5Towner enters Ivy League

Former Cedarhurst resident Katherine N. Lapp has held many large roles in business operations in her career but her latest job may be the most prestigious. The native Five Towner was recently named an executive vice president at Harvard University in the Ivy League school's Office of the President and Provost.

As executive vice president, Lapp serves as the chief administrative officer within Harvard's central administration and a member of the president’s senior management team. The graduate of St. Joachim's School in Cedarhurst and Sacred Heart Academy in Hempstead Village also oversees the financial, administrative, human resources and capital planning functions of the central administration, as well as the Allston Development Group and administrative aspects of information technology. She also works with Harvard colleagues across the institution to identify areas in which greater coordination or collaboration can improve the quality or cost-effectiveness of operations, services or administrative support.

"It's virtually everything that is not academic to support the university’s activities," said Lapp when describing her role at Harvard. "It is one of the best higher education institutions in the world so it has been great to be exposed to that."

Lapp entered America's oldest college with plenty of large-business management experience, including her previous stint as executive vice president for business operations for the University of California. In that role she served as the chief business officer and oversaw an $18 billion annual operating budget in 10 University of California campuses.

The Cedarhurst native was also executive director and chief executive officer for the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority for five years until the end of 2006. She has also had a distinguished legal career, serving as New York State Director of Criminal Justice and Commissioner of the Criminal Justice Services Department from 1997 to 2001; as New York City’s Criminal Justice Coordinator from 1994 to ’97; and as chief of staff and special counsel to the Deputy Mayor for Public Safety for former New York City mayor David Dinkins from 1990 to ’93.

Lapp, a graduate of Fairfield University and Hofstra University School of Law, said she is “very humbled” to play a role in Harvard's history and has loved living in the Boston area, and a short trip away from her childhood home in Cedarhurst. Some of her main goals at Harvard are to improve the university's endowment, which plummeted during the latest economic downturn, find ways to have the school be more efficient with spending and reducing greenhouse emissions on the Cambridge, Mass. campus.

"Not in my wildest dreams could I have anticipated having an opportunity like this," said Lapp. "I'm very pleased to be a part of Harvard's amazing academic reputation."