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Northeastern London Board

Drawn from a range of backgrounds, the Board has primary responsibility for the good governance of the University. The full Board is listed below.

Tom Nedell, Senior Vice President for Finance & Treasurer at Northeastern University and Chairman of the Board

Thomas Nedell manages the university’s financial affairs to help ensure that it has the budgetary resources to achieve its ambitious goals. His portfolio includes campus planning, facilities, finance, human resources, institutional audit, and treasury, including oversight of the university’s endowment.

As Northeastern’s chief financial officer, he is responsible for establishing and monitoring sound financial controls within the university community.

Nedell joined Northeastern in 2009 as vice president for finance. Prior to that, he held several different positions over 18 years at St. John’s University in New York, including his last post as vice president for business affairs and treasurer. He started his career in the audit practice of Coopers & Lybrand in Boston where he spent three years and became a Certified Public Accountant in Massachusetts.

He is also a member of the board of the Boston Consortium for Higher Education. Nedell holds a bachelor’s degree from Boston College and an MBA from St. John’s University.

Rob Farquharson, Chief Executive Officer

Rob’s early career was as a solicitor with Clifford Chance in London and Singapore. He spent four years in corporate finance with 3i and three years with Bain & Company as a consultant. More recently, he has spent eight years as a director and managing director of major educational publishing businesses. He has a degree in history from Oxford University and an MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Tricia Wood, Vice President of Audit & Advisory Services at Northeastern University

As the Vice President of Audit & Advisory Services, Tricia Wood is responsible for developing, organizing, and directing Northeastern University’s Audit plan. She also contributes to the Enterprise Risk Management program which oversees efforts to facilitate the identification, assessment, and management of key institutional risks. She reports administratively to the Senior Vice President Finance and Treasurer and has a direct reporting relationship to the Chair of the Audit & Risk Committee of the Board of Trustees.

Prior to joining Northeastern, she worked at Boston College and Deloitte. She received her MBA from Boston College and her Bachelors in Mathematics from Stonehill College. Tricia holds Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) and a Certified in Information Systems Risks & Controls (CRISC) certifications.

Darren Campili, Vice Chairman, Healthcare Investment Banking at Barclays

Darren is one of Europe’s preeminent advisors to European life sciences companies. Before joining Barclays he spent 12 years at Deutsche Bank, based in both New York and London, most recently as Global Head of Healthcare Banking. He has advised on a number of significant transactions, including Stada’s sale to Bain and Cinven, Shire’s acquisitions of Baxalta, Dyax and Movetis, Bayer’s acquisition of Algeta, and Takeda’s acquisition of Nycomed.

Darren is an alumnus of Northeastern, having gained his Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting and Finance there, before attaining an MBA from Columbia Business School.

Jonathan Philip Pryce Goodwin OBE

Jonathan Goodwin is a Partner and Head of Merchant Banking at Alvarium Investments. In 2011 he founded Lepe Partners, an independent merchant bank focused on the media, internet and consumer sectors, which merged with Alvarium in 2019. Prior to founding Lepe, Mr. Goodwin was Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of LongAcre Partners, Europe’s leading mid-market media corporate finance house. Jonathan is also President, Investment Pillar, British Fashion Council, which is committed to developing excellence and growth in a sector that is a significant contributor to the British economy. More recently Jonathan received his OBE for services to the economy in 2018 and has been appointed Chairman of the Media Trust in 2020.

Diane MacGillivray

Diane MacGillivray is Senior Vice President for University Advancement at Northeastern University, where she oversaw the successful completion of the university’s largest ever campaign in 2017, which raised $1.4 billion, setting a new a university record. Under Diane’s leadership, annual fundraising has increased from an average of $20 million to an average of $85 million, including securing a gift for the first named college at the university and a $50 million donation for a second named college. Most recently, MacGillivray was instrumental in attaining two $100 million gifts to launch an advanced technology campus in Portland, Maine—one from David and Barbara Roux to create the Roux Institute and a second from the Harold Alfond Foundation to provide scholarships and other resources for its students.

MacGillivray steers a University Advancement team that works closely with university leadership to develop and execute fundraising strategies that fuel the university’s momentum. After coming to Northeastern, she implemented a strategic restructuring of the fundraising operation from a centralized model to a more effective hybrid structure and oversaw the creation of new initiatives such as the parent giving program, innovative alumni engagement programs, and Women Who Empower—a university-wide scholarship and conference series.
Prior to joining Northeastern in 2007, MacGillivray was senior associate dean for Advancement in the University of Letters, Arts and Sciences at the University of Southern California (USC). MacGillivray holds a bachelor’s degree from Boston University and a master’s in 19th century British history from USC.

