Pitt names Thomas E. Richards board chair-elect

The University of Pittsburgh Board of Trustees named a new chair-elect Friday, who will take over next year after the fifth and final term of incumbent Chair Eva Tansky Blum, who board members reelected Friday.

A Pitt spokesman said Thomas E. Richards, a long-serving Pitt trustee and executive chair of the board of directors for the technology services corporation CDW, will take over as board chair on July 1, 2020.

Blum, a lawyer and retired PNC executive became the first woman in 228 years to chair the Pitt board when she took the helm of the board of trustees at the state-related university in 2015.

Richards, a 1976 graduate of Pitt, was elected to the Board of Trustees in 2011. He is the executive chairman of the board of directors for and retired CEO of CDW, an Illinois-based company that provides technology solutions to businesses and other organizations.

The chair-elect, who was a four-year starter on the Pitt basketball team and its 11th all-time high scorer, earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Pitt before earning a master’s degree in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The board also elected five new alumni trustees to the board. New alumni trustees include Robert O. Agbede, of Pittsburgh; SaLisa L. Berrien, of Tampa, FL; Sundaa Bridgett-Jones, of New Yor, NY; Wen-Ta Chiu, of Temple City, CA and Adam C. Walker, of Alpharetta, GA.