BU welcomed three new members to the Board of Trustees in September, while an ex officio member became a regular trustee. Photo by Janice Checchio

Trustees

BU’s Board of Trustees Gains New Members

All are veteran supporters of the University

The BU Board of Trustees welcomed three new members last month, most drawn from the University’s Board of Overseers, the advisory body to the trustees.

Former Board of Overseers chair Nathaniel Dalton (LAW’91) has become a regular member after serving as a trustee ex officio, a spot reserved for the chair of the Board of Overseers.

“Our recent success as a leading private research university is built on the foundation of a strong and engaged board,” says Robert A. Brown, president of BU. “New members bring new insights and perspectives from their professional lives and their interest in higher education. Our bylaws provide for the balance of needed longevity and renewal of the board that has proven critical for governing our complex institution.”

Nathaniel Dalton (LAW’91)

Dalton is one of the cofounders and a senior advisor and member of the board of directors of Affiliated Managers Group, a global asset management firm based in West Palm Beach, Fla., and Beverly, Mass., with approximately $775 billion in assets under management across its affiliated firms. He started with the company as its first general counsel, and then held a series of roles, including chief operating officer, president, and chief executive officer. Before AMG, Dalton was a mergers-and-acquisitions attorney with the Boston law firm Goodwin Procter LLP.

He was elected to the Board of Overseers in 2015 and has served the University in other positions: as a member of the Campaign for Boston University steering committee, BU’s International Advisory Board (which helps guide BU’s overseas efforts), and the William Fairfield Warren Society. 

He and his wife funded the Dalton Family Career Development Professorship and the Dr. Cecile Kaplan Dalton Career Development Professorship. Dalton is also the founder, president, and chairman of Guard Support of Massachusetts, a nonprofit that provides support for family members of deployed National Guardsmen and women.

The three new trustees:  

Cynthia Cohen (MET’77)

Cohen joins the Board of Trustees ex officio as the new chair of the Board of Overseers. A member of Metropolitan College’s Dean’s Advisory Board, she is a career consultant and the founder and chief strategist of IMPACT 2040, a strategy firm focused on start-ups and emerging-growth companies who are innovating and disrupting their markets. Prior to that, Cohen was a partner in management consulting at Deloitte and built the firm Strategic Mindshare, which provided consulting to the retail and consumer product industries. She has been a director of multiple public company boards, including Sports Authority and Office Depot, and now takes a leadership role on several private company boards. Cohen frequently speaks to companies, the media, and conferences on consumer trends as well as corporate governance topics.   

Cohen has supported several initiatives at BU, including the creation of the Innovation Pathway, which guides BU students to funding and other resources to support their entrepreneurial projects, and the Cynthia Cohen Scholarship Fund, which supports women students studying at Questrom. She is an active mentor to young women pursuing business careers and frequently speaks about entrepreneurship and consulting as a profession to student clubs. Last spring she was the recipient of Questrom’s Henry Morgan Award, given for her efforts to support BU’s innovation and entrepreneurship.

Michael D. Fricklas (LAW’84)

The Board of Overseers vice chair, Fricklas is chief legal officer of Advance, which operates and invests in communications and tech businesses that include Condé Nast (publisher of the New Yorker, Vogue, Vanity Fair, GQ, Wired, and others), Advance Local (publisher of the Oregonian, the Newark Star-Ledger, and other papers and digital properties), Stage Entertainment (a European producer of musicals), American City Business Journals, Leaders Group, Turnitin, 1010data, and POP. Advance is also among the largest shareholders in Charter Communications, Discovery, and Reddit. Its operating companies span the globe and employ thousands.

From 1993 to 2017, Fricklas held various positions at Viacom, most of that time as executive vice president, general counsel, and secretary. Before that, he was general counsel of the multinational mining firm Minorco and a private attorney.

He was elected a BU overseer in 2015, has served on the School of Law’s Dean’s Advisory Board since 1996, and is a member of the William Fairfield Warren Society. He and his wife have funded LAW and Sargent College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences scholarships, fellowships, and other initiatives. A graduate of the University of Colorado, he is secretary and trustee of Jazz at Lincoln Center, a member of New York’s Permanent Commission on Access to Justice, a past president of the Association of General Counsel, a fellow of the American Bar Association, and a director of the National Chamber Legal Center. He also cochairs the media and entertainment division of the United Jewish Appeal. He is active with the political organization No Labels.

Jane Moncreiff

A graduate of Barnard College, Moncreiff joins the Board of Trustees after serving as a nontrustee member of the University’s Investment Committee for the last nine years. She is an independent consultant and the former chief investment officer of CareGroup/Combined Jewish Philanthropies, overseeing the institution’s $3 billion in endowment and pension assets.

Prior to CareGroup, Moncreiff was a managing director at Cambridge Associates, serving as an investment advisor to elementary and secondary schools, arts institutions, and families. She began her career at JP Morgan in both the New York and London offices, where her duties included running the sales and trading desk in London for emerging-market debt, equity, and derivatives. Moncreiff is a trustee of the Prospect Hill Academy Charter School in Cambridge, Mass., and a trustee of the Charles Schwab Family of Funds, where she serves on the investment committee. She has also served as chair of the board of trustees at Shady Hill School in Cambridge, Mass.