Vice Chair, Elected 2023
Elected to the Board: 2008
Voting Trustee
Steven W. Barnes is a senior advisor at Bain Capital LP. He has been affiliated with Bain since 1988 and previously served as chairman of global private equity. Bain is a leading global private investment firm that manages several pools of capital, including private equity, venture capital, public equity and leveraged debt assets, totaling more than $165 billion.
Barnes serves on the board of directors of New Profit and the Boston Celtics, where he is a member of ownership. Barnes also is a founder and a member of the board of trustees of MV Youth. He is a former chairman of the board of directors of The Make-A-Wish Foundation of Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
Barnes earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Syracuse University’s Martin J. Whitman School of Management in 1982. He was awarded an honorary doctorate degree from the University in 2019.
Barnes served as chairman of the Board of Trustees from 2015-19; chairman emeritus from 2019-2023; and vice chair from 2023-2027. Barnes serves on the Executive, Board Organization and Nominating, and Investment and Endowment Committees as well as the National Campaign Council Executive Committee and Free Speech Trustee Advisory Group. Barnes served on the West Campus District Project Ad Hoc Committee, the Ad Hoc Workgroup on Real Estate Strategy and the Steam Station Ad Hoc Workgroup. Barnes twice served on the search committee for the chief financial officer, during 2016-17 and again in 2022. He received the Dritz Trustee of the Year award in 2014. His Syracuse University service includes membership on the Whitman Advisory Council, the Boston Regional Council and the Orange Value Fund, of which he was a founding investor. He also served as co-chair on the D’Aniello Institute for Veterans and Military Families Advisory Board. He received the Whitman School’s Jonathan J. Holtz Alumnus of the Year Award in 2011.
He and his wife, Deborah Barnes, have endowed the Whitman School’s Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities and the Barnes Professorship in Entrepreneurship. They also provided the lead gift for the Barnes Center at The Arch and have made an Annual Fund challenge gift, supporting the Invest Syracuse campaign to increase opportunities for students to attend the University. They have supported the Office of Disability Services, the Remembrance Scholars, Syracuse University Athletics and other programs and scholarships across campus.