Board names Crown Chair, Grossman, Trott as new Trustees

The University Board of Trustees has officially approved the election of James Crown to serve as the new Chairman of the Board of Trustees. Crown succeeds Edgar Jannotta.

At its Thursday, June 12 board meeting, the University Board of Trustees named James Crown to succeed Edgar Jannotta as Board Chairman and also elected two new University Trustees, Sanford Grossman, chairman of Quantitative Financial Strategies Inc., and Byron Trott, managing director and partner of Goldman, Sachs & Co.

Crown is president of Henry Crown and Co., a privately owned investment company, which invests in public and private securities, real estate and operating companies. He is a director of Bank One Corporation, General Dynamics Corporation and Sara Lee Corporation, and a trustee of the Museum of Science and Industry and the Orchestral Association.

Crown earned a B.A. in political science in 1976 from Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., and received his law degree in 1980 from Stanford University Law School, where he was projects editor of the Stanford Law Review and a member of the Stanford Public Interest Law Foundation.

Crown has been serving as Vice Chair of the University’s Board of Trustees for the past two years.

Grossman, an economist who earned his A.B., A.M. and Ph.D. degrees at Chicago, is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society. He is a recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal, bestowed every two years by the American Economic Association to recognize the nation’s most outstanding economist under 40.

Sanford Grossman (above) and Byron Trott (below) have been elected members of the University Board of Trustees.

A member and director of the American Finance Association, Grossman also has served as its vice president and president. Grossman also was a public director of the Chicago Board of Trade from 1992 to 1996.

He has been honored with the University’s Professional Achievement Citation and the Leo Melamed Prize and received fellowships from both the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Trott, who received his A.B. and M.B.A. from Chicago, serves as co-head of the Goldman Sachs Chicago office and head of the company’s Midwest investment banking services. He was one of the architects of and provided the initial support for the College’s Jeff Metcalf summer internship program, which provides 100 paid summer internships exclusively to students in the College.

Trott is a trustee of Rush Presbyterian St. Luke’s Medical Center and at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he also serves as a member of the Asian art and finance committees. He currently is a director of Enterprise Rent-A-Car Co. and TBG Information Investors L.L.C. He also is a member of the Economic Club of Chicago, the Executives’ Club of Chicago and the Commercial Club of Chicago.

Jannotta, who served as Chairman of the search committee that was instrumental in bringing President Randel to the University, will continue to serve as Chair of the Chicago Initiative, the University’s $2 billion, five-year capital campaign, and as a Life Trustee of the University.

The Board of Trustees also elected at its June meeting two current trustees, Andrew Alper (A.B.,’80, M.B.A.,’81), president of New York City Economic Development Corporation, and Paula Wolff (A.M.,’69, Ph.D.,’72), senior executive of Chicago Metropolis 2020, to serve as Vice Chairs of the board.