Current Board
Kristín Ingólfsdóttir (Chair)
Kristín Ingólfsdóttir served as President and Rector of the University of Iceland from 2005 to 2015. Prior to taking office she was professor at the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences. Following her 10 years in office Kristin was visiting professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston. She is currently serving as Vice-President of the Board of Governors at the University of Luxembourg and Chairman of the National University Hospital Advisory Board in Iceland. Kristin is a board member of the European Women Rectors´Association (EWORA) and the research-based startup companies Atmonia and Akthelia Pharmaceuticals. She is a member of the International Scientific Committee at the University of Grenoble Alpes in France and the Committee of the Nordic Medical Research Councils. From 2011-2015 Kristin served as an elected board member of the European University Association (EUA). She was a longstanding member of the Medicine Council of the Icelandic Medicines Agency and served as representative at the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in London.
Kristín received her degree in pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Iceland and her PhD degree from King´s College, University of London in the field of pharmaceutical chemistry, focusing on natural products. Her research mainly involved isolation and chemical identification of pharmacologically active compounds from lichens, mosses, and marine organisms. In addition to healthcare, Kristin´s interests are focused on education and how reform can best be achieved to meet changing needs of the workforce, society and individuals.
John T. Casteen III
John Casteen served as president of the University of Virginia from August 1990 through August 1, 2010. After teaching English at the University of California (Berkeley) and the University of Virginia, Mr. Casteen became the Commonwealth of Virginia’s secretary of education in 1982. He served until 1985. From 1985 to 1990, he was president of the University of Connecticut.
Mr. Casteen has been a director of the American Council on Education and has served on many other education-related boards. Mr. Casteen was named the Outstanding Virginian of 1993. He is a recipient of a number of honors and awards including the state conference of the American Association of University Professors’ (AAUP) Jackson Davis Award (1993); the doctor honoris causa from the University of Athens in Greece (1996); the University of Virginia’s outstanding alumnus of the year (1998); and the Gold Medal of the National Institute of Social Sciences (1998). Mr. Casteen writes short fiction as well as essays and papers in medieval literature, bibliography, and public policy. A collection of his short stories received the 1987 Mishima Award for fiction.
Mr. Casteen holds three degrees in English from the University of Virginia (B.A. with high honors in 1965, M.A. in 1966, and Ph.D. in 1970). He served as UVA’s dean of admissions from 1975 to 1982.
Jennifer Grayburn
Jennifer Grayburn received her M.A. and Ph.D. in the History of Art and Architecture from the University of Virginia. She was awarded the Robert Kellogg Memorial Fellowship from the Leifur Eiríksson Foundation in 2013 to pursue studies in Old Icelandic and complete her M.A. in Medieval Icelandic Studies at the University of Iceland. This experience supported her dissertation research on St. Magnus Cathedral and the architecture of the medieval North Sea world.
At the University of Virginia, Jennifer was a Scholars’ Lab Praxis Fellow and Makerspace Technologist. She has presented and published on digital scholarship and digital humanities topics, specifically 3D technologies, pedagogy, and the digital humanities. She served as a consultant for the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Council on Library and Information Resources.
Jennifer is currently the Assistant Director of Research Data & Open Scholarship at Princeton University. An advocate for emerging scholarly outputs and open scholarship, she served as a member of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) Steering Committee from 2019-2021. She has held previous digital scholarship positions at Temple University and Union College, where she also taught courses on Viking Art. Before her current role as a member of the Board of Trustees, Jennifer served on the Screening Committee for the Leifur Eiríksson Foundation, acting as chair of the committee from 2019-2023.
Susan Greer Harris
Susan Greer Harris is a 1987 graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law. She did undergraduate work at Amherst College and the University of Minnesota, where she graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in Political Science in 1982. She is currently the Secretary to the Board of Visitors and Special Assistant to the President at the University of Virginia, and has served in this role since May 2009. As the University of Virginia did not have a president during the first 85 years of its existence, the Secretary to the Board is the oldest administrative position at the University, created when the University was chartered in 1819. Ms. Harris is the first woman to hold the position.
Ms. Harris has served in the University of Virginia administration for 28 years, initially in the Office of the General Counsel and then as Assistant to the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, where she worked closely with specific units reporting to the EVP/COO including athletics, the UVA Medical Center, police, emergency management, the University of Virginia Foundation, and the University of Virginia Investment Management Company.
Ms. Harris is a trustee and secretary/treasurer of the University of Virginia Alumni Board of Trustees, and a trustee and secretary to the board of the Leifur Eiríksson Foundation. She also serves on the Board of Directors of Child Aid, a foundation that operates teacher training and literacy programs in Guatemala; the Colonnade Club, which is the faculty club of the University of Virginia; and the Foundation of the State Arboretum of Virginia. She is a former member and chair of the Charlottesville Salvation Army Advisory Board. Memberships include the Association of Governing Boards, the Association of Board Secretaries, the National Association of College and University Attorneys, the Virginia State Bar, and the American Bar Association.
Kristrún Heimisdóttir
Kristrún Heimisdóttir is a lawyer and currently a Fellow at Columbia University’s Center for Global Legal Transformation and a Doctoral Candidate at Columbia Law School. She is a member of the board of HB Grandi, one Iceland’s biggest seafood companies and also serves as an expert adviser for the Government of Iceland, her most recent projects an analysis, on behalf of the Foreign Ministry, on Iceland’s participation in the European Economic Area 1993-2018. and a chairmainship in a special commission concerning a notorious case of miscarriage of justice.
Kristrun has been an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Akureyri. The Director General of the Icelandic Federation of Industries. She was Political Advisor to the Minister of Economic Affairs, Legal adviser to the Minister of Social Affairs and Political Advisor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs all positions held throughout the Financial Crisis Period in Iceland in 2008-2012. Before that she worked as a lawyer, as a Managing Director of the Reykjavik Academy and a sports commentator on RUV television and radio. She has been engaged in various social activities, as Honorary Secretary of the Icelandic Olympic Committee (a former elite soccer player herself for Reykjavik FC9, as chair of the board of Icelandic Innovation Fund, member of the board of Reykjavik University as well as university lecturer in law and philosophy. Kristrun represented Iceland in the Stoltenberg commission of 2008-2009 headed by Thorvald Stoltenberg which was assigned to formulate proposals for a joing security and defence policy for the Nordic Countries. She has served as a deputy member of the Board of the Central Bank of Iceland, as board member and chairperson in various entities of the Church of Iceland and was a Deputy Member of Parliament from 2003-2009. Kristrun holds a law degree from the University of Iceland, and was an Erasmus student in law in Leuven in Belgium and in Philosophy in Cork in Ireland. She focuses currently on academic research on the State as Backstop to Finance and the repercussions thereof to democracy and legitimacy – the res publica itself.
Officers
- Kristín Ingólfsdóttir (Chair)
- Susan G. Harris (Secretary)
- Margo Eppard (Treasurer)
Founding Board
- Mr. Robert Kellogg (Chair)
- Mr. Marshall Brement
- Mr. Don Fry
- Mr. Steingrímur Hermannsson
- Ms. Sigríður Dúna Kristmundsdóttir