Stanford University Board of Trustees elects five new members

The Stanford University Board of Trustees has elected five new members who will take their seats at the upcoming board meeting in April: John A. Gunn, Ann H. Lamont, Goodwin Liu, Miriam Rivera and Richard A. Sapp.

Four of the new trustees—Lamont, Liu, Rivera and Sapp—were elected through the alumni nominations process. Every two-and-a-half years the Alumni Association and the board's Committee on Nominations present four names to the board for election.

Including the new trustees, the board will have 33 members, two fewer than its limit of 35. Trustees are elected to five-year terms.

John A. Gunn is the chairman and chief executive officer of Dodge & Cox, a San Francisco firm that provides investment-management services to individuals, corporations, retirement funds and tax-exempt institutions through mutual funds and separate accounts.

Gunn earned a bachelor's degree in economics from Stanford in 1965 and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1972. He is one of the founding donors of the business school's Center for Global Business and the Economy, a four-year-old center that supports research and course development on global issues.

Gunn is a member of the Stanford Challenge Steering Committee, composed of 37 people from around the world, each of whom is heading up volunteer activities for a specific campaign area. Gunn is the chair of the major gifts campaign area. In addition, he is a member of the Parents Advisory Board and the Stanford Challenge Leadership Council. He is also the chair of the advisory board of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.

An opera buff, Gunn is chairman-elect of the board of directors of the San Francisco Opera. He and his wife, Cynthia, have underwritten many San Francisco opera productions, including the recent world premiere of Appomattox and a new production of The Maid of Orleans.

Ann H. Lamont is a managing partner of Oak Investment Partners, a multi-stage venture capital firm, where she leads the healthcare and financial services information technology teams. Lamont, who served as general partner of the firm for 20 years before becoming a managing partner, works in Oak Investment's office in Westport, Conn. Before joining the firm in 1982, Lamont was a research associate with Hambrecht & Quist, an investment banking firm.

She ranked 50th on the 2008 Forbes Midas 100 List, an annual survey of the top technology dealmakers in the world by Forbes magazine. She serves on the boards of directors of several companies, including iHealth Technologies Inc. and CareMedic Systems Inc.

Lamont serves on the Stanford Challenge Major Gifts Regional Committee. Previously, she served on the major gifts committee for the five-year Campaign for Undergraduate Education, which raised more than $1 billion, and co-chaired her 20th Reunion Special Gifts Committee. Lamont earned a bachelor's degree in political science from Stanford.

In January, she received a 2008 BRAVA Award from the YWCA of Greenwich, Conn., for excellence in professional and community service.

Goodwin Liu is an assistant professor at the University of California-Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law, where his primary areas of expertise are constitutional law, education policy, civil rights and the U.S. Supreme Court. He is co-director of the law school's Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity, a multidisciplinary think tank on civil rights law and policy.

Before joining the law school faculty, Liu was an appellate litigator at O'Melveny & Myers in Washington, D.C. He clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg during the October 2000 term and for Judge David Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1998 to 1999.

Liu earned a bachelor's degree in biological sciences from Stanford in 1991 and, as a senior, received a Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel Award for outstanding service to undergraduate education. He earned a master's degree as a Rhodes Scholar in the Philosophy, Psychology and Physiology Program from Oxford University in 1993, and a law degree from Yale in 1998.

He has served on the board of directors of the Stanford Alumni Association, on the Board of Trustees Task Force on Minority Alumni Relations and on the national advisory board of the Haas Center for Public Service. He has won the Stanford Alumni Association's Governors' Award for exemplary volunteer service to Stanford.

Liu serves on the boards of directors of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California; the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy in Washington, D.C.; and Chinese for Affirmative Action, an advocacy group that fights for civil and political rights for Asians and Pacific Americans.

Miriam Rivera is a former vice president and deputy general counsel of Google Inc. In that post, she led the legal teams for the company's corporate, commercial, Asia Pacific/Latin America, employment, real estate and technical operations. Earlier, she served as associate general counsel, managing Google's revenue and commercial partnership practice. Before joining Google, Rivera served as in-house counsel for Ariba Inc. in Sunnyvale. Earlier, she co-founded On Your Mind, a venture-backed enterprise software company later known as Outcome Software Inc.

Rivera earned a bachelor's degree in sociology from Stanford in 1986 and a master's degree in Spanish (Caribbean literature) from Stanford in 1989. She earned an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1994 and a law degree from Stanford Law School in 1995.

Currently, she serves on the board of visitors of the Stanford Law School. She also has volunteered with several campus projects, including the Stanford Alumni Consulting Team, which provides pro bono management consulting services to the nonprofit community.

She serves on the board of advisers of Hispanic-Net, an organization dedicated to the needs of Hispanic entrepreneurs and executives in technology.

Last week, Rivera received the 2008 Jerry I. Porras Latino Leadership Award from the Hispanic Business Students Association of the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Richard A. Sapp is a private investor who lives in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif.

Sapp retired from Goldman, Sachs & Co. in 2003 after working for the investment banking firm for 22 years. He was elected a general partner in 1990.

Sapp spent nearly 17 years with Goldman Sachs International in London, building and ultimately heading the mergers and acquisitions and corporate advisory business for the Europe, Middle East and Africa regions. He has extensive experience in the energy and power, financial services and consumer products industries. He returned to California in 2005.

Sapp earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Stanford in 1978 and an MBA in finance from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1981. In 1980, he was chosen for a Wharton Public Policy Fellowship at the U.S. Treasury Department.

Sapp has chaired the advisory board for the Stanford Trust, a charity registered with the U.K. Charity Commission, and helped with major gift development efforts in the United Kingdom and Europe during the Campaign for Undergraduate Education. He is co-chair of his class committee for its 30th reunion and is a member of the San Diego Regional Major Gifts Committee.

Currently, Sapp serves on boards at the Wharton School; at the Pacific Ridge School, an independent, nonprofit college preparatory school for grades 7 through 12 in Carlsbad, Calif.; and at the Rancho Santa Fe Foundation, a community charitable foundation in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif.

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