Gregory D. Abowd

Gregory D. Abowd is Dean of the University of Engineering and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northeastern University. He is an internationally renowned and highly cited scientist known for his contributions and groundbreaking research in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and ubiquitous computing.

Dr. Abowd’s contributions to the fields of HCI and ubiquitous computing have been recognized through numerous awards. In 2008, he was named a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery as well as inducted into the ACM CHI Academy, the most prestigious honor for researchers in HCI. In 2009, he received the ACM Eugene Lawler Humanitarian Award for his work in autism and technology.

He was on the founding editorial board of IEEE Pervasive Computing Magazine and was founding Editor-in-Chief of Foundations and Trends in HCI and The Proceedings of the ACM in Interactive, Mobile, Wearable, and Ubiquitous Technologies. He also founded the non-profit Atlanta Autism Consortium in 2008 to serve and unite the various stakeholder communities in Atlanta connected to autism research and services.

Prior to joining Northeastern in March 2021, Dr. Abowd was a Regents’ Professor and held the J.Z. Liang Chair in the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he also served as Associate Dean of Research and Space for the University of Computing. In over 26 years at Georgia Tech, Dr. Abowd initiated innovative research efforts, including Classroom 2000 and the Aware Home, as well as pioneering innovations in autism and technology, health systems, CampusLife, and a joint initiative with engineering in computational materials.

Dr. Abowd holds a B.S. degree in Honors Mathematics from the University of Notre Dame and an M.Sc. and D.Phil. in Computation from the Programming Research Group in the Computing Laboratory at the University of Oxford, where he attended as a Rhodes Scholar.

Julietta E. Dexter

Julietta Dexter is co-founder and Chief Growth & Purpose Officer of ScienceMagic.Inc. Founded in 2020, ScienceMagic.Inc partners with brands to define and articulate their purpose, develop their commercial strategies, and build their digital interfaces. She served as founding partner and chief executive officer of The Communications Store until it merged with ScienceMagic,Inc in 2020. She is also an ambassador for the Prince’s Trust campaign, Women Supporting Women, a Trustee for Beauty Banks, a charity combating hygiene poverty in the UK and a regular fundraiser for Great Ormond Street Hospital.

Professor A C Grayling, Principal, Founder & Professor of Philosophy (co-opted)

 

A. C. Grayling CBE MA DPhil (Oxon) FRSA FRSL is the Master of the Northeastern University London, London, and its Professor of Philosophy. He is also a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford. He is the author of over thirty books of philosophy, biography, history of ideas, and essays. He was for a number of years a columnist on the Guardian, the Times, and Prospect magazine. He has contributed to many leading newspapers in the UK, US and Australia, and to BBC radios 4, 3 and the World Service, for which he did the annual ‘Exchanges at the Frontier’ series; and he has often appeared on television. He has twice been a judge on the Booker Prize, in 2014 serving as the Chair of the judging panel. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Vice President of Humanists UK, Patron of the Defence Humanists, Honorary Associate of the Secular Society, and a Patron of Dignity in Dying.

Martin Smith, Assistant Vice President for Recruitment & Marketing for the Global Campuses (co-opted)

Martin is responsible for the recruitment and marketing function across much of Northeastern University’s campus network, including: Charlotte, London (NCH), San Francisco, Seattle, Silicon Valley, Toronto and Vancouver. Martin gained extensive experience of student recruitment at the University of Law, including the development of the international recruitment department and the agent network . Before this, he was a lecturer in law at the University of Law, the University of Kent and the University of Reading. He was previously a solicitor in the City with Denton Wilde Sapte, specialising in EU and competition law. He holds LLB and LLM degrees.

Senior Management Team

The Senior Management Team (SMT) ensures there is effective leadership, management and coordination of all academic administrative services, marketing, recruitment and support activities undertaken by the University. SMT is responsible for developing detailed operational plans and supporting strategies to deliver the Northeastern University London Strategic Plan.

  • Scott Wildman
  • Sheena Van Der Merwe
  • Vanessa Carreras
  • Elizabeth O’Connell
  • Bex Morrison