Vice President for Finance To Depart for Top Administrative Post at Brown

Harvard’s Vice President for Finance Elizabeth C. “Beppie” Huidekoper has accepted a post as Brown University’s executive vice president for finance and administration, after spending two decades in Cambridge.

Huidekoper said her job at Brown will encompass a wider range of responsibilities than her job at Harvard.

“I wasn’t looking to leave, but this is an opportunity and I felt I had to grab it,” Huidekoper said.

She said that only “not being offered the job at Brown” could have kept her at Harvard.

At Brown, Huidekoper—who said a Brown official notified her in July that

President Ruth J. Simmons wanted her for the job—will oversee all finance, police and security, facility and human resources issues.

“Beppie Huidekoper was recruited for this important position at Brown because of her reputation as a skilled and talented leader,” Simmons wrote in an e-mail message.

“She is highly regarded in higher education as an innovative thinker and a collaborative colleague.”

Huidekoper said the responsibilities of the Brown post and the university’s smaller size led her to accept the offer.

“Brown is a much smaller place, it doesn’t have all of the graduate schools Harvard has,” she said. “I’ll be more involved with direct management as well as the University as a whole.”

But Huidekoper added that she will miss all of the people she has worked with at Harvard.

Vice President for Government, Community and Public Affairs Alan J. Stone said that Huidekoper brought “energy, integrity and a great open and collegial style” to the University.

“You always have mixed feelings when a valued colleague leaves: you are sad to see them go, but you are happy for their new opportunity and wish them well,” Stone wrote in an e-mail message.

Huidekoper said her tenure has strengthened Harvard’s financial administration and helped the different financial deans work more collaboratively.

“I’ve been here for 20 years now. I’ve done a lot of things that I wanted to do. Everyone needs to take on new challenges,” said Huidekoper, who also served as a financial analyst, director of the Budget Office and acting vice president during her time at Harvard.

Brown, she said, will offer her a new challenge.

“Brown is at a new point in its history and going to be doing some new interesting things over the next 20 years,” she said.

Huidekoper would not describe the new initiatives, but added that Simmons has already pledged to “hire new faculty, create a new life sciences building and define new academic priorities.”

Until she officially assumes her new position on Oct. 15, Huidekoper said she will divide her time between Cambridge and Providence.

She said that University President Lawrence H. Summers has already asked her to advise him in the search for a new vice president for finance.

This marks the third vice presidential appointment for Summers, after his appointment of Stone last year and the pending replacement for Vice President and General Counsel Anne Taylor, who resigned in June.

—Staff writer Jenifer L. Steinhardt can be reached at steinhar@fas.harvard.edu.