Officials’ salaries increased from 2021 to 2022, with GW tacking on severance payments for former top employees, University tax forms show.
The IRS requires all nonprofit organizations to report its revenues and expenses, including the compensation of up to 20 current key employees who make more than $150,000 a year from GW and “related organizations” using the Form 990, which discloses financial data from July 1 to June 30 each year. The form shows that four officials who left GW from June 2021 to June 2022 have received severance payments of between $338,000 to more than $1.1 million, and the University extended loan guarantees to the Medical Faculty Associates that now total more than $300 million.
The form reveals that GW paid former interim University President Mark Wrighton a salary of about $1.3 million and raised Provost Chris Bracey’s compensation by almost $400,000 during the 2022 calendar year. The University also paid about 53 percent more in legal fees during the Fiscal Year 2023, dishing out $11.6 million to firms compared to $7.6 million the previous year, according to the form.
Here is a breakdown of the University’s latest public financial disclosure:
Severance pay
The forms show that since 2022, former University President Thomas LeBlanc, former Chief Financial Officer Mark Diaz, former Head Basketball Coach Jamion Christian and former General Counsel Beth Nolan received severance payments of at least $1,167,000, $976,440, $774,228 and $338,250, respectively.
LeBlanc left GW in December 2021 after serving as president for four years, which culminated with widespread calls for his resignation from faculty members who felt his leadership did not match the University’s core values. He came under fire from faculty who criticized officials for violating principles of shared governance with his 20/30 plan, which proposed decreasing the undergraduate population by nearly 20 percent and increasing the proportion of STEM students to about 30 percent of GW’s population.
LeBlanc made $1,527,713 during his last year in office, a $280,910 pay increase from the year before.
LeBlanc hired Diaz in August 2018 after working with him at the University of Miami from 2005 to 2017. In an April 2022 survey, faculty members reported an “overwhelmingly negative” view of GW leadership, with Diaz being mentioned in a negative light by 62 survey participants.
In January 2020, Diaz also came under criticism from faculty over the 20/30 plan, with some faculty senators saying the move would force GW to take on more debt to account for lost revenue. Faculty leaders also disagreed with Diaz’s FY 2022 budget because they believed it didn’t allocate enough resources to research following the delays and decreased funding that took place during the height of the pandemic.
Diaz left the University in June 2022, after making $1,318,578 in 2021. CFO Bruno Fernandes said in March that GW still pays Diaz for consulting on arrangements with Universal Health Services, which has owned GW Hospital since 2022.
GW fired Christian — who joined the University in 2019 — and his three assistant coaches in March 2022 after poor performance and the basketball team’s third-consecutive losing season. Christian made $725,851 during his final year at GW.
Nolan, the first of the four officials to depart, retired and left the University in June 2021 after leading GW’s legal services for almost 14 years. Nolan made $654,360 during her last year.
A University spokesperson declined to comment on how the University determined the four former employees’ severance payments. The spokesperson also declined to comment on how long the employees will receive severance payments.
Compensation of top officials
Officials paid Wrighton $1,293,735 between January and December 2022 — $1,210,000 in base compensation and $83,735 in nontaxable benefits, per the form. The interim former president’s income during his term, which began on Jan. 1, 2022 and ended on June 30, 2023, remained slightly lower than LeBlanc’s in three of his four years in the role, excluding 2020 when LeBlanc took a slight pay cut due to the onset of COVID-19.
Before his stint at GW, Wrighton served as the chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis from 1995 until 2019, collecting more than $2.8 million in total compensation from his 24 years in office.
The form did not include University President Ellen Granberg’s compensation because she began her tenure on July 1, 2023, the first day of the 2023-2024 tax cycle.
Bracey saw a $391,811 pay bump in the 2022-2023 tax cycle, earning $966,960 compared to $575,149 the previous year. When asked for comment on the pay bump, a University spokesperson pointed to Bracey’s transition from interim to permanent provost in February 2022.
