Barry Munitz

Executive Committee

Barry Munitz, Executive Committee, is president of the Cotsen Foundations for the Art of Teaching and for Academic Research, chancellor emeritus of the California State University System, vice chair of the Broad Family Education Foundation (TBC), and senior advisor to the Milken Institute.

Munitz served as president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, overseeing the two museums, the Foundation, the Research and the Conservation Institutes, and supervising the multi-billion dollar endowment portfolio. At California State University, he led the expansion from 18 to 23 campuses, with student enrollment now reaching well over one half million, and more than 50,000 employees.

Munitz is the founding chair of Generation Three (an international family office) and continues as an original director of Rocky Mountain Resources and its subsidiaries, and chaired the San Diego Zoo Global Foundation Board. He was a trustee at the Courtauld Institute in London, chaired the Houston Grand Opera board, and served for 20 years as a director of Navient (formerly Sallie Mae), as well as being a director of the publicly-held entities Sun America Corporation, Kaufman & Broad, and LeapFrog. For a decade, Munitz served as president, then executive vice chair of several publicly-held, for-profit companies. A Princeton University Emeritus Trustee, he also chaired the transition committee for Governor-Elect Gray Davis, continues as a director of Sherry Lansing’s EnCorps Foundation, and was a member of the Radcliffe Board serving on its task force to complete a merger with Harvard University.

Munitz is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and held the White House seat on the Congressional Higher Education Cost Commission. He chaired the boards for Sierra Nevada College, and for the American Council of Education, and was the original (and the only) chair of California’s P-16 Council.

Munitz was chancellor of the University of Houston and academic vice president of the University of Illinois system. He received a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Princeton University, after a Baccalaureate degree (PBK/MCL/Woodrow Wilson Fellow) at Brooklyn College, and taught literature as the Trustee Professor at CSU Los Angeles. Munitz holds honorary degrees from Whittier College, Claremont Graduate University, the California State University, the University of Southern California, Notre Dame, Pepperdine, and the University of Edinburgh.