in Teaching in 2014. Dixon’s research focuses on the implementation of process technology innovations, operations strategy, and performance measurement. He coauthored The New Performance Challenge: Measuring Operations for World Class Competition and has published numerous articles on business process reengineering, manufacturing flexibility, operations strategy, and technological innovation.

Dixon holds a bachelor’s in biology from Wesleyan University and an MBA and a PhD in operations management from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business.

Overseers

Philip Libin is a managing director and general partner of General Catalyst Partners, a Cambridge, Mass.–based venture capital firm that has invested in such notable start-ups as Snapchat, Airbnb, and Kayak. He also is the cofounder and executive chairman of Evernote, Inc., the developer of a cross-platform application for digital note-taking, organizing, and archiving. Prior to founding Evernote, he established CoreStreet, an industry-leading provider of smart credential and identity management technologies, and Engine 5, a Boston-based internet software development company. The son of Russian immigrants, Libin was raised in the Bronx, N.Y., and is a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science. He later studied computer science at BU.

Lisa Ann Wong (CAS’00, GRS’00) was mayor of Fitchburg, Mass., for four consecutive terms, from November 2007 to January 2016. During her tenure, she is credited with strengthening the city’s finances, attracting business investment, increasing recreational areas, and improving schools and public safety. She is the first Asian-American woman to be elected a mayor in Massachusetts, as well as the youngest female mayor ever elected in the commonwealth. She earned a dual bachelor’s in international relations and economics and a master’s in economics at BU. Wong, who received the University’s Young Alumni Award last year, currently is a senior fellow of the Governing Institute, a leading media platform covering political-, policy-, and management-related matters for state and local government leaders. Her husband, Anthony Soto, is a former Holyoke, Mass., city councilor.

Michael S. Goldberg can be reached at michaelscottgoldberg@gmail.com.