Ramanan Raghavendran — who currently chairs the board of advisors of Penn's School of Arts and Sciences — will take the helm of the University's Board of Trustees following Scott Bok's resignation.
The Board of Trustees unanimously passed a resolution to appoint Raghavendran as chair during a virtual meeting Thursday evening. Raghavendran has served as the SAS Board of Advisors chair since 2022 and is also chair of the Penn International Alumni Council. He is the first person of color to chair the University's Board of Trustees.
Julie Beren Platt, who had served as interim chair following Bok's decision to step down last month, will return to the position of vice chair.
Raghavendran will oversee the search and selection process for Penn’s next president — and the second presidential transition at the University in three years. Raghavendran — who Platt described during the meeting as a "true University citizen" — is a 1989 Engineering and Wharton graduate as well as a 2015 College of Liberal and Professional Studies graduate.
Raghavendran is a managing partner at Amasia, a San Francisco- and Singapore-based venture capital firm that specializes in sustainability and climate investments. He has served as a trustee for 10 years, including as a member of the board's Executive Committee and chair of the Location, National, and Global Engagement Committee.
He also serves as global coordinator for the Penn Alumni Ambassadors Program and is a member of the advisory board for the Center for the Advanced Study of India.
Jameson and Platt both praised Raghavendran in an email to the Penn community following the board's vote.
“Ramanan Raghavendran is an inspired and inspiring choice for Trustee Board Chair,” Interim President Larry Jameson wrote in the email. “Ramanan has a history of bridging distance to make a lasting difference, whether between places and people or fields of knowledge.”
Platt described Raghavendran as “someone who listens with intention and invests deeply in relationships,” writing that she looks forward to working alongside him.
In the email, Raghavendran said he is honored to serve as Board of Trustees chair.
“I believe great American universities, like the University of Pennsylvania, are the most important repositories of all that defines, and is good and laudable about, our modern civilization,” Raghavendran wrote. “I am humbled by the trust reposed in me by my fellow Trustees. We are united in supporting the mission of this incredible institution.”
Platt was appointed to serve as the board's interim chair following Bok's resignation in December. Bok stepped down just minutes after former Penn President Liz Magill's own resignation. Platt will return to her former role as vice chair.
A Dec. 9 statement by the Executive Committee said the nominating committee of the Board of Trustees would begin an "expeditious process" to recommend the next chair to the Executive Committee before the start of the spring semester.
Bok oversaw the transition from former Penn President Amy Gutmann to Magill during his term as chair that began in July 2021. Magill and Bok faced months of criticism over the University's response to the Palestine Writes Literature Festival, the Israel-Hamas War, and antisemitism on campus. The criticism came to a head following Magill's testimony before Congress regarding antisemitism, and she resigned only days later.
On Dec. 12, J. Larry Jameson — executive vice president of the University of Pennsylvania for the Health System and dean of the Perelman School of Medicine — was announced as the University's interim president in a public meeting of the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees. It is unclear how long Jameson will serve.
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