Silbert keeps eye on rising tide of women running higher ed

The foundation’s latest Women’s Power Gap survey results, released last week, show encouraging trends. The percentage of the nation’s 146 elite research universities (known as “R1s”) where women hold the title of president, or are about to, rose to 30 percent this spring from 22 percent in 2021. Women are currently presidents or presidents-elect at six of the eight Ivy League schools, including Harvard University, where Claudine Gay will become the school’s second-ever female president in a few weeks when she takes over for Larry Bacow. More than half of the 38 R1 university presidents appointed in the past two years have been women.

Among all Massachusetts colleges and universities, not just the R1s here, women represent 39 percent of presidents (up from 33 percent in 2018), and 16.5 percent are women of color. Those numbers include Yves Salomon-Fernández, who was named last month to lead the Urban College of Boston, a small nonprofit community college downtown.

But Silbert said troubling signs remain, such as the fact nearly 40 percent of R1s have never had a woman as president.

Silbert has focused most of her career on gender equity and poverty issues. Inspired by a microloan program she saw while working with a nonprofit in Brazil, she launched the nonprofit Center for Women & Enterprise in 1995. The organization provides a range of services to help women start and run their own businesses — from access to equity and debt financing to networking to classes and consulting. She left CWE to run for lieutenant governor in 2006, but lost to Tim Murray. The next year she got the call from Eos founders Ken Nickerson and Kate Deyst to run their foundation as its first president.

For her first nine years there, Silbert focused on addressing poverty issues in the Boston area. But in 2015, she became more concerned that men still primarily controlled the levers of power in Boston’s business community. So she broadened the foundation’s mission. Eos published its first gender equity report in 2018, looking at leadership in higher ed in Massachusetts. The foundation has also kept tabs on leaders at the state’s publicly owned companies, business and civic groups, school superintendents, and government boards and commissions.

Silbert said she’s encouraged by the traction she’s seeing, particularly in higher ed.

“I do credit our work for highlighting this data in a way that institutions are compared to one another,” Silbert said. “I think it creates a race to the top.”

Interested in mingling with your congressman? You might want to check out the New England Aquarium.

Senator Ed Markey gave a keynote speech there on May 23 as part of a program hosted by the New England Council to discuss the economic impact of climate change. Then, last week, it was Representative Steve Lynch’s turn to visit, to celebrate with chief executive Vikki Spruill a $2.4 million earmark that will subsidize major upgrades at the aquarium, including new display signs. Next up: a possible trip to Cape Cod this summer to highlight rehabilitated sea turtles, alongside a member or two from the state’s congressional delegation.

Associate vice president James Sutherland said the events are part of a broader effort under Spruill’s leadership to get more involved in public policy issues. Among the nonprofit’s legislative goals: sparking a federal grant program that would help pay for the rescue of endangered sea turtles that get stunned by cold waters and end up coming ashore on the Cape. Markey and Representative Bill Keating filed legislation last year to approve the program, though it still hasn’t become law.

Not every congressional visit has been planned in advance. Senator Elizabeth Warren swung by in March. The reason? Her son-in-law, Sushil Tyagi of Berkeley Marine Robotics, was participating in the aquarium’s BlueSwell startup incubator program. Spruill greeted Warren, along with government relations manager Alissa Weinman. Warren, Sutherland said, stayed for the entire event, and then joined a reception afterward there.

MassEcon is going global.

The Watertown nonprofit economic development group just launched a campaign with a video highlighting the state’s attributes — health care access, good schools, relatively low crime rates, among them — in nine different languages, as part of a new effort to attract international companies to Massachusetts and answer their questions about doing business here. Also underway: targeted e-mail pitches to companies, in different languages, linking to the video.

MassEcon executive director Peter Abair said he heard from site selection firms that were seeing more interest in Massachusetts from overseas companies. While MassEcon staff had previously visited international trade shows, this “America at its Best” campaign, with funding coming from a $140,000 state grant, marks MassEcon’s most aggressive effort yet to court international employers.

“Frankly, it’s a global marketplace,” Abair added. “We want to be less about competing against other states and more about competing for global-oriented companies.”

This eagle is about to lose its nest.

The Boston College Club will close on June 30 after more than 25 years perched in its aerie on the 36th floor of 100 Federal Street (aka the “Pregnant Building”). BC alums will say goodbye to those amazing views of the Charles and the harbor, as building owner Boston Properties — or BXP, as it goes by now — prepares for a change.

BC spokesman Jack Dunn said Boston Properties did not renew the lease. (BXP didn’t return requests for a comment about the situation.)

“We had negotiations and tried to make that happen,” Dunn said. “But unfortunately Boston Properties has another tenant in mind, and they’re going to take the space.”

The club opened in 1998 to much fanfare after local powerbrokers who graduated from BC worked for several years to make it happen — a group that included Jack Joyce, Jack MacKinnon, Tom Hynes, and Owen Lynch. Dallas-based manager Invited (formerly ClubCorp) runs the club for BC and its alumni.

Dunn said Invited has been working with officials from BC and the BC Club, including GM Paul McAvoy and advisory board members Stephen Kelleher and Jack Concannon, to find a new location. No luck yet.

“We did work with Invited to look at alternative venues around Boston,” Dunn said. “But we haven’t found a place that works thus far from a logistical or financial perspective.”

Or, presumably, a place that can match those killer views.

Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign got a boost this spring from New Balance chairman Jim Davis, who became one of many prominent businesspeople to back the former Republican governor of South Carolina.

Davis was among several Haley supporters listed on an invite to a May 25 fund-raiser in Boston. A New Balance spokeswoman declined to comment. But Jennifer Nassour, who organized the event, is happy to chat about it. Nassour has been impressed with Haley ever since they first met, at the Republican National Convention in 2012. (Nassour focuses much of her time on Haley’s campaign but also leads a nonprofit called the Pocketbook Project, to help more right-leaning women get involved in politics.)

The event in Boston served as a prelude to Haley’s “town hall” forum on CNN on Sunday.

“She’s very engaging,” Nassour said. “She doesn’t like to just talk at you. She likes to answer questions. Every single opportunity [to do so] just makes the candidate stronger.”

Jon Chesto can be reached at jon.chesto@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @jonchesto.