October 19, 2022
Dear Willamette community,
This week, Willamette's Board of Trustees will hold their first of three scheduled meetings of the academic year, mostly on the Salem campus but with some events in Portland and some committee meetings on Zoom.
Collectively, the 36 members of the Board include alumni from all of our schools, as well as some former Willamette parents and other regional leaders committed to our educational mission. They are legally responsible for overseeing the health of the university and for ensuring that it flourishes for generations to come.
Although in the 19th century trustees were sometimes involved with the day-to-day running of the university, today our Board delegates most of its authority either to the deans and faculty or to the administration. As president, I am the only employee whom the Board hires directly. But the Trustees continue to exercise direct authority in important ways, including by approving the annual budget for the university, managing our endowment funds, and granting faculty tenure. As a group, Trustees are also very generous supporters of Willamette's Annual Fund, student scholarships, and other programs.
I wanted to briefly introduce the five new Trustees joining Willamette's Board this fall:
- Bryn Berglund '01 is Senior VP of Human Resources for Paramount and previously served as VP of Workforce Development at CBS Corporation. A native Oregonian, Bryn's mother is a Willamette alumna (Class of '71), and her father was a faculty member and administrator at Willamette, and the university's first soccer coach. Bryn earned her BA in politics while working at AGSM. She was a member of Alpha Chi Omega and is a fervent supporter of Bearcat athletics. She earned an MBA at Seton Hall University.
- Bonnie Bauer Flynn ‘97 is VP of Finance Transformation and Strategy at Nike. She has held a variety of roles at Nike since starting as a Finance Manager in 2006. She previously worked as a finance manager for Amazon and a senior analyst at Arthur Andersen. As a student, Bonnie was on the women’s swim team; she was elected to Willamette's Athletics the Hall of Fame in 2019.
- Janelle (Duyck) Bovell ‘08 is one of our early career trustees (someone who graduated within the last 15 years). Janelle is the Director of Financial Crimes Compliance at PayPal in California, where she has worked since 2017 in various management roles. Janelle transferred to Willamette from Georgetown University, receiving her B.A. in Politics. After briefly working for Trimet and Bank of America, Janelle attended Indiana University School of Law. At Willamette, Janelle was a member of the women’s basketball team and worked as a research assistant for the Dean of Campus Life.
- Bob Heck '07, MBA '11 is the President of Willamette's Alumni Board and serves ex officio as a Trustee. While at Willamette, Bob was an English major, studied abroad in Auckland, New Zealand, and was involved in Beta Theta Pi, the Senior Gift Committee, ASWU, Opening Days, Class Council, and IFC. While at the AGSM, he served as a Peer Resource Advisor. Bob lives in Olympia, WA where he works as a Wealth Advisor. Earlier in his career, he worked at Willamette as an Assistant Director for Annual Giving and Leadership Gifts.
- Kenneth Wayne Morris JD ‘75 is the CEO of KnectIQ, a cybersecurity firm he founded in 2015 that has developed proprietary technology to detect and mitigate or prevent data breaches during data transfers. He has been a VP at Guidant and Boston Scientific, and General Counsel at Honeywell. While at Guidant, he created “Close the Gap,” a program to reduce disparities in cardiovascular care for underserved populations, including African Americans, Latinx, and women. He is also an Academic Excellence Tutor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in MN and an adjunct professor at Hamline University. Ken grew up in Oakland, CA.
I am grateful to our new trustees and for their willingness to serve their alma mater.
non nobis solum,
Steve