Three New Trustees Join the Grinnell College Board
Three individuals have been elected to the Grinnell College Board of Trustees, which meets formally three times during the academic year.
The new members are:
- Yuki Narula ’94
- Steve Pickle ’90
- Gabe Rodriguez ’00
President Anne F. Harris said, “It is a privilege to welcome these accomplished alumni to the Grinnell College Board of Trustees. Their professional experience, their love of Grinnell, and their deep commitment to our enduring mission will be assets as we work together to empower the College’s academic excellence and positive impact on the common good.”
Here’s a more detailed look at each new trustee:
Yuki Narula ’94
Yuki Narula graduated from Grinnell College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and earned an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management. He has over 25 years of experience in strategic finance, including working as an investment banker, private equity and venture capital investor, board member, and C-level finance executive in the infrastructure and renewable energy industries. Yuki began his investment banking career at Lehman Brothers and then spent almost a decade at JP Morgan, working with private equity firms.
After investment banking, Yuki spent a number of years in private equity and venture capital, investing and managing a portfolio of diverse investments, including many in the energy, infrastructure, industrial, technology, and telecom services sector. He has also served on various corporate boards. More recently, Yuki has been a C-level finance executive in the infrastructure and renewable energy sector. He lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, New York, with his wife Jennifer Kupinse ’94 and two children.
Steve Pickle ’90
Steve Pickle is a technology executive focused on growing and scaling innovative companies and teams. He is currently chief people officer at Samsara, a data platform provider helping physical operations companies — including global supply chain, construction, warehousing, and energy companies — operate more safely, efficiently, and sustainably using data and AI. Prior to Samsara, Steve held positions at Salesforce, where he was executive vice president of People Strategy and Operations, chief operating officer of the Enterprise Business Unit, and head of Global Sales Strategy. Steve was also an executive at VMware and a partner at Monitor Deloitte, where he led the firm’s technology practice and was head of the San Francisco office. Prior to his graduate work, Steve was a research associate at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he modeled investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy for the U.S. Department of Energy.
In addition to a B.A. in political science from Grinnell, Steve holds an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics and Political Science and an MBA from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management. Steve was a Thomas J. Watson Fellow and spent his fellowship year after Grinnell studying the political and community organizations of indigenous groups in Australia, New Zealand, and Norway. He serves on the Advisory Council of the Kala Art Institute, a non-profit community art and artist residency program in Berkeley, California. Steve lives in the San Francisco Bay area with his wife and two sons.
Gabe Rodriguez ’00
Gabe Rodriguez earned a B.A. with honors in history from Grinnell College. Originally from Lordsburg, New Mexico, he was delighted to attend college in a town three times the size of where he grew up. Gabe was an active member of the Student Organization of Latinos/as (SOL), served on the Department of History SEPC, and co-hosted a Friday afternoon radio show on KDIC heard by at least five people on Main 4th each week. He was part of the first group of students to work in the new Science Library and happily remained a student library employee his entire four years (including full-time one summer). Recognizing that a need was not being met on campus, Gabe co-founded Queer People of Color (QPOC) in 1999 and was thrilled to find out years later that the next generation of Grinnellians had turned it into something far greater than he could have imagined back then.
Gabe has been in nonprofit fundraising since his student days when he worked two Reunions and served on the Development and Alumni Relations Office’s committee of graduating seniors to encourage class giving. Gabe has been both class agent and co-class fund director for the class of 2000 and participated on three Reunion Planning Committees. He has spent most of his career in philanthropy for academic medicine, raising major gifts for Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago, the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, the Mount Sinai Health System in New York, and SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University in Brooklyn, where he currently serves as executive director of development for research. Gabe is especially proud to have successfully led major fundraising efforts for Mount Sinai’s largest department, whose frontline workers and scientists faced COVID head on both in patient care and research during 2020 and 2021. He also helped launch the health system’s Institute for Health Equity Research during that time.
Gabe is especially grateful for the Grinnell-in-London program, which allowed him to experience city life for the first time and introduced him to art and art history. He took as many art history classes as he could when he got back to campus and has learned much more since then through frequent visits to the Art Institute of Chicago, MoMA, the Met, and other museums around the world.
The Board of Trustees also voted to re-elect four trustees to new terms:
- Christina Cutlip ’83
- Keith Jantzen ’80
- David Maxwell ’66
- Nancy Radermecher ’83
The role of the trustees is to assure the “great and lasting good” of Grinnell College. Through their commitment to institutional stewardship, shrewd financial investments, and prudent management, the trustees have enabled Grinnell to become a leading liberal arts college noted for its rigorous academics, diversity, community, and commitment to exploring issues of justice on campus and beyond. Learn more about Grinnell College Board of Trustees.