Miller, Rinvelt, Elected To Lead WMU’s Board of Trustees

Kenneth V. Miller of Kalamazoo and Jeffrey Rinvelt of Ann Arbor have been elected chair and vice chair, respectively, of the Western Michigan University Board of Trustees.

The two were elected at the board's Feb. 11 meeting and will serve throughout 2016. Miller succeeds James F. Hettinger of Fennville, who remains on the board. Rinvelt replaces Miller who has served as vice chair for the past year.

Miller is a principal with Havirco, a Kalamazoo-based investment management firm launched in 1983. He also is the owner of the Millennium Restaurant Group LLC, which operates several restaurant properties in southwest Michigan.

Miller earned bachelor's and master's degrees in business from WMU and a law degree from what is now the Western Michigan University Thomas Cooley Law School. Miller also is one year into a four-year term as a member of the WMU Cooley Board of Directors.

Now serving in his second eight-year term as a WMU trustee, he has twice served as chair of the WMU board, and he led the presidential search committee that resulted in the 2007 appointment of WMU President John M. Dunn. He was first appointed to the board by then Michigan Gov. John M. Engler and then reappointed by Gov. Rick Snyder.

Miller is a director and chairman of the board of directors of the Michigan Restaurant Association, is trustee of the Havirmill Foundation, is past president and board member of the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra, and is former chair of Downtown Tomorrow Inc. Board of Directors. He has received the Distinguished Alumni Award from WMU and the Red Rose Award for exceptional community service from the Kalamazoo Rotary Club.

Rinvelt, who earned a bachelor's degree in business administration from WMU in 1991, is the principal with Renaissance Venture Capital Fund, a Michigan-based fund that supports the growth of venture capital in the state, and is the largest privately funded organization of its kind in the United States. He also is a member of the Michigan Venture Capital Association’s board of directors.

A veteran of various startup ventures, Rinvelt was previously the director of Ardesta, where he was engaged in sourcing, evaluating and conducting due diligence on investment opportunities as well as monitoring and providing assistance to the companies in Ardesta's portfolio. Prior to joining Ardesta, Rinvelt was a co-founder of GrapeVINE Technologies, providing product management and marketing for that company's knowledge management product, eventually resulting in an acquisition by Sun Microsystems.

Rinvelt was also part of the startup team for MAXfunds.com, an Internet company providing complete coverage of the mutual fund industry, and he spent five years with Ernst & Young's Information Technology group as a senior consultant.

He was appointed to the WMU board in 2014 by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder.

Other WMU board officers elected to one-year terms at the Feb. 11 meeting were: Kahler B. Schuemann, secretary to the board; Jan J. Van Der Kley, treasurer and assistant secretary; and Patti VanWalbeck, assistant treasurer. Van Der Kley is the University's vice president for business and finance, and VanWalbeck is associate vice president for business and finance.