UPDATED: April 5, 2016, at 2:15 a.m.

Kenji Yoshino ’91, a constitutional law professor at New York University, will serve as the next president of Harvard’s Board of Overseers, the University announced Monday.

Yoshino will lead the University’s second highest governing body along with Nicole P. Haughey ’93, who will serve as the vice chair of the Overseers Executive Committee for the 2016-2017 academic year.

Thirty Harvard affiliates serve on the Board of Overseers to advise University leaders, review schools and departments, and approve decisions made by the Harvard Corporation, the University’s highest governing body. Alumni elect Overseers to six-year terms on the body; earlier this month, voting began in an unusually lively race for the five open seats.

Yoshino and Haughey will succeed Karen Nelson Moore ’70, a federal judge, and Diana Nelson ’84, an executive at the Carlson hotel and travel group, in their relative posts. Both elected in 2011, Yoshino and Haughey will fill the Overseers’ top leadership roles for the final years of the six-year terms.

“Kenji Yoshino and Nicole Parent Haughey are both remarkably thoughtful leaders, and I am eager to work closely with them in their new roles on the Board,” University President Drew G. Faust said in a statement.

Yoshino, a Rhodes scholar, currently chairs the Overseers committee on the humanities and arts. He also served on a University-wide task force dedicated to preventing sexual assault that released its final report earlier this month.

Haughey spent much of her career in the corporate and financial world, including as vice president for corporate strategy at United Technologies and as a managing partner at Vertical Research Partners LLC. At Harvard, she has served on the governing board’s joint committee on alumni affairs and development and the Overseers executive committee.

"Harvard is a wonderful place and as the first person in my family to attend college, it transformed my life in so many ways and for that I am forever grateful," Haughey wrote in an email.

Yoshino and Haughey rise to the helm of the Overseers in the midst of a contentious race for the Overseers’ five open seats. Earlier this year, Ron K. Unz ’83 and four of his peers launched a controversial bid for the governing body on a two-fold platform: eliminate undergraduate tuition and make public more data about Harvard’s admissions process.

Harvard will announce the results of that election in May.

—Staff writer Andrew M. Duehren can be reached at andy.duehren@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @aduehren.

—Staff writer Daphne C. Thompson can be reached at daphne.thompson@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @daphnectho.