Three Join Westmont Board of Trustees
The Westmont Board of Trustees has welcomed three new members: Dave Gehring, advisor for Guardian News and Media; Tom Nguyen, managing director of U.S. sales for China International Capital Corp. (CICC); and Jim Richardson, senior management consultant and director for Alexandria Real Estate Equities. The 31-member board oversees the operations of the college.
Gehring, who graduated from Westmont in 1993, worked at Google and YouTube before joining the Guardian in 2014. His work focuses on developing business models that will support quality journalism in the digital economy. As a trustee he is interested in improving journalism programs and courses at Westmont. “I would love to figure out how to get more Christians into the top tier of the journalism world,” he says. “I spend a lot of time in those newsrooms and when topics of religion come up, it can be frustrating. Christians need to be in those newsrooms helping to make decisions about what the public understands.”
Nguyen, a graduate of Pepperdine University, earned a Master of Business Administration from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. Before joining CICC, he was managing director at Bank of America, head of international sales at Deutsche Bank, head of global markets in Vietnam for Deutsche Bank and vice president in equity sales at Merrill Lynch in Chicago. Nguyen says he wants to connect Westmont to Wall Street. “I have grown up in the Wall Street business, and it can use more Christ-centered people,” says Nguyen, whose daughter, Mackenzie, attended Westmont. “The Wall Street culture desperately needs the types of leaders that are produced here.
“I would also love to help expand the global footprint of Westmont through various programs or by being a global voice for Westmont.”
Richardson, whose daughters Carly ’16 and Frannie ’18 attend Westmont, has been in executive leadership positions in the commercial real estate industry for several decades. Most recently he served as president and board member with Alexandria Real Estate Equities, a New York Stock Exchange real estate investment trust that is the largest global investor and developer of Class A urban campuses dedicated to life science and technology enterprises. He serves on a variety of private company and non-profit boards and advises and invests in young companies and entrepreneurs. “I have a passion for investing in the next generation,” he says. “Westmont’s holistic approach to developing men and women of character by combining rigorous academics with Christian spiritual formation is unique and critical. These young leaders are going to influence the world in a very different way than their secularly educated counterparts.”