Who are the trustees on the chancellor search committee?
The search committee tasked with finding Syracuse University Chancellor Kent Syverud's successor is set. The Daily Orange breaks down who the 24 trustees, faculty and students on the committee are. Leonardo Eriman | Photo Editor
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UPDATE: This post was updated at 1:15 p.m. on September 22, 2025.
Syracuse University’s Board of Trustees officially began its search for Chancellor Kent Syverud’s successor after it announced its full search committee Friday.
The committee, co-chaired by Shelly Fisher and Lisa Fontenelli, is made up of 24 trustees, faculty members and students. The group began seeking student engagement this week to help shape its search.
As the committee begins its search, The Daily Orange breaks down the trustees, faculty and students in the group.
Trustees:
Some members of the board are voting members, while others are considered life members. Voting members serve four year-long terms, with the opportunity to serve three terms. The board has 70 voting members at a time, who are allowed official voting rights.
Life trustees have served the maximum number of terms permitted as a voting member. They can attend all meetings and proceedings but have no voting rights.
Alexander was elected to the board in 2016 and will serve as vice chair until May 2027. He’s a partner at Arnold & Porter, a law firm in Washington, D.C. His practice specializes in financial services and has led some of the firm’s high-profile cases, including the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. He currently serves as its chair emeritus.
He sits on the University Climate, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility and Academic Affairs Working Group advisory committees. He also serves as the chair for the College of Law Board of Advisors, the college from which he earned a law degree in 1982.
Alper served as a Circuit Court judge for the Seventeenth Circuit of Virginia, which covers Arlington County and the city of Falls Church, until 2012. She served as chair of the chancellor search committee in 2013, helping appoint Syverud.
She is currently chair of the board’s budget committee and helped create the Institute for the Study of the Judiciary, Politics & the Media, a joint program between the College of Law, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and the Newhouse School of Public Communications. Alper graduated from SU in 1972 with a degree in American Studies and is a life trustee of the board.
Ballentine was elected to the board in 1998 and is the president and CEO of Ballentine Capital Management Inc., an investment firm he founded in 1989. He also established the Ballentine Investment Institute, which provides Whitman School of Management students access to state-of-the-art technology for company and market research.
In 2015, he served as chair of the Director of Athletics Search Committee, helping appoint Mark Coyle. Ballentine graduated from SU in 1983 and sits on the Executive, Investment & Endowment and Athletics committees.
Barner is a voting member of the board. Most recently, she was vice president and chief administrative officer at Cummins, an Indiana-based technology company. She is an intellectual property law expert and worked as both the deputy under secretary of commerce for intellectual property and the deputy director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in the Barack Obama administration.
Barner, who graduated in 1979 with a dual degree in political science and psychology, made a $1 million donation in 2024, which renamed 119 Euclid, a space for Black students on campus, to the Barner-McDuffie House.
Barnes was elected to the board in 2008 and was made vice chair in 2023, a position he will hold until May 2027. He was previously chair of the board. He is a senior advisor at Bain Capital, and previously served as its global private equity chairman.
He is also a member of the Boston Celtics’ board of directors and is a member of the team’s ownership group. Barnes graduated from SU’s Whitman School of Management with an accounting degree in 1982 and was awarded an honorary doctorate degree in 2019. The Barnes Center at the Arch is named after him.
D’Aniello is a co-founder and chairman emeritus of Carlyle, a global investment firm. He is also the co-chairman of SU’s D’Aniello Institute for Veterans and Military Families, and served in the U.S. Navy from 1968 to 1971.
He is a lifetime member of the board, chairman of the Chancellor’s Council and the Corporate Advisory Council to the Whitman School of Management. He is a 1968 magna cum laude graduate SU, and received an honorary degree in 2020. In 2022, he and his wife made a $10 million donation to SU Abroad’s Florence program, of which he is an alumnus.
Kramer was elected to the board in 2012, made vice chair in 2023 and will hold that position until May 2027. After graduating from SU with a magazine journalism degree in 1972, he went on to have a 45-year media career.
He was president and publisher of USA Today from May 2012 until his retirement in July 2015. He then joined the board of directors of Gannett Inc., USA Today’s parent company. Currently, he is a senior advisor to Advance Publications and sits on Advance Local’s board of directors.
Kramer was also a previous chair for the Newhouse Advisory Board and served on other university search committees. He was also a founding donor of the Institute for Democracy, Journalism & Citizenship, a joint venture between Maxwell and Newhouse, with the directorship named after him.
O’Hanley is chairman and chief executive officer of State Street, an investment and asset management platform which he joined in 2015, according to the company’s page. He previously worked at other companies, including Fidelity Investments and McKinsey & Company.
He serves on several boards, including SU’s Board of Trustees, the Naval War College Foundation and FIFA Boston 26. He graduated from SU in 1980 with a degree in political science and is a voting member of the Board of Trustees.
Tirico was elected to the board in 2016 and was made vice chair this year, a position he will hold until May 2029. He is a high-profile sportscaster on NBC Sports, with features on Sunday Night Football and the Olympic Games. Tirico graduated from SU in 1988 with a dual political science and broadcast journalism degree.
He is also a member of the Newhouse Advisory Board and the Sport Management Advisory Council within the David B. Falk College of Sport. He’s also been a part of multiple search committees in the past, including 2017’s senior vice president of communications and marketing search, 2019-20’s search for Newhouse dean and 2023’s Falk College dean search.
Scruggs was elected to the board in 2018 and was made chairman in 2023, a position he will hold until May 2027. He is a managing director at Goldman Sachs, where he leads the public sector and infrastructure banking group within the global banking and markets division.
He is an alumnus of Harvard University and a member of the board of trustees at Trinity School, an independent K-12 school in New York City. Scruggs was previously on the SU board finance committee and has been a member of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs Advisory Board since 2017.
Faculty and staff
Eight faculty and a handful of other staff are on the committee. Two faculty members, Tula Goenka and Dean Mark Lodato, represent the Newhouse School. Similarly, the College of Engineering and Computer Science also has two representatives, Chris E. Johnson and Pun To (Douglas) Yung.
Additionally, SU’s College of Arts and Sciences has two representatives, Brice Nordquist and Andrea Persin. Persin serves as an assistant dean of budget, finance and administration. Nordquist is an associate professor and dean’s professor of community engagement in the Writing Studies, Rhetoric and Composition department.
Other colleges have one representative, including Beth Patin from the School of Information Studies, Kira Reed from the Whitman School of Management, Shane Sanders from the Falk College of Sport and Emily Stokes-Rees from the College of Visual and Performing Arts.
Brett Padgett, senior vice president and chief financial officer, will also serve on the search committee. There are no faculty members from the Maxwell School or the School of Education represented on the board.
Students
Three students take up the final slots on the search committee. German Nolivos, president of SU’s Student Government Association, is the only undergraduate. The other two students are Ryleigh Mellen, a J.D. candidate at the College of Law, and Alexia Chatzitheodorou, a Ph.D. candidate in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Students can share their input on the chancellor search in the committee’s second engagement session on Thursday from 4:30 to 5:45 p.m. over Zoom. Registration is required.
