Skip to content ↓

Twelve new members are elected to MIT Corporation

The MIT Corporation -- the Institute's board of trustees -- elected two Corporation life members and 10 term members at its quarterly meeting on June 5, just before MIT's 133rd Commencement exercises. Alexander d'Arbeloff, chairman of the Corporation, announced the election results.

The following were elected to Corporation life membership, effective July 1:

Denis A. Bovin (SB 1969), vice chairman for investment banking and senior managing director of Bear, Stearns and Co. Inc.

With more than 25 years of experience with the strategic and financial concerns of domestic and international companies and government agencies, Mr. Bovin has initiated or been involved with financing and business combinations accumulating in excess of $100 billion. In his current position, he plays an integral role in the management team in charge of Bear Stearns's worldwide investment banking activities. Mr. Bovin has direct responsibility for a wide variety of the firm's key domestic and international banking clients.

Mr. Bovin earned the SB in management from MIT and the MBA degree from the Harvard Business School in 1971. He has been an active alumnus for more than 20 years, serving on many committees and boards and as a corporation member since 1990. He is also a Sustaining Fellow Life Member. MIT honored him with the Bronze Beaver in 1995.

James A. Champy (SB 1963), chairman of consulting at Perot Systems Corp.

Mr. Champy received the SB and SM in civil engineering from MIT and the JD degree from Boston College Law School. Before joining Perot Systems, he was chairman of CSC Index Inc., the management consulting firm that pioneered reengineering. Index, founded in 1969 by Mr. Champy and three other MIT alumni, was acquired by CSC in 1988.

Mr. Champy is co-author of Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution. The sequel, Reengineering Management, was recognized by Business Week as one of the best business books of 1995. He also writes regularly for Computer World and Forbes Magazine and has a syndicated weekly column on business management.

He has been a member of the MIT Corporation since 1994, having also served from 1969-74. He has served on the Membership Committee since 1995, the Civil and Environmental Engineering Visiting Committee since 1996, the Music and Theater Arts Visiting Committee since 1994, and the Development Committee since 1987.

The following were nominated by the Association of Alumni and Alumnae of MIT and elected to five-year term membership, effective July 1.

Kenneth F. Gordon (SB 1960), international consultant (semi-retired), former deputy director for international affairs for US Department of Commerce.

Dr. Gordon received the BS in electrical engineering from Cornell University in 1956, the SM from MIT's Sloan School of Management in 1960, and the MA and PhD from the University of Rochester in 1964 and 1967, respectively.

He has more than 35 years of experience in organizing and managing technical and economic-based programs in federal government, private industry, universities and consulting. His areas of specialty include management of international R&D, policy analysis and technological forecasting.

Dr. Gordon has been a vice president and president of the MIT Alumni Association, a member of the Awards Committee, a vice president and president of the MIT Club of Washington, general chair of the MIT Regional Conference of Technological Change and Economic Growth and chair of Sloan's 35th Reunion Committee for the Class of 1960. He was awarded the Bronze Beaver in 1978.

Harbo Peter Jensen (PhD 1974), manager of international technical services for Chevron Overseas Petroleum, Inc., and founder, chairman and CEO of Cal Bionics Inc.

Dr. Jensen received the BA from Northeastern University in 1971 and the PhD in chemistry at MIT in 1974, the year he joined Chevron.

President, director and member of the executive committee of the US Arab Chamber of Commerce (Pacific), Inc., Dr. Jensen received MIT's Bronze Beaver Award in 1994 and the Harold E. Lobdell '17 Distinguished Service Award in 1986. He served on the Alumni Association Board of Directors from 1996-98 and is currently director of the MIT Club of Northern California. He was a board member of the MIT Alumni Fund from 1991-94.

John A. Morefield (SB 1956), president of Morefield Communications, Inc.

After graduation from MIT, he joined Morefield Communications, a family-owned firm that provides business communications systems, of which he was president from 1964-91. A Corporation member from 1993-98, he is on its Development and Development Advisory Group, and chairs the Music and Theater Arts Visiting Committee. He has served on the Visiting Committees for Architecture and Media Arts and Sciences since 1993, and on Athletics, Physical Education and Recreation since 1988. Mr. Morefield was president of the Alumni Association in 1998-99, and as such served ex officio on the Corporation Joint Advisory Committee for Institute-Wide Affairs. Mr. Morefield received MIT's Bronze Beaver Award in 1996 and the George B. Morgan '20 Award in 1991.

He has been a member of Rotary Club of Harrisburg, PA, since 1964 and was on the Board of Supervisors of the Silver Spring Township from 1992-93.

Also elected to five-year term membership are the following individuals nominated by the Corporation Membership Committee:

C. Morris Chang (SB 1952), chairman of the board at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (TSMC) and president and chairman, Industrial Technology Research Institute.

Dr. Chang received the SB, SM and ME degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT in 1952, 1953 and 1955 respectively. In 1964 he received the PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford University.

He is the founding chairman of TSMC, established in 1987. He is also the founding chairman of Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp. (1994) and WaferTech, LLC (1996). Before founding TSMC, he was president and CEO of General Instrument Corp. and he served in various capacities, including corporate senior vice president, at Texas Instruments, where he began work in 1958.

Dr. Chang was a member of the Electrical Engineering Visiting Committee from 1975-78. He was selected by Business Week magazine as one of the Top 25 Managers of 1997.

Barrie R. Zesiger, founding partner and principal, Zesiger Capital Group LLC.

Since 1995, Ms. Zesiger has been the partner in charge of administration at Zesiger Capital Group (ZCG), an employee-owned money management firm with a principal focus on investing in emerging technologies and emerging markets. She founded the company with her husband, Albert L. Zesiger (SB 1951) and also is involved in the firm's private placement investments. She serves on the boards of several small new companies in the medical technology and consumer products industry.

