(1) John Casteen — President, University of Virginia
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John Casteen: The undisputed leader of the house that Jefferson built remains a masterful manager and fundraiser, and seems, as The New York Times claimed, “placed on this earth for the purpose of being president of the University of Virginia.” |
In a hierarchical organization like UVA, the man at the top is just that. John Casteen is one of the longest-serving university presidents in the country, at a school that’s long made a convincing case for itself as an “Almost Ivy.” He controls enormous human and financial resources (13,920 employees and a $2.2 billion operating budget) and is closely identified with an extremely ambitious $3 billion capital campaign.
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JUMP TO: • Up & Comers from this and the other four categories! |
Casteen earned all three of his degrees at UVA, specializing in Beowulf, and was the dean of admissions there for seven years. After teaching English at UVA and serving as Virginia’s Secretary of Education and president of the University of Connecticut, he became UVA president in 1990 and has since overseen a raft of major projects, from construction to restructuring. Much of his power comes from his track record as a master of eliciting donations: In redefining the role of university president as fundraiser-in-chief, Casteen has helped to establish UVA as increasingly independent from the Commonwealth.
In terms of network, Casteen’s connections in the business and higher education worlds are wide and deep. He has been involved with a panoply of corporate boards, nonprofits and educational organizations: everything from Allied Concrete to Wachovia to Sallie Mae to the NCAA. In tandem with Chief Operating Officer Leonard Sandridge, Casteen has true power to shape UVA and, in turn, the economic, physical and cultural profile of Charlottesville. As The New York Times had it in a 1999 story, “If ever there were a man placed on this earth for the purpose of being president of the University of Virginia, it is Dr. John Casteen III.” He is likely to retire within a few years, but for now his power is undiminished.
(2) Leonard Sandridge — Chief Operating Officer, UVA
Sandridge is the day-to-day mastermind of UVA in all its guises: as an educational institution, major employer, local development player, business and cultural force. If you’re a top leader at UVA—the chief of police, the VP for management and budget, the chief human resources officer, the athletics director, the chief student—you’re probably reporting directly to Leonard Sandridge.
An accountant by training, Sandridge held various finance-related positions at the school beginning in 1967 and worked his way up to the No. 2 position at UVA in 1990. Casteen became president that year, and the two are strongly linked as a team. Sandridge clinches his power at UVA through sitting on the boards of UVIMCO and the UVA Foundation.
Though he’s risen high, Sandridge has not traveled far: He’s a Crozet native and a product of Albemarle County schools, and has been involved in everything from the Lions Club to the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce, where he serves on the board. When the Chamber presented him with the 2003 Paul Goodloe McIntire Citizenship Award, it cited his “skill, purpose and grace” in representing UVA and the community, along with his remarkably busy schedule of community involvement. It wasn’t the only public recognition of Sandridge’s long shadow: You may have noticed a certain road bearing his name, off the 250 Bypass.
(3) Bob Sweeney — Senior VP for Development and Public Affairs
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Bob Sweeney: The man responsible for developing UVA’s power and image remains involved in nearly every aspect, from overseeing the relationship between school and city to nearing that $3 million capital campaign total. |
Sweeney oversees the $3 billion capital campaign and the considerable staff that makes it run ($1.873 billion raised through February!), as well as the University’s public relations arm. His fundraising expertise includes overseeing a fourfold increase in philanthropic giving to UVA between 1990 and 2000, when he led a previous $1.43 billion campaign.
Sweeney not only manages an enormous swath of the UVA bureaucracy, he also has a national network in the world of higher education fundraising, due to his having directed development at universities throughout the East Coast (SUNY-Oswego, UNC-Chapel Hill, Loyola College) prior to taking his local post in 1991. UVA’s development office is recognized as one of the most effective in the nation, and Sweeney personally has a track record of managing campaigns that meet their objectives and then soar beyond them ($440 million in a $320 million campaign at Chapel Hill, for example).
Sweeney has also assumed greater control of public affairs than UVA’s previous development VPs, giving him oversight of UVA’s official publications and media outlets, marketing, and the changing relationship between UVA and Charlottesville. As the University becomes an ever bigger powerhouse nationally and an ever more significant presence locally, Sweeney is the boss of that big ship’s engine room.
(4) Susan Carkeek — Vice President and Human Resources Officer
As UVA’s first vice president and human resources officer, since 2006 Susan Carkeek has overseen the realm of human relations: work benefits, retirement benefits, leave plans, employee grievances. Carkeek came to Charlottesville knowing a thing or two (she has more than 30 years of experience in higher education human resources management) and didn’t waste any time getting to work. In the last couple of years, she has sponsored and implemented a new HR plan that was greeted by 13,920 employees with both disdain and joy. Any UVA employees hired after July 1, 2006 (they number 1,500 and growing), were required to switch from a state-based benefits system to a more autonomous, University-based plan. The plan is a direct outcome of the 2005 Management Agreement and Restructured Higher Education Finance Administrative Operations Act, a.k.a. “charter,” that gave UVA greater autonomy from the state.
As the new HR plan kicked in at the beginning of the year, employees who were hired before July 1, 2006, had the choice to switch over or stick with the old plan. According to UVA HR, of 4,400 employees eligible to switch, only 2 percent decided to make the leap. Still, Carkeek notes that 28 percent of employees are under the new plan. That number will only grow with future hires. Thus, Carkeek’s revamped HR plan has created two very distinct classes of UVA employees, Classified and University Staff, working alongside one another, yet with different sets of benefits and leave policies. That’s a big deal at the largest employer in town.
Perhaps one of the biggest changes had to do with compensation: The new plan makes use of national and local market-rate pay bands. For thousands of UVA employees and their families, Carkeek is the architect of a changing vision of the future.
(5) Dorothy Batten — Darden M.B.A., Class of 1990
How do you insulate an enormous university against a shrinking economy? Keep your friends close and your donors closer. It’s hard to imagine any donor closer to UVA than Dorothy Batten.
A graduate of UVA’s Darden School of Business, Batten worked with her father, Landmark Communications retired Chairman and CEO Frank Batten, Sr., to fund the “Batten Family Challenge for Entrepreneurial Leadership” in 1996 with a $13.5 million donation—a precursor to perhaps the Batten family’s biggest contribution, the $100 million Batten School of Leadership. But Dorothy Batten is a donor across an even wider variety of fronts—namely business and the arts—and doubles her power as a donor by making her presence felt on a few boards. A longtime member of the UVA Arts Council (along with donors John and Mary Scott Birdsall), Batten is also a friend of the Virginia Film Festival, serves on the board of UVA’s Jefferson Scholars Program and helped to sponsor choreographer and dancer Bill T. Jones’ artist-in-residence program last fall.
With well-placed donations and board positions to shape how her money is used, Batten is in a prime position to help steer a few key parts of Mr. Jefferson’s University through the next few years. And in the midst of our current recession, you can bet that she’ll be the first person UVA tries to woo for funding big plans.