Log | School News

Simon Rich to Lead Nicholas Board of Visitors

Simon B. Rich Jr. is the new chairman of the Nicholas School Board of Visitors, succeeding Douglass F. Rohrman, who retired this spring. Rich and his wife, Nancy, recently relocated to Durham from Redding, Conn., where he was chairman of Louis Dreyfus Natural Gas and president and chief executive officer of Louis Dreyfus Holding Company.

“Rich has an extremely broad background for this job,” said Dean William H. Schlesinger. “He knows the environment as a farmer, a sportsman, a conservationist, and an energy executive, and he knows Duke as a student, an alumnus, a parent and a board member.”

Rich began his career as president of First Colony Farms. It was during this time that he first met Norman L. “Norm” Christensen Jr., a young botany professor he engaged to assess the environmental impact of harvesting peat in eastern North Carolina. At the same time, he helped found The Nature Conservancy of North Carolina, transferring more than 100,000 acres from First Colony Farms to establish the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in Dare County and to expand the Pungo Refuge in Washington and Hyde counties. Years later, Rich and Christensen would cross paths again, as the Riches toured the Levine Science Research Center at Duke after Christensen became the first dean of the Nicholas School.

“The dean of the Nicholas School had unusual items on his windowsill,” laughs Rich. “I knew what they were, but couldn’t figure out why he had them. They were peat extrusions made by a machine I had purchased in Finland in 1979. As he saw me noticing the peat, we remembered each other—same people, but very different roles.”

Rich joined the board shortly thereafter, and has been instrumental in the school’s strategic planning and outreach to new constituencies. “The major challenge facing the school is to fund the education of the highest quality people and launch them into an economy that does not provide pay scales commensurate with the importance of the task or the cost of the education. I would like to see adequate scholarship funds available to accomplish this goal.” The Riches have established the Nancy A. and Simon B. Rich Scholarship Endowment.

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