Jessica BergerJessica Berger has been appointed Executive Vice President and Chief Advancement Officer at Chapman University.
Berger brings nearly two decades of advancement and fundraising leadership experience across multiple institutions. Most recently, she served as vice president for university advancement and executive director of the foundation at California State University, San Marcos (CSUSM), where she led a team of nearly 50 professionals across fundraising, alumni and donor relations, marketing and communications, events and government relations.
Prior to CSUSM, Berger spent seven years at Harvey Mudd College, rising to the role of assistant vice president for development. Earlier in her career, Berger contributed to fundraising efforts at Polytechnic School in Pasadena during a $93 million campaign, raised private support for a children’s home in Kenya and served in the U.S. House of Representatives as a congressional staff member focused on constituent advocacy.
Berger earned a Master of Social Work from Cleveland State University and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Wittenberg University, both with honors.
Polly TrottenbergPolly Trottenberg—a former Deputy Secretary of the US Department of Transportation (USDOT) and Commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation (NYCDOT), and a nationally recognized authority on transportation, infrastructure, and public policy and management—has been named dean of the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and a Global Distinguished Professor at NYU.
Trottenberg takes up her new duties on August 1, 2025.
From April 2021 until January 2025, Trottenberg served as the Deputy Secretary of the US Department of Transportation, making her the chief operating officer of a 57,000-person federal agency, where she helped oversee hundreds of billions of dollars of new investments in roads, bridges, transit, passenger and freight rail, airports and ports. Trottenberg also served in 2023 as the Acting Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, the federal government’s largest and most complex 24/7 operational agency, with 44,000 employees and hundreds of facilities across the US and overseas. Prior to USDOT, Trottenberg served for seven years as New York City’s Transportation Commissioner, steering the 5,800-person agency through an era of growth and innovation, as well as the challenges of COVID. She led the City’s Vision Zero initiative, the first in the US, a comprehensive, multidisciplinary, and data-driven effort to reduce roadway fatalities. NYCDOT operates one of the US’s largest urban transportation systems, with 6,000 miles of roads, nearly 800 bridges, the nation’s largest traffic operation and parking system, the Staten Island Ferry, and extensive bicycle, pedestrian, and public plaza infrastructure. Between 2009 and 2014, she served first as Assistant Secretary and later Undersecretary of Transportation Policy at the USDOT. She previously spent 12 years on Capitol Hill, which was preceded by two years at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
Trottenberg received her BA in history from Barnard College, Columbia University, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and her MPP from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Dr. Raquel MonroeHoward University has named Raquel Monroe dean of the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts. In that role, she Monroe will oversee academic, performance, and research programming for visual arts and design, music, and theater arts at Howard. Monroe currently serves as a full professor and associate dean of graduate education and academic affairs at the University of Texas at Austin’s (UT Austin) College of Fine Arts. Monroe will begin her new role Aug. 4, 2025.
Monroe is a founding board member of the Collegium for African Diaspora Dance and a member of Propelled Animals, a multimedia, interdisciplinary arts collective. Before her work at UT Austin, she was a professor in dance and an administrator at Columbia College in Chicago.
Monroe earned bachelor’s degrees in dance and theatre and a master’s degree in communication from Arizona State University. Monroe also holds a doctorate in culture and performance from the University of California, Los Angeles.
RAJ AGNIHOTRI has been named the next Raisbeck Endowed Dean of Iowa State University’s Debbie and Jerry Ivy College of Business. He will begin his service July 1, 2025. Agnihotri currently serves in the college as Mary Warner Professor and Morrill Professor of marketing and assistant dean for industry engagement at Iowa State. He has served at Iowa State since 2018, and in his current role as assistant dean since 2024. Prior positions include appointments at the University of Texas-Arlington and Ohio University. Agnihotri earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the University of Pune in India, an MBA in management from Oklahoma City University, and a Ph.D. in marketing from Kent State University.
Jason KingJason King has been named senior vice president for legal affairs and general counsel at Hofstra University.
King most recently served as associate vice president of strategic risk management and chief legal officer at The University of Texas at San Antonio, a role where he oversaw institutional risk and provided legal counsel to university leadership. Previously, he served as chief compliance and ethics officer for The University of Texas System Administration, where he held various roles from 2012 to 2023, and led the development and execution of a system-wide research compliance strategy that safeguarded a $3.5 billion research portfolio from foreign influence and misconduct.
Earlier in his career, King was an associate at Akers & Boulware-Wells, LLP, and assistant general counsel for the Texas Ethics Commission. King holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and a Juris Doctor from Baylor University School of Law.
