Georgia State University Foundation Names New Board Chair, Officers

ATLANTA — Georgia State University alumnus and distinguished heathcare leader Kevin Lofton (M.H.A. '79) was elected the new chair of the Georgia State Foundation Board of Trustees at the group’s June 12 meeting. Lofton, who joined the board in 2021, was selected by trustee vote and began his two-year term as chair July 1.

Trustees also selected new officers at the June session, which was the first official board meeting presided over by the Georgia State Foundation’s new president, Cheryl Harrelson. Also serving as Georgia State’s vice president for university advancement, Harrelson joined the institution May 1 from her previous role as associate vice chancellor for alumni, annual giving and pipeline development at the University of California San Diego.

“It’s been a great pleasure to get to know each of our outstanding and incredibly dedicated trustees, and I’m looking forward to working alongside them and our new board officers to reach milestones that match and help fuel Georgia State’s big ambitions,” Harrelson said. “Georgia State, like its students, has unlimited potential, and we’re honored to have a group of committed trustees and a leader in Kevin Lofton willing to invest of themselves to find and secure innovative, dynamic and enduring ways to unlock it.”

Lofton, a J. Mack Robinson College of Business alumnus, a 2017 inductee to its Hall of Fame and immediate past vice chair of the Georgia State Foundation board, joined the board in 2021 after a decorated career in healthcare administration. He retired in 2020 after serving as CEO of the Chicago-based CommonSpirit Health and its predecessor organization, Catholic Health Initiatives, for 18 years. Under Lofton’s leadership, CHI was transformed from a hospital company to an innovative, diversified $29.6 billion healthcare entity with 137 hospitals and more than 1,000 care sites in 21 states.

GSU alumnus Kevin Lofton was selected as chair of the Georgia State University Foundation Board of Trustees in June 2024.

Throughout his career, Lofton had a broad impact across the healthcare sector by helping to increase the ranks of healthcare executives and physicians from underrepresented groups and reduce care disparities in underserved populations. A former president of the National Association of Health Services Executives, Lofton received the organization’s top honor when he was inducted into its Hall of Fame in 2022. He is a founding board member of the Institute for Diversity, a member of the Howard University Board of Trustees and a former board member of the Morehouse School of Medicine and the Heersink School of Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Lofton also currently serves as an independent director for Gilead Sciences and Medtronic.

A 2017 recipient of the Georgia State Alumni Association’s top honor, the Distinguished Alumni Award, as well as an inductee in the Robinson College of Business Hall of Fame, Lofton and his wife Sabrina Shannon endowed the Lofton Family Professorship in Robinson’s Institute of Health Administration.

Along with Lofton, the Georgia State Foundation board officers serving two-year terms in their leadership roles are:

• Vice chair: Mary Stokes, head of institutional investments, Bank of America
• Past chair: Frank Boykin (B.B.A. '78), CFO (ret.) of Mohawk Industries Inc. and co-founder of the Addiction Alliance of Georgia
• Secretary: Regynald Washington, president (ret.) of Paradies Lagardère Dining Division and hospitality industry leader
• Treasurer: Ursula Godoy-Arbelaez (B.B.A. '01, MBA '08), CEO and president, Guardian Vue Partners

New leadership for the foundation board’s committees was also chosen by trustees during the June meeting. The committee leadership for the new board term will be:

• Audit Committee: chair – Kim Hixon (MBA '98), vice president, financial operations and transformation, Safe-Guard Products International LLC; vice chair – Tracy Daniels, executive vice president and chief data officer, Truist
• Development Committee: chair – Felicia Mayfield (B.S. '75, M.Ed. '80, Ed.S. '87), professor (ret.), Clark Atlanta University; vice chair – Kim Reed, president (ret.), southeast zone, AIG
• Finance Committee: chair – Ursula Godoy-Arbelaez;  vice-chair – Sabrina Sanders (B.B.A. '00, MBA '08), senior vice president, AT&T Corporation
• Investment Committee: chair – Mary Stokes; vice chair – Mark Adams (MBA '97), managing director/regional director of wealth management, JPMorgan Chase & Co.
• Nominating & Governance Committee: chair – Janine Bowen (J.D. '98), partner, BakerHostetler; vice chair – Nikita Trivedi (B.B.A. '09), director, supplier inclusion and sustainability, Southern Company
• Real Estate Committee: chair – Esmael Hill (B.B.A. '03), managing principal, the Net Lease Group; vice Chair – Randall Kent (B.B.A. '08), co-founder, Cypress.io

In addition to her role as Finance Committee chair, Godoy-Arbelaez is one of the two new trustees to join the board in March, along with Susan H. Eckert (B.A. '75, M.Ed. '79, Ph.D. '95), author and retired senior associate dean of administration in Emory’s Woodruff School of Nursing. Explore the full roster of trustees at  giving.gsu.edu/trustees.

Learn how the work of the Georgia State Foundation and the university’s donors is making a daily difference in students’ lives at  giving.gsu.edu.