AGB President Richard D. Legon Announces Retirement

By AGB November 8, 2018 January 10th, 2020 Press Releases

Richard D. Legon, who has served as President of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges since 2006, has announced he will retire from his position on June 30, 2019.

“We are tremendously grateful to Rick Legon for his energetic and visionary leadership of AGB for the last thirteen years,” said David W. Miles, chair of the AGB Board of Directors. “Under Rick’s leadership, AGB has become the premier organization centered on higher education governance in the country. Today, AGB is a thriving and innovative association that is financially healthy, has a strong and dedicated staff, and is poised to advance its role as an essential partner to the nation’s higher education governing boards.

“Rick Legon’s is one of the most highly respected voices in higher education today, not only on matters of governance, but on the most critical policy issues faced by AGB’s college and university members and the tens of thousands of trustees AGB serves,” Miles added. “His contributions will continue long after he passes the baton next year.”

Legon, who first joined AGB in 1983 and served as Executive Vice President before assuming the presidency, presided over a period of substantial change in higher education board governance. With an engaged board of directors, he led the association through an extended period of entrepreneurial growth, broadened AGB’s role in federal and state policy advocacy, and urged governing boards to rethink their accountability through a series of best practices guidelines.

Included among AGB’s initiatives in recent years:

  • The expansion of AGB’s board consulting services, the launch of AGB Search, a for-profit firm that specializes in executive search exclusively for higher education institutions, and the launch of AGB Institutional Strategies, a non-profit that assists higher education institutions address their changing business models;
  • AGB’s successful three-year effort to persuade the SEC to provide board members with an exclusion to proposed changes in the definition of “municipal advisor,” part of the Dodd-Frank legislation to address Wall Street reform;
  • The Guardians Initiative, a national effort to encourage higher education governing board members to serve as advocates for higher education’s value proposition; and
  • Advancing governance best practice guidelines addressing intercollegiate athletics, shared governance, student success, freedom of speech, and innovation in higher education among others.

The AGB Board of Directors has established a search committee chaired by Shauna Ryder Diggs, M.D., vice chair of the AGB board and a member of the Board of Regents for the University of Michigan. AGB has selected Korn Ferry to work alongside the AGB Board to select the next President. Click here for a link to the job description.