4 elected to Rice University Board of Trustees

Three prominent alumni and the former president of Brown University were elected to the Rice University Board of Trustees at its March 20 meeting.

Nancy Packer Carlson ’80, principal of Carlson Capital LP; Charles “Charley” Landgraf ’75, a partner at Arnold & Porter LLP; Ruth Simmons, president emeritus of Brown University; and Amy Sutton ’89, a partner with Deloitte Tax LLP, will serve four-year terms on the board.

“We are very honored to welcome such a prestigious group to the Rice Board of Trustees,” said Chairman Bobby Tudor. “Their distinctive professional experience and expertise in fields such as asset management, law and higher education will benefit Rice University in multiple ways.”

“Nancy, Charley and Amy are an extraordinarily accomplished group of alumni who have each already shown remarkable dedication to Rice,” said President David Leebron. “In addition, we are also delighted to add to our board Ruth Simmons, one of the most renowned higher education leaders of the last two decades. These are challenging times for higher education, and this breadth of perspective will serve Rice well as we chart our strategy for our second century.”

Nancy Packer Carlson

Carlson works for Carlson Capital, an alternative asset management firm founded by her husband, Rice alumnus Clint Carlson. Nancy is board chair of TACA (The Arts Community Alliance) and serves as a trustee of the Dallas Museum of Art and the Greenhill School. She also serves on the Executive Board of the Southern Methodist University Meadows School of the Arts, the National Council of the Aspen Art Museum and the Board of Governors of Texas Ballet Theater. She is a member of the Humanities Advisory Board at Rice and previously served on the Rice Board of Trustees from 2008 to 2012. She has a bachelor’s degree in economics and sociology from Rice and a J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law.

Charles Landgraf

Landgraf is a partner in the Financial Services and Legislative and Public Policy practice groups at Arnold & Porter LLP, an American Lawyer 100 firm that is also a pre-eminent international law firm. Landgraf is considered to be one of the top insurance lawyers and lobbyists in Washington, D.C. He has been closely involved in the development of, among other major legislation, the Oil Pollution Act, the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which was designed to prevent the excessive risk-taking that led to the financial crisis of 2008. He has formed and serves on the boards of several nonprofits, including the International Insurance Foundation, the Dek Thai Foundation and the U.S.-Thailand Amity for Charity. Landgraf has a B.A. in economics from Rice and a J.D. from New York University School of Law.

Ruth Simmons

Simmons served as president of Brown University in Providence, R.I., from 2001 to 2012. She is the first African-American president of an Ivy League university. During her tenure at Brown she completed a $1.4 billion initiative to enrich the school’s academic programs. She continues to serve on the faculty as a professor of comparative literature and Africana studies. Simmons also is a former president of Smith College, the largest women’s college in the U.S., where she inaugurated an engineering program. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Philosophical Society and the Council on Foreign Relations. Simmons has a bachelor’s degree from Dillard University in New Orleans and a master’s and Ph.D. in Romance languages and literatures from Harvard University.

Amy Sutton

Sutton is a co-managing partner in Deloitte’s Washington National Tax Office and works in the Houston office. Deloitte is internationally known for its audit, financial advisory, tax and consulting services. Sutton specializes in partnership taxation with an emphasis on the use of partnerships in mergers and acquisitions and real estate transactions, and also in taxation issues relating to publicly traded partnerships. Sutton is a member of the American Institute of CPAs and has served on its Partnership Taxation Technical Resource Panel. She is a co-author of the Bureau of National Affairs portfolio, “Publicly Traded Partnerships.” Sutton and her husband, Gary Chiles, are both Rice alumni. Sutton received a B.A. magna cum laude in economics and managerial studies and an MBA from Rice. She also has a master’s degree in taxation from Golden Gate University.