MIT's senior lawyer named VP and general counsel at UF

August 10, 2006

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The head of the primary legal office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been named vice president and general counsel at the University of Florida, UF President Bernie Machen announced today.

Jamie Lewis Keith will assume the new position in October. She succeeds Pam Bernard, who left UF in March to take a similar position at Duke University. Barbara Wingo has served as interim general counsel since April 1. Keith’s salary will be $245,000.

“Jamie’s experience is outstanding. Her background in both government and higher education as well as her enthusiasm for UF’s academic goals make her an ideal choice for this position.”

Keith, 49, joined MIT in 1999, where she has been MIT’s senior counsel, the university’s primary in-house counsel, as well as managing director for environmental programs and risk management. She created the university’s first in-house primary counsel’s office serving MIT’s senior officers, Academy and Administration and offering a broad range of services in all areas other than intellectual property and investments. Prior to that, MIT had intellectual property lawyers and otherwise relied primarily on outside counsel. Keith has led enterprise risk management for the university. She also has served since 2004 as a board member for the Council on Governmental Relations, which represents research universities in Washington on a broad range of policy, compliance, and cost issues.

“As one of the nation’s great public research universities, University of Florida can contribute in critical ways to seizing the opportunities and addressing the challenges facing U.S. higher education and academic research in the coming decades,” Keith said. “I am honored to have been asked by President Bernie Machen to join his senior leadership team, and I am exhilarated by the prospect of serving this exceptional institution and its faculty and students at an exciting time of growth and promise.”

Prior to joining MIT, Keith worked from 1993 to 1999 in Gov. William F. Weld’s administration as general counsel for the Massachusetts Division of Capital Asset Management in Boston. From 1985 to 1993, she was an associate and then a junior partner for the Boston law firm Hale and Dorr (now Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr).

Keith graduated magna cum laude with her law degree from the Boston University School of Law in 1984. She earned a bachelor’s degree, with distinction, in art history from Cornell University in 1979, concentrating in Asian art and studies and Chinese language, and she served as a law clerk for U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Bailey Aldrich from 1984 to 1985.