| Speaker Profile: Dr. Robert King, served as Interim President at Florida Institute of Technology (2022-2023); and presently as Co-Chair of a project entitled “Higher Education as a Strategic Asset” (HESA), as a member of the Board of Directors of the Association of Governing Boards, and as a founding member of the Board at the Sea Islands Heritage Academy, a new Charter School serving children in the Gullah Geechee community near Beaufort, South Carolina.
Dr. King has prosecuted the Mafia and serv ed as the Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education at the U.S. Department of Education, King has had a diverse career path that has provided him the experience and insights that continue to drive his work to improve our nation’s prosperity and protect our national security.
Trained as an attorney, King spent much of the first half of his working life as a prosecutor in California and New York. His knowledge of the criminal justice system and the people who are touched by it (the victims and the wrongdoers) has served as a constant reminder of the consequences of the chronic and growing failure of our systems of public education. Always a student of our political behaviors and the public policy impacts that flow from them, King ran for office, and was first elected to the New York State Assembly (1986), and then as Monroe County Executive (1991). From there he was invited to join the administration of Governor Geroge Pataki, first as Director of the newly created Office of Regulatory Reform, then as State Budget Director, and last as Chancellor of the State University of New York. It was there that King fell in love with higher education, and the critical role it has played, and continues to play, in the growth of the American economy and the preservation of our national security. Much of what you will hear this evening flows from research King initiated nearly a quarter century ago exploring the impact of higher education on our society. From SUNY, King subsequently served for three years as the President and CEO of the Arizona Community Foundation, ten years as the President of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, and two and half years as the Assistant Secretary.
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