Ms. Zesiger earned the BA in political science from Stanford University in 1967 and the JD from Stanford University Law School in 1974. She is a former board member of the San Francisco Symphony, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Sierra Club Legal Defense Team. She began her legal career as an environmental lawyer in the 1970s.

Elected to a second five-year term are:

Edie N. Goldenberg (SB 1967), professor of political science and public policy, University of Michigan.

Dr. Goldenberg received the SB in political science from MIT in 1967, and the SM and the PhD in political science from Stanford University in 1968 and 1974, respectively.

She joined the University of Michigan as assistant professor of political science in 1974 and was promoted to professor in 1985. She worked at the US Office of Personnel Management from 1978-80, and as director of the Institute for Public Policy from 1987-89. She was dean of the College of Literature, Science and the Arts for nine years.

Dr. Goldberg has been a member of the Corporation and chair of the Department of Political Science Visiting Committee since 1994.

Judy C. Lewent (SM 1972), senior vice president and chief financial officer, Merck & Co., Inc.

Ms. Lewent prepared for her career at Goucher College (BS in economics, 1970) and at MIT's Sloan School (SM 1972). She joined Merck in 1992.

A trustee of the Rockefeller Family Trust, she is on the board of Chugai MSD Co., Ltd., Johnson & Johnson Merck Consumer Pharmaceuticals Co., Merial Ltd., Motorola, Inc., and the Quaker Oats Co. The recipient of many national awards, she was named by Fortune Magazine in 1998 as one of the 50 most powerful women in American business

Ms. Lewent, a member of the Corporation since 1994 and a Life Sustaining Fellow, has served on the Corporation's Executive Committee since 1995, and has chaired the Visiting Committee of the Sloan School of Management since 1997. She is also on the advisory panel of the Program on the Pharmaceutical Industry.

A. Neil Pappalardo, chairman and CEO, Medical Information Technology (Meditech).

A 1964 graduate of MIT in electrical engineering, Mr. Pappalardo has been a Corporation member since 1994 and serves on the Auditing, Development and Executive Committees, as well as the Visiting Committees for the Libraries, the Department of Physics and the Department of Mechanical Engineering, which he chairs. A Life Sustaining Fellow, he was on the Boston Campaign Committee from 1987-92 and the Class of 1964 25th Reunion Gift Committee.

Mr. Pappalardo founded Meditech in 1968 after pursuing his interests in computer programming languages at Massachusetts General Hospital. His company is now a leading supplier of clinical information systems for hospitals in the US, UK and Canada.

Elected to complete the unexpired portion of a five-year term, effective July 1, was Kenan E. Sahin (SB 1963), president and founder of Kenan Systems and vice president of Bell Labs' software technology division

Dr. Sahin is president and founder of Cambridge-based Kenan Systems, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lucent Technologies. The firm provides billing, customer care, order management and decision-support services to communications companies worldwide. He received the Financial Times' Best Convergent Billing System Solution award in 1999 and the Ernst & Young New England Entrepreneur of the Year Award in Software in 1998.

Dr. Sahin has taught and done research at Harvard University and the University of Massachusetts in computer communication networks and massively parallel computation. He earned the SB in management from MIT in 1963 and the PhD from the Sloan School in 1969. He has served as a member and chair of the Technology Day Committee and the Committee on Alumni Nominees to Corporation Visiting Committees, and as a member since 1992 of the Humanities Visiting Committee. He became a Life Sustaining Fellow in 1979.

The elected representative from recent classes, who will also serve a five-year term, is Pardis C. Sabeti (SB 1997), a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University.

Ms. Sabeti received the SB in biology from MIT and the MSc in human biology from Oxford, where she is now pursuing the DPhil. An article on her research, "DNA: An Alternative Record of African History," is to be published in Encarta Africana. In her sophomore year at MIT, she authored the study which led to the establishment of the Freshman Leadership Program, now in its fourth successful year.

In addition to her Rhodes scholarship, Ms. Sabeti was a Burchard Scholar, a participant in the Leadershape Conference, a recipient of a grant from the Race Relations Committee, and a finalist for a Truman Scholarship. Among her many campus activities at MIT, she was coxswain of the varsity heavyweight men's crew, a member of the women's varsity tennis team, and president of the Class of 1997.

Mr. d'Arbeloff also noted the selection of Brian G.R. Hughes (SB 1977) as the 1999-2000 President of the Association of Alumni and Alumnae, and ex officio member of the Corporation, effective July 1, 1999.

Currently a consultant to entrepreneurs, Mr. Hughes was elected chief executive officer in 1992 of American Rocket Co. (AMROC), which specializes in the development and commercialization of hybrid rocket propulsion. He joined the company in 1989 as a consultant to the board of directors and was named vice chairman in 1990.

Prior to his association with AMROC, Mr. Hughes was co-founder and executive vice president of PTAT System Inc., which was established to develop a privately funded transatlantic fiber-optic telecommunications cable system. In August 1989, the completed PTAT system was sold to US Sprint.

Mr. Hughes received the SB in mechanical engineering from MIT in 1977 and the MBA from Harvard Business School in 1979.

He was a member of the Corporation from 1978-1983, and from 1993-1998, and has served on a variety of committees since 1978. Hewas a member of the Alumni Board Fund from 1992-98 and served as chair from 1996-98.

A version of this article appeared in the June 9, 1999 issue of MIT Tech Talk (Volume 43, Number 33).

Related Topics

More MIT News

Headshot of Catherine Wolfram

A delicate dance

Professor of applied economics Catherine Wolfram balances global energy demands and the pressing need for decarbonization.

Read full story