Brown Corporation elects eight new trustees to its 42-member board

At its Commencement Weekend meeting May 26, 2001, the Corporation of Brown University elected eight new members to its Board of Trustees: Craig M. Cogut, Paul R. Dupee, Jeffrey W. Greenberg, Bernicestine McLeod Bailey, John Seely Brown, Kenneth R. Fitzsimmons Jr., Laura Geller, and Javette Pickney Laremont.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Brown’s governing body, the Corporation of Brown University, elected three term trustees and five alumni/ae trustees at its Commencement Weekend meeting May 26, 2001. The new trustees will be sworn in at the next regular meeting of the Corporation in October and will serve six-year terms, from 2001 to 2007.

New term trustees include Craig M. Cogut, investor; Paul R. Dupee, holding company executive; and Jeffrey W. Greenberg, insurance broker. The new alumni/ae trustees are Bernicestine McLeod Bailey, technology consulting firm president; John Seely Brown, Xerox scientist; Kenneth R. Fitzsimmons Jr., international investment banker; Laura Geller, senior rabbi of a major metropolitan synagogue; and Javette Pickney Laremont, marketing leader.

The Corporation is composed of a 12-member Board of Fellows and a 42-member Board of Trustees, all elected by the Corporation. Fourteen members of the Board of Trustees are alumni/ae trustees, nominated by the Brown Alumni Association and elected to office by the Corporation.

The Corporation is responsible for establishing broad policies for the operation of the University, for selecting a president to carry out those policies, for appointing administrative officers and faculty members, for managing the funds and holding the real estate of the University. In addition to attending three regular meetings of the Brown Corporation (October, February and May), members normally serve on one or more standing committees of the Corporation and may be asked to serve on ad hoc boards or committees established from time to time.

Craig M. Cogut, of Cos Cob, Conn., Class of 1975, will serve as a term trustee. Cogut is a senior partner of Pegasus Investors, a private equity firm he co-founded in 1996, which manages more than $800 million of institutional capital. Last year, the firm announced the formation of paperloop.com, the premier online information and business exchange for the global paper, printing and converting industries. Cogut is a former director of Salant Corporation, Gillette Holdings Inc., and Envirotest Systems Corporation. He serves on the board of directors of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, which works to hold governments accountable to the standards affirmed in the International Bill of Human Rights, and he has served on the board of directors of Vail Resorts since 1992. He is president of the Craig & Deborah Cogut Foundation and established a Judaic studies fund at Brown.

Paul R. Dupee, of Los Angeles, Calif., Class of 1965, will serve as a term trustee. Dupee is chairman of the board and chief executive office of Maxicare Health Plans Inc., a holding company that owns and operates HMO subsidiaries in California and Indiana, and also owns and operates Maxicare Life and Health Insurance Company. Dupee has served on the boards of Christie’s and the Bridgehampton (N.Y.) Chamber Music Festival. His contributions to the Brown Library established the Dupee Collection on Fireworks, the Dupee Mexican History Collection, and the Dupee Digital Reference Collections. He is president of the Paul R. Dupee Jr. Foundation and has established a professorship of social science and national scholarship at Brown.

Jeffrey W. Greenberg, of New York City, Class of 1973, will serve as a term trustee. Greenberg is chairman, president and chief executive officer of Marsh & McLennan Companies, the world’s largest insurance broker, with annual revenues exceeding $10 billion. He is a trustee of the Spence School (N.Y.) and New York Presbyterian Hospital. He formerly served on the board of directors for such organizations as the Children’s Oncology Society of New York, the Ronald McDonald House of NYC and the National Commission Against Drunk Drivers. He has been a member of the Board of Visitors of Georgetown University Law School.

Bernicestine McLeod Bailey, of Westport, Conn., Class of 1968, will serve as an alumnae trustee. Bailey is president of McLeod Associates Inc., an information technology consulting firm that specializes in workgroup, e-business systems development and PC/Server sales. For 12 years prior to forming McLeod Associates in 1981, she was a systems engineer at IBM. Active throughout her life in professional and community organizations, Bailey has served most recently as president of the Fairfield/Westchester Chapter of the Independent Computer Consultants Association and president of the Stamford-Norwalk Chapter of Jack and Jill of America Inc. She has also co-founded an organization to assist with identifying, recruiting, preparing and retaining minority teachers. She was an initial recipient of the Brown University Alumni Service Award.

John Seely Brown, of Palo Alto, Calif., Class of 1962, will serve as an alumni trustee. Brown is vice president and chief scientist of Xerox Corporation, which he joined in 1978 as a research scientist. Until recently, Brown was director of Xerox’s famed Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), overseeing the research that brought such innovations as the mouse, the laser printer and the Ethernet network. Brown has published numerous articles in scientific journals and has authored books including The Social Life of Information, published in February 2000. His article “Research that Reinvents the Corporation” won the 1991 McKinsey Award from the Harvard Business Review, an award that selects outstanding articles that are likely to have a major influence on the actions of senior managers worldwide. Brown is on the Board of Directors of Corning Inc., General Instruments Corp., and Varian Associates Inc., a Silicon Valley high-technology company. He was named by the Brown Alumni Magazine as one of the hundred distinguished alumni of the past century.

Kenneth R. Fitzsimmons Jr., of Piedmont, Calif., Class of 1968, will serve as alumni trustee. He is a founding partner, member of the executive committee, managing director and director of capital markets at BancBoston Robertson Stephens, an international investment banking firm specializing in growth companies. Robertson Stephens & Company was acquired in 1998 by BankBoston to become BancBoston Robertson Stephens, a wholly-owned subsidiary. Fitzsimmons is a member of the Board of Directors and an advisor to the Brown University Sports Foundation (BUSF). He has been a Brown Alumni Schools Committee (BASC) member since 1994. In 1992, he served a leadership gifts vice chair, and from 1990-1992, he was a member of the Brown Annual Fund Executive Committee (BAFEC).

Laura Geller, of Los Angeles, Calif., Class of 1971, will serve as an alumnae trustee. Senior rabbi of Temple Emanuel in Beverly Hills, she is the first woman to achieve that role in a major metropolitan synagogue. She served 14 years as the rabbi at the University of Southern California, and then as director of the American Jewish Congress (Southwest Region), a civil rights organization. A recipient of the ACLU (Southern California) Award for Fostering Racial and Cultural Harmony, Geller served on the Los Angeles Human Relations Commission of Beverly Hills. She was named by the Brown Alumni Magazine as one of the hundred distinguished alumni of the past century. Geller gave the baccalaureate address at Brown in 1985.

Javette Pickney Laremont, of Stamford, Conn., Class of 1980, will serve as an alumnae trustee. Laremont is a marketing professional with more than 20 years of experience in technology solutions, sales and marketing. She has worked as a consultant to large corporations and small businesses, using technology as a strategic business tool. Laremont also worked for IBM Corporation for more than 13 years. Since she graduated from Brown, Laremont has held various leadership positions in alumni activities and received an award for distinguished alumni service. She is the president of the Brown Alumni Association, director of the Brown Club of Fairfield County and a member of Pembroke Leadership Council. Laremont also helped to establish the active Brown multicultural alumni networks.