Board of Trustees elects new members

New trustees and an ex-officio trustee have been named to Grinnell College's governing board, which meets formally three times during the academic year. The new trustees, who began their service at a board retreat in June and will attend their first board meeting Oct. 6-8, 2016, are:

Charlie E. Gottdiener ’86

Gottdiener is chief operating officer and a managing director for Providence Equity Partners LLC, New York, where he leads portfolio operations and business development activities. Prior to joining Providence in 2010, Gottdiener spent seven years at Dun & Bradstreet, serving in strategy and operating roles, including president of the global risk, analytics, and internet solutions business unit. Previously, he held leadership positions in consulting with the Boston Consulting Group, CSC Index and Cap Gemini Ernst & Young. A director of Altegrity and SRA International, Gottdiener's previous board service includes Survey Sampling, VRAD, Blackboard, and Ascend Learning. A resident of Tenafly, New Jersey, he holds an M.B.A. from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He is married to Dr. Alexandra Hoffman Gottdiener ’87, who is Chief of Medicine at Englewood Hospital in Englewood, New Jersey.

John H. Kispert  ’85

Kispert is Managing Partner of Black Diamond Ventures. Kispert also serves as lead independent director for several technology companies, both public and private. Most recently, he was president and CEO of Spansion, a developer and manufacturer of embedded semiconductors. Prior to joining Spansion, Kispert was president of KLA Tencor, a leader in the semiconductor equipment industry.  He consults, speaks, and instructs on how to operationalize innovation with an international perspective. He lives in Atherton, California, and holds an M.B.A. from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management. 

Kathryn E. Mohrman ’67

Mohrman retired in 2015 as a professor in the School of Public Affairs at Arizona State University. Prior to ASU, Mohrman directed the Washington office of the Hopkins Nanjing Center at Johns Hopkins University; she also was a Fulbright professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She was president of Colorado College from 1993 to 2002, and held administrative positions with the University of Maryland, Brown University, and the Association for American Colleges. A past director with the National Committee on United States-China Relations, she holds a Ph.D. from George Washington University and lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland. She was awarded the Doctor of Law honorary degree from Colorado College and Grinnell College, where she was a trustee from 1980 to 1993.

W. Ed Senn ’79

Senn is vice president of state government relations with Verizon Communications. He begins his position on the board after one year of service as an ex-officio trustee in his role as president of the Alumni Council for 2015-16. Senn has been a member of the Council since 2010, and has volunteered for the College by hosting student interns and externs, and by interviewing prospective students.  In addition, he established for the College the Jenny Erickson Endowed Scholarship, the John and Emily Pfitsch Endowed Scholarship, and the Katie Brown Anderson ’49 and Mary Lou Brown ’56 Experiential Learning Endowed Fund.  Senn, a resident of Washington, D.C., began his career as legislative director for U.S. Rep. Tom Tauke (R-Iowa). He later served as federal lobbyist for NYNEX, Bell Atlantic, and Verizon Communications.

David Maxwell ’66

Maxwell, who was president and professor of literature at Drake University for 16 years before his retirement in June 2015, was elected to the Board of Trustees in 2015, but deferred his service for one year while he transitioned to his new position as an Association of Governing Boards senior fellow. Maxwell, who resides in Asheville, North Carolina, also has been president of Whitman College, as well as a faculty member and dean of undergraduate studies at Tufts University. Before joining Drake in 1999, he directed the National Foreign Language Center. In addition to his bachelor's in Russian area studies, Maxwell holds a master's degree and doctorate in Slavic languages and literatures from Brown University.

Angela Onwuachi-Willig ’94

Onwuachi-Willig serves as an ex-officio trustee in her role as president of the Alumni Council for 2016-17. She is Charles and Marion Kierscht Professor of Law at the University of Iowa and Chancellor's Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. A graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, she clerked for U.S. District Court Judge Solomon Oliver Jr. and U.S. Circuit Court Judge Karen Nelson Moore. She is the author of According to Our Hearts: Rhinelander v. Rhinelander and the Law of the Multiracial Family. A past recipient of the AALS Derrick A. Bell Jr. Award and AALS Clyde Ferguson Award, she is a current American Law Institute member and was named to the National Law Journal's "Minority 40 under 40" list in 2011. She lives in Grinnell and is married to Jacob Willig-Onwuachi ’95, a tenured physics professor at the College.