By Angelina Gomez ’14

The three newest members of the Amherst Board of Trustees are Rafael Campo ’87, Ted Beneski ’78 and Arthur Koenig ’66. The alumni body elected Campo; Beneski and Koenig were appointed by the board.

Campo, an award-winning physician and writer, is extraordinarily productive in both fields, serving as a professor of medicine or poetry at multiple universities, including Harvard Medical School, Lesley University and Stanford University. He is the author of seven books and the recipient of a 2004 honorary doctorate from Amherst.

Campo majored in neuroscience and English at Amherst, and he continues to work, in his words, “at the intersection of mind and body.” As a trustee, he aims to ensure that Amherst “continues to uphold its ideal of illuminating our land, [and] that it continues to teach critical thinking and encourage respectful debate,” as he wrote in a biographical statement.

If Campo embodies the diversity of culture and study that Amherst seeks to instill with its open curriculum, Beneski and Koenig further demonstrate that the skills learned at Amherst can spearhead any type of career.

The founder of Insight Equity, a private equity firm, Beneski earlier cofounded a new branch of Bain & Co. in Dallas. He is also a benefactor of  Amherst, and the college’s Beneski Earth Sciences Building and Beneski Museum of Natural History are named in his family’s honor.

Koenig’s work is distinctive in its international scope. He worked for more than two decades in the international steel-trading business, including as president of Erlanger and Co. He retired as chairman and managing partner at VIZ-Stal, an electrical steel mill in Russia.

Koenig opened and closed his productive career by helping the less advantaged. After graduating from Amherst he served the Peace Corps in El Salvador, helping to staff a rural hospital. In recent years he has focused his efforts on philanthropy, most notably in association with Human Rights Watch and his own Koenig Scholarship Fund, which allows Amherst to recruit and enroll students from Latin America and Africa. Koenig received the college’s Medal for Eminent Service in 2011.