Joan Gabel, president and chief executive of the University of Minnesota system and its Twin Cities campus, has been named as the University of Pittsburgh’s 19th and first woman chancellor.

Pitt’s board of trustees voted Monday at a special meeting to make her chancellor-elect. She will succeed Patrick Gallagher, 60, who is stepping down after nine years in office with plans to teach on campus.

“I am excited and filled with optimism when I think of leading this institution into its important next chapter,” Gabel said in a statement released by Pitt.

During a news conference after the board vote, Gabel expressed profound admiration for an institution she said had emerged from recent challenges, including the pandemic, stronger than it was before. “There is an energy here,” she said.

Gabel, 55, will take office in July, becoming the first woman to lead Pitt since its founding in 1787.

Later Monday, the trustees’ compensation committee approved a pay package for Gabel that includes a base salary of $950,000 — an amount substantially above Gallagher’s base pay of $698,202.

Doug Browning, the trustees chairman, said the increase was necessary because Gallagher’s pay had fallen below the 50% level of peers within the association of American universities — partly because Gallagher’s pay until December had not been adjusted since 2019, prior to the pandemic.

“It was also clear that our peers had hired their chief executives at base salaries that were as much as $275,000 more than our chancellor’s base pay,” Browning said. “We therefore knew that to attract the type of leader we believed this institution needed, to continue to ascend to greater heights, it would be necessary to bring our new chancellor in at a salary that was significantly higher than that of Chancellor Gallagher.”

Browning added that the board was “also aware that many of our faculty and staff salaries need to be adjusted to remain competitive with our AAU peers and we are committed to supporting the ongoing efforts of the administration to close that gap as soon as possible.”

Gabel also will be eligible for annual deferred compensation payments of $200,000 that will vest only if she does not voluntarily resign from her university position or is not dismissed for cause prior to June 30, 2029.

In addition, she is eligible to receive $100,000 retention payments on the third, fourth and fifth anniversary of her start date if she does not voluntarily leave her role prior to those dates or is not dismissed for cause prior to those dates.

She also will receive funds toward her retirement and $5,000 toward tax preparation and planning services in addition to those available to other officers during the first year of her tenure.

The selection followed a nearly eight-month search that drew candidates from across the nation.

Gabel, an educator for nearly three decades, has led Minnesota’s system since 2019 and developed its first comprehensive systemwide strategic plan that yielded record-setting graduation rates and research expenditures and increased its number of startups and patents, Pitt officials said.

She also oversaw completion of a $4 billion, 10-year capital campaign that surpassed its goal by 10%.

Pitt officials Monday pointed to Gabel’s career accomplishments in service, teaching and research, saying they reflected an academic vision and aspiration that fit with the university. She earlier became the first woman to lead the University of Minnesota, though her tenure there also saw turbulence.

In January, she stepped down from her seat on the Securian Financial board of directors amid complaints of potential conflict of interest with an entity that holds $1.3 billion in retirement plan assets for the university’s employees, according to Inside Higher ed, which cited reporting from the Pioneer Press in the Twin Cities.

According to Inside Higher Ed, Gabel said the board seat included $130,000 in compensation beyond her university salary at Minnesota but she later said she had voluntarily waived the compensation. The university approved a conflict resolution plan.

Asked about it during Monday’s news conference at Pitt, Browning said such arrangements are not unusual and that Gallagher’s contract has language allowing him to serve on nonprofit and for-profit panels with the university’s approval. He said Pitt and the search committee knew about the Securian matter.

“We were aware of that issue and felt we had a satisfactory response,” he said.

Gabel said it was done with her university’s approval and she had been transparent.

“People didn’t like it. I wouldn’t call it a controversy,” she said. “I would say they didn’t like it and it became a distraction so I stepped down.”

Gabel, a New York City native, expressed gratitude for the baton at Pitt being passed to her, crediting her predecessor Gallagher and others. She pointed to the quality of faculty and staff and an involved board.

“There is so much exciting potential future opportunity. It is so nice to be looking forward to the future this way,” she said. “And I am absolutely honored and delighted to be here.”

The University of Minnesota system is a land-grant institution with 68,000 students and five campuses. It’s one of the nation’s largest universities.

Previously, Gabel was executive vice president and provost of the University of South Carolina from 2015 to 2019. Before that, she served as dean of the University of Missouri business school from 2010 to 2015.

She began her teaching career at Georgia State University in 1996 and has worked at institutions including Florida State University, where she was a professor of legal studies and chair of its department of risk management/insurance, real estate and legal studies. She also was director of international relations.

She earned a bachelor’s degree from Haverford College in Pennsylvania’s Delaware County and a law degree from the University of Georgia.

A 26-member search committee has worked since September to identify Gallagher’s successor, aided by the Philadelphia-based firm Storbeck Search.

Pitt is Western Pennsylvania’s largest university. It has 34,000 students on its main oakland campus and branches at Bradford, Greensburg, Johnstown and Titusville, as well as 14,000 employees.

It has a $5.5 billion endowment, the nation’s 26th largest, and does more than $1 billion in sponsored research.

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