New Trustees Join Roster

Thirty-one of the board of trustees’ 47 voting members are now Brandeis graduates, continuing a trend of increasing alumni involvement in university governance.

Larry Kanarek ’76, Leslie Pearlstein, P’94, Bruce Pollack ’81 and Jonathan Sandler were elected to the Brandeis Board of Trustees during the board’s May meeting, while former trustees Sylvia Hassenfeld, Steve Reiner ’61 and Harvard professor Michael Sandel ’75 rejoined the board.

Thirty-one of the board’s 47 voting members are alumni, continuing a trend toward increasing involvement of Brandeis graduates in university governance.

Kanarek serves as a senior director at McKinsey & Co. and heads the international management consulting firm’s office in Washington, D.C. An economics major who graduated from Brandeis at age 20, he has served on the board of overseers at the Brandeis International Business School (IBS). Kanarek led the fundraising campaign to establish an endowed scholarship in honor of economics professor Barney Schwalberg.

Pearlstein, mother of Rachel Raifman ’94, M.A. ’96, joins the board by virtue of her three-year term as president of the Brandeis National Committee.

Pollack is a managing partner at Centre Partners Management, a New York–based private equity firm. At Brandeis, he majored in economics and played on the varsity soccer team. Since graduating, Pollack has generously supported construction of new athletic bleachers for the soccer/track complex, the Dean’s Strategic Initiative Fund at IBS, and the Alumni Annual Fund.

Sandler serves as vice chair of the Kessler Group, an international affinity sales, marketing and investment banking company. He is on the board of directors at Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston and served as CJP’s 2010 campaign co-chair with fellow Brandeis trustee Myra (Hiatt) Kraft ’64.