GW announced Saturday that the Board of Trustees elected Vice Chair Mark Chichester as its next chair, succeeding longtime leader Grace Speights as the University navigates strategic planning and financial strains.
Chichester, co-founder of healthcare consulting firm Atlas Research, has served as vice chair since May 2022 and will lead the University’s top governing body for three years beginning June 1 as GW implements University President Ellen Granberg’s strategic framework, works to reverse the structural deficit and grapples with Trump-era policies reshaping higher education. The Board also elected Trustee Todd Klein to a three-year term as vice chair and reappointed Secretary Jeffrey Flaks — who began serving in the role last June — to a three-year term.
The Board voted last March to extend Speights’ and Chichesters’ terms for an additional year — made possible by a 2024 bylaw amendment that permits trustees to extend an officer’s term for a year under extraordinary circumstances. Before the amendment, bylaws mandated that Board officers could not serve more than six years in the same position.
Speights is no longer allowed to serve on the Board given she is leaving her officer role, and the bylaws have a 12-year trustee term limit.
Chichester has served on the Board since 2013 — exceeding the bylaws’ 12-year limit for trustees — but the document permits trustees to surpass that limit if they are serving in an officer role.
Speights, who is now serving her seventh year as Board chair, will step down on June 1 after leading the University through a complex and consequential period that included the contentious tenure and resignation of former University President Thomas LeBlanc, Interim University President Mark Wrighton’s 18-month tenure and the Board’s selection of University President Ellen Granberg as GW’s 19th president. Speights also oversaw the body’s controversial decision to arm select GW Police Department officers, retire the Colonials moniker and most recently, sell GW’s Virginia campus to Amazon Data Services for $427 million.
Speights said in a release she is confident the trio will bring “deep experience” and “sound judgment” to their new positions.
“Their leadership and partnership with the administration will be important as the University seeks to elevate its trajectory as an AAU member and advance the goals of the strategic framework,” Speights said in a release. “I am confident the board will be in excellent hands under their leadership.”
Chichester graduated from GW with a bachelor’s of business administration degree in information systems in 1990, and earned a law degree from the University in 1993. After leaving Atlas Research in 2021, he joined consulting firm Ageis Group before the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs tapped him to serve as a senior advisor to the Under Secretary for Health from 2023 to 2025.
As a trustee, Chichester chaired the Board’s 2019 task force that considered changing GW’s moniker and renaming the student center. Chichester previously served on the Medical Faculty Associates’ Board of Trustees while simultaneously holding a position on GW’s board from July 2022 to April 2025, though he resigned from the MFA’s board last February after officials moved to disentangle the two bodies in February 2025.
Klein, who is not a GW alum, joined the Board in July 2018 and currently serves as chair of the Board’s Finance and Investment Committee. He is also a managing partner at Revolution Growth, an investment firm, and previously served as the interim operating chief of Anonymous Content, an entertainment company.
Klein’s promotion to the Board’s leadership marks a departure from a long-standing tradition of electing GW alumni to officer positions, including chair, vice chair and secretary. At least the past three officers for each role have graduated from GW — including chairs Speights, Nelson Carbonell and Russell Ramsey, vice chairs Chichester, Ellen Zane and Carbonell and secretaries Jeffrey Flaks, Ave Tucker and Allan From.
Speights during her tenure initiated a task force to improve shared governance at the University — a 12-person group of trustees, faculty and administrators that Chichester and Klein were members of, which led to the Board’s approval of shared governance principles in May 2022. The principles asserted that faculty should have a meaningful role in “key decision making” at GW and have primary authority over “specific areas” of academic policy.
She also led the Board to adopt recommendations from its Environmental, Social and Governance Responsibility Task Force, including the commitment to fully divest the University’s endowment from fossil fuel companies by 2025, a goal GW achieved in December.
Speights’ leadership spanned a period of heightened tensions across campus, including pro-Palestinian students’ spring 2024 encampment in University Yard that called on officials and the Board to disclose investments and divest from companies supplying arms to Israel, something GW declined numerous times to do, explaining they wouldn’t commit to financial transparency. Speights, at the time, backed Granberg’s leadership following the weeks of outcry toward GW’s response to student protests on campus.
The community throughout Speights’ tenure has also criticized the Board for insufficient shared governance, notably condemning their lack of consultation with faculty and other community members before they voted to arm some GWPD officers, which a third-party investigation last year confirmed reports of gun safety concerns and disregard for community input. Faculty have also called for heightened consultation under the shared governance principles surrounding discussions of the MFA’s recurring losses and officials’ handling of the pro-Palestinian encampment, though they acknowledged officials have taken strides in increasing transparency surrounding their decision-making after the ratification of the principles.
