University of Puget Sound

Search for the Vice President and University Counsel

Tacoma, Washington

University of Puget Sound (Puget Sound or University), one of the nation’s leading liberal arts colleges and “A College that Changes Lives,”  located in the creative, urban city of Tacoma, Washington, seeks an experienced leader to be the inaugural Vice President and University Counsel (University Counsel). With a visionary new President, passionate students, dedicated faculty and staff, and a new university strategic planning process underway, the University Counsel will be joining Puget Sound at an exciting point in its 130-year history. The University Counsel will have the opportunity to help the University and its senior leadership team advance Puget Sound’s distinctive educational mission and strategic goals, anticipate legal issues, manage risk, and ensure that the University complies with all relevant laws and regulations as the first in-house counsel for Puget Sound. Reporting directly to the President and serving as the Secretary to the Board, the University Counsel will advise the leadership team and campus on a tremendous breadth of issues and will play a key role in the University’s strategic planning and decision-making processes.

Over the past 40 years, Puget Sound has deliberately refocused its mission as a national liberal arts college, attracting an academically rigorous student body, and committed to increasing its socioeconomic, racial, ethnic, and geographic diversity to meet the needs of a rapidly changing population of high school students. Today, the University enrolls approximately 2,400 undergraduate students and nearly 270 graduate students on the 97-acre campus. Some 240 distinguished faculty members who share a deep commitment to teaching offer 1,200 courses in 50 traditional and distinctively interdisciplinary areas. Puget Sound also offers graduate programs in the School of Education, School of Occupational Therapy, and School of Physical Therapy.

President Isiaah Crawford joined the University in 2016 with a platform of bringing innovation to the campus, and has been thoughtfully cultivating his team and the campus around their many aspirations. Recognizing the complexities within higher education, the expanding breadth of legal matters facing universities, and the value of critical thinking around the future, Puget Sound created the University Counsel position to be an important resource as the campus embarks on new ventures, responds to day-to-day legal affairs, and more proactively assesses and manages risk and compliance. To be successful, the University Counsel will need to be approachable, have exceptional judgment, value collaboration, and have an appreciation for shared governance with the intent of collectively advancing the institution’s mission and strategic initiatives. The University Counsel will be an experienced, senior legal professional, ideally a generalist who has worked for or with higher education institutions or similar organizations on a wide range of issues. The University Counsel will have a Juris Doctorate (J.D.) degree from an American Bar Association accredited law school, and will be a member in good standing with the Washington State Bar Association or acquire membership within a reasonable time upon hire.

The University Counsel will be expected to address a key set of opportunities and challenges upon joining Puget Sound:

• Establish the inaugural office of the Vice President and University Counsel and engage senior leadership and other University constituents around how to best prioritize and leverage the services of in-house and external counsel
• Develop trust and build relationships with the campus community
• Provide advice and counsel consistent with University culture and aspirations in a dynamic higher education environment
• Support the Board of Trustees and serve as Secretary to the Board

The University of Puget Sound has retained Isaacson, Miller, a national executive search firm, to assist in this search. Screening of complete applications will begin immediately and continue until the completion of the search process. For more details, including the full position profile and to submit inquiries, nominations, referrals, and applications, please see the Isaacson, Miller website for the search: www.imsearch.com/6627. Electronic submission of materials is required.

Julie Filizetti, Lindsay Gold, and Sunny Zhang

Isaacson, Miller

1000 Sansome Street, Suite 300

San Francisco, CA  94111

Phone: 415.655.4900

Fax: 415.655.4905

The University of Puget Sound is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to recruiting, hiring, and retaining the most qualified persons based on job-related criteria. The university will not engage in or tolerate any discrimination or harassment in the workplace as prohibited by local, state, or federal law. More specifically, no applicant or staff member will be discriminated against or harassed on the basis of his or her race, color, sex, religion, age, disability, marital or familial status, national origin, creed, veteran and military status, sexual orientation, sexual identity, gender identity and expression, genetic information, socioeconomic class, language spoken, documentation status, political beliefs or any other characteristic prohibited by applicable federal, state, or local law.