Allen Proctor To Step Down as V.P. for Finance

Allen J. Proctor will step down next month as the University's Vice President for Finance, it was announced today.

"Allen Proctor has done a great deal to improve the quality of financial analysis and planning at Harvard," President Neil L. Rudenstine said. "He has helped make the University's complex financial systems more rational and understandable, and advanced our efforts to control costs, to take a hard look at our budgets, and to plan responsibly for the future. He has brought complete commitment and energy to his responsibilities during a time of unusually difficult economic challenges for higher education. We will miss his analytical skill, his capacity to think through complicated issues, and his valuable counsel."

"Serving as Harvard's Vice President for Finance has been an enlightening and stimulating experience for me," Proctor said. "I have enjoyed the challenges, and I'm pleased that we've made some important strides in improving our financial management processes and in developing tools to make the University's finances easier to understand. At the same time, I have increasingly come to realize that my own background and experience, and my basic approach to financial management, are less ideally suited to the organizational structure of a university such as Harvard than they are to other environments. I will miss my colleagues here, but I will do my best to make the transition as seamless as possible."

Proctor will serve from April 8 through the end of the academic year as a special assistant to the President for financial affairs, in order to ensure a smooth transition. Thereafter, he will continue his appointment as lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government while he evaluates professional opportunities outside of Harvard.

Proctor joined the Kennedy School faculty in the summer of 1994 as a lecturer in public policy. That fall, he was named the University's Vice President for Finance, a role in which he has had overall responsibility for such functions as budgets, financial systems, information technology, internal audit, and research administration. Among other things, he has played a leading role in developing a new Central Administration budget process, in upgrading systems for evaluating the financial condition of the University, and in facilitating compliance with government standards for financial reporting on sponsored research.

Before coming to Harvard, Proctor served from 1990 to 1994 as executive director of the New York State Financial Control Board, which oversees and regulates the financial operations of the city of New York. Previously, he held executive posts in the Monetary and Bank Analysis divisions of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 1980 to 1987, and in the New York City Office of Management and Budget from 1987 to 1990. He holds an A.B. from Harvard College and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Rudenstine said that Provost Albert Carnesale is leading a search to identify Proctor's successor.