By SUSAN JONES
Dwayne Pinkney, who was approved as Pitt’s new executive senior vice chancellor for administration & finance and chief financial officer at the June 21 Board of Trustees meeting, will earn a base salary of $630,000 annually when he starts at Pitt next month.
The salary was approved by the trustees’ Compensation committee just after the full board voted on Pinkney becoming an officer of the University. He also will receive a signing bonus of $50,000, plus deferred compensation of $100,000 per year payable on year six if he stays in this position at Pitt.
Pinkney, a 1987 alumnus of the Pitt’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, was paid $502,061 in 2022 at Indiana University, where he has been the inaugural executive vice president for finance and administration since March 2022, according to information compiled by the IndyStar from the Indiana Gateway database. He will start at Pitt on July 22.
The new position at Pitt combines the roles of the chief financial officer, which was held by Hari Sastry until he left for Georgetown University in January, and the senior vice chancellor for business and operations, which has been held by David DeJong since 2021. It’s unclear what DeJong’s role will be going forward.
When combined, Sastry’s and DeJong’s base salaries for 2024 were around $900,000.
The newly combined position at Pitt is similar to one under Gabel when she was president of the University of Minnesota, and was the model used at the University of South Carolina when she was provost there. At Minnesota, the senior vice president for finance and operations provides leadership for systemwide financial and operational offices, including Budget; Investments and Banking; Finance; Information Technology; University Services; Health, Safety and Risk Management; and Public Safety.
In addition to his duties as CFO, Pinkney’s chain of command at Pitt will include the offices of Facilities Management; Planning, Design and Real Estate; Public Safety and Emergency Management; Auxiliary Services, and Sustainability.
In an interview this week, Gabel said that nationally the CFO position in higher education has evolved to include these other responsibilities. “That’s what we saw coming over the transom in the candidates that were coming in,” she said. “And so it looked pretty clear to me that that’s what it was going to take to attract the right person.”
Gabel pointed out that she had previously moved two large functions out of the two offices to be under the chancellor’s office. Strategic planning, which had been under the CFO, is now part of the revised Plan for Pitt process headed by the chancellor’s office.
In January, Gabel moved HR back under the chancellor’s office, saying that people are Pitt’s “greatest asset.” She said that “the infrastructure update will ensure I have a direct line to both employee feedback and HR initiatives that are championing positive change.”
Prior to his job at Indiana, Pinkney worked at Virginia Tech for nearly four years as the senior vice president and chief business officer and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for eight years, ending as the chief financial officer and senior associate vice chancellor for finance and administration.
He began his career in the North Carolina General Assembly as an analyst and served as the deputy secretary for administration with the North Carolina Department of the Secretary of State. In addition to his master’s degree in public administration from Pitt, he earned a bachelor’s degree in English and journalism at North Carolina A&T State University, and a Ph.D. in political science at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.
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