William E. Best Elected Chair of the Rutgers Board of Governors 

Mark A. Angelson to serve as vice chair 

William E. Best, a senior vice president at PNC Bank, has been elected to a second one-year term as chair of the Rutgers University Board of Governors. Mark A. Angelson, an international leader in higher education, business and law, and a distinguished public servant, will serve as vice chair.

Best and Angelson will begin their terms on July 1, 2023.

Best previously served one term as chair and 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 board committees at Rutgers, such as the Board of Governors/Board of Trustees’ financial due diligence subcommittee, the Board of Governors’ committees on audit, investment, and finance and facilities, the Board of Trustees’ executive and emeriti committees, and was elected trustee emeritus. Best also served as co-vice chair, along with Board of Governors Professor of History Deborah Gray White, on 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 and 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. His board affiliations include the 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, a member of the Rutgers Hall of Distinguished Alumni, has served three terms as the chair of the Board of Governors, three terms as its vice chair, five terms as chair of its committee on finance and facilities and one term as chair of its committee on intercollegiate athletics. He also chaired the aforementioned presidential search committee. 

 Angelson is chair of the Institute of International Education, the nonpartisan world leader in international education and scholar rescue, which administers the Fulbright Scholarships for the U.S. Department of State and hundreds of other educational programs from offices around the globe.

Angelson also serves in the Executive Office of the President of the United States as a member of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.   Angelson has served as the deputy mayor of the City of Chicago, CEO of RR Donnelley, chair and CEO of two prominent Canadian public companies, chair of MidOcean Partners, an international investment firm, and vice chair of Chancery Lane Capital and the Biden Foundation. He previously had a lengthy and distinguished career as an international lawyer in Singapore, New York and London. 

Angelson is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and its membership committee; the Pilgrims (New York and London); the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce; and the Economic Club of New York. He is a Life Trustee of Northwestern University and adjunct professor of mergers and acquisitions at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. He is the coauthor (with Dr. Allan Goodman) of several articles on the efficacy of rescuing threatened professors and rebuilding national academies the world over. 

Angelson graduated from Rutgers College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and from Rutgers School of Law. In May 2023, Rutgers conferred upon him an honorary doctor of humane letters degree during the 257th Anniversary Commencement. Angelson was the first recipient of the Rutgers Law School Alumni Service Award. He holds an honorary doctorate of laws from the John Marshall Law School and the Harold Hines Award from the United Negro College Fund.

In other board news, Hollis Copeland, a Rutgers Board of Trustees member since 2004, has been elected by the trustees to join the Board of Governors on the seat designated by the New Jersey State Legislature for Essex County residents. Copeland is a Rutgers alumnus and was a member of the Rutgers men’s basketball team in the mid-1970s. He is a senior managing director and head of equities capital markets at Tigress Financial Partners.