Meredith “Max” Hodges ’03, M.B.A ’10, government director of Boston Ballet, has been elected president of the Harvard College Board of Overseers for the 2023-24 tutorial 12 months. Geraldine Acuña-Sunshine ’92, M.P.P. ’96, a nonprofit chief centered on healthcare supply and biomedical analysis, will function vice chair of the board’s government committee for a similar time period.
Elected as Overseers in 2018, Hodges and Acuña-Sunshine will assume the board’s prime management roles for the ultimate 12 months of their phrases. They are going to succeed Paul Choi ’86, J.D. ’89, a associate on the worldwide regulation agency Sidley Austin LLP, and Leslie Tolbert ’73, Ph.D. ’78, Regents’ Professor Emerita in Neuroscience and former senior vice chairman for analysis on the College of Arizona.
“Max Hodges and Geraldine Acuña-Sunshine have served Harvard with extraordinary thoughtfulness, perception, and dedication for the previous 5 years,” stated President Larry Bacow. “Collectively they carry a priceless set of complementary views to the work of the Overseers and the College. It’s been a pleasure to serve alongside every of them, and I’m certain their management and dedication will likely be actual property to Claudine Homosexual as she steps into her new function.”
The Board of Overseers is one among Harvard’s two governing boards, together with the President and Fellows, often known as the Company. Formally established in 1642, the board performs an integral function within the governance of the College. As a central a part of its work, the board directs the visitation course of, the first means for periodic exterior evaluation of Harvard’s Faculties and departments. Via its array of standing committees, and the roughly 50 visiting committees that report back to them, the board probes the standard of Harvard’s packages and assures that the College stays true to its constitution as a spot of studying. Extra usually, drawing on its members’ various expertise and experience, the board offers counsel to the College’s management on priorities, plans, and strategic initiatives. The board additionally has the facility of consent to sure actions, such because the election of Company members, together with the president.
Max Hodges
Identified for her mixture of inventive vitality, government ability, and dedication to increasing entry to the humanities, Max Hodges has been government director of Boston Ballet since 2014. Her management has been acknowledged by the Boston Enterprise Journal, which named her a “40 beneath 40” honoree in 2019, and by the Commonwealth Institute and The Boston Globe, which named Boston Ballet one of many prime 100 women-led Massachusetts companies for 5 years in a row. Earlier than becoming a member of Boston Ballet, Hodges was government director of Gallim Dance, a New York-based modern dance firm, and held quite a lot of roles on the Museum of Trendy Artwork. She started her profession at Bain & Firm.
On Harvard’s Board of Overseers, Hodges chairs the committee on humanities and humanities. She additionally serves on the board’s government committee, together with its subcommittees on governance and visitation; the committee on finance, administration, and administration; and the governing boards’ joint committee on alumni affairs and improvement. As well as, she is a member of a variety of visiting committees, together with these for Harvard Enterprise Faculty, the Division of Romance Languages and Literatures, the Division of Close to Japanese Languages and Civilizations, and Harvard Radcliffe Institute.
“I really feel enormously honored to be elected president of the Board of Overseers,” stated Hodges. “Because the little one of two public faculty academics, I’ve all the time believed that training is the only most vital supply of alternative and development. Harvard units an instance for the sphere nationally and internationally. It has been a deeply rewarding expertise to serve and be taught alongside such completed, devoted, and various board colleagues for the previous 5 years, and to interact with Harvard’s extraordinary leaders. I really feel lucky to have served throughout Larry Bacow’s presidency, and to have realized from his management. And I’m crammed with vitality and pleasure to assist information the board as Claudine Homosexual takes on her new function at this important time for Harvard and better training.”
Hodges is a 2003 graduate of Harvard Faculty and a 2010 graduate of Harvard Enterprise Faculty. A frequent speaker on entrepreneurship within the arts, and an engaged alumna of each the Faculty and HBS, she usually advises college students curious about pursuing impactful careers within the arts and social enterprise. As an undergraduate, she was director of CityStep Harvard, which makes use of dance and motion to domesticate self-expression and vanity in space schoolchildren. She later served on CityStep’s graduate board. Beneath her management on the Boston Ballet, the corporate has hosted each HBS Social Enterprise Summer season Fellows and HBS Management Fellows. She is a member of the Dance/USA Managers Council.
Geraldine Acuña-Sunshine
A social entrepreneur, lawyer, and financeexecutive who divides her time between Boston and the Philippines, Geraldine Acuña-Sunshine is founder and president of the Sunshine Care Basis for Neurological Care and Analysis and the Collaborative Middle for XDP on the Massachusetts Normal Hospital, two organizations centered on serving people and households impacted by X-Linked Dystonia Parkinsonism, a neurological illness affecting individuals of Filipino descent. She can be senior counsel at Bracebridge Capital, a Boston-based funding administration agency.
“Harvard has been an vital a part of my life since my pupil days, and serving as an Overseer has been a terrific alternative to assist take into consideration how Harvard can finest serve the world,” stated Acuña-Sunshine. “I’m actually wanting ahead to the approaching 12 months with my fellow board members, and particularly to supporting President-elect Homosexual as she launches her presidency.”
As an Overseer, Acuña-Sunshine serves as chair of the committee on institutional coverage. She additionally serves on the manager committee, the committee on pure and utilized sciences, and the governing boards’ joint committee on inspection. She is a member of the visiting committees for the Division of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Worldwide and Space Research, Harvard Faculty, the Harvard Chan Faculty of Public Well being, and the Harvard Kennedy Faculty of Authorities.
Lengthy an energetic alumna, Acuña-Sunshine was a member of the board of the Harvard Alumni Affiliation from 2012 to 2018, and he or she is a present member of the HAA committee to appoint Overseers and HAA elected administrators. She serves on the College of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Council and was on the FAS marketing campaign steering committee in 2017-18. She is co-president of the Harvard Membership of the Philippines and co-chairs the Harvard Kennedy Faculty Fund Government Council. She can be a member of the Harvard Faculty Fund Government Committee, which she co-chaired from 2015 to 2018.
Acuña-Sunshine graduated from Harvard Faculty in 1992 and obtained a grasp of public coverage diploma from the Harvard Kennedy Faculty in 1996, in addition to a J.D. from Columbia Regulation Faculty in 1999. Early in her profession, she practiced regulation on the companies White & Case and Testa, Hurwitz & Thibeault. A trustee of the Massachusetts Normal Hospital, she additionally serves on the boards of Harvard Hillel, the Ladies’s Basis of Boston, and the Anti-Defamation League. In 2018, she obtained the ADL’s Girl of Valor Award for her work on behalf of ADL within the New England area.