Senior Appointments (March 1, 2021)
To the campus community,
Today, it is my great pleasure to announce the appointment of Claudia Marroquin ’06 as Bowdoin’s next senior vice president and dean of admissions and financial aid, and Niles Bryant as our next senior vice president and chief investment officer. Both of these appointments are effective July 1, 2021.
Claudia, who will succeed Whitney Soule as dean, has been a key member of Bowdoin’s admissions and financial aid team for more than a decade, serving since 2016 as director of admissions. She brings deep professional and personal experience to the position and an unwavering commitment to bring amazing students to the College. In her work here, she has overseen the expansion of multicultural recruitment, and she continues to be a strong advocate for access, affordability, equity, and inclusion in admissions and across the College. An art history major at Bowdoin with a minor concentration in government and legal studies, Claudia is originally from the Koreatown neighborhood in central Los Angeles, California, where she lived after immigrating to the United States from Guatemala with her mother and two sisters. As the first in her family to earn a college degree, Claudia knows firsthand how special a Bowdoin education is and how it changes lives, and we are truly fortunate to have her in this leadership role at the College.
Niles Bryant’s exceptional experience and skills, his record of achievement, and his deep commitment to Bowdoin’s mission make him the ideal person to succeed Paula Volent as our next chief investment officer—focusing on work that is vital for the College and especially for the students and families supported through our endowment returns. Niles joined Bowdoin’s investment office in April 2020 as director of investments, following sixteen years as an investment professional and earlier as an attorney specializing in capital markets and mergers and acquisitions. Most recently, he served on the investments team as director of real assets at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, a Bay Area private foundation with an $8 billion endowment. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan, where he earned his undergraduate degree magna cum laude in classical archaeology, and where he was also elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He earned his law degree at the Duke University School of Law in 1998 and his MBA in 2003 at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business.
Both of these appointments reflect the deep level of talent and expertise that we are so fortunate to have at the College. I am grateful to those at the College and on the board of trustees who participated in the process that assisted me in selecting Claudia and Niles for these critical positions. I know you join me in congratulating them both on their new leadership roles.
All the best,
Clayton