Northwestern names new trustees

• Link to: Northwestern Now Story

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Northwestern University has named three new members to its Board of Trustees: David Helfand, chair, CEO and president of Equity Commonwealth; Jack Kang, senior manager at Wabtec Corporation; and Rodney Priestley, dean of the Graduate School and the Pomeroy and Betty Perry Smith Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Princeton University.

Meet the newest board members.

David A. Helfand ’86

David Helfand is the chair, CEO and president of Equity Commonwealth, a publicly traded real estate investment trust (REIT) that owns and operates commercial office properties throughout the United States. Helfand serves as an advisor to Equity Group Investments (EGI), a private investment firm, where he previously served as co-president, overseeing EGI’s real estate activities. Helfand is also the founder and president of Helix Funds LLC, a private real estate investment management company. He served as CEO for American Residential Communities LLC, a Helix Funds portfolio company. Before founding Helix Funds, Helfand served as executive vice president and chief investment officer for Equity Office Properties Trust (EOP), the largest REIT in the U.S. at the time. Prior to working with EOP, Helfand served as managing director and participated in the formation of Equity International, a private investment firm focused on real estate-related companies outside the U.S. He was also the president and CEO of Equity LifeStyle Properties, an operator of manufactured home communities, and chair of the board’s audit committee.

Helfand serves on the board of directors for the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, on the executive committee of the Kellogg Real Estate Center at Northwestern, and on the Board of Visitors of the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern. He also serves on the NAREIT Advisory Board of Governors, as vice chair of the executive committee of the Samuel Zell and Robert Lurie Real Estate Center at the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania. Helfand received a bachelor’s degree in political science from Northwestern and an MBA from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.

Jack Kang ’90

Jack Kang is a senior manager at Wabtec Corporation, a railroad technology company, where his team determines global pricing for the $650+ million aftermarket industrial parts business. Previously, he spent nearly 20 years in strategic marketing at the General Electric Company, where he led the annual strategic planning process, managed the pricing team, eco-certified GE’s locomotives, and managed MBA recruitment and new talent training. Prior to his time at GE, Kang worked in banking, ultimately as senior vice president of marketing analytics. Kang filed a patent application related to converting images of paper checks to electronic deposits.

Kang is a longtime volunteer leader serving the Northwestern community. He is the past president of the Northwestern Asian and Asian American Alumni Association, also known as NU-A5. Under Kang’s leadership, NU-A5 was recognized as the Northwestern Alumni Association (NAA) Club of the Year in 2020 and 2023 for their exemplary alumni impact. In 2021, he was named NAA Club Leader of the Year for his leadership and service excellence. In 2024, Kang co-organized a live music event on campus while on the steering committee of One Book One Northwestern, the community-wide reading program hosted by the Office of the Provost. Today, he serves as president-elect of the NAA Board of Directors and is a mentor in Northwestern’s Affinity Leaders and Learners (ALL) Mentorship Program.

After graduating from Northwestern with a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering, Kang received an MBA from Vanderbilt University.

Rodney D. Priestley ’05 MS, ’08 PhD

Rodney Priestley is the dean of the Graduate School and the Pomeroy and Betty Perry Smith Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Princeton University. His research focuses on the intersection of polymeric materials design and characterization, with applications across health care and the environment.

Priestley’s love of creativity and discovery fuels his research, which applies principles of physics, chemistry and engineering to nanoscale processing and characterization of polymers and soft matter. His contributions to the field of polymer physics and chemistry earned him the 2023 Carl S. Marvel Award for Creative Polymer Chemistry by the American Chemical Society (ACS) Division of Polymer Chemistry. In 2023, Priestley was also named a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and a Poly Fellow from the ACS.

Priestley’s earlier honors include the APS Dillon Medal, National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers and an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, among others. He was named to the Root 100 list of most influential African Americans in 2014 and selected as a World Economic Forum Young Global Scientist in 2018.

Prior to being named dean of the Princeton Graduate School in 2022, Priestley served as Princeton’s inaugural vice dean for innovation. He has cofounded several companies to translate his research into real-world applications, including AquaPao, a solar water purification technique that he developed with Princeton postdoctoral research associate Xiaohui Xu. This innovation earned the duo a spot on Newsweek’s list of America’s Greatest Disruptors.

Priestley has served on the Northwestern Alumni Association’s Board of Directors since 2019. During his graduate studies at the McCormick School of Engineering, he was a member of the Black Graduate Student Association, in which he participated in numerous outreach activities and service events to enhance diversity and inclusion within McCormick. Priestley remains committed to these issues today as a faculty member and administrator in higher education. Priestley received a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Texas Tech University and a master’s degree and Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Northwestern.