Dartmouth's Alumni Council nominated Nathaniel Fick '99, Richard Kimball '78 and Benjamin Wilson '73 to seek election to the Board of Trustees on Friday. The candidates were unanimously approved by a vote of 85-0.
The three candidates may be opposed by any petition candidate who gathers 500 signatures by Feb. 9. Voting will occur from March 14 to April 11, 2012.
Kimball, Wilson and Fick were chosen from among over 300 names suggested by alumni from June to September, according to Pete Frederick '65, chair of the Nominating and Alumni Trustee Search Committee. They will each run for one of the three open positions on the Board, a process that began with the 2010 elections that replaced the previous method of choosing three nominees per vacancy.
If elected, Fick would become the youngest trustee on the Board by over 10 years.
Fick is currently the chief executive officer of the Center for a New American Security, a Washington, D.C., think tank that focuses on military issues, Frederick said during the meeting. Fick also serves as an operating partner at Bessemer Venture Partners and is a director of the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation, an organization that helps the children of marines killed in action to attend college.
Fick, a classics and government major, organized the Dartmouth Cycling Club and led it to a national championship while at the College. After graduation, he served in the Middle East with the Marine Corps for four years before returning to the United States to receive an MBA from Harvard Business School and an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He wrote the bestselling book "One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer" (2005) about his experience in the military.
Fick, who was involved in the Rockefeller Center as an undergraduate, is currently a member of the Board of Visitors at the Rockefeller Center and regularly speaks on campus.
"There are a lot of other people who have served Dartmouth for decades longer than I have," he said to the Alumni Council on Friday. "We all have a duty to the organizations that have shaped us."
Fick highlighted the need to bolster Dartmouth's reputation through innovation, recruitment and retention, while still maintaining its traditions and sense of community.
"We need to maintain and extend the college's preeminent position," he said in an interview with The Dartmouth.
Fick also advocated for administrative transparency, a prominent issue in campus discourse in recent years.
"We live in an age of authenticity," he said, noting that transparency is essential to an organization's legitimacy. "There's no reason why Dartmouth is any different in that regard."
He said he plans to campaign before the spring elections, even if no petition candidate runs against him.
"I didn't start this process to lose," Fick said, adding that he would remain involved in the College regardless of the election's outcome.
Wilson is the managing principal of Beveridge and Diamond, P.C., the nation's largest law firm focused on environmental law, according to Frederick. He is also an adjunct professor at Howard University School of Law, where he helped found a program to increase diversity in environmental law.
Wilson, whose three brothers also attended Dartmouth, was a member of the varsity football and track teams and was vice president of his class. He was a history major and graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude before receiving his J.D. from Harvard Law School.
Wilson has served on various boards, including those at the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company and the Environmental Law Institute.
"That experience has taught me how to listen well and to be persuaded to a different point of view," he said.
He called upon the College to address the issues of environmental justice and diversity, noting that Dartmouth has come through a difficult financial situation and needs to ensure its future because "success cannot be assumed."
Wilson said that environmental studies, government and philosophy courses should raise issues of environmental justice, and that interested students should collaborate with the nearby University of Vermont Law School.
"Diversity is a significant issue," he said in an interview with The Dartmouth. "We're fortunate because at Dartmouth we have students from every state and around the world."
Wilson will also campaign before the spring elections, and plans to make an effort to meet Dartmouth alumni and students, he said.
Kimball is a founding general partner of Technology Crossover Ventures, a growth equity and venture capital fund focused on information technology, Frederick said.
Kimball helped organize the construction of Class of 1978 Life Sciences Center and is a class agent. He is a member of the President's Leadership Council, the Trustees' Investment Committee and the College Fund Committee.
While at Dartmouth, Kimball was a member of Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity and graduated cum laude as a history major. He received his MBA from the University of Chicago and has worked in information technology, finance and governance throughout his career. He has served on the boards of multiple nonprofit and for-profit institutions such as Intel.
Kimball could not be in Hanover on Friday due to family commitments, he said, but was able to speak to the Alumni Council from his home in San Francisco via Skype.
"I believe at the end of the day I can make a positive contribution to the future of Dartmouth," he said via Skype. "I would like to give back to a place that has given so much to me through the years."
Kimball said during the meeting that he would like to focus on the unique position Dartmouth occupies as a school that combines the qualities of both a research university and a liberal arts college, specifically through undergraduate teaching.
"My strongest priority will be to preserve the professor-student relationship that is the hallmark of the Dartmouth experience," he wrote in a statement to The Dartmouth on Friday. "We're in a faculty arms race and that is a challenge."
