Two business leaders join University Board of Trustees

Two new members of the University Board of Trustees were elected at the board’s Thursday, May 31 meeting.

David Rubenstein, a co-founder and the managing director of The Carlyle Group, and Charles Lewis, chairman of the Lewis-Sebring Family Foundation and managing general partner of Coach House Capital, have joined the Board of Trustees.

Lewis is a retired vice chairman of the investment banking division of Merrill Lynch & Co. He worked for Merrill Lynch & Co. and its predecessor from 1970 to 2004. Prior to his work in investment banking, Lewis was an assistant to the President and CEO of Computer Technology Inc., and he also is a former Captain in the U.S. Army, having served in the military from 1966 to 1969.

Educated at Amherst College, Lewis graduated in 1964. He earned his M.B.A. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1966. Lewis also holds an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Amherst College.

Lewis is a life trustee of Amherst College and chaired the school’s capital campaign. He also is a life trustee and a former vice chairman of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; a former trustee of the Ravinia Festival; a life director of the Illinois chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation; and the former director of the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation International.

Lewis is a member of the Policy Board of the University’s Urban Education Initiative and the Governing Board of its Charter Schools. He also is a member of the Visiting Committee to the Social Sciences Division.

Lewis’ wife, Penny Sebring, is Co-director of the University’s Consortium on Chicago School Research, a component of the Urban Education Initiative.

In 1987, Rubenstein co-founded The Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest, private equity firms. Since then, Carlyle has grown into a firm that operates 29 offices around the world, which manage more than $65 billion.

Rubenstein, a native of Baltimore, Md., is a 1970 magna cum laude graduate of Duke University, where he was elected Phi Beta Kappa. After graduating from Duke University, Rubenstein enrolled in the University’s Law School, where he edited the Law Review and earned his J.D. in 1973.

From 1973 to 1975, Rubenstein practiced law in New York with Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. The following year, he served as Chief Counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments. During the Carter Administration from 1977 to 1981, Rubenstein was Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy. After his White House service and before co-founding The Carlyle Group, he practiced law in Washington with Shaw, Pittman, Potts & Trowbridge (now Pillsbury, Winthrop, Shaw, Pittman).

In addition to his new membership on the Board of Trustees at Chicago, Rubenstein serves on the directing boards of Duke University, Johns Hopkins University, the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the Asia Society, the American Academy in Berlin, American Council on Germany, Freedom House and Ford’s Theatre.

Rubenstein also is a member of the visiting committee of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, the Dean’s Council at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, the Advisory Board of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, the Board of Overseers of the Hoover Institution, the Trustees’ Council of the National Gallery of Art, the Madison Council of the Library of Congress, the International Business Council of the World Economic Forum, the Council of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Trilateral Commission and the National Advisory Committee of J.P. Morgan Chase.