Washington College’s Finance and Administration Team Gets a New Leader

Washington College President Sheila Bair today announced that Rahel Rosner, whose diverse background has encompassed K-12 education as well as serving as a director at the international accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, will become the College’s new Vice President for Finance and Administration.

Rahel Rosner

Most recently, Rosner has been for the past seven years the director of finance and operations at Georgetown Day School in Washington, D.C., where she oversaw the daily operations of the 1,075-student school on two urban campuses with an operating budget of $44 million. With a BA from Swarthmore College in religion and biology, she has an MBA focusing on marketing, operations, and information systems from Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, and an MS in education, specializing in adolescent education in science and biology, from Mercy College.

“Rahel is a seasoned professional with extensive experience overseeing campus planning and real estate projects, finance, human resources, data management, and physical plant and operations,” says President Bair. “From a pool of over 90 applicants, she stood out clearly with the breadth and depth of her experience across multiple disciplines. I’m thrilled she’ll be stepping in to lead our finance and administration team.”

At Georgetown Day School, Rosner led the team to negotiate, finance, and purchase major properties with a value of $44 million, managed the team that developed a new 240,000-square-foot school building and a retail residential complex—with the goal to reduce the school’s dependence on tuition revenue—and cut expenses by $2.5 million per year for her first two years through contract renegotiations and procurement changes.

Previously, Rosner was chief operating officer at the Solomon Schechter School of Westchester in Hartsdale, NY, and she has also been a 9th- and 10th-grade teacher at Wings Academy in the Bronx. She spent two years in Japan, helping the Montessori School of Tokyo develop a model to expand and studying Japanese culture and language. Before her switch to education, Rosner spent eight years with PricewaterhouseCoopers, where she served as an operations manager of Unifi, as well as director of operations for Global Human Resource Solutions Practice for the Americas.

“I look forward to serving the students, faculty, staff, administration, and the board at Washington College, while becoming part of the Chestertown community,” says Rosner, who will take her new position in February 2017. “I am energized by the vision articulated by President Bair and excited to work as part of the team implementing her strategic priorities.”

President Bair also lauded the efforts of Chief of Staff Joe Holt, who served as the interim VP during the search process and enabled the Finance and Administration team to maintain momentum at a critical time for the College.

“If it weren’t for Joe, we would not have been able to make the transition in leadership of Finance and Administration so smoothly,” says President Bair.“In fewer than four months, Joe and the Finance and Administration team brought to fruition numerous major projects. As in all of his contributions to Washington College, Joe has served the College superbly. We owe him a deep debt of gratitude.”