University of New England announces three new appointments to Board of Trustees

The University of New England has announced three new members elected to its Board of Trustees.

Abigail Carroll, M.I.A., Brian Gagnon, MBA, and Cathy Trower, Ph.D., will join 21 of their peers in overseeing the University’s strategic direction, financial health, and overall governance, playing a crucial role in ensuring its long-term success.

About UNE’s newest trustees:

With a career spanning international finance, telecommunications, fashion, and sustainable aquaculture, Carroll has lived and worked across Europe, Latin America, and the United States. She spent more than 12 years in France, where she traded stocks and consulted on business plans before returning to Maine in 2009. An unexpected consulting project led her to found one of Maine’s premier oyster farms, building it into a brand featured from Portland to New York City.

Carroll serves as a mentor and entrepreneur-in-residence at SeaAhead and holds advisory board positions at Bright Tide, Oceanovaton, and Engine. She is a technology board advisor at the Maine Technology Institute and an angel investor with Paris Business Angels. Her community engagement includes service on the boards of Friends of Scarborough Marsh and the World Affairs Council of Maine, Biddeford Shellfish Conservation Commission, and many others.

Carroll holds a master’s in international affairs from Columbia University and a bachelor’s in French and Spanish literature from Barnard College.

With more than 30 years of experience building, scaling, and optimizing complex technology ecosystems across global enterprises and startups, Gagnon has held senior roles including head of global systems engineering at HGST/Western Digital and global architect at VMware, where he drove major infrastructure and cloud transformations worldwide. As a founder and executive leader of multiple tech ventures, he brings a strategic mindset and technical acumen to every stage of growth.

Gagnon has also led several consulting organizations focused on technology adaptations, specializing in cybersecurity, technology infrastructure, and machine learning. His core expertise spans cybersecurity, enterprise infrastructure, hybrid and multi-cloud architecture, data management, and data science platforms.

He additionally served as an entrepreneurship mentor for startup accelerator programs, including Techstars and MassChallenge. He holds an MBA from Cornell University and a bachelor’s in computer science from the University of Maine.

She is the author of several widely regarded publications on governance, including “The Practitioner’s Guide to Governance as Leadership” (Jossey-Bass, 2013) and “Practical Wisdom: Thinking Differently about College and University Governance” (Stylus Publishing, 2018).

With a career spanning higher education leadership, research, and administration, Trower served as research director at the Harvard Graduate School of Education for 16 years, where she studied academic leadership, shared governance, faculty work life, and employment issues, including the experiences of women in STEM disciplines and underrepresented minorities. 

Prior to Harvard, she served as a senior-level administrator of business degree programs at Johns Hopkins University and as a faculty member and department chair at a liberal arts college.

Trower brings extensive board service experience, having served on the boards of RiverWoods, BoardSource, and Wheaton College, holding leadership roles including board chair and governance committee chair. She has also contributed numerous articles, book chapters, and case studies to the field of higher education governance, including regular contributions to the Association of Governing Boards’ Trusteeship magazine.

Trower holds a Ph.D. in higher education administration from the University of Maryland, College Park, an MBA from the University of Iowa, and a bachelor’s in business administration, also from the University of Iowa.