SAIS alumna Pamela P. Flaherty ’68 has been elected the 15th chair of The Johns Hopkins University Board of Trustees. Flaherty, who has chaired the SAIS Advisory Council since 2003, is senior vice president for global community relations at Citigroup, Inc., in New York.

Flaherty will become chair-elect of the JHU board this July. She will officially succeed current chair Chip Mason in July 2007, when she assumes a six-year term. She continues as SAIS Advisory Council chair.

Johns Hopkins reaches two milestones with Flaherty’s appointment: She will be the first SAIS graduate and the first woman to chair the board of trustees. She became a JHU trustee in 1997.

Flaherty’s career at Citigroup spans more than 35 years, including managing Citibank’s New York branch banking business and serving as Citicorp’s senior human resources officer. She has served two terms on the SAIS Advisory Council - 1989 to 1995 and 2001 to the present. Her husband, Peter Flaherty B’67, ’68, also serves on the advisory council.

SAIS Reports interviewed Flaherty about her new role at Johns Hopkins.

Both the SAIS and JHU positions require a major investment of time and talent. In view of the many requests to serve that come your way, why have you chosen to accept these two commitments?

I think the reasons are threefold. The first is that I am enormously grateful to SAIS and JHU for my education, which has very much helped in my career. And so the prospect of giving back is important to me.

Second, the issues addressed by JHU as a whole and in particular by those at SAIS are essential for humanity and the world today. Clearly SAIS is dealing with the issues of the world in which we live, such as U.S. foreign policy. SAIS is traditionally strong in regional studies, which are key to our understanding of different parts of the world. JHU in the larger sense deals with everything from public health to critical issues of medicine; to broad scholarship, investigation and research; to the education of young people.

The final reason is that I experience a tremendous amount of enjoyment from being with the people at SAIS and JHU - from the administration to the professors to the students - it’s an exciting place to be.

Could you discuss some of the major issues that the SAIS Advisory Council has addressed during your tenure?

I think the role of the advisory council is to support the school in any way we can. One of those ways is to provide sounding-board advice and counsel to Dean Jessica Einhorn. In that regard, she has shared a number of her initiatives with the council, and we have given feedback. I believe the most prominent among those initiatives is the planning exercise that the dean has been going through with her key people, people, faculty and administration, on the future of SAIS. Another area where we have been able to help is in the dean’s creation of the SAIS Opportunity Fund. … This is a critical fund that enables SAIS to do things over the next three years that further strengthen the school while we conduct our longer-term fundraising.

How would you describe the current relationship between JHU and SAIS ... and do you foresee enhancements to that relationship in coming years?

First, I’d like to say that the current chair of JHU’s board, Chip Mason, is just terrific. And we are extraordinarily fortunate to have someone of President William Brody’s brilliance and leadership ability to lead Johns Hopkins.

I would say the relationship between the university and SAIS has strengthened in recent years, and Dean Einhorn has clearly made that one of her priorities. It helped that JHU’s Bernstein-Offit Building is right across the street from SAIS. We have a pretty strong SAIS contingent on the university’s board, which enhances the visibility of SAIS. And the issues that SAIS’s students and professors address, such as national security and U.S. foreign policy, are of immense interest to everyone - it’s a place people look to for leadership. …

The university also is trying to focus on how different parts of the institution can collaborate to achieve a higher outcome, so [the desire to connect] is truly coming from both sides.

What do you believe are the major challenges facing higher education?

The clearest one deals with the undergraduate part of JHU - the whole issue of affordability of higher education in the United States today.

Second, we are a research-based university, and that is a distinguishing characteristic of the scholarship and the high level of academic achievement at Johns Hopkins. The federal government is cutting back funds for research, and that is a big challenge for the university.

What led you and your husband to fund a fellowship for a SAIS student each year - and what would you say to other SAIS alumni to encourage them to make similar contributions?

Scholarship money is necessary for SAIS to be able to compete and to continue to be the best - so it reflects a key priority of the institution. We are both grateful for the education we received at SAIS. We have many close friends from that time at SAIS. … So for us, it was the obvious way to give back. And I would encourage all SAIS alums to think about ways they can reconnect and things they can do to support SAIS. They should be enormously proud of the institution. There is not a set of more crucial issues in the world than the ones SAIS is addressing.

You have called SAIS "one of our nation’s treasures." What is significant about the school and the education it offers?

I think SAIS uniquely prepares students in today’s world. … If you read The New York Times or Financial Times or any other world publication, most of the issues discussed are issues that SAIS students are dealing with. SAIS’s emphasis on regional studies, on languages and on understanding the context in which most people live is absolutely critical to solving the world’s problems. I think that is an enormous strength. … I think one of the shocking things we discovered through our experiences in Iraq is how few people we could call on who have experience and knowledge of the Arab world and Arabic language. And that is not just the issue in Iraq but in the post-9/11 era in general. In fact, my concentration at SAIS was in Arabic and Middle Eastern studies. People are relearning that knowledge and exposure to global issues and cultures other than our own are the only way we are going to have the tools to solve our problems.

Can you reflect on becoming the first SAIS grad and first woman to chair JHU’s board? As a role model for female students and graduates, can you offer them any advice?

I am very proud to have this opportunity. I do think it’s an interesting signal to students, and to me it’s an example of Hopkins’ incredible ability to absorb and respect a diversity of opinions and people. So I think it is a milestone, and it shows that if you work hard, if you contribute, if you listen well and learn from others, you can achieve whatever you want.

Can you speak about the role SAIS played in your own career success?

SAIS was the reason that I was able to come to Citigroup all those many years ago. … it opened my eyes to the whole private sector. I was accepted into the foreign service when I graduated from Smith College. While I was on the waiting list [for my foreign service assignment], I started at SAIS and decided that I wanted first to finish my education. When I graduated, the war in Vietnam was ongoing. Working for the federal government didn’t seem like the best idea for me, so I opened my eyes to other possibilities. … Since then I have been grateful to be operating in a huge multinational company that has enormous impact on the world, and [this was all made possible] because of SAIS.