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In President Roth’s annual ‘A New Academic Year’ email sent out last Tuesday, he announced three changes to Wesleyan’s administration. Andy Tanaka ’00 and Key Nuttall will be starting new roles as Senior Vice Presidents, and David Chearo will be starting as President Roth’s Chief of Staff.

As one of the new Senior Vice Presidents, Tanaka is taking on the role of Chief Administrative Officer and Treasurer. Tanaka graduated from Wesleyan as an Economics major and worked in consulting and the insurance industry before returning to Wesleyan as part of the University Relations team. He then worked in the President’s Office, while earning his MBA part-time at Cornell University. Before his appointment as Senior Vice President, he served as the Vice President and Chief of Staff for President Roth.

“I’m responsible for operations including finance, budget, legal, human resources, facilities and sustainability,” Tanaka wrote in an email to the Argus. “Part of my job is also to ensure coordination across the various administrative areas and collaborate with my colleagues on Cabinet to advance the objectives of Wesleyan 2020.”

When asked what he was looking forward to in his new position, Tanaka explained he is hoping to form deeper partnerships with the Middletown community.

Key Nuttall was also recently appointed to serve as one of Wesleyan’s Senior Vice Presidents, the Senior Vice President for External Relations. Nuttall has worked at Wesleyan as the University’s Chief Communications Officer since August 2015. After receiving his BA from Colgate University and his MBA from UCLA, Nuttall held a variety of positions at Microsoft from 1990 to 2001. Before arriving at Wesleyan, Nuttall worked at the University of Washington for 10 years, where his focus was university communications and marketing.  

“The goal of my job is to enhance recognition of Wesleyan as an extraordinary institution,” Nuttall said.

“The first is rolling out the work from the Core Messaging project into our communication efforts to tell Wesleyan’s unique story more effectively,” Nuttall said about his main focus for the year.

“The other main focus this year will be working with [Vice President] Barbara-Jan Wilson and [incoming Vice President] Frantz Williams [’99] in [University Relations] to plan for a new fundraising effort that builds on the great success of the This is Why campaign,” Nuttall added.

While both Nuttall and Tanaka held other positions at Wesleyan before becoming Senior Vice Presidents, President Roth’s new Chief of Staff, David Chearo, recently joined the Office of the President from the University of Chicago. As Chief of Staff, Chearo is responsible for advising and representing President Roth, as well as ensuring that Wesleyan’s other administrative officials are aligned with the President.

“I was very excited to join the team serving and supporting Wesleyan, and to be working with President Roth,” Chearo said.

At the University of Chicago, Chearo most recently served as the university’s Assistant Vice President. He also served in the U.S. Marine Corps as a Russian Linguist from 1998 to 2003 and received his BA from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and his MA from the University of Chicago.

As the three new appointees settle into their respective positions, the administration is marching forward with its plans. Given the impressive resumes they each boast, the President’s office has high hopes for the year to come, and is eager to see how each employee will contribute to the Wesleyan’s community engagement efforts, narrative-construction, and fundraising campaigns.

Claire Isenegger can be reached at cisenegger@wesleyan.edu.