McMurtry elected chair of the Board of Trustees

By Ray Delgado

The Board of Trustees has elected Burton J. McMurtry, a board member since 1997, as its new chair. The board also elected two new trustees to the board, Steven Denning and Susan Rasinski McCaw, at a retreat last week.

McMurtry succeeds Isaac Stein, who after 10 years of service on the board will step down at the end of June. Stein, a Palo Alto resident and president of Waverly Associates Inc., a private investment firm, served as board chair for four years.

"This is a remarkable time for Stanford. With John Hennessy as president and Isaac Stein as chair, the university has made great progress," McMurtry said. "I'm really honored and enthused to lead this board. This is a great institution, and we have not arrived at what we can be yet."

Stein said McMurtry has been a tremendous asset to the university. "From working with us on the presidential search committee to leading the board's Governance Task Force, Burt has been thoughtful, innovative and, most of all, dedicated to the best interests of Stanford," Stein said. "It has been a privilege to lead the Board of Trustees these last four years, and I know that under Burt's leadership it will continue to support the excellence of Stanford in all of its dimensions."

McMurtry, a resident of Portola Valley, is a private investor who co-founded several venture capital partnerships, including Institutional Venture Associates and Technology Venture Investors. McMurtry earned an M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford in 1959 and 1962, respectively. He earned a B.A. and B.S. in electrical engineering from Rice University in 1956 and 1957. He spent 12 years in engineering and management positions with GTE Sylvania before entering the venture capital business.

McMurtry is currently chair of the board's committee on compensation and is a member of the committees on agenda, athletics, development, medical center and trusteeship. He has been a member of the advisory board to the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research since 1995 and is also a member of the School of Engineering Advisory Council.

McMurtry has been a member of the Hoover Institution Board of Overseers since 1997, and he was a member and past chair of the advisory council to the Graduate School of Business. He also served as campaign vice chair of the $200 million Campaign for Stanford Graduate Fellowships and chair of the university's Major Gifts Committee of the Peninsula. He earned the Gold Spike Award in 2002 and the Stanford Associates Award in 2001.

McMurtry is also a trustee of Rice University and the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

Elected vice chairs of the board were Denise O'Leary, a private investor from San Mateo; Susan Orr, president of Telosa Software in Palo Alto; and John Levin, chair and managing partner of Folger Levin & Kahn LLP in San Francisco.

New board members

Denning is the managing partner of General Atlantic Partners LLC, a worldwide private equity firm, which he co-founded in 1980. He earned an M.S. from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey in 1971 and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1978. He graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology with a B.S. in 1970.

Denning has been a member of the advisory council to the Graduate School of Business since 1996 and will serve as its chair beginning in 2005.

McCaw is president of COM Investments and managing partner at Eagle Creek Capital, both private investment firms. She received an A.B. in economics from Stanford in 1984 and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School in 1988.

McCaw has served as a co-chair of the executive committee of the Campaign for Undergraduate Education since 1999. She was a member of the Stanford Alumni Association Board of Directors from 1998 to 2001.

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