Vice President for Health and Dean of the School of Medicine and Health Sciences Barbara Bass, who also served as the MFA Chief Executive Officer until May 13, earned a total compensation of $1,399,361, a $74,444 raise from the year prior.
Professor and Director of GW Online Engineering Programs Shahram Sarkani earned $1,278,666, a $64,127 raise from the 2021-2022 tax cycle. Sarkani is the highest-paid professor at the University, per the form.
Vice President for Development and Alumni Relations Donna Arbide earned a total compensation of $814,314, a $74,520 raise from the previous year.
Growth in higher education administrative pay raises has been seen across the country for college and university presidents, outpacing the growth in full-time faculty salaries.
The form indicates that compensation for the company’s highest officer — which is the University president for GW — is determined using a compensation committee, a compensation consultant, an analysis of other organizations’ Form 990s, a compensation survey or study and approval of a board or committee.
“Compensation for senior administrators is determined by a multitude of factors, including the prevailing market rate, experience and the qualifications that an employee brings to the job,” a University spokesperson said in an email.
MFA & contractor payments
The University reported that by June 2023 it extended $301.2 million total in loans or loan guarantees to Medical Faculty Associates, a nonprofit group of doctors, nurses and health care staff controlled by GW. The MFA currently owes GW $200 million after several successive years of financial deficits.
Fernandes said in October 2022 the University extended a $50 million loan that it granted the MFA in March 2021 to a $140 million loan to help offset the MFA’s losses during the pandemic. He said the MFA is expected to pay back $120 million of the loan with interest to the University in the next 15 years, and the MFA will use the other $20 million for operating costs.
Faculty senators passed a resolution in February calling on the Board of Trustees to evaluate the MFA’s financial losses and asking GW officials to report the impact of MFA debt on the University at-large. Bass stepped down as the CEO of the group in May and officials hired interim CEO Bill Elliott.
The University reported that it paid the MFA $43.6 million for teaching and research services between July 2022 and June 2023 — up from $35 million the year before — making it GW’s highest-paid contractor that year. The University spokesperson declined to comment on why the University provided more funding to the MFA during this period.
Other top contractor payments included $27.9 million to facility services provider Aramark for services like custodial and maintenance work, $26.8 million to Clark Construction Group, a Bethesda based construction firm, and $24.6 million to 2U, Inc. for e-learning services. GW paid $47.9 million to Clark Construction Group and $33.7 million to 2U during the 2021-2022 tax year.
Officials have expanded course offerings with 2U over the past decade, starting with just three graduate programs for the Milken Institute School of Public Health and branching out to offer an online MicroMasters and Doctorate of Public Health degree in 2022.
GW compensated Chartwells Higher Education $17 million for dining services like dining hall administration and employees between July 2022 and June 2023. GW entered into a partnership with Chartwells to operate the University’s dining halls in 2021, reviving campus dining facilities after officials had previously phased them out in favor of local partner restaurants.
Gifts & legal fees
The University received $99.6 million in contributions and gifts, tax forms show — a 9.49 percent increase from the year before. GW’s tax forms from previous years indicate that the total from 2022-2023 is GW’s highest since 2014.
The University saw its outside legal fees increase 53.3 percent to $11.6 million from $7.6 million the year prior. GW faced ongoing lawsuits from July 2022 to June 2023, including cases over alleged athletic department pay discrimination, alleged racial discrimination against a former student-athlete and the alleged unjust firing of a library employee.
The University reported new international fundraising from people in regions not seen the year before, including East Asia and the Pacific, Europe, North America and South Asia.
GW also described conflict of interest policy as of June 2023, including annual disclosure forms for trustees and key employees, which are reviewed by University leadership to mitigate “actual or apparent conflict.” GW revised its conflict of interest policy in October 2023 to consolidate processes, modernize and align language with “best practices” and D.C. law and provide “more clear expectations and responsibilities,” according to a University press release.
