Biography

Ran Coble is originally from Graham, North Carolina and graduated in 1971 from Davidson College. He has a joint degree in Law and Public Policy, with the J.D. degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Master’s degree in Public Policy from Duke University. He was president of the student body both at Davidson and in law school. He was one of the first staff for the Fiscal Research Division of the North Carolina General Assembly when it was created in 1971. He also spent four years as legal counsel to the Secretary of what is now the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services. While serving in that Department, he was assigned to explain and guide 54 pieces of legislation through the General Assembly and was successful in securing passage of 51 of these bills. In 1990, Ran was named a Kellogg Foundation National Fellow. This is a three-year leadership development program sponsored by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation in Battle Creek, Michigan in which each Fellow pursues an individual learning plan. He interviewed leaders he admires (for example, the late John Gardner and Nobel Peace Prize winner Oscar Arias) and visited and learned about emerging democracies around the world (for example, Russia, Brazil, South Africa, Armenia, Poland, and Lithuania). He has had articles published in “Nonprofit Management and Leadership,” the “Wake Forest Law Review,” the Raleigh “News and Observer,” and “North Carolina Insight” magazine, as well as poetry in the Kellogg Foundation’s Focus publication. In 2001, he was named an Eisenhower Fellow and traveled to Argentina and Chile to study innovative programs in citizen involvement and civic education. Ran has been Executive Director of the North Carolina Center for Public Policy Research since 1981. The Center celebrated its 37th anniversary of service to the state in 2014 and is a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan corporation dedicated to the goals of a better-informed public and more effective, accountable, and responsive state government. For example, the Center published studies of (1) governance of public universities; (2) the pros and cons of state lotteries; (3) ways to reduce domestic violence; (4) the shortage of teachers in North Carolina. The Center is currently working on (1) issues facing the aging, especially fraud committed against the elderly; (2) an evaluation of the state’s efforts in mental health reform; (3) ways to increase college-going rates and college completion rates; and (4) state water policy. The Center also publishes a biennial citizens’ guide to the legislature and a textbook on state and local government that is used in college courses on state and local government and in high school social studies classes. The Center is funded by 10 foundations, 110 corporate contributors, and about 400 donors and individual members. The Center has been highlighted in “Responsive Philanthropy” magazine and was featured in a “Profiles of Excellence” series in “Nonprofit World” magazine.