Northeastern added two new members to its Board of Trustees in the fall, while four others are no longer listed under the university’s board of directors’ website.
Alice Chinebuah and Greg Waters were appointed to Northeastern’s Board of Trustees in September, according to the board of directors’ website. Trustees are elected by the Board of Trustees “from time to time” and are selected to “best advance the university’s mission and vision,” according to the relevant bylaw of the university. The four members who appear to have left are Susan S. Deitch, Anita Nassar, Marcy L. Reed and Melina Travlos.
The Board of Trustees is Northeastern’s governing body that appoints the university’s president and “works with senior leaders to shape the university’s strategic vision.” After the addition of Chinebuah and Waters, and the removal of Deitch, Nassar, Reed and Travlos, the board has 30 members located in 11 states and seven countries.
Waters, based in California, is the founder of MatrixSpace, an artificial-intelligence-powered radar system used primarily in infrastructure, defense and public safety industries to detect drones. He is also the director of onsemi, a global semiconductor supplier that aims to drive “technology breakthroughs that deliver on the promise of a sustainable future.”
Waters first became involved with Northeastern when he founded MatrixSpace with research professor Jose Martinez Lorenzo in 2020.
The other company that Waters is involved with, onsemi, has had many co-ops and been deeply involved with Northeastern as well.
“We’ve [even] hired a few [co-ops] into full-time roles,” Waters said in an interview with the News, “lots of interactions with Northeastern.”
Waters was also involved in founding Northeastern’s campuses in California.
“I was running this company, Integrated Device Technology, and we had this beautiful campus,” Waters told the News. “[The office] was two-thirds full, and it just felt a bit dead to me. So I moved the employees closer together, freed up a lot of space. And Northeastern at that time wanted to build a presence in the San Francisco Bay Area. So a deal was struck. They got free rent. Our employees got a bunch of free tuition credits. And that was the beginning of Northeastern California. So that’s how I got deeply involved with Northeastern again.”
Chinebuah, based in Ghana, is currently the Dean’s Strategy Council member in Northeastern’s College of Social Sciences and Humanities. This council is composed of alumni and parents who offer their “time, guidance, and other resources in support of elevating awareness and excitement about Northeastern and CSSH.”
The board generally meets five times a year in addition to emergency meetings when necessary. In the past, these emergency sessions have been called during turbulent periods, such as when students erected a pro-Palestine encampment on Northeastern’s Boston campus in 2024. The university did not specify other times that emergency meetings have been held.
In contrast to some of its public university counterparts, Northeastern has historically been secretive about the board’s meetings and activities.
Waters graduated from Northeastern in 1989 with a master’s degree in computer science and, in 2022, was made a Khoury College 40 for 40 honoree. For his master’s, he specialized in “machine learning, neural networks, and general artificial intelligence,” according to his LinkedIn. Matrix Space, which operates out of the Kostas Research Institute at Northeastern Burlington, offers co-op positions for students.
As a Board of Trustees member, Waters wrote on his LinkedIn page that he is interested in “contributing to an amazing institution that is redefining higher education — with a results orientation and a global mindset.”
In addition to her position at Northeastern, Chinebuah is a managing partner of the law firm Reynolds, C & Co., where she represents a “diverse portfolio of clients, including multinational corporations and major oil and gas companies.” She also serves as a notary public for the Republic of Ghana and is a “board member with international institutions engaged in higher education,” according to her bio on the Reynolds, C & Co. website.
Chinebuah is also a member of the seven-person Northeastern London Board of Directors that is responsible for “good governance of the university.”
She did not reply to multiple requests for comment.
In previous reporting done by The Huntington News, only two of the then 32-member board agreed to be interviewed. This time, the board was similarly tight-lipped, with only Waters responding to The News’ requests for comment.
Last fall board member Lucian Grainge faced controversy when he was named a defendant in a lawsuit claiming he aided and abetted rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs in sexual abuse, funded Combs’ illegal activities through Universal Music Group, or UMG, and funded and allegedly knew of Combs’ drink spiking. Grainge and UMG have since been dismissed from the civil case.
This spring, Grainge’s son, Elliot Grainge, a Northeastern alumnus who graduated in 2016 with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and economics, spoke at Northeastern’s undergraduate commencement.
None of the members of the board who left could be reached for comment.
