Erskine Bowles, co-chair of President Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform and president emeritus of the University of North Carolina, will speak on Sept. 8 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“The Deficit, Spending and Taxes” will be the title of the free public lecture at 5:30 p.m. in Gerrard Hall, 160 E. Cameron Avenue.
A 1967 Carolina graduate, Bowles will present the Thomas Willis Lambeth Lecture in Public Policy in the College of Arts and Sciences. The endowed lecture series is named for the former executive director of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation.
The bipartisan presidential commission, which Bowles co-chaired with former U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson, was appointed to address the nation’s budget deficit amidst an economic crisis. Commission recommendations informed the recent debate about how to raise the debt ceiling and decrease the deficit without further harming the national economy.
During the Clinton administration, Bowles directed the Small Business Administration, then was White House chief of staff. He helped negotiate the first balanced federal budget in a generation. He also helped guide domestic and foreign policy as a member of the National Economic Council and National Security Council.
Born and raised in Greensboro, Bowles was the founder, chair and CEO of the Charlotte-based investment banking firm that became Bowles Hollowell Connor & Co. He also led Kitty Hawk Capital, a venture capital company, and Carousel Capital, a middle-market private equity company.
Bowles was president of the 16-campus University of North Carolina from 2006 to 2010.
He has shown a lifelong commitment to public service in North Carolina and beyond. He helped found Dogwood Equity, chaired the Rural Prosperity Task Force and was a trustee of the Golden LEAF Foundation. All three were designed to bring economic development to rural North Carolina.
He also was a United Nations deputy special envoy to 13 tsunami-affected countries in Southeast Asia.
