He Was the President. His Wife Was Getting Payments From the University. Is That a Problem?

As the new president of the Georgia Institute of Technology, Ángel Cabrera has a clear mission: Rebuild public trust.

A highly publicized ethics scandal last year — involving questionable spending, conflicts of interest, and multiple employees’ losing their jobs — severely damaged the institute’s image. The repair has begun: Georgia Tech elevated its ethics-officer position, hosted an ethics-awareness week, and surveyed its employees about the issue.

Cabrera, who started on the job this month, is a logical choice to lead the restoration campaign. An expert on business ethics, he previously served as president of George Mason University, Virginia’s largest public institution, where he was credited with raising the university’s enrollment and prestige.

But records obtained by The Chronicle show that Cabrera’s tenure at George Mason also included an arrangement that some ethics experts now criticize. During his term, the university paid more than $120,000 to his wife, Beth Cabrera, a motivational speaker and author who teaches corporate executives the power of positive psychology.

One of George Mason’s contracts with Beth Cabrera paid her at a rate of $3,800 per day. At least two of the contracts were awarded on a no-bid basis, without competition. More than a dozen payments were made in total, in amounts ranging from $500 to $60,000.

“It certainly raises a lot of red flags,” said Hailyn Chen, a Los Angeles lawyer specializing in higher-education issues, about the arrangement. Chen cited Beth Cabrera’s high rate of pay, along with the ethical obligations of public universities in general.

“Public institutions have to be concerned not just about whether their own university policies and the law are being followed, but whether there is the public perception that their own policies and the law are being followed,” Chen said.

Arthur Andrew Lopez, a former federal government-ethics official who is now a professor of business law and ethics at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, said: “These are things that you look at, and you say, ‘This doesn’t smell right.’”

Ángel Cabrera, his wife, and George Mason officials all insist there was nothing improper about the payments. Beth Cabrera told The Chronicle that her work for the university began without any involvement from her husband, and was instead the result of conversations between her and others at George Mason who teach or supervise personal-development courses.

The payments shed light on a gray area of the college presidency. When college chiefs chase the next job, it affects their partners or spouses — who are often accomplished professionals in their own right. And most of those partners are women. As part of a 2016 study, researchers at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities surveyed more than 400 presidential spouses from around the country; about half changed their employment status after their significant other became president. In most cases, the change meant becoming unemployed. Only 12 percent of spouses said they were paid by their partner’s university. Among those who were, most earned $50,000 or less.

The results also showed that the role of the presidential spouse is ambiguous, highly demanding, and generally unpaid. In addition, female spouses tend to shoulder more responsibilities than male spouses, who are more likely to continue working on their own.

The impact of the so-called “trailing spouse” problem on professors is widely discussed, and institutions go to considerable lengths to accommodate faculty partners and spouses. But with presidential partners, the standards are less clear. Should colleges take extra steps to avoid potential conflicts of interest, or seek out opportunities to support two careers instead of one?

Lopez, the ethics professor, said there’s an incentive to tread cautiously: “You’re talking about the perception of impropriety.”

Known, but Not a Superstar

The website for Beth Cabrera’s company, Cabrera Insights, describes her as a “dynamic professional speaker” who is “passionate about helping organizations and individuals apply knowledge from the field of positive psychology to achieve greater success and well-being.” Her teachings emphasize mindfulness, a positive attitude, and finding a life with purpose. She has written one book: Beyond Happy: Women, Work, and Well-Being.

Beth Cabrera has roughly 2,500 Twitter followers. In the crowded world of motivational authors and speakers, she has an established track record. But she is not a superstar.

In early 2015, two and a half years after Ángel Cabrera became president of George Mason, the couple received a conflict-of-interest waiver from the university’s Board of Visitors. The waiver stated that both husband and wife were “eminently qualified” to work for the university, and it noted that Beth Cabrera previously held faculty positions at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and Arizona State University. At Mason, she taught executive-education courses.

Virginia state law required the board to approve a waiver. But records show that she had already begun teaching there months before the waiver was issued. She taught two courses in the fall of 2014: Mindful Leadership and Purposeful Leadership.

Chen, the higher-education lawyer, said the situation raises the question of whether there was an unwritten or oral agreement for Beth Cabrera to be paid for teaching, with the board’s waiver vote amounting to “simply a rubber stamp on an already done deal.”

“If she’d already delivered the services with an expectation of payment, that fact could have exerted influence on the decision makers,” Chen said.

The February 4, 2015, vote by the board to approve the waiver was unanimous, with no discussion.

When asked about Beth Cabrera teaching classes prior to the waiver, Michael Sandler, a George Mason spokesman, wrote in an email: “Beth delivered instructional services beginning in 2014. She wasn’t paid through the university’s accounts payable system until Feb. 2015, after the board approved the conflict-of-interest waiver.”

