September-October 2008 > John Harvard's Journal

University People

EVP

Edward C. Forst ’82 has been named Harvard’s first executive vice president, effective September 1. As the “principal ranking operating officer” at the University, he will oversee financial, administrative, and human-resources functions (each run by a vice president) and administrative information technology. The new position relieves somewhat the administrative pressures on the president and provost, to whom seven vice presidents and 11 deans, among others, now report. Forst, a Goldman Sachs partner since 1998, was most recently global head of investment management (and now becomes a board member at Harvard Management Company, which invests the endowment); previously, he served as chief administrative officer at Goldman Sachs. He has been actively involved in his College class’s reunions and gift commitee.

 

Diversity Development

Conant professor of education Judith D. Singer, former academic dean and acting dean at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has been appointed the University’s senior vice provost for faculty development and diversity. In that role, Singer, known for developing quantitative methods of social-science research, will oversee and monitor faculty-appointment processes; review junior-faculty appointments; administer University funds used to appoint scholars who make the faculty more diverse; and gather data and report on the status of these efforts (see www.faculty.harvard.edu). She succeeds Evelynn Hammonds, who became dean of Harvard College in June.

 

Communications Chief

Christine Heenan, founder and president of Clarendon Group, a Providence, Rhode Island-based public and government relations firm, will become Harvard’s new vice president for government, community, and public affairs, effective October 1. She succeeds Alan J. Stone.

Heenan, who holds a B.S. in journalism from Boston University, was a business strategy consultant. She then entered government, serving on the Domestic Policy Council staff during the first term of the Clinton administration, focusing on health and women’s issues and writing speeches. She had communications roles at the 1996 and 2000 Democratic national conventions, and was subsequently director of community and government relations at Brown University and Brown Medical School. She founded Clarendon Group in 2000. Her Harvard portfolio extends from Boston’s review of Allston plans and congressional concern over university endowments to news-media matters.