Overseers announce new president, vice chair
Campus & Community Overseers announce new president, vice chair Monica Bharel (left) and Sylvia Mathews Burwell.Niles Singer/Harvard Staff Photographer June 5, 2025 7 min read Sylvia Mathews Burwell and Monica Bharel to assume leadership roles for 2025-2026 Sylvia Mathews Burwell ’87, former president of American University and former secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has been elected president of the Harvard University Board of Overseers for the 2025-2026 academic year. Monica Bharel, M.P.H. ’12, a physician, public health leader at Google Health, and former commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, will serve as vice chair of the board’s executive committee for the same term. Burwell and Bharel assume the board’s top leadership roles succeeding Vivian Hunt ’89, M.B.A. ’95, chief innovation officer of UnitedHealth Group, and Tyler Jacks ’83, a cancer genetics research expert and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who served in the roles over the past academic year. “Sylvia...