Beth Cabrera said that she doesn’t remember the details surrounding those first two classes in 2014, but she stressed “it was all very legitimate.” Cabrera said it’s possible she taught the classes free of charge.

The waiver authorized Beth Cabrera to become a George Mason employee, but in the years that followed, she worked for the university only as a consultant. “Employee does not mean consultant,” said Lopez, the ethics professor, “and an employee does not, under the law, mean a contractor.”

Mason officials say the waiver nevertheless applied to Beth Cabrera’s consulting work, and Ángel Cabrera, in a written statement, told The Chronicle: “The implication that the involvement of my wife Beth in Mason’s executive-education programs creates some kind of ethical violation is false.”

“The board explicitly approved Beth Cabrera’s work in teaching graduate, professional, and continuing education courses at Mason,” he wrote. He added that his wife’s annual compensation was disclosed to the board, and her contracts were drafted with help from the university’s legal and human-resources departments.

Asked by The Chronicle if he ever instructed university employees to hire his wife, Ángel Cabrera responded: “No. Never.”

Thomas Davis, who leads George Mason’s Board of Visitors, said in a written statement that he is grateful for Beth Cabrera’s “outstanding contribution” to the university.

“Dr. Ángel Cabrera has had an impeccable record as George Mason University president. I have no doubt that he will continue to set a strong example of ethical leadership at Georgia Tech,” Davis said.

The challenge at Georgia Tech is significant. Four Georgia Tech employees, all supervisors, either were fired or resigned after the university discovered violations that included improper relationships with vendors and insufficiently disclosed conflicts of interest.

One example: Steven G. Swant, then executive vice president for administration and finance, earned almost $14,000 annually from RIB Software SE, a German construction-technology company. At the same time, Swant pressured Georgia Tech to hire RIB, and improperly used campus space and employee time for company meetings, according to a university report.

The results of an employee survey, published in April, revealed the deep mistrust caused by ethical misconduct. Nearly 1 in 5 Georgia Tech employees in administration and finance said that their supervisors did not behave in an ethical manner, and that ethical practices were not observed in their workplace.

‘Doing Mason a Favor’

At George Mason, an adjunct professor typically earns a few thousand dollars per course. The university paid Beth Cabrera as much as $3,800 per day.

The rate, she said, is roughly half what private companies pay for her services, and she was “doing Mason a favor” by offering the discount.

“That’s much lower than my rate,” she said. “I was not happy about that rate.”

Cabrera declined to identify her private clients by name, but she said they include real estate companies, banks, and retail firms.

Nance Lucas, executive director of George Mason’s Center for the Advancement of Well-Being, told The Chronicle that Beth Cabrera’s pay was reasonable. For one, Lucas said, the money was for occasional work, and not a full-time, every-day salary. Cabrera’s classes were based out of Lucas’s center.

Lucas said that Cabrera is highly trained and qualified, and that her compensation is on par with what instructors and speakers make in the field of executive education. One of Cabrera’s co-instructors, Steve Gladis, was paid $5,000 by George Mason for a single day’s work last fall, Lucas said.

But a contracts database maintained by the Virginia Association of State College & University Purchasing Professionals shows that the $3,800 daily rate paid to Beth Cabrera was well above average for George Mason. The database lists Cabrera’s contract, as well as contracts for more than a dozen other firms that provided similar “Leadership Training & Development Services” to the university.

The most common rate for these firms is $2,000 per day. No firm was paid anything close to Beth Cabrera’s $3,800-per-day rate.

George Mason officials said the courses taught by Cabrera were an important moneymaker for the university. They said she was paid from the private fees that companies pay, as opposed to state funding.

BDO USA, an accounting firm, paid the university $295,000 for eight days of executive education, according to Michael Sandler, a George Mason spokesman. Sandler said BDO approached Beth Cabrera and Gladis privately, but the instructors wanted to include the college in the deal.

Under that contract, Cabrera and Gladis taught a two-day positive leadership course to four different groups of BDO executives. The university says Cabrera and Gladis each earned $60,000.

“They were paid this fee because they were able to attract a client willing to pay that amount plus the university’s overhead for the design and delivery of a particular program,” Sandler wrote in response to written questions from The Chronicle.

In an interview, Gladis said that he and Cabrera had worked hard to develop the curriculum they used at George Mason. Gladis said his portion of the program focused on positive leadership and coaching techniques, while Cabrera’s section dealt with mindfulness and the idea of purposeful work.

“There was a lot of hours in that,” Gladis said. “It sounds like you do it on a weekend with a couple of beers, but it’s not.”

University policy requires contracts over $5,000 to be competitively bid. So when Cabrera and Gladis were paid $60,000 each, without any competition, Mason officials had to provide a written explanation. They stated that Cabrera and Gladis had designed the course materials, which relied on the books that they wrote. Therefore, they were “the only two individuals qualified to teach” the program.

