Brandeis Magazine

Four new members — Bonnie Berger ’83, professor of mathematics at MIT; Deborah Bial ’87, H’12, president and founder of the Posse Foundation; Josh Kraft, president and CEO of Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston; and Lan Xue ’90, MA’91, founding partner at Trivest Advisors — were elected to the university’s Board of Trustees in April. In addition, Jonathan Davis ’75, founder, CEO and chief investment officer of the Davis Companies, was re-elected to the board.

Their four-year terms began May 14, the day after Brandeis’ Commencement exercises.

The Simons Professor of Mathematics at MIT, Berger holds a joint appointment in electrical engineering and computer science, and serves as head of the computation and biology group at MIT’s Computer Science and AI Lab. Recently, she’s focused on designing algorithms to gain biological insights from advances in automated data collection and the subsequent large data sets drawn from them.

Two years after graduating from Brandeis, Bial established the Posse Foundation, a youth leadership-development and college-success organization. Posse sends teams of students from diverse backgrounds to selective colleges and universities, including Brandeis, which was one of the first schools to participate. By 2020, the foundation will boast 6,000 alumni.

Davis founded the Davis Companies, a real estate development, investment and management firm based in Boston, in 1976. As CEO and chief investment officer, he oversees the firm’s operations as well as its investment strategy and investment activities.

Before becoming president in 2008 of Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston (BGCB), Kraft was the founding executive director of BGCB’s Gerald and Darlene Jordan Club, in Chelsea, Massachusetts. The son of late Brandeis trustee Myra Hiatt Kraft ’64, for whom the Myra Kraft Transitional Year Program is named, and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, he has served BGCB for almost three decades.

A Wien Scholar at Brandeis, Xue is a pioneer in China’s equity research field. Before founding Trivest, she was the head of China research at Citigroup and Merrill Lynch. At Brandeis, Xue established the Lan Xue ’90, MA’91, Endowed Scholarship Fund in memory of her parents, Limin Zhang and Minglun Xue.