Crownover Named New Board Chair

James W. Crownover ’65 was elected as the new chair of the Rice Board of Trustees in a unanimous vote December 16. His term is effective July 1, 2005. He will succeed William Barnett, retired managing partner of Baker Botts L.L.P., who has chaired the Rice board since 1996.

From left: William Barnett, David Leebron, and James Crownover

Crownover, 61, a former director of McKinsey & Company Inc., has been a Rice trustee since 1999. During the last 30 years, he and his wife, Molly, have been active in Houston’s charitable, educational, and civic life. Crownover, who earned an MBA from Stanford in 1968, has served the Houston area in roles ranging from chairing the 2004–05 United Way of the Gulf Coast campaign to serving on the boards of the Houston Grand Opera, St. John’s School, Project GRAD Houston, and Rice’s Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management.

In a 30-year career with McKinsey, which he completed in 1998, Crownover led the firm’s regional practice in the Southwest for 10 years, co-headed its worldwide energy practice for five years, and served on its 20-person elected board of directors for his last eight years.

He has advised the executives of many of Houston’s leading companies and currently serves on the boards of directors of four firms listed on the New York Stock Exchange: Unocal Corp., Great Lakes Chemical Corp., Allied Waste Industries Inc., and Weingarten Realty Investors of Houston.

On the Rice Board of Trustees, which was named by Worth magazine as one of the 100 most prestigious nonprofit boards in America in 2003, Crownover is chair of the Academic Affairs Committee and vice-chair of the Financial Affairs Committee. Last year, he chaired the presidential search committee that successfully recruited David W. Leebron as the university’s seventh president. Crownover also served on the search committees for Rice’s last two deans of the School of Humanities.