Henry A. Fernandez will join the Stanford Board of Trustees on Oct. 1. (Image credit: Courtesy Henry A. Fernandez / MSCI Inc.)

Henry A. Fernandez, chairman and chief executive officer of MSCI Inc., a global provider of investment decision support tools, and a longtime supporter of Stanford’s Graduate School of Business (GSB), has been elected to the Stanford University Board of Trustees.

He will begin a five-year term Oct. 1.

Steven A. Denning, chair of the Board of Trustees, said he was delighted to welcome Fernandez to the board.

“Through our mutual prior involvement on the GSB Advisory Council, I have had the opportunity to work with Henry on a variety of issues involving the Business School,” Denning said. “Henry is an extraordinary leader with a deep appreciation for, commitment to and involvement in higher education, including at the board level at Georgetown University. Our board will benefit from Henry’s experience and expertise.”

Fernandez took the helm at MSCI in 1998. Before leading the company’s transition to a fully independent, stand-alone public company in 2009, he was a managing director at Morgan Stanley, where he worked in equity derivatives sales and trading, emerging markets product strategy, mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance and mortgage finance. Prior to joining Morgan Stanley, he founded and served as president of the private equity firm HispaniMedia. He also founded Ferco Partners, a private equity investment firm in Mexico.

Fernandez, who earned an MBA at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1983, has been a strong volunteer in New York City and nationally for the school. He is a former member and chair of the GSB Advisory Council, and served as an adviser to the dean on the school’s strategic plan for educational technology and globalization.

In 2013, the GSB honored Fernandez with an Excellence in Leadership Award, which honors one senior executive who also is an alumnus for significant contributions to the corporate world and to the community.

Currently, Fernandez is a member of the Hoover Institution Board of Overseers and a member of the new LEAD (Lifelong Engagement and Advocacy for Development) Council, an initiative of Stanford’s Office of Development that aims to prepare the next generation of development volunteer leaders at Stanford. The LEAD council is composed of more than 70 members representing schools, institutes, undergraduates and graduate alumni from across the university.

Fernandez, who was born in Mexico City, grew up in Nicaragua. He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics at Georgetown University in 1979. While attending Georgetown, he worked as a diplomat in the Nicaraguan Embassy in Washington, D.C. He pursued doctoral studies in economics at Princeton University for two years before enrolling in the MBA program at Stanford.

Fernandez is a member of the Georgetown University Board of Directors. He also is a member of the boards of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the Foreign Policy Association, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York, and the American Nicaraguan Foundation. He has also served on the boards of the Mexican Derivatives Exchange, the Browning School and the Trinity School in New York City.

Henry and his wife, Alexia, who reside in New York City, have three children, one of whom is an undergraduate at Stanford.