Bruce Davis, who served as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences  chief executive for 22 of the 30 years that he spent with the organization, during which he made a profound impact on Hollywood and global cinema, has died. He was 83.

Davis died Saturday evening following a battle with leukemia, his wife, Joann, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Davis, born in Washington, D.C., on March 10, 1943, received an undergraduate degree in English from Juniata College in Pennsylvania and a masters degree in Medieval Literature from the University of Maryland. He initially entered academia and rose to become chair of the theater department at Juniata. But a longstanding desire to write screenplays motivated him to relocate to Los Angeles in 1980, where, shortly after his arrival, he attended a party where he met someone whose wife worked at the Academy. That encounter led to Davis being hired, just weeks later, to arrange seminars and lectures for the organization.

In 1983, Davis was elevated to executive administrator and tasked with overseeing the Academy's library, archives and public programming. Then, in 1989, he was promoted to executive director of the entire organization, succeeding Jim Roberts, who had held the role since 1971.

Over the ensuing decades, spanning the terms of six Academy presidents, Davis presided over the day-to-day operations of the organization, staffing for which grew from 75 to 200. And he also oversaw large-scale undertakings like the relocation of the Academy's Margaret Herrick Library to the Beverly Hills Waterworks Building in 1991 and the establishment of its film archive at the Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study, which opened in 2002. His long-running efforts to rally financial support for an Academy museum were derailed by the Great Recession.

In 2010, Davis informed the board of governors of his intent to retire at the end of the 2010-11 fiscal year and sent a memo to Academy staff sharing his plans:  When I leave, I will have spent 30 years at the Academy and more than 20 as its executive director. That seems like enough. Organizations and indi

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