Briner, Kolappa Sworn In as Trustees

Posted on Nov. 29, 2023

Brad Briner ’99 and Vimal Kolappa have been appointed to the UNC Board of Trustees after passage of a state bill that increased the governing boards at Carolina and N.C. State University from 13 to 15 members.

Briner and Kolappa were sworn in at the Board of Trustees’ Nov. 9 meeting and will serve four-year terms.

A provision in Senate Bill 512 added two additional trustees to the boards overseeing Carolina and NCSU, the only universities in the UNC System to have more than 13 members.

Briner, who was appointed by the North Carolina Senate, is the co-chief investment officer at Willet Advisors, which manages the philanthropic assets of Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York City. Briner, who is responsible for real assets and public markets investments, previously held positions at Morgan Creek Capital Management, a Chapel Hill-based wealth management company, and the UNC Management Company, which manages UNC’s endowment.

Briner was a Morehead-Cain Scholar at UNC, where he graduated with a degree in economics. He holds an MBA from Harvard University and currently serves on the board of trustees for Phillips Exeter Academy, the board of directors of the Boston Omaha Corp. and North Carolina’s debt affordability advisory committee.

Kolappa, appointed by the N.C. House of Representatives, is the founder and CEO of East Coast Hospitality, a hotel group with properties throughout North Carolina and Virginia. He is on the board of the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina and previously served on the Board of Trustees of the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics.

Kolappa holds an MBA from the University of Chicago and has two children who are Carolina graduates. He is the founder of the North Carolina Association of Indian-Americans, which serves to address community issues meaningful to Indian-Americans in the Triangle.