By Anne Baker
Board of Trustees Chairman Neil Finnegan is stepping down after 10 years, said university spokesperson Fred McGrail, and Board member Sy Sternberg has been elected to replace him beginning July 1.
“I’m very excited about it,” Sternberg said in an interview with The News. “Anyway I can help President [Joseph] Aoun is kind of high priority for me, and obviously being Chairman of the Board of Trustees is a very good way of helping our president.”
Sternberg has served on Northeastern’s Board of Trustees since 2004. He received a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Northeastern and is also the chief executive officer (CEO) and chairman of the board of trustees for New York Life Insurance Company, one of the largest life insurance companies in the world, according to a university press release.
Though Sternberg will now lead the body ultimately responsible for the university, he said he does not want students to confuse his role with that of the president’s.
“The person who runs the school day-in and day-out is President Aoun,” he said. “In corporate America, he’s what we call the CEO. He’s the person who sets the vision for the school.”
His predecessor, Finnegan, was elected and served as Chairman of the Board of Trustees for 10 years, a period Sternberg called “unusually long.” Sternberg said although he has not set a specific time frame for his chairmanship, he intends to have a shorter term.
“I think it’s good that you have new people and new blood coming into an organization,” he said.
Finnegan said he is stepping down now because university bylaws do not allow board chairmen to be older than 70 years old (Finnegan turned 70 in March), and because the bylaws also do not allow board chairmen to serve more than 10 years.
“Ten years is a good, long run, and it’s time for the next person to be chair,” he said.
Finnegan will now act as chairman emeritus, which he described as “being part of the fan club” of Northeastern.
“I can’t believe that I would not be a cheerleader for the university for the rest of my life,” he said.
This role does not include a seat on the Board of Trustees.
Finnegan said the new chair is chosen initially by a Board committee. The chair is presented to the entire Board, and is then presented to the Northeastern corporation for approval.
“From my perspective, it is the students at Northeastern who are excited about being there and getting much more from their experience at the school than from what I remember when I first joined the Board, which was almost 20 years ago,” Finnegan said.
Finnegan said he has seen a dramatic change in the university since joining the board in the late 1980s.
Sternberg said he will focus on raising the school’s endowment, which he said is about $700 million – relatively small compared to other schools of similar size.
“I think we need to do a more aggressive job, and a more assertive job, to raise funds from friends of the institution, from alumni, from board members, so that we can grow the endowment,” he said. “The larger the endowment is, the more financial strength we have to be able to grow the institution and expand it.”
One of the key components of raising the endowment is investing, Sternberg said. Many students, including NUSTAND, a student group committed to ending genocide, have expressed a desire for more transparency of where the money is invested, especially in regard to divesting from Sudan.
Sternberg said that in Northeastern’s case, investment transparency is not an option because the school does not make direct investments. Instead, school officials chose to invest its funds in outlets, which invest the money in a variety of different companies. Therefore, in some instances, even the board is not aware of where the school’s funds are invested.
“It sounds like it would be an appropriate objective, and speaking as a person, I don’t like seeing what goes on in Darfur,” he said. “But we really don’t make any direct investments in Darfur, and I’m not aware that any of our funds are invested there because we don’t have that level of transparency.”
Sternberg said living up to Finnegan’s excellence as chairman will be a challenge, but it is one he is prepared for.
“Neil did a magnificent job,” he said. “It’s going to be very hard to replace Neil Finnegan, but I’m going to do my best.”
