William Best Elected Chair of the Rutgers Board of Governors

Mark Angelson to serve as vice chair

William E. Best, a senior vice president at PNC Bank, has been elected to a one-year term as chair of the Rutgers University Board of Governors.

Mark A. Angelson, an international leader in higher education, business and law, will serve as vice chair after serving three terms as the chair of the Board of Governors. 

Best and Angelson will begin their terms on July 1, 2022.

Best previously served two terms as vice chair of the Board of Governors and two terms as chair of the Board of Trustees. He has been involved in numerous governing and trustee board committees at Rutgers, such as the Board of Governors/Board of Trustees’ financial due diligence subcommittee, the Board of Governors’ committee on audit, the Board of Trustees’ executive and emeriti committees, and elected Trustee Emeritus.  Best also served as co-vice chair, along with Board of Governors Professor of History Deborah Gray White, of the presidential search committee that recommended Jonathan Holloway as the 21st president of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

In his role at PNC, Best is focused on growth and prosperity for community and economic development corporations, small businesses and women and minority-owned enterprises in the Northeast.

Best served three New Jersey gubernatorial administrations as the first executive director of the New Jersey Redevelopment Authority (NJRA), a state-financing agency that provides the state’s urban centers with public/private partnership opportunities to leverage funds for entrepreneurial growth, job creation, and to enhance community empowerment. Before leading the NJRA, Best pioneered commercial banking initiatives as vice president of community development for PNC and community reinvestment officer at BNY Mellon.

Best has also chaired the International Economic Development Council, where he developed and instituted an ethics education and enforcement policy for global economic development professionals and recession recovery. He currently presides on boards for New Jersey Future, New Jersey Regional Plan Association, Newark Alliance and Newark Regional Business Partnership.

Best has been honored with many awards and recognitions, including from the New Jersey Redevelopment Authority, the African American Chamber of Commerce, the New Jersey Senate and Assembly and the NJBIZ Icon award. He lives in Belle Mead, N.J., and is a graduate of North Carolina Central University.

Angelson is a member of the Rutgers Hall of Distinguished Alumni and chairman of the Institute of International Education (IIE), the world leader in international education and training that administers the Fulbright Scholarships and hundreds of other educational programs from offices around the globe.

As chairman of IIE, chair emeritus of IIE’s Scholar Rescue Fund and selection committee and coauthor of several articles on the efficacy of saving professors and entire national academies, Angelson and IIE have partnered with hundreds of host universities, including Rutgers, to rescue persecuted scholars from harm’s way throughout the world.  After practicing international law for two decades in Asia, Europe and New York, he went on to serve as chair/CEO of five public companies, including as CEO of R.R. Donnelley. Angelson also served as chair of MidOcean Partners, an international investment firm, and as Chicago’s deputy mayor.

Angelson is a former vice chair of the Biden Foundation and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Royal Society of Arts, The Pilgrims and the Economic Club of New York. He is a life trustee of Northwestern University and has been an adjunct professor of mergers and acquisitions at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management. Angelson graduated from Rutgers College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, in 1972 and from Rutgers School of Law-Newark in 1975. He was the first recipient of the Rutgers Law School Alumni Service Award. Angelson also received an honorary Doctorate of Laws from the John Marshall Law School and the Harold Hines Award from the United Negro College Fund.

Angelson also chaired the presidential search committee that recommended Holloway as the 21st president of Rutgers University.