Harris Takes Over for Orleans as Ivy League Executive Director

The Ivy League has named a new executive director of the Council of Ivy Group Presidents, tapping Robin Harris to replace Jeffrey Orleans. Harris, a senior counsel in the Collegiate Sports Practice at Ice Miller LLP, will take office on July 1. She will be the first female executive director in the league’s history. The choice of Harris ends a long, nationwide search that began when Orleans announced exactly one year ago that he would retire effective June 30, 2009, ending his 25-year tenure.

“Robin Harris will be a great executive director and I look forward to assisting her in this transition,” Orleans said in a statement released on the Ivy League’s athletics Web site. “We have worked together in many ways and I’m very pleased that she now will be representing the Council and Ivy League athletics.”

Harris, originally from Pearl River, New York, was offered the position on Feb. 11 and accepted it the same day. A graduate of Duke University and Duke University School of Law, Harris said that when the Ivy League reached out to her in its search for a new executive director, she found herself increasingly intrigued by the prospect of running the league.

“I wasn’t looking to leave Ice Miller, but this was a fabulous opportunity,” Harris said. “Each step of the way, I felt like this was a great fit, and it became a better fit as I got more and more involved [in the process].”

In Harris, the Ivy League will have an athletics leader who has more than her fair share of experience in NCAA matters. Before joining Ice Miller, an Indianapolis-based law firm, Harris spent nine years as an administrator with collegiate sports’ governing body. Harris worked in several different fields, ranging from academic standards, to diversity, to legislative proposals, and also had a five-year stint as director for the Committee on Infractions. Harris worked as the associate chief of staff for Division I for the last five years of her time at the NCAA before leaving in 2002.

After joining Ice Miller, Harris continued to work with the NCAA, joining the firm’s Collegiate Sports and NCAA Compliance Practice. That particular division works to investigate and resolve NCAA rules violations and infractions while also providing compliance reviews, athletics certification, and intellectual property protection, among other services. Harris has been involved with a slew of high-profile cases in her time at Ice Miller, including investigations of the University of Oklahoma football and men’s basketball teams and the Indiana University men’s basketball team for recruiting violations.

As executive director, Harris will serve as the chief executive officer of the Ivy League, essentially acting as the head of the athletic conference. Harris’ responsibilities will mostly revolve around ensuring that the Ivy League is in compliance with NCAA regulations and with its own distinct recruitment and admissions requirements. Unlike the majority of NCAA Division I schools, Ivy League programs are prohibited from offering athletic scholarships to potential recruits.

Harris will have large shoes to fill after Orleans, who spent nearly three decades as executive director modernizing and reforming the league. Under Orleans, the league cemented policy on a number of issues ranging from recruitment to championships. Orleans also worked to expand the Ivy League’s exposure in the national media, negotiating deals with a number of TV and radio outlets to broadcast Ivy games while also spearheading the creation of an Ivy League’s athletics Web site, www.ivyleaguesports.com .

Orleans’ tenure as executive director was also marked by discussions about postseason play for the league as a whole, centering on football and basketball. As it currently stands, Ivy football teams are not allowed to participate in the Division I-AA playoffs, and unlike the majority of Division I conferences, the Ivy League does not hold a conference tournament in basketball to determine its league champion or NCAA tournament participants. Most recently, Orleans and the Ivy Group Presidents introduced a postseason tournament for men’s and women’s lacrosse, the first-such tournament for a team sport in the Ivy League. For her part, Harris stated that, before opening the debate on postseason in the Ivy League, she would want to talk to all parties involved about the feasibility and logistics in each case.

While Harris will not officially take over as executive director until July 1, she said that the transition from Orleans’ tenure to hers had already begun. Nevertheless, Harris stressed that despite the presence of a successor, Orleans was still in charge of the Ivy League.

“The important thing is that Jeff is the executive director through June 30,” Harris said. “In between now and then, we will have regular communications, and I’ll be kept in the loop on and have input on major ongoing projects.”

For now, Harris will continue to work at Ice Miller through May while also transitioning into her new role as executive director. Currently residing in Kansas City, Harris and her husband will relocate to the East Coast sometime in the summer. It’s a flurry of change and preparation, but Harris believes that the opportunity provided by the Ivy League is second-to-none.

“I really believe,” Harris said, “in the principles espoused by the Ivy League regarding student athletes representing the student body, who are truly amateurs and who are academically qualified for admissions and graduation at Ivy League schools.”