Director of Government Relations and Community Affairs Tim Leshan has left Brown to become Vice President for Government Relations at Northeastern University this academic year.
Leshan's main motivations for leaving were "the opportunity to become a vice president at an institution of higher education," and the ability to work "closer to home," said Vice President of Public Affairs and University Relations Marisa Quinn.
"I am thrilled to join an outstanding external affairs team at Northeastern University. I look forward to elevating the university's national profile on matters of public policy and advancing a multiyear strategy to increase federal research funding," Leshan said in an August Lexington Minuteman article.
Leshan did not respond to The Herald's requests for comment.
In the Lexington Minuteman article, Northeastern President Joseph Aoun said he was happy to have Leshan aboard. "Tim Leshan brings the expertise and energy we need to take our government relations program to the next level," he said.
The director of government relations and community affairs is the University's main advocate for advancing Brown's agenda on the federal level, Quinn said. The director has a "wide portfolio of work specific to Brown," Quinn said, with potential areas of interest including tax, labor and health care policy, and funding and policy issues related to research and student aid.
In order to manage Leshan's responsibilities, the position will be temporarily manned by a group of University staffers, according to Quinn. The temporary effort includes Quinn, who was originally hired as the director in 1999, and Director of State and Community Relations Al Dahlberg.
Filling the vacancy has been a team effort, Dahlberg said. "Since Tim's absence, we've all been pitching in to fill Tim's responsibilities," he said. "We've really worked as a team. It's not me alone."
The University has formed a search committee to find Leshan's replacement. The committee — which includes members from the Taubman Center for Public Policy, Office of Financial Aid, Department of Community Health, Alpert Medical School and the Office of the Vice President for Research — posted the job opening online and have already narrowed down a list of 40 candidates to 10 finalists, who are currently going through a final round of interviews, Quinn said.
Key attributes the University is looking for in potential candidates are "federal experience," "knowledge and understanding of higher education" and "managing and promoting positive relations with the government at all levels of the community," Quinn said.
Though she would like to have a director "as soon as possible," there is no set deadline for hiring to find the "most qualified candidate," Quinn said.
Given that politicians are currently focusing on the midterm elections, the workload for the director for government relations and community affairs is slightly less then usual, according to Quinn.
Leshan had been working at the University since 2006. He was hired by Northeastern on July 29, according to a July Politico article.
Prior to his work at Brown, Leshan received his master of public administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, according to the Lexington Minuteman article. He had worked both in the private and educational sectors with stints at Duke University and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and was a branch chief and senior policy analyst at the National Human Genome Research Institute, where he earned the National Institute of Health's Director's Award in 2006.
