FIU names Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez president in hasty board vote encouraged by DeSantis

Without a search, Florida International University on Friday hired the state’s lieutenant governor as its acting president, displacing the longtime administrator who led the Miami-Dade County school for the last three years.

The 11 to 1 board vote ratified a secret plan that’s been underway for weeks to install Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez, a former healthcare lobbyist from Miami-Dade County, as the state school’s new president. The Nuñez hire at the state-funded school was a request from the office of Gov. Ron DeSantis, board Chairman Roger Tovar told board members on Friday.

Nuñez will take the helm on Feb. 17, Tovar said, after the state board of governors approves her appointment and Tovar negotiates an employment contract. It was not clear Friday morning when Nuñez would resign as lieutenant governor.

The decision, made in an online board meeting called two days prior, places a senior Republican leader in charge of a state school with 56,000 students, a rising academic profile and a quest for more government funding that university leaders say they’re hoping Nuñez can wrangle from Tallahassee. Nuñez is the first woman to lead FIU and also the first FIU graduate to serve as president.

“She is a true product of what our FIU is about,” Tovar said at the meeting. “I have always been impressed by her engagement and tireless efforts as a champion of FIU.”

In his comments, Tovar made it clear the Nuñez hire was a request by the governor.

“Today we have an opportunity to continue to propel FIU forward,” he said. “The governor’s office has contacted me and suggested we consider Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez as the next leader of FIU.”

Nuñez did not participate in the board meeting, but issued a statement after the vote.

“As a two-time alumna and a proud Panther mom, I am deeply committed to the success of FIU,” she said. “I look forward to working with the Board of Trustees in the coming days.”

DeSantis’ office involved

In the run-up to Friday’s meeting, backers of the Nuñez hire said they thought she’d bring the Tallahassee gravitas that FIU needs to secure more money from the Legislature. Critics saw it as a politician displacing a proven academic administrator.

The FIU Faculty Senate passed a motion ahead of the vote urging the board to retain the current president, longtime FIU administrator Kenneth Jessell, and issued a statement calling the potential Nuñez hire “dismaying.” Noël C. Barengo, chairman of the Faculty Senate, was the one board member to vote against the hire.

At a press conference Friday morning, DeSantis said Nuñez isn’t resigning today. He said the FIU position was a job she wanted and that he supported her pursuing the post.

“I think FIU has an opportunity to really expand its horizons,” DeSantis said. “They have done a good job, but I think you are going to see them pick up even more steam with her at the helm.”

While the faculty’s board member was the lone public objection, people familiar with the Nuñez push said other FIU directors weren’t happy to have Jessell’s tenure cut short in favor of a DeSantis hire.

The sources described a nuanced view of Nuñez’s selection. They said board members viewed the lieutenant governor as a smart, well-regarded politician with strong ties in Miami, and far preferable to other political loyalists DeSantis could have dispatched to FIU.

“It wasn’t that they didn’t like Jeanette,” according to a Republican insider familiar with the conversations, “but they didn’t like being told what to do.”

Another insider said in the past, a governor’s staff always had a role in picking university presidents, including at FIU. But this source said in the past, universities would run potential picks by a governor’s staff to check for objections.

“Of course you’d call the governor’s office and say: Do you have issues with these names,” the insider said. “Now they don’t want a veto. They want to tell you who it’s going to be before the process.”

In an email Friday to FIU staff, faculty and students, Tovar called the chance to hire Nuñez a “unique opportunity” for the school.

“I personally had conversations with both President Jessell and Lt. Gov. Nuñez and, together, we feel that this is an appropriate time to begin a leadership transition,” he wrote. “It is difficult to overstate the importance of President Jessell’s contributions to our university. President Jessell, who is in the final year of his contract, has led this university for the last three years with distinction, dedication, and professionalism. Our recent unprecedented success took place under his leadership.”

Multiple FIU students and graduates opposed the Nuñez hire during the one-minute speaking time the board allotted for public comment at the meeting. No one from the public supported the lieutenant governor during the meeting. Speakers against Nuñez cited her support for lifting in-state tuition for students who grew up in the United States after being brought to the country by undocumented parents — a group of young immigrants known as “Dreamers” by supporters.

“FIU deserves better than a yes woman to Desantis’ dangerous agenda,” said student Kassandra Toussaint.

FIU’s Future

Jessell became president in 2022, when he was promoted from chief financial officer by the board after the abrupt departure of then-president Mark Rosenberg over alleged advances toward a school employee.

Jessell’s three-year contract as president, a post worth about $1 million in compensation, is up in November. He’s planning to resume his role in FIU’s senior leadership team as chief administrative officer, Tovar said at Friday’s one-hour online meeting called to hire Nuñez.

While Tovar said a formal search process will begin to find a permanent replacement for Jessell, the discussion suggested Nuñez is being hired as the board’s long-term pick. Board member Dean Colson said he supported the Nuñez appointment as he predicted FIU would be “thriving over the next decade under our new leadership team.”

He later suggested Tovar push for changes in state rules requiring a formal and costly search process for permanent presidents of Florida universities when a governor has already decided his or her choice.

“You can’t help but wonder what happens in two years when we will have a new governor — are these presidencies going to be included in the jobs that a new governor might want to fill during his or her transition or first few years in office?” said Colson, a former FIU chair. “More pressing for FIU is making us go through the time and expense of a full search when we transition from an interim to a permanent president. That seems like a lot of time and money to spend when the probable results of the search are already known.”

While there was no official advanced notice that a Nuñez appointment was on the table Friday, multiple sources last week said the lieutenant governor, an FIU graduate and a Republican former lawmaker representing Miami, was on track to take over the school.

FIU’s hiring of Nuñez clears the way for the term-limited DeSantis to appoint another lieutenant governor as he manages a Republican revolt in the Legislature and decides who to back as his successor in the 2026 gubernatorial race. As governor, DeSantis appoints some board members and exerts influence throughout Florida’s university system.

Backers of the Nuñez effort described her hire as a vehicle for FIU to capture its fair share of state funding from the Florida Legislature to match the school’s rising academic reputation.

Nuñez, 52, was a rising star in Tallahassee before DeSantis picked her as his running mate in 2018, giving the four-term Florida House member a high profile perch in state politics for the next seven years.

She brings extensive ties in both Tallahassee and Miami-Dade, where she worked as the head of government relations for both the county’s Jackson hospital system and HCA, a private hospital operator. She received her undergraduate and masters degrees at FIU, and is the mother of two FIU graduates, according to university reports. Nuñez has a masters in public administration and previously worked as adjunct professor at FIU, according to the university’s website.

She also assumes leadership of FIU as the suburban school is reportedly in the running to land President Donald Trump’s future presidential library. Trump’s local lawyer, Felix Lasarte, toured FIU’s main campus last month as part of a fact-finding effort for a library site, and the school issued a statement under Jessell saying it would welcome being considered for any president’s library.

The meeting concluded with Jessell, choking back emotion, saying he backed Nuñez.

“I have complete confidence in the lieutenant governor,” he said. “I look forward to supporting her.”

Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau staff writer Romy Ellenbogen contributed to this report.

This story was originally published February 7, 2025 at 11:10 AM.