Harvard Alumni Association Announces Board of Overseers, Elected Directors Candidates Before April Election

The Harvard Alumni Association announced a slate of nine candidates for the Board of Overseers and nine for HAA elected directors on Thursday, kicking off the election process for Harvard’s two alumni leadership bodies.

The candidates for the Board of Overseers — Harvard’s second-highest governing body — include lawyer Salvo Arena; Birkenstock Holding PLC independent director and audit committee chair Nisha Kumar Behringer ’91; YoungArts president and chief executive officer Clive Chang; entrepreneur Teresa Hillary Clarke ’84; technologist Arti Garg; former Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson ’94; former Mexican Supreme Court justice Alfredo Gutiérrez Ortiz Mena; former California Surgeon General Nadine Burke Harris; and Philip L. Harrison ’86, the chief executive of an international architecture firm.

The 13-member nominating committee, which includes three current or former members of the Board of Overseers, spent the fall reviewing hundreds of prospective candidates before settling on its picks.

Candidates can also self-nominate for the Board of Overseers until Jan. 29 if they receive signatures from more than 1 percent of the total number of eligible voters in the last election for the board.

Voting will begin April 1. For the Overseers election, Harvard degree holders as of Jan. 1 are eligible to vote except for officers of instruction and government at Harvard and members of the Harvard Corporation; for HAA elected directors, all Harvard degree holders as of Jan. 1 may vote.

Both elections have suffered from low voter turnout in previous cycles. Last year, only 39,725 of more than 400,000 eligible alumni voted in the Overseer election.

This cycle, virtually all of the Board of Overseers candidates are top executives, though many have experience in the public sector.

Among the list is Ortiz Mena, who spent 13 years as a justice on Mexico’s top court. As a justice, Ortiz Mena developed a strong liberal track record, championing decisions to advance reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights. He resigned from the post in 2025, citing reforms that require judges to be elected, not appointed.

Ortiz Mena, now a lecturer in human rights at Harvard Law School, told The Crimson in October that the reforms would disincentivize counter-majoritarian decisions and were “incompatible with my personal beliefs of what the court should be.”

Grayson was once a rising name in Republican political circles. Dubbed a “rising star” at the 2004 Republican National Convention, he spent seven years as Kentucky Secretary of State and then — with the support of then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-K.Y.) — launched an unsuccessful campaign for U.S. Senate. After losing the Senate race, the Harvard graduate left public office to lead Harvard’s Institute of Politics, a position he held from 2011 to 2014.

Clarke, a former managing director at Goldman Sachs and Co., left the investment bank in 2010 to relaunch tech company “Africa.com,” a domain intended to be a hub for information on the continent. Clarke also has ties to Harvard’s top brass. As U.S. secretary of commerce in 2014, Harvard Corporation Senior Fellow Penny S. Pritzker ’81 appointed Clarke to serve on President Barack Obama’s Advisory Council on business in Africa.

Garg is the chief technologist at industrial software company AVEVA. Before entering the private sector, she worked at the White House Office of Management and Budget, where she distributed research funding for the Department of Energy.

Harris served three years as the California Surgeon General under California Governor Gavin C. Newsom. Harris, a pediatrician who specializes in the aftereffects of childhood trauma and toxic stress, resigned from the role in 2022.

Chang, a pianist and music director, just began his fourth year as CEO of YoungArts, a national foundation to support aspiring artists. Harrison is the chief executive at the architecture firm Perkins&Will. Arena is a partner at the Italian law firm Chiomenti, where he helps lead their mergers and acquisitions practice. Arena, who is also the president of the Harvard Law School Association of New York, addressed the Harvard Law School at class day in 2016.

The candidates for HAA elected directors are Mia Esther Alpert ’99, a founder of an alumni arts network; James P. “Jimmy” Biblarz ’14, an attorney and law lecturer; opera singer and producer Allison Charney Epstein ’89; Medha-Kameswari Bhamidipati “Medha” Gargeya ’14, a lawyer and Air Force Reserve officer; consulting executive Jakob Haesler; David G. Lefer ’93, an academic leader in innovation and technology; Margarita Montoto-Escalera ’78, a business consultant; private investor Yoshiko J. “June” Nagao ’96; and Jeffrey H. Tignor ’96, a law specialist.

If elected, they will be responsible for spearheading HAA’s alumni engagement efforts.

Nine Overseer candidates were put forward rather than the traditional eight to account for the resignation of board member Vikas P. Sukhatme. The candidate with the sixth-most votes will serve for two years to complete the rest of Sukhatme’s term.

—Staff writer Hugo C. Chiasson can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on X @HugoChiassonn or on Signal at hcc.35.

—Staff writer Elise A. Spenner can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X @EliseSpenner.