St. Lawrence Elects New Members to Board of Trustees
St. Lawrence University’s Board of Trustees has elected William W. Cowan, Class of 1986, and Shauna Ryan King, Class of 1979, as new members. Their six-year terms begin June 1.
Shauna Ryan King ’79
Shauna Ryan King is the retired vice president of finance and business operations at Yale University. Appointed in June of 2006, she served Yale in that capacity until August 2015.
As vice president, King was responsible for finance, accounting, information technology, research administration, student services, registrar, financial aid, dining services and departmental business operations. She led a comprehensive effort to transform business operations across the university, including shared services, improved business process and core systems upgrades with a goal to strengthen Yale’s strategic and analytical approach to financial management and to continuously improve operations while delivering enhanced service to the Yale community. She was also instrumental in guiding the university through the challenges posed by the 2008 financial crisis.
Before joining Yale, King spent the majority of her career at PepsiCo, where she worked in various capacities in several different operating divisions. Her last position was president of PepsiCo Shared Services, global chief information officer, and chief transformation officer. Her efforts were instrumental in initiating a transformation of PepsiCo from a highly decentralized company into one that shares business processes and IT systems across its divisions. Before joining PepsiCo in 1982, she was a staff accountant at Price Waterhouse.
King earned her bachelor’s in psychology, magna cum laude, from St. Lawrence in 1979 and a master’s degree in accounting and finance from Cornell University in 1981. While at St. Lawrence University, she was a Presidential Scholar and president of Kappa Delta Sigma.
She is married to Stephen King, who is the chief executive officer of Dave and Busters Restaurants, Inc. They reside in Dallas, Texas, and have three children, Ryan, Brianna and Megan.
William W. Cowan '86
William “Bill” Cowan is the chief operating officer, chief financial officer and director of Enthought, Inc., a privately-held company that specializes in software products and services that accelerate innovation and enterprise transformation. He is also the co-founder of SMM Capital Partners, provider of early-stage venture capital with an investment focus on software solutions for cyber security, defense and intelligence, science, and healthcare.
From 1997 to 2001, Cowan was president, chief operating officer, chief financial officer and director of @Outcome, Inc., one of the first e-health companies in the U.S. From 1993 to 1997, he held leadership roles at Medicus Systems Corporation, a leading publicly-traded healthcare information technology company.
Cowan serves on a number of boards of directors, coaches boys and girls lacrosse at the West Austin Youth Association and is finance chair for Scipy.org, an open source software community and conference for mathematics, science and engineering.
Cowan earned his bachelor’s in economics at St. Lawrence in 1986 and a master’s degree from the University of Michigan in 1992 in business administration and health services administration. As an undergraduate, he was a Vilas Scholar, committee chair of the University Center Association, a member of the Orientation Planning Board and a member of Omicron Delta Epsilon, the national economics honorary.
As an alumnus, Cowan has served St. Lawrence in many volunteer capacities, including chairing reunion planning and fundraising committees, as a Laurentians Investing in Networking and Careers (LINC) mentor, and as a member of the Alumni Executive Council in which he currently holds the office of vice president.
He is married to Jill Cowan who holds a bachelor’s degree from Emory University and a master’s degree in public health at the University of Michigan. They have two children, Katherine and Jack.
