Chairman of the Board of Trustees Charles Manatt announced today at a meeting of the body that he will step down from his position when his term expires in June.

Manatt has served as a member of GW’s highest governing body since 1980 and has been chairman for six years. An election within the Board of Trustees will take place in February to choose the next chairman.

Board member and chairman of the presidential search committee Russell Ramsey has been nominated for the position, which serves a three-year term.

“He and I are walking off into the sunset together,” Trachtenberg said about Manatt’s announcement after the board’s meeting on Friday. University President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg announced last April that he will step down from nearly two decades as GW’s president when his term expires in July.

“We’re allowing a new dawn of leadership to begin,” he said.

Manatt said he will remember his time as the chairman of the board by “changes and improvements” to the University.

“This venue is so attractive to so many people, it’s an honor to have served,” he said after the meeting.

Manatt is the former chair of the Democratic National Committee and Ambassador to the Dominican Republic from 1999 to 2001. He is a 1962 graduate of the Law School and is a founding partner at the international law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP.

Any member of the board may nominate a new chair. Vice chairwoman Lydia Thomas has been re-nominated for her position and Nelson Carbonell Jr., a 1985 Business School graduate, has also been nominated as vice chairman of the board. Carbonell and Thomas both sit on the presidential search committee.