Michael L Lomax

As president and chief executive officer of the United Negro College Fund (UNCF), Dr. Lomax heads the nation's largest and most successful minority higher education assistance organization. Immediately before joining UNCF, he served seven years as president of Dillard University in New Orleans. Dr. Lomax came to Dillard after twenty years in Atlanta, where he pursued simultaneous full-time careers as a university professor and public servant. Dr. Lomax is a trustee of Emory University and a member of the founding Council of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture. He is a member of the Boards of Directors of Teach For America, The Carter Center, the Woodruff Center for the Arts in Atlanta, the Studio Museum in Harlem and the National Black Arts Festival, of which he was founding chair. Since 2004, Dr. Michael Lomax has been president and chief executive officer of UNCF, the nation’s largest private provider of scholarships and other educational support to minority and low-income students. Before coming to UNCF, Lomax was president of UNCF-member institution Dillard University in New Orleans and a literature professor at UNCF-member institutions Morehouse and Spelman colleges. He also served as chairman of the Fulton County Commission in Atlanta, the first African American elected to that post. Throughout his career, Lomax has worked to provide educational opportunities for under-represented Americans. As president and CEO of UNCF, he oversees UNCF’s 400 scholarship programs, including the UNCF Gates Millennium Scholars Program, a 20-year, $1.6 billion program whose 14,000 low-income minority recipients have a 90 percent college graduation rate. He also launched the UNCF Institute for Capacity Building, which helps UNCF’s 38 member historically black colleges and universities become stronger, more effective and more self-sustaining in such critical areas as fund-raising and building strong academic programs that prepare their students for careers in the global economy. A leading advocate for the importance of cradle-through-college education for all Americans, Lomax is co-chair of the Education Equality Project, a member of the Aspen Institute’s Commission on No Child Left Behind and a member of the governing boards of Teach For America, the KIPP Foundation and the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools. He is also a frequent contributor to the National Journal’s Education Experts blog and author of the “MorehouseMan” blog at Essence.com. Lomax also serves on the boards of the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of African American History and Culture and the Studio Museum of Harlem. He founded the National Black Arts Festival.