The Herald explored the career and educational backgrounds, composition and political activity of the Corporation’s members.
The Corporation — Brown’s highest governing body since 1764 — is primarily responsible for long-term strategy, overseeing Brown’s financial health, reviewing major policies impacting the campus community, accepting gifts and selecting University presidents.
The group, currently composed of 51 individuals, typically meets behind closed doors three times a year. The only publicized insights from these meetings are notes released in the following weeks.
Five semesters ago, The Herald set out to understand the individuals who sit on the powerful panel.
Since then, campus issues have thrust the Corporation into a unique spotlight. After months of student activism calling on the University to divest from companies affiliated with Israel, the Corporation agreed to vote on a divestment proposal. The move — that ultimately ended in the Corporation rejecting the proposal — led one trustee, Joseph Edelman, to step down from his position early in protest. More recently, members have defended the University when it faced attacks from the Trump administration to its federal funding.
With a renewed prominence and 19 new Brown Corporation members, The Herald once again explored publicly available information — University records, government databases and more — to compile a profile of the members of Brown’s highest governing body.
The Corporation has a bicameral structure formed by two branches — the Board of Fellows and the Board of Trustees — that formally gather every February, May and October.
While trustees do not meet without fellows present, fellows meet more regularly and hold additional responsibilities in University administration such as “adjudging and conferring the academical degrees,” according to the University’s charter.
Each Corporation member must serve on one main committee — Committee on Academic Affairs, Committee on Budget and Finance or Committee on Campus Life — and can choose to join other standing committees, subcommittees and ad hoc committees.
Traditionally, the Corporation has 42 trustees and 12 fellows elected for six- and 11-year terms, respectively. Of these trustees, 13 are chosen by alums in an agreement between the Corporation and the Brown Alumni Association.
Two new alumni trustees are elected by current Brown students in their final year of study and alums within five years of graduating, according to the Corporation’s website. The remaining trustees, along with all of the fellows, are elected internally by the Corporation.
Currently, the Corporation has 36 trustees, 10 fellows, President Christina Paxson P’19 P’MD’20, Chancellor Brian Moynihan ’81 P’14 P’19, Vice Chancellor Pamela Reeves ’87 P’22, Secretary Richard Friedman ’79 P’08 and Treasurer Earl Hunt ’03.
All Corporation positions are unpaid volunteer positions with the exception of Paxson, who also serves as Brown’s president.
Seventeen members, a third of the Corporation, have a background in finance or investing. All hold or have held prominent leadership positions, and at least seven have founded or co-founded financial companies.
A significant responsibility of Corporation members is to protect “the long-term institutional assets of the University,” set the budget and tuition and establish salary pools, according to the Corporation website.
Trustee Joe Dowling previously served as Brown’s chief investment officer and the CEO of Brown’s endowment. Under Dowling’s leadership, the endowment grew to a then-record high of $4.7 billion and was the best-performing endowment in the Ivy League. Fellow Jim Yong Kim ’82 P’22 also formerly served as the 12th president of the World Bank from 2012 to 2019 and the 17th president of Dartmouth from 2009 to 2012.
Academia and education is the second-most common sector of employment among Corporation members. Medicine is the third most common.
At least one of the trustees and fellows did not earn an undergraduate degree in the United States, with the majority of members attending institutions in the Northeast. Of the Corporation’s 51 members, 41 graduated from Brown. Other undergraduate institutions include Harvard, Spelman College and Swarthmore College.
The Herald was unable to determine the undergraduate institution for one member.
The Herald positively identified 42 corporation members who attended graduate schools. Harvard, Columbia and Brown are the most represented institutions with eight, six and five members receiving a degree from each school, respectively. Seven members did not attend Brown for either undergraduate or graduate studies.
From visual arts to engineering, Corporation members earned their undergraduate degrees in a diverse array of fields.
The most common fields of study among members are in economics and international and public affairs, with 14% and 7% of members earning those degrees, respectively. While the Corporation previously had one trustee with a concentration in computer science, none of its current members hold an undergraduate degree in that subject despite it being one of Brown’s most popular concentrations.
The Herald identified undergraduate class years for all but one member of the Corporation.
Of these members, around 70% graduated between 1980 and 1994. Over 25% graduated after 1995, a more than 6% increase from the number on the Corporation in 2023.
In 2009, the Corporation established a young alumni trustee position in hopes of allowing the Corporation to engage more effectively with the perspectives of the student body and recent alums. In 2016, the Corporation reformed the process to expand the number of renamed new alumni trustees to two.
New alumni trustees serve staggered three-year terms and are asked to serve an additional year on another University committee.
Since the early 2000s, Corporation members have donated over $8 million dollars to political campaigns and initiatives, with donations to Democratic representatives topping out at $5.9 million, according to data publicly released by the Federal Election Commission.
Fellow Robert Goodman ’82 P’18 P’24 made the largest donations, including $2.7 million to Democratic initiatives and just over $100,000 to initiatives not affiliated with either the Democratic or Republican parties. Gregory Penner, chairman of the board of directors of Walmart, trails him with a total of $934,000. A majority of Penner’s donations made to political initiatives were not affiliated with either major party. Penner also donated the most out of any Corporation member to Republican political initiatives, spending $430,435 according to FEC data.
Members donated over $80,000 to then-Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Joe Biden’s 2024 campaigns. No direct donations were made in support of the Trump campaign.
Goodman, Guow, Johnson, Penner, Dowling and Friedman did not respond to a request for comment regarding their political donations.
Paxson has donated $25,750 to political causes since 2000, and all of them were made to Democratic campaigns. Paxson also declined to comment on her donations.