St. Lawrence Board Elects First Woman Chair; Welcomes New Vice Chairs
The St. Lawrence University Board of Trustees is pleased to welcome new members and announce Jennifer Curley Reichert '90 as the first woman to be elected chair in its 167-year history.
Board Elects First Woman Chair
Board Chair Jennifer Curley Reichert ’90 St. Lawrence University’s Board of Trustees has elected Jennifer Curley Reichert ’90 as the first woman chair in its 167-year history.
“Jennifer’s strategic acumen, depth of experience as a trustee, and dedication to her alma mater make her the ideal chair of our Board. She, Ed, and Shauna make a powerful team and I am looking forward to working with them in leading St. Lawrence University,” says President Kathryn A. Morris. “It is exciting to have strong and collaborative trustee partners during such a dynamic time at St. Lawrence.”
Jennifer Curley Reichert ’90, who served as vice-chair of the board for five years, was elected to lead the board as chair. Curley Reichert has served as a term trustee since 2010 and as a McCurdy-Sprague trustee from 1999-2003. McCurdy-Sprague trustees are alumni who graduated within the past 10 years.
Curley Reichert is a founder of the SLU Connect program, an innovative weeklong program that provides St. Lawrence students an immersive hands-on career experience including site visits, career and industry roundtables, and small group discussions, hosted by St. Lawrence alumni and parents. The SLU Connect program started in Washington D.C. and has expanded to cities across the country. Curley Reichert’s leadership and vision were crucial to the program’s initial success, and she has remained a strong financial supporter. In addition, she has served on the Presidential Search Committee, the Experience St. Lawrence Task Force, and has been a member of the Alumni Executive Council and Leadership Gifts Committee.
She has been a career mentor to countless Laurentians and has hired 22 Laurentians as either interns or full-time staff members at her company. Curley Reichert is the founder and CEO of Curley Company, a strategic communications firm based in Washington, D.C. She is a business strategist, author, and entrepreneur who advises Fortune 100 companies, large trade associations, and nonprofits on thought leadership, reputation management, and risk mitigation.
In 2020, she was named Woman of the Year by Washington Women in Public Relations. She serves as a board member for Junior Achievement of Greater Washington and the Global Women’s Innovation Network (GlobalWIN), where she chairs the governance committee. As St. Lawrence’s board chair, Curley Reichert has joined an elite group of women. According to a 2020 report by the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, only approximately 25% of independent universities and colleges have a female board chair.
New Vice-Chairs Elected
Ed Keller ’86 and Shauna King ’79 were also elected to serve as vice-chairs.
Ed Keller ’86
Ed Keller was elected as vice-chair and has served as a term trustee since 2018. He has served on the Laurentian major & planned gift committee, as vice-chair of the board budget & finance committee, and has been an important mentor to many young St. Lawrence alums.
Keller recently joined Balyasny Asset Management as a senior advisor. Previously he spent almost 20 years in leadership roles at Morgan Stanley before stepping down from his role as global head of Morgan Stanley’s prime brokerage in 2021. He ran Global Equity Sales in the Americas, was head of Morgan Stanley’s Boston office, and spent five years with them in London. In 1991, he graduated from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management and serves on the Kellogg Finance Network Advisory Board.
Shauna King ’79
Shauna King was elected as vice-chair and has served as a term trustee since 2017. She has spent the last several years as the chair of the Board’s budget and finance committee. King retired from Yale University as vice president for finance and business operations in 2015 after nine years. At Yale, she initiated the transformation of business operations, information technology, finance, and research administration while developing a culture of high performance across these areas.
Before joining Yale, she spent the majority of her career at PepsiCo. King also has significant Board experience both in the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors. She was on several Yale-affiliated boards during her tenure at the university. In the Dallas community, she has served on the boards of Prince of Peace Catholic School in Plano and the University of Dallas. She is currently a director at Catholic Charities of Dallas.
