Three New Trustees Elected to UVA Darden School Foundation Board

The University of Virginia Darden School of Business and the Darden School Foundation today announced the election of H. William “Bill” Coogan Jr. (MBA’82), John Glynn Jr. and Erik Slingerland (MBA ’84) as trustees. They will serve three-year terms.

In addition, Rick Edmunds (MBA ’92), vice chair of the School’s Corporate Advisory Board; Warren Estey (MBA ’98), president of the Darden Alumni Association Board of Directors; and Naresh Kumra (MBA ’99), vice chair of Darden’s Global Advisory Council were appointed as ex-officio members of the board of trustees.

“Bill, John and Erik will bring a wealth of experience and a truly global perspective to the board,” said Elizabeth Weymouth (MBA ’94), chair of the Darden School Foundation Board of Trustees. “I look forward to working with them and each of the new ex-officio trustees as the board partners with Dean Scott Beardsley to execute Darden’s strategic priorities.”

Coogan is the former chairman and CEO of Firstmark Corp., an aerospace and defense products manufacturing company that was sold in June 2015 to a portfolio company of the private equity firm, The Riverside Company. Previously, Coogan served as a management partner and COO of the Los Angeles investment banking office of CS First Boston (now Credit Suisse), head of investment banking at Wheat First Butcher Singer (now Wells Fargo Investment Banking) and co-head of investment banking for the Rothschild Group’s North American operations. After a 20-year investment banking career, Coogan began personal company acquisitions in such fields as radio broadcasting, aerospace and defense products manufacturing, and insurance. He is a graduate of the University of Vermont and earned his MBA from Darden in 1982. Coogan has three children, one of whom graduated from UVA in 2010 and one of whom graduated from Darden in 2016.

Glynn is the founder and managing partner of Glynn Capital Management and Glynn Ventures, a venture capital fund, in Menlo Park, California. He has been active in the venture business on a national basis since 1970. His firm has committed capital exceeding $900 million from university endowments and many prominent individual investors and families who are founders, CEOs or directors of well-known technology companies. Glynn Ventures and Glynn Capital Management focus on significant new technology market opportunities in which substantial businesses can be built over time, and try to invest ahead of major waves of change in technology.

Glynn grew up in Virginia. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame, a law degree from the University of Virginia and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. From 1990 through 1998, he taught a course on starting new ventures at Stanford and, since 1999, he has offered a course at Stanford entitled “Venture Capital and the Entrepreneurial World.” He has offered both courses as a visiting lecturer at Darden, where he is the Thomas C. MacAvoy Professor of Business Administration. For the past seven years, he has also taught a class in entrepreneurship at the Cambridge Judge Business School. Glynn is a member of the board of trustees of the University of Notre Dame and is former trustee of the University of Virginia School of Law. Glynn is married, has three daughters and a son, and lives in Atherton, California.

Slingerland recently retired as a senior partner at Egon Zehnder, one of the world’s leading executive search and board consulting firms, to set up his own Switzerland-based advisory firm in governance consulting and leadership development. After early years with Ciba-Geigy (now Novartis) in financial roles in Europe and Brazil, he joined Egon Zehnder in 1989 and was elected worldwide partner in 1995. In 1990, he started Egon Zehnder’s activities in Central and Eastern Europe. He established the firm’s first presence in Budapest, Hungary, and spearheaded regional expansion by opening offices in Prague; Warsaw, Poland; Moscow and Bratislava, Slovakia. He was based in Prague as managing partner until 2006, before moving to Geneva — where he currently lives — as global head of the firm’s public and social sector practice.

Originally from The Netherlands, Slingerland holds a master’s degree and Ph.D. in law from the University of Zurich, in addition to his MBA from Darden. He has previously served on Darden’s Global Advisory Council and chaired its Alumni Engagement Committee.

Edmunds is a principal with PwC Strategy&, where he leads the Strategy& team within the Pharma Life Sciences unit. He was previously senior vice president and leader of the global health care practice at Booz & Company, which became part of PwC. He is also now part of PwC’s Global Pharma & Life Sciences leadership team. He joined the firm in 2005 after nearly 13 years at McKinsey & Co. Edmunds holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of North Carolina and received the William Michael Shermet Award and Faculty Award for Academic Excellence as a student at Darden.

Estey is managing director and head of the Natural Resources Group, Americas at Deutsche Bank, where he also serves as a member of the Corporate Finance Americas Management Group. He has been at the firm for 19 years and previously was co-head of U.S. equity capital markets. Over his career, Estey has been involved in transactions valued in excess of $190 billion for clients in a wide variety of industries. Prior to joining Deutsche Bank, Estey held leadership positions at Bank of America and as an armor officer in the U.S. Army. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Miami in addition to his MBA from Darden.

Kumra has served as group managing director and CEO of Jmatek Limited since April 2013, through a management buy-in. In this role, Kumra is helping build Jmatek as a global leader in selected home comfort niches. He is also an active investor and advisor to early stage, innovative companies through his firm, La Rochelle Ventures Ltd. He has served as executive vice president and president, Asia Pacific, with Belden Inc. in Hong Kong and spent six years with McKinsey & Co. in the New York City area. Kumra started his career as an engineer with Schlumberger Limited in France, and held positions in India and Scotland. He earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology and received the William Michael Shermet Award and Faculty Award for Academic Excellence at Darden. Kumra was elected to The Raven Society while at UVA, and his wife, Jaya Kumra, earned her LL.M. from the UVA School of Law.

“We are honored to welcome our new trustees to the board,” said Dean Scott Beardsley. “They are tremendous leaders who have demonstrated a deep commitment to Darden, and I look forward to working with them to help the School reach the full potential of its mission.”