What to know about Scott L. Bok, who resigned as Penn’s board of trustees chair

Scott L. Bok resigned as chair of the University of Pennsylvania’s board of trustees Saturday evening, stepping down from his position minutes after former Penn president Liz Magill’s departure was announced.

The resignations came amid ongoing backlash over a congressional hearing on antisemitism last week. During the hearing, Magill was questioned regarding whether calling for genocide of Jewish people violates Penn’s rules or code of conduct.

Julie Platt, who had served as the board’s vice chair, will step in as interim chair. A replacement for Magill has not been announced.

Bok said he had been asked to remain as chair for the remainder of his term as the university transitioned to new leadership. But ultimately, he decided to step down.

“I concluded that, for me, now was the right time to depart,” Bok said Saturday.

Here is what you need to know:

A native of St. Joseph, Mich., Bok graduated from Penn’s College of Arts and Sciences and Wharton School in 1981. He went on to also graduate from its Carey Law School in 1984.

In a 2021 interview with the Pennsylvania Gazette, Penn’s alumni magazine, Bok said that he was the first person in his family to attend college. He chose Penn after seeing the school in a Barron’s school guide, having never seen the campus before.

“So, I applied, I got in, traveled with my parents from Michigan and moved into the Lower Quad — and on that first day met people who are still among my closest friends today,” he said.

As a student, Bok majored in political science and economics, and contributed to the school’s newspaper, the Daily Pennsylvanian. He also worked as a student liaison to the school board, which gave him “a glimpse into how the university is governed,” he told the Penn Gazette.

Bok and his wife, Roxanne Conisha Bok, met as undergraduates at Penn. They have two children — Elliot and Jane — who went on to become Penn graduates themselves, the Penn Gazette reports.

Bok briefly worked at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, a New York City-based law firm that focused on mergers and acquisitions. That experience was short-lived, as he “thought it was maybe a little more interesting to do the business side of those deals,” he said in a 2021 Penn alumni newsletter interview.

“I joke that I spent more years in law school than I did practicing law: three versus two and a half,” Bok said.

He then began working at Morgan Stanley as managing director of mergers, acquisitions and restructuring in the mid-’80s, and remained there for about a decade. While at the company, he lived for five years in London, and rarely visited Philadelphia or the United States, he told the Penn Gazette.

In 1997, Bok moved to Greenhill & Company, which he described as a “specialized, boutique place advising companies on mergers” in the Penn alumni newsletter. Today, he serves as Greenhill’s chairman and CEO.

“There were maybe 10 people at Greenhill when I started. I loved the collegiality,” Bok said in his newsletter interview. “I loved what I did at Morgan Stanley, but it was at a firm of thousands of people. I’m proud that Greenhill has grown into a firm with about 450 people scattered in 15 offices around the world.”

In 2005, Bok joined Penn’s board of trustees, and would serve as its vice chair before taking over as chair. He also served on the school’s investment board starting in 2016, and was involved with the school’s executive, academic policy, and development committees, among others.

Bok additionally was a member of the boards of Penn’s School of Arts and Sciences and the Lauder Institute of Management and International Studies.

“I’ve been involved at Penn for a very long time in a lot of different ways, and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it,” he told the Penn Gazette in 2021.

Bok took over as chair of the trustees in July 2021, succeeding David Cohen, who had served in the role since 2009. During that time, Bok oversaw the transition of leadership from Amy Gutmann to Magill, with Gutmann now serving as the U.S. ambassador to Germany.

In the alumni newsletter from 2021, Bok said that he had no particular plans for the university under his leadership, as Penn had “kept getting better in every possible way” since he became involved with it as a student in 1977. Instead, he said, his goal was “to keep moving in that direction.”

“I don’t think there’s anything that’s broken or really needs attention,” he said at the time. “I think the university is firing on all cylinders, and, hopefully I won’t screw it up.”