Four new members were elected to Brandeis University’s Board of Trustees, according to a BrandeisNow article. The new members are Bonnie Berger ’83, Josh Kraft, Deborah Bial ’87 and Lan Xue ’90, and they will start their four-year terms May 14. Jonathan Davis ’75 was reelected to the board.
Berger has been the Simons Professor of Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) since 2016 and a professor at MIT since 2002. She focuses on the use of mathematics in the field of molecular biology, according to her MIT webpage.
Kraft has been the president and CEO of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston since 2008, an organization which hosts educational and mentoring programs for children in Boston. Kraft is also the president of New England Patriots Charitable Foundation and is the son of the late trustee Myra Hiatt Kraft ’64, who is the namesake of the Myra Kraft Transitional Year Program, which provides students who have not had access to AP and honors courses with support systems.
Bial is the president and founder of the Posse Foundation, which recruits and trains students in teams to help them succeed in college. Posse Scholars receive four-year, full-tuition leadership scholarships. In an interview with the New York Times, Bial said her inspiration for the foundation came from a student she met at the nonprofit CityKids Foundation. “I loved this idea that you send teams of kids together to college so they can back each other up. Social justice motivates me now, but at the time the idea of starting something and making it great really appealed to me,” Bial said.
Lan Xue ’90, who received her bachelor’s degree in economics and masters in international economic in finance from Brandeis and Brandeis International Business School, is a founding partner at Trivest Advisors. She focuses on Chinese financial markets and actively supports women in finance. Xue spoke at a Hong Kong lecture series in 2016 in connection with the global organization “100 Women in Finance.”
Davis, who was reelected to the board, is a former vice chair of the Board of Trustees and works as the chief executive officer and chief investment officer at the real estate management, investment and development firm Davis Companies. He has also been involved with several non-profit organizations including the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston, Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston and WBUR.
