Longtime financial head at Penn is leaving for Stanford
Craig Carnaroli, senior executive vice president, has been a core member of the leadership team at Penn for 25 years and helped steer the school through the 2008 financial crisis and the pandemic.
The University of Pennsylvania’s longtime financial leader is leaving the school for a similar position at Stanford University.
Craig Carnaroli, senior executive vice president, has been a core member of the leadership team at Penn for 25 years, and his departure comes at a critical time for the school, as it faces the potential loss of hundreds of millions in federal funds and the possibility of additional costs from an endowment tax hike.
In an interview, Carnaroli said the tumult of the last five years played a role in his decision, though it was not the driving factor. That includes the pandemic; the multiple presidential transitions, including the resignation of former president Liz Magill in December 2023 following her congressional testimony over the campus’ handling of antisemitism; and, more recently, the scrutiny by the federal government threatening hundreds of millions in Penn funding.
“It grinds you down over time, just the amount of uncertainty and the scrutiny we’ve had as an institution,” Carnaroli, 61, said. “I’ve done my best to kind of help keep the institution together, but I need a fresh start.”
Penn president J. Larry Jameson announced Carnaroli’s impending departure to the leadership team Tuesday morning, noting he is Penn’s longest-serving executive vice president, who adeptly steered the school through the 2008 financial crisis and the pandemic.
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“We want to acknowledge all he has done to help shape the Penn we know today,” Jameson said.
Carnaroli, a 1985 Wharton graduate, will begin his role as senior vice president for finance and administration at Stanford, where he got his MBA, in September.
His forthcoming move follows the departure of other high-level Penn leaders over the last few years who served under longtime Penn president Amy Gutmann. They include Maureen S. Rush, vice president of public safety; Greg Rost, senior vice president and chief of staff; John Zeller, senior vice president for development and alumni relations; and Stephen J. MacCarthy, vice president of communications.
Such transitions are healthy for an institution so that “fresh thinking” can come in, especially given the challenges Penn is facing, Carnaroli said.
“It’s healthy for the institution to transition at this moment at a time when some hard decisions have to be made and the people who make them need to own the decisions,” he said.
At Penn, Carnaroli serves as the Ivy League university’s chief financial and administrative officer. His vast areas of oversight include: audit, compliance, and privacy; budget planning and analysis; business services; facilities and real estate services; finance; human resources; investments; information systems and computing; and public safety.
He said he had been thinking for a while about what his next step would be when the Stanford opportunity arose. Stanford has not faced as much federal scrutiny as some of the Ivy League colleges on the East Coast.
The president there, Jonathan Levin, is less than a year into his tenure.
“It’s an opportunity to get on the ground floor as a new administration is beginning,” he said.
Carnaroli received about $1.6 million in total compensation in 2023, according to Penn’s most recent 990 tax form that is publicly available. He has worked at Penn since 2000, his first four years as vice president of finance and treasurer, then executive vice president, and finally senior executive vice president in 2021.
Jameson noted the highlights of Carnaroli’s tenure from the time he arrived at Penn and helped resolve the health system’s financial difficulties. Under Carnaroli, Penn’s endowment has grown to $22.3 billion and, Jameson said, the school has charted 20 years of budget surpluses.
Carnaroli worked with Gutmann on the school’s all-grant, no loan financial aid policy for undergraduates, dramatically reducing debt that students face after graduation.
He helped shape Penn’s master plan, which included adding 8.5 million square feet of space to the campus, new buildings including the Lauder and Gutmann residential houses and Perry World House, and multiple renovation projects, Jameson said.
“Craig also played a critical role in the real estate expansion of the campus, including the final acquisition of the U.S. Postal Service properties in 2007,” Jameson said. “This historic acquisition has transformed the campus’ eastern gateway, including one of Craig’s favorite places on campus, Penn Park.”
Carnaroli said he will be finishing at Penn in late August or early September. He hopes to help Penn’s efforts to look for efficiencies in the administration to cope with the loss of federal funds. The university is working with consulting groups on “potential realignment of operations, how to get more buying power, how to improve our procurement processes to leverage our spend.”
“I don’t want my departure to slow us down,” he said.
Asked what he is most proud of during his tenure, Carnaroli paused to regain his composure amid an emotional moment.
“I’m really proud of all the people,” he said. “The contribution I made is in people I could recruit and put in leadership positions and getting the community to work better together.”