Donald Julian Reaves

Dr. Donald Reaves currently serves as Chancellor of Winston-Salem State University (WSSU), a constituent institution within the University of North Carolina (UNC) System. Elected to the position by the Board of Governors of the 17-campus system, he assumed his duties as Chancellor in August 2007 and brings to the position 35 years of higher education experience that includes both teaching and administration. Prior to his election as Chancellor at WSSU, he served for five years as Vice President for Administration and Chief Financial Officer at the University of Chicago. Reaves joined the University of Chicago after 14 years at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island where he held a number of senior positions including Assistant Vice President for Budget and Planning, Vice President for Finance, and Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration and Chief Financial Officer, a position that he held for nine years. Prior to joining Brown University, he worked for the Massachusetts Department of Public Welfare where he held several positions including Senior Budget and Personnel Analyst and Deputy Assistant Commissioner for Budget and Cost Control. Dr. Reaves has spent many years in the classroom beginning in 1977 as a teaching fellow while in graduate school. In 1980 he joined the faculty of Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts where as an assistant professor he taught an array of courses in political science and public administration. In 1985 he left the full-time faculty but continued until 1993 as an adjunct professor teaching public finance courses in Northeastern University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Reaves holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from Cleveland State University (1976), a master’s degree (1978) and a doctoral degree (1981), both in political science and public administration from Kent State University. Dr. Reaves is active in higher-education organizations, as a member of the Board of Directors of American Student Assistance and also previously as chair of the Roxbury Community College Board of Trustees in Boston, Massachusetts and vice chair of the Tougaloo College Board of Trustees in Jackson, Mississippi. He has previously served as a director of the Eastern Association of Colleges and University Business Officers (ECUBO), and the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO). Dr. Reaves is actively engaged in a number of civic activities in the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County community. These activities include serving on the following boards and committees: the Novant Hospital Health Triad Region Board of Trustees; the Forsyth Futures Board of Directors; the Millennium Fund Oversight Executive Committee; the United Way of Forsyth County Board of Directors; the Piedmont Triad Leadership Council; the Piedmont Triad Research Park Board of Directors; the Winston-Salem Alliance Board; the Josh and Marie Reynolds Hospital Guest House Board of Advocates; and the Advisory Board of the North Carolina Humanities Council. Donald Reaves also serves on the boards of two for-profit corporations, as an independent trustee of the William Blair Mutual Funds in Chicago, Illinois, and as a director of the Amica Mutual Insurance Company in Lincoln, Rhode Island. He is married to Dr. Deborah Ross Reaves, a retired clinical psychologist. They have two adult children: Marc, a graduate of Cleveland State University who is in the real estate development business in Columbus, Ohio; and Katherine (Katie), a graduate of Yale University and the University of Chicago Law School who practices law in New York City.