The State University System’s Board of Governors has selected new leadership following its biennial election.

Alan Levine, CEO of Ballad Health, was elected Chair, and Tim Cerio, CEO of Citizens Property Insurance, was elected Vice Chair — six months after both played roles in the high-profile rejection of Santa Ono’s selection as University of Florida (UF) President.

They were the only members of the 17-person panel nominated for each post. And accordingly, both won two-year terms with unanimous support.

“I’m grateful. I’m enthusiastic about the direction the Board of Governors is heading in, and my job as Chair really is to support the other 16 members and give them the opportunity to pursue priorities and things they want to see happen while working with the Governor’s Office,” Levine told Florida Politics.

“Of course, there’s going to be another Governor during my term, and I want to make sure it’s a smooth transition, but that we continue on the path (Gov. Ron DeSantis) has set for us. Frankly, we’ve been on this path a long time, and it’s working. I’ve been on the Board for 12 years. We’re the No. 1-ranked system in the country, and we’re not resting on that.”

Levine works as President and CEO of hospital chain Ballad Health; Cerio has served since 2023 as President and CEO of Citizens Property Insurance Corp., Florida’s state-run insurer of last resort. Cerio previously worked as General Counsel for Citizens and former Gov. Rick Scott.

Scott, now Florida’s senior U.S. Senator, congratulated Levine and Cerio for their “tremendous victory” shortly after their election on Thursday. They’d joined the Board in 2013 and 2017, respectively, both by his appointment.

“I was so honored to appoint them to various positions as Governor,” he wrote on X. “They are great champions for our higher education system.”

Levine and Cerio’s ascension to Chair and Vice Chair comes half a year after they and eight other Board members rejected the selection of Ono, a former University of Michigan President, as UF President.

In one of the most turbulent higher education showdowns in recent Florida history, the Board voted 10-6 to kill Ono’s appointment after Levine — a UF alum and the Board’s then-Vice Chair — grilled Ono for nearly 40 minutes about his prior support of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and his handling of pro-Palestine activist encampments while on the Michigan campus.

Cerio, another UF graduate, carried forth a similar but shorter line of questioning, at one point demanding answers for why Ono’s administration delayed treating antisemitism on campus as a “uniquely virulent and persistent threat.”

The vote against Ono followed weeks of mounting conservative opposition from Scott, U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds and Donald Trump Jr., who branded Ono a “woke psycho,” despite the backing of UF Board Chair Mori Hosseini, one of DeSantis’ most prominent supporters and a major donor to the Governor’s campaigns.

DeSantis, for his part, kept mainly out of the conflict — an uncharacteristic decision, considering his generally overt opposition to so-called “woke” higher ed initiatives. The Governor defended the Board’s decision, but stopped short of criticizing Ono directly, apart from saying that while he believed Ono was seeking the UF job because he wanted to “be more in line with what Florida is doing and our policies,” Ono’s past comments had made him “cringe.”

According to a high-ranking House official who spoke to Florida Politics on background, the Ono debacle played into a behind-the-scenes effort ahead of Thursday’s Board of Governors election to deny Levine and Ciero leadership posts and to ultimately oust them from the Board.

DeSantis, the official said, wanted the existing Chair, Brian Lamb, to continue in the position for a third consecutive term — a move that would have required a two-thirds vote — with newly appointed member Doug Broxson as Vice Chair.

That would have upended the Board’s customary pattern of succession by which the Vice Chair — Levine, in this case — becomes Chair after their predecessor left the post. Such was the case with Lamb, who was Vice Chair before being elected Chair in 2021, and with Sydney Kitson, who preceded Lamb as Chair after previously serving as Vice Chair.

If Lamb expected a different outcome, he didn’t betray as much in his comments before nominations were made.

“For me, it’s been an incredible run, (but) I definitely think it’s the right time to put a successor in place. I think the Governor has been an outstanding supporter of the Board of Governors and the State University System and me. I’ve been grateful for that,” he said.

“But both he and I have laughed about how busy things are for me, for all the right reasons, not to mention the job is never done, but I do believe it’s in a place that it’s best positioned to give someone else an opportunity to lead.”

Levine denied hearing of any covert machinations and declined to speculate on the matter.

“Any time you have an election, you’re always going to have people with different opinions, and that’s part of the process. There’s always palace intrigue. But I can’t speak to what other people wanted or anything like that, because I don’t know,” he said.

“At the end of the day, Gov. DeSantis laid a path for us to continue focusing on student achievement and cost efficiency. I’m grateful to work with him and his staff. I’ve worked very closely with the staff over the last seven years, and we’ve had a lot of great success in higher ed because of it.”

Board member Jose Olivo, a former House Speaker rumored to be on DeSantis’ shortlist for Lieutenant Governor this year, nominated Levine after commending Lamb for leading with “tremendous grace.” Ken Jones nominated Cerio.

The Board of Governors oversees the entire State University System, setting policy, strategic direction and budget priorities for all 12 of Florida’s public universities. It establishes academic standards, approves new degree programs, manages systemwide funding and ensures accountability in coordination with the individual university Boards of Trustees.

Levine and Cerio will assume their new roles in January.