Former UNC President Tom Ross has been named president of the Volcker Alliance, a nonpartisan organization aimed at rebuilding public trust in government.
The New York-based nonprofit, launched in 2013 by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, announced the appointment Tuesday. Ross will start the job July 1.
He is now serving as the first Terry Sanford Distinguished Fellow at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, where he has been working on a project on bipartisan redistricting. He will continue in that role after joining the Volcker Alliance, but will resign his faculty position at UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Government in June.
The alliance looks for ways to make government more effective, primarily in the way new policies are implemented, Ross said Tuesday in an interview. The organization has examined each of the 50 states’ budgets to see whether they are truly balanced and which states have the best budgeting practices. On the federal level, the organization has examined financial regulations and offered solutions in areas that may represent emerging risks.
The alliance also aims to work with universities to encourage young people to go into public service, Ross said.
“You know there was a time, certainly earlier in my life, in which people saw it as a great opportunity to serve their government and their country,” Ross said. “That seems to have waned a good deal. Part of what we want to try to do is think of ways that we can expose some of our great students to public service: what the opportunities are, what the diversity of those opportunities are and how enriching that life can be.”
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