JAMES L. WATERS will be joining KeyCorp (NYSE: KEY) as general counsel and corporate secretary, effective July 6. He will lead Key’s Law Group and serve as the company’s senior legal officer. Waters brings more than 20 years of experience in corporate law with a focus on finance. Prior to joining Key, he served as general counsel and corporate secretary at Cullen/Frost Bankers, Inc. Previously, Waters was a partner at Haynes and Boone, LLP, where he spent 18 years as a corporate lawyer, representing banks and corporations. He graduated from Harvard Law and Columbia University and has been admitted to the bar in both New York and Texas. Cleveland, Ohio–based KeyCorp’s roots trace back 190 years to Albany. Its KeyBank unit is the No. 2 bank in the 16-county Central New York region, ranked by deposits.

EVE DE ROSA, associate professor of human development in the College of Human Ecology, has been elected dean of the faculty at Cornell University, effective on July 1. Her election marked the first time Cornell’s faculty has selected a woman and person of color to the position. De Rosa will serve a three-year term and replace Charles Van Loan, who has served as faculty dean since 2016. The dean of faculty represents the interests of the faculty to Cornell’s trustees, administration, students, employees, and alumni. The dean also ensures the faculty is fully informed about campus issues and the concerns of each university constituency. De Rosa was recruited to Cornell as a Rebecca Q. and James C. Morgan Sesquicentennial Fellow. She plans to focus on building mentorship structures that will support faculty recruitment, retention, development, and belonging. De Rosa also plans to shepherd the faculty’s current focus on anti-racism scholarship and activities. She brings to the role experience with bridging disciplines and colleges. As Dean’s Fellow for Racial and Social Justice in the College of Human Ecology, De Rosa created an initiative, Pathways to Social Justice, to hire a cohort of scholars to advance scholarship and sustained community engagement that addresses social justice. As a comparative cognitive neuroscientist — a neuroscientist working in the social sciences — De Rosa has an interdisciplinary focus. In her research, she takes two related approaches. One is cross-species, examining neurochemistry in the brains of rats and relating it to how attention and learning works, and fails, in humans. The other approach focuses on the lifespan, examining developmental changes from young children to older age and the neurochemistry of age-related changes in cognition, and potential interventions for neurocognitive aging. In her work, she uses blood-flow mapping from fMRI to generate hypotheses of brain function that can then be more fully tested by altering brain chemistry in rats. Representing her holistic perspective, her most recent research in rats and humans hopes to generate digital biomarkers derived from the neurochemistry of the brain-heart connection that predict and track dementia. De Rosa joined Cornell’s faculty in 2013 as associate professor. She was assistant and then associate professor of psychology at the University of Toronto from 2003-2013. At Vassar College, she acquired a liberal-arts perspective and earned a bachelor’s degree in biology-psychology in 1991. She then worked as a research assistant at Harvard University’s School of Medicine, where she further developed an interest in research. De Rosa trained in animal neuroscience and earned a Ph.D. in experimental psychology from Harvard in 2000. She then trained in human neuroscience as a postdoctoral fellow Stanford University’s School of Medicine, from 2000-2003.

TIM DOWNS has been named VP for finance and administration and chief financial officer (VPFA-CFO) at Ithaca College. He has served in leadership roles in operations and financial management at Princeton University for the past 14 years. Currently the executive director for facilities finance and administrative services at Princeton, he will start his new position at Ithaca on Aug. 2. Downs joined Princeton in 2007 as manager of the Facilities Finance and Business Office and was promoted to his current position in 2012. In that role, he has been responsible for leading a 37-member department providing budget, finance, business operations, procurement, information technology, and customer service support. He manages all financial aspects of a $125 million operating budget, $50 million major-maintenance budget, and multi-billion-dollar capital projects budget. At Ithaca College, Downs will serve as an essential strategic partner to President Shirley M. Collado, working collaboratively with her, the board of trustees, and the senior leadership team, as well as with faculty, staff, and student leaders to assure a successful and stable financial future for the college. He will provide leadership and managerial oversight for 300 staff members in the areas of business and finance, facilities, and auxiliary services, and have primary responsibility for the development and implementation of the college’s annual operating budget that will allow for financial alignment with the Ithaca Forever strategic plan. Among his other accomplishments at Princeton, Downs developed the university’s $5.5 billion capital plan, overhauling an $80 million construction surcharge program to close a $14 million deficit; reviewed and strengthened the stewardship program for the university’s $7 billion physical plant; managed key municipal relationships leading to a revaluation of the university’s property tax payment; and partnered with developers and financers on such sustainability projects as a 5.4MW solar field array and 12MW power-purchase agreement. Downs’ private-sector experiences have included serving as a group controller for Aramark Uniform Services and in a series of financial-management positions within key strategic business units at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. He entered the education field as director of finance and then president of the Sanford Brown Institute, one of 82 campuses under the Career Education Corporation umbrella. Downs earned his undergraduate degree in accounting from Temple University and MBA, with a concentration in finance, from the University of Delaware.

MICHAEL ATTILIO, M.D., was recently selected to serve as Rome Health’s vice president for physician practices, effective June 1. In addition to providing leadership for Rome Health’s primary care and specialty practices, Dr. Attilio will be working closely with the recruitment team to attract additional providers to serve the community. In July, he will also begin seeing patients at the Rome Health Delta Medical Center at 1819 Black River Blvd., for their primary care needs. Dr. Attilio is a board-certified family physician with more than 10 years of leadership experience. He has extensive experience in unifying multiple practices in the delivery of team-based patient-centered care. Attilio earned his medical degree from Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia and completed his residency in family medicine at Tripler Army Medical Center. He served in Afghanistan as a battalion surgeon with the 1st Battalion 12th Infantry Regiment and was a medical officer at Fort Hood, Texas, before he moved to the Mohawk Valley.

JUSTIN RUDGICK has been appointed president of Christopher Community, Inc., effective June 7. He succeeds Douglas J. Reicher, who is retiring after 12 years leading the organization. Christopher Community is a not-for-profit development and management company that provides affordable-housing opportunities across upstate New York. Rudgick brings 15 years of nonprofit management and community and economic-development experience. His expertise is in leading and implementing strategic initiatives for projects and programs, and he has secured nearly $300 million through leveraging awarded external funding obtained through local, state, and federal agencies. Rudgick was the principal of Influence CNY, LLC, a consulting business that provided expertise to municipalities, businesses and organizations with grants, strategies, and solutions, as well as serving as the development-finance director for the Child Advocacy Center of Oswego County. He holds an MPA degree from the Syracuse University Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs. Christopher Community currently manages more than 3,000 units and over 100 buildings, and administers Onondaga County’s Rental Assistance Program, which serves more than 1,200 households.