“There is no other vendor that can provide similar training,” wrote Brad Dawson, who was executive director of George Mason’s Learning Solutions department, on July 5, 2016. “Thus other vendors were not considered.”

Dawson, who no longer works for the university, declined to comment on the decision to hire Beth Cabrera.

But other George Mason officials say they are so pleased with Beth Cabrera’s job performance that they plan to continue hiring her — even though she and her husband now live in Georgia.

Several Job-Related Moves

Taking the Georgia Tech job is a sort of homecoming for the Cabreras. It is the college where they first met, both as students. Ángel Cabrera, born in Madrid, was at Georgia Tech on a Fulbright Scholarship. Beth Cabrera, who grew up in Florence, Ala., was working toward the Ph.D. she would earn in industrial/organizational psychology.

After completing their studies, the couple moved to Cabrera’s native Spain, where Ángel Cabrera became a business professor, and later dean of the Instituto de Empresa business school. While in Europe, he collaborated with other young leaders at a World Economic Forum task force — the group created an ethics oath for business managers.

The importance of business ethics became Ángel Cabrera’s calling card. He wrote an op-ed about it for a German newspaper. He championed the issue when he returned to the United States in 2004 to become president of the Thunderbird School of Global Management, in Arizona.

Thunderbird students now recite an ethics pledge at commencement ceremonies. “I will oppose all forms of corruption and exploitation,” states one section of the oath. “And I will take responsibility for my actions.”

While Ángel Cabrera’s career reached new heights, his relocating from one college to the next posed challenges for his wife. In a 2015 interview with the Washington Business Journal, Beth Cabrera talked about how the couple, after finishing their studies at Georgia Tech, had moved to Spain. The Spanish government paid for his degree, so they were obligated to return for a few years.

Beth Cabrera didn’t speak Spanish. Despite that obstacle, she landed a job teaching English at another university in Madrid. Six years later, not only had her Spanish improved, but she had earned tenure.

“What happened next? Then, three years after I got tenure, my husband got a great job in Arizona,” Beth Cabrera told the Washington Business Journal, referring to the Thunderbird presidency. “It was a good move for him and the family, but I had to quit my job and walk away from my tenured position I’d worked really hard to get.”

Beth Cabrera considered abandoning her career.

“That’s when I almost walked away,” she told the newspaper. “We had children who were 5 and 7 at the time, we no longer had family, friends, or anything in the U.S. I remember thinking to myself, ‘I can’t do this, I can’t start over again.’”

Instead of giving up, Beth Cabrera got a job at Arizona State. But she also decided to go into business for herself, as an independent leadership consultant. It was, in her words, a “transportable career” for the next time the family had to move.

Her company, Cabrera Insights, was born.

Beth Cabrera told The Chronicle that she worked hundreds of hours at George Mason without pay.

“I’ve given workshops and talks to every department on campus,” she said. “All of this stuff goes unpaid, and I feel unappreciated.”

Raymond D. Cotton, a lawyer in Washington, D.C., began specializing in the field of university compensation in the 1980s, and he’s negotiated countless contracts between presidents and governing boards. He said boards used to openly say they were getting “two for the price of one” when they hired a new president. Spouses were expected to contribute, and do so free of charge.

That attitude has now shifted somewhat, said Cotton, who represented Ángel Cabrera during his initial contract talks with George Mason. The contract to hire Ángel Cabrera did not mention his wife, Cotton said.

But Cotton said he didn’t see anything wrong with Beth Cabrera’s being hired as a consultant a few years later.

“What I want to see is what happened at George Mason,” he said. “Boards need to have the backbone to stand up and say, If we attract a wonderful president, and he happens to have a very talented spouse, we are not going to ignore her talents simply because she is the wife of the president.”

Cotton said that the money paid to Beth Cabrera averages out to about $20,000 to $25,000 per year. The amount is “not significant at all,” he said, when you consider that university budgets are in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Others disagree. George Mason’s own presidential-compensation expert, James Finkelstein, has studied employment contracts extensively. In a 2015 analysis of more than 100 presidential contracts, Finkelstein said that only a handful included compensation for the spouse, and in those instances the payments came for performing the traditional duties expected of the role. Nobody was hiring the president’s spouse as a contractor.

“The idea of contracting in general is to obtain the best-quality service for the lowest price,” said Finkelstein, a professor emeritus of public policy. “It would be hard to imagine that a university president’s spouse is so uniquely qualified that a university would find the need to choose them over a vendor who did not have this relationship.”

Beth Cabrera said The Chronicle’s disclosure of the George Mason contracts has discouraged her from doing any work for Georgia Tech, her husband’s new employer.

“I feel like I’m being punished for just trying to keep my career going,” she said, “and not having done anything wrong.”

Michael Vasquez is a senior investigative reporter. Follow him on Twitter @MrMikeVasquez, or email him at michael.vasquez@chronicle.com.