After a bit of a rough-and-tumble, politically charged process, the President of the UNC Board of Governors has been chosen. John Fennebresque is out. Spellings is in.
Yes, Former Bush Education Ed Secretary and overseer of the failed No Child Left Behind, Margaret Spellings, will be the new head of the UNC system and will pull down $775,000 over five years for the role.
How coincidental is it that Spellings gets the job just prior to a presidential election year? And unanimously to boot. With a bachelor’s degree in political science and Jeb! on the ticket, it’s probably not that coincidental.
Spellings, by her own account and history, appears to mainly be a domestic policy wonk, serving as Bush’s Domestic Policy adviser from 2001-2005, and is a “mother-earth type Republican“.
Point of interest from her own bio at the Bush Center:
“Previously Spellings was president and CEO of Margaret Spellings and Company, a Washington, D.C. consulting firm that provided strategic guidance to philanthropic and private sector organizations. She also served as a senior advisor to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and was president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation.”
Spellings was also named ‘senior adviser’ to the Boston Consulting group in 2009. Boston Consulting Group has had one or two bugaboos since Spellings joined them.
Her resume lists many more ‘Boards and Advisory groups’, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Education Advisory Board, of which she apparently still sits on. That probably meshes well with her ties as a former President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has been a water carrier for the Gates Foundation financed Common Core.
Spellings was Ed Secretary from 2005-2009. Her bio at the US Dept. of Education is still archived. Given the flop of NCLB and subsequent failing of Common Core, it is a bit ironic that this quote that kicks it off her bio:
“We cannot prepare students for the global economy if we don’t get them to grade level first.”
— Secretary Margaret Spellings
Hindsight is 20/20, but ouch.
Let’s finish with a bit on her own private company, Margaret Spellings & Company. Google the company for a website, you won’t find one easily.
Margaret Spellings and Company is (or was?) a private company – Apparently, very private. According to the Bloomberg profile for Margaret Spellings & Company