University President William P. Leahy, S.J.., with new Board of Regents chairs Susan Martinelli Shea and Marc Seidner, and former chair John Fish.

The Boston College Board of Regents, formed in 2017 to advise the University President and Board of Trustees on strategic priorities and matters essential to the University’s future, has announced a leadership change, as inaugural chair John Fish P’13, ’18 completed his term and was succeeded by Marc Seidner ’88 and Susan Martinelli Shea ’76. All three are current University trustees.

Seidner, managing director and CIO of non-traditional strategies for PIMCO, has more than three decades of investment experience. A frequent participant in the Carroll School of Management Finance Conference, he moderated a discussion with Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President and CEO Robert Steven Kaplan this year; at past conferences, he has taken part in a panel on global investment and led a Q&A with VISA Inc. Chief Executive Officer Alfred F. Kelly Jr. He also has been a featured speaker at the Winston Center for Leadership’s “Lunch with a Leader” series. During the past year, Seidner committed a gift to endow the executive directorship of the University’s Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society.

Shea is founder and president of Dancing with the Students, a non-profit organization that offers ballroom dance instruction to students in grades five through nine in the Philadelphia area, to promote respect, civility, exercise, and enjoyment; a group of students in the program performed for Pope Francis during his 2015 visit to the U.S. The mother of a 2004 BC graduate, Shea made a gift establishing the Charles F. Donovan, S.J., Deanship in the Lynch School of Education.  

 The 98-member Board of Regents, which will hold its annual campus meeting Nov. 14 and 15, provides opportunities for alumni, current and former BC parents, and friends of BC to serve as University ambassadors and thought leaders. Regents are selected on the basis of their professional, charitable, and civic pursuits, and for their capacity to bring diverse and unique perspectives to the work of the University. They are expected to experience and model practices of reflection and discernment, and to prioritize philanthropic support of the University.

In addition to participating in periodic conference calls and off-campus experiences, regents serve on advisory committees, each working with a senior administrator or academic leader and focused on a priority area of the University. The committees are Financial Aid, Formation, Global Engagement, Integrated Science and Society, and Leadership Development.

–University Communications | October 2019