Donald J. Edwards was unanimously re-elected to a second one-year term as chairman of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees during its annual organizational meeting Thursday at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC).
Edwards, of Chicago, is an alumnus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who has served as a trustee since 2017. He is now chief executive officer of Flexpoint Ford, a Chicago-based private equity investment firm he founded in 2004 that manages approximately $4 billion in assets.
He earned his bachelor’s degree in finance with University Honors, and also was a four-year letter-winner on the Illini golf team from 1985 to 1988. Later, he received an MBA from Harvard Business School with Baker Scholar Distinction.
The board governs the U of I System and its universities in Urbana-Champaign, Chicago and Springfield. The system – with more than 89,000 students, 25,000 full-time equivalent faculty and staff and over 750,000 alumni – awards more than 22,000 degrees every year and pumps $17.5 billion into the Illinois economy annually.
“It has been an honor to pay forward the incredible opportunities that the University of Illinois provided for me and my family,” Edwards said. “Together with our administration and my colleagues on the board, I look forward to continuing our efforts to build on the excellence that makes the U of I System truly exceptional and a life-changer for our students and a key engine of progress for our state.”
The board also unanimously re-elected a three-member Executive Committee, which meets as needed to complete urgent U of I System business that cannot be postponed to a regular meeting. Members of the committee are Edwards, Ramon Cepeda of Darien, and Patricia Brown Holmes of Chicago. All will serve one-year terms.
Along with Edwards, Cepeda and Holmes, other board members are Kareem Dale of Chicago, Ricardo Estrada of Chicago, Naomi Jakobsson of Urbana, Dr. Stuart King of Champaign, Edward McMillan of Greenville and Jill Smart of Downers Grove. Student trustees are Rosie Dawoud from the University of Illinois at Springfield, Trayshawn Mitchell from Urbana-Champaign and Susan Panek from UIC.
Trustees also re-elected Thomas R. Bearrows as university legal counsel, Dedra “Dee Dee” Williams as secretary of the Board of Trustees and the University and Avijit Ghosh as comptroller. All will serve one-year terms except Williams, who will retire in June and will be succeeded by longtime Urbana-Champaign administrator Gregory Knott. Treasurer Lester McKeever Jr. was elected to a two-year term in 2019.
University of Illinois trustees volunteer their time and service. More information is available at the Board of Trustees’ website – https://www.bot.uillinois.edu/
