Yale University

Class News

Bill Morse ’64, Class YAA Rep, reports on Yale Trustee meeting

November 29, 2020

As part of the YAA Assembly series conducted via Zoom this year, Bill Morse provided the following report.

Yale Alumni Association: Assembly Meeting with Yale Trustees

November 10, 2020

Catherine Bond Hill, Yale Ph.D., Economics, served as moderator for this meeting.

  • She's a Williams graduate (Economics), with an Oxford B.A. and M.A, and a Ph.D. from Yale.
  • Elected Alumni Fellow in 2013, she was named a successor and senior trustee in 2016.
  • From 2006-2016, she was president of Vassar College.  She is currently managing director of Ithaka S&R.
  • Her research and career have focused on improving access to higher education and enhancing student outcomes.

There are 16 trustees, plus the president, Peter Salovey. It’s a small board, a working board.

Their role is to support Yale’s mission, and to balance the needs of students, faculty and staff with the needs of generations to come.

No one represents a particular constituency.

Ms. Hill first asked her three colleagues to introduce themselves and their Yale background.

David Sze:

  • David Sze’s father, sister, wife went to Yale and two children are currently enrolled.  
  • An integral part of his life, Yale taught him “not what to think, but how to think.” 
  • His expertise is startup technology firms and technology investment.
  • While not a technology expert, he credits his success to thinking and communication skills learned at Yale.
  • He was in Branford College, and described himself as a "intramural gym rat.” 
  • After serving on the President's Advisory Committee on Digital Yale, he was named a successor trustee in 2018.

Ann Miura-Ko:

  • Ann Miura-Ko, whose parents came from Japan, bought a Yale sweatshirt on her first visit. Though Yale wasn’t her first choice at that time, the sweatshirt "made me happy."  
  • After majoring in Electrical Engineering, she earned her Ph.D. at Stanford (where she lectures), specializing in mathematical modeling and cybersecurity. Her parents (father was a NASA research scientist) wondered why she didn’t choose Stanford or MIT. She sang in “Proof of the Pudding” and loved the liberal arts.
  • She’s a talented classical pianist who, in her second week, was kicked off the piano by “super mean” Bobby Lopez. She saw Yale as a “series of amazing choices.”  So much talent walked the streets of Yale. Her best story was about an "incredible act of kindness.” Her group of seniors, with no money, entered a robotics competition, programming soccer-playing robots. Anonymous generous alumni stepped up and funded them. They were the only undergraduate team, and the only one with two women. They went to Paris and won. She noted the advice of one of her mentors: “Make sure you develop a philosophy of philanthropy.”  
  • She was elected an Alumni Fellow in 2019.

John Rice:

  • John Rice said, "Yale was a fantastic foundation and an accelerator for me, on several levels: academically, socially, athletically.” He majored in Latin American Studies, with a focus on economic development.
  • He was a four-year member of the basketball team (the ups and downs were a formative experience), a founding member of a fraternity and of a young men’s leadership program at Hillhouse HS. That fueled his passion for and interest in mentoring, and eventually led to his becoming a social entrepreneur. He worked at Payne Whitney, handing out towels, "a fairly mundane experience that I actually enjoyed. I was able to meet many interesting people, including faculty, on their way to the pool."
  • “My time as a trustee has given me the responsibility to steward Yale at a very interesting time, the opportunity to learn how complex, how vast, how diverse it is.”  
  • Mr. Rice was elected an Alumni Fellow in 2011 and appointed a successor trustee in 2017.

Given that the arts and humanities are under attack these days, the point was made that the arts, humanities, sciences, and technology are all interrelated.  David Sze commented: “The richness of Yale is the power of all these areas coming together. It’s the seams and the overlaps where the most amazing things happen.” He noted how certain leading theories in economics come out of physics. Everything is connected. Ann Miura-Ko marveled at how one of her engineering professors reinforced his points with memorable analogies from Roman history and Shakespeare. 

The faculty and administration are the leaders; they run the university; they make the key decisions. The issues Yale faces are complex; the university is complex. The trustees’ role, in supporting Yale’s administration, is to look at these issues and check the university's thinking. They care; they are deeply committed to the students, to teaching, to research, and overall to what is best for Yale. They meet periodically with faculty and students. The trustees represent a variety of perspectives. As a small, working board, they know one another well. No one has an agenda. They can disagree and have robust discussions, but they bring “their best selves” to the board, and “check their egos at the door.”  It’s an immensely diverse, accomplished group. Prior to becoming trustees, all have provided extensive, invaluable service to Yale in a variety of volunteer roles. 

Assembly Leader Jerry Henry joined the discussion at the end. He asked for comments on the impression that the  board is dominated by people in finance. David Sze, in response, encouraged all to go online and look at the full profiles of the trustees.