Brian K. Lee, vice president for alumni affairs and development since 2018—in effect, the University’s chief fundraising officer—will retire at the end of 2024, the University announced today.
He had previously filled similar roles at Tufts (working with its then-President Lawrence S. Bacow, who brought Lee aboard when he became Harvard’s president in 2018), and Caltech. In making the Harvard appointment, Bacow said, “Brian has demonstrated an extraordinary ability to bring together people in support of higher education, and he brings to his new role an especially strong record of supporting and advancing institutional goals with a combination of creativity, insight, and thoughtfulness. I look forward to working closely with him again.”
Lee’s leadership of the $1.2-billion Beyond Boundaries campaign at Tufts, and then his role in organizing Caltech’s $2-billion Break Through campaign, begun in 2016, prepared him both for his Harvard responsibilities and for Bacow’s focus on applied science. During Bacow’s administration—which of course came just after the conclusion of the Harvard Campaign and so did not involve a successor University capital campaign—Harvard raised significant sums for research and teaching focused on quantum science and engineering, climate change and sustainability, and natural and artificial intelligence.
In a statement in the news announcement, interim president Alan Garber hailed Lee as “a champion of Harvard and our mission,” saying, “Since 2018, our community has benefited tremendously from his ability to connect individuals and their interests to our institution and our aspirations, even in the face of unprecedented challenges. There are, of course, the outstanding acts of generosity enabled by Brian’s leadership, but what I most admire is his commitment to articulating our values and how they guide our efforts to seek support of our teaching and research.”
Lee’s retirement is a natural transition given the change in Harvard’s leadership from Bacow to President Claudine Gay and now to Garber. Although the latter serves in an interim capacity, he announced that he would begin the search for Lee’s successor soon, consistent with his determination to keep the University’s senior ranks fully staffed, as in the recent appointments of a new Kennedy School dean and last week’s announcement that Jennifer O’Connor would assume the position of vice president and general counsel at the end of this month, filling a vacancy.
