Board of Trustees welcomes two new members who bring ’wisdom and expertise’

Stanford alumni Ruth Porat and Penny Pritzker join the Board of Trustees for five-year terms beginning in October.

The Stanford University Board of Trustees has elected two new members, both alumni who bring "wisdom and expertise," according to Leslie Hume, chair of the board.

Joining the board for five-year terms beginning Oct. 11 are Ruth Porat, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Morgan Stanley, and Penny Pritzker, chair of TransUnion and the Pritzker Realty Group.

"We are extremely fortunate to welcome Ruth Porat and Penny Pritzker to the Board of Trustees," said Hume. "Dedicated volunteers for Stanford, they bring to the board wisdom and expertise developed through distinguished careers in business, a passion for education and a deep commitment to serving the university."

Porat joined Morgan Stanley in 1987 in its Mergers and Acquisitions Department. She is now executive vice president and chief financial officer and sits on the firm’s Operating and Management committees. Prior to becoming CFO, Porat served as vice chair, Investment Banking; global head of the Financial Institutions Group; and co-head of the Global Technology Group. Throughout the recent financial crisis, she has been responsible for Morgan Stanley’s coverage of financial institutions and governments globally, and she led the Morgan Stanley team advising the U.S. Treasury on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the team advising the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on AIG.

Porat earned her undergraduate degrees in economics and international relations from Stanford in 1979. She received a master’s degree from the London School of Economics in 1981 and her MBA with distinction from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1987.

She has served on Stanford’s Humanities and Sciences Council since 2007 and is currently a member of The Stanford Challenge Major Gifts Regional Committee. She and her husband, attorney Anthony Paduano, have established endowments for a graduate fellowship and an undergraduate scholarship at Stanford. In addition, Porat serves as a vice chair of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Business Committee. She is also a member of the U.S. Treasury’s Borrowing Advisory Committee.

Pritzker, chair of TransUnion and the Pritzker Realty Group, is also chair and co-founder of Vi, The Parking Spot and Artemis Real Estate Partners. She sits on the board of Hyatt Hotels Corp. In addition, Pritzker is a member of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, which formulates and evaluates economic policy for the Obama administration. Pritzker was national finance chair of the Barack Obama for President campaign and co-chair of the 2009 Presidential Inaugural Committee.

Pritzker is an education advocate, serving as chair of the Chicago Public Education Fund, a venture philanthropy that raises private equity to invest in creating sustainable improvements in Chicago’s public schools. She and her husband, Dr. Bryan Traubert, also fund various initiatives to improve the quality of education for schoolchildren through the Pritzker Traubert Family Foundation.

Pritzker is a member of the board of the Council on Foreign Relations and an advisory board member of the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project. She previously served as chair of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and on the Harvard Board of Overseers. She earned her bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard University in 1981 and her JD and MBA degrees from Stanford in 1985.

At Stanford, Pritzker has previously served as a member of the Graduate School of Business Advisory Council and of the Dean’s Strategic Council at the Law School. She was a co-chair for the March 2010 Leading Matters program in Chicago and serves on The Stanford Challenge Major Gifts Regional Committee. In addition, she has endowed the Pritzker Professorship for Law and Business, the Pritzker Traubert Fund for Clinical Education at the Law School and the Pritzker Traubert Fund for Global Business and the Economy at the Graduate School of Business.

Most recently, the Pritzker family pledged $10 million to Stanford to fund the Pritzker Scholars program, a scholarship fund dedicated to supporting students with the greatest financial need from the Chicago area.