Acting president Joe Echevarria, ‘78, will be the seventh president of the University of Miami, following a unanimous Board of Trustees vote on Friday morning.
Echevarria, the longtime UM supporter and first-ever CEO of the University, will lead UM into its centennial year, transitioning from interim to official president. He is the first UM alumni to hold the position and second Hispanic president of the University.
“Joe is a ’Cane through and through. He embodies our mission and stands with our teams—in classrooms, clinics, labs, and on fields of competition worldwide,” Board of Trustees Chair Manny Kadre said in a statement to the UM community at 10:30 a.m. on Friday.
“His personal journey has been intertwined with the U since the day he first stepped foot on campus 50 years ago.”
The former Deloitte LLP CEO has been active in UM leadership for over a decade. Echevarria joined the Board of Trustees in 2012 and filled a series of advisory roles to former UM President Julio Frenk before being appointed CEO of UHealth, UM’s sprawling medical arm, in 2020. He was then appointed as CEO of the University in 2020.
The decision comes four months after Frenk’s abrupt departure from the role to serve as Chancellor for UCLA. Frenk served nine years as president and worked closely with Echevarria for most of those years.
“Joe Echevarria, our exemplary CEO and an incomparable leader, has been absolutely essential to navigating every crisis and challenge we have overcome during my tenure as president,” Frenk said in a statement to the UM community after announcing his resignation on June 12, 2024.
Unlike previous presidential searches, this has been primarily an internal process that moved at an accelerated pace. No formal search committee was named, as was the case in the 2014 Donna Shalala replacement search that lasted until April 2015. Instead, the University appointed a consultative committee of eleven individuals representing the faculty, deans and the Board that worked quietly for four months to confirm Frenk’s successor.
Echevarria stands out from previous presidents. He only holds a bachelor’s degree and spent most of his career in business. Before his involvement with UM as a trustee in 2012, Echevarria had not worked in higher education or academia.
Born in the South Bronx to a single Puerto Rican mother, Echevarria was a part of a government social program to attend college, where he earned a degree in business administration. He was hired by Deloitte LLP out of college where he quickly began moving up the ladder, eventually taking on the role of CEO in 2011 until his retirement in 2014.
Deloitte is one of the “Big Four” accounting firms and the largest professional services network in the world by revenue and number of employees.
He has filled a number of other roles including being an advisor to the Obama Foundation, chair of President Barack Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper Alliance and a Board of Directors member for Pfizer and UNUM, an insurance company.
Echevarria has not detailed any official plans for his presidency though his past position with UHealth and commitment to the athletics program as a trustee indicate these may be top priorities.
No anticipated timeline for how long he will serve as president was announced, but previous presidents have typically served for 10 to 20 years.
The school has not indicated whether a new candidate will take on his previous role of CEO or if the position will be absorbed entirely under his presidency.
The story was originally published by The Miami Hurricane, the student newspaper of the University of Miami in Coral Gables, as part of an editorial content partnership with the WLRN newsroom.
