WC Welcomes Three New Appointments to Board

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Washington College has announced the appointment of DuPont executive William J. Harvey, New York attorney Jayne Conroy, and Washington attorney Bert W. Rein to serve on its Board of Visitors and Governors.  In a tradition that dates to the College’s founding charter in 1782, two of the appointments were made by Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley.

“We could not be more delighted to have these three experienced and accomplished individuals join us,” said board chair Edward Nordberg ’82, CEO of Wakefield Capital Management in Chevy Chase, Maryland.  “They will be great assets as we move forward on our new strategic plan. We welcome the breadth of experience and expertise they bring in the legal and business worlds.”

The Governor appointed William Harvey, President of DuPont Packaging & Industrial Polymers in Wilmington, Delaware, to fill a position that extends through 2017.  Harvey joined DuPont in 1977 as a product specialist in the former Polymers Department. He rose through a series of assignments in product-management and product-development, eventually becoming business manager for DuPont Elastomers ( Neoprene, Nordel® and Hypalon®) in 1990.

 

He left DuPont for four years to work as general manager of the Peroxygen Chemical Division of FMC Corporation in Philadelphia. After returning to DuPont in 1996, he would hold another series of positions, including Vice President of DuPont Advanced Fibers, DuPont Corporate Operations and DuPont Corporate Strategy, before assuming his current position in 2009.

 

A native of Portsmouth, Virginia, Harvey earned a bachelor of science degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and an MBA from the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. In addition, he has completed several executive management programs at the Harvard Business School. He is on the Board of Directors of Kennametal, Inc. and is a former trustee of the Darden School of Business, Delaware State University and St. Catherine’s School in Richmond, Virginia. 

 

Also appointed by the Governor, Jayne Conroy is a New York based partner with the nationwide law firm Simmons Hanly Conroy. A skilled litigator and strategist, she has represented plaintiffs in high-profile liability lawsuits involving the BP oil spill, Toyota safety issues and the 9/11 terror attacks. For the latter, she represented several thousand victims of the tragedy in a multi-district action against the financial sponsors of terrorism. In a separate set of negligence litigations against the airlines and airport security companies on behalf of 50 families who lost loved ones on the four 9/11 airliners, she helped to forge settlements that totaled in the hundreds of millions of dollars. 

 

More recently, Conroy has focused on the pharmaceuticals industry. Her practice has brought actions on behalf of several thousand plaintiffs who were administered the drugs Actos, OxyContin, Zelnorm, Zyprexa, Vioxx, Celebrex, Bextra, Ephedra, Chantix, Yazmin and Yaz, as well as those injured by gadolinium contrast dyes and medical devices such as DePuy artificial hips.

Early in her career Conroy acted as national trial and coordinating defense counsel to a multi-national corporation and several of its subsidiaries. A native of Woburn, Massachusetts, and a graduate of Dartmouth College and the New England School of Law, she worked in U.S. District Courts throughout New York and the District of Columbia. Governor O’Malley appointed Conroy to a six-year term on the board.

 

The Board invited Bert Rein, a leading antitrust and commercial litigator, to fulfill a six-year term through 2018. A founding partner of the firm Wiley Rein LLP, he has been recognized by Legal Times as a “visionary” and Washington’s “Leading Food and Drug Lawyer.” In 2013, he was named the Washington, DC Administrative/Regulatory “Lawyer of the Year” by The Best Lawyers in America directory.

 

Rein earned even more prominence when he argued two high-profile cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2012, he successfully represented petitioner Abigail Fisher in Fisher v. University of Texas, a constitutional challenge to the university’s race-based admission policies. And the following year, in Shelby County v. Holder, he successfully represented the Alabama county in its challenge to the constitutionality of the renewal of the preclearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act.

 

Rein received his B.A., summa cum laude, from Amherst College, and his LL.B., summa cum laude, from Harvard Law School, where he served as notes editor for the Harvard Law Review.  In 1966, he clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice John M. Harlan. He has served on numerous national committees and boards, including the Civil Aeronautics Board and an advisory committee to the U.S. Sentencing Commission. He is currently a director of the National Chamber Litigation Center, an affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that advocates on behalf of the Chamber and its members in the courts and before regulatory agencies.

 By agreeing to help guide the 232-year-old College, Harvey, Conroy, and Rein follow in the footsteps of General George Washington, who gave his name and a 50 guinea donation to the school’s founding in 1782 and served on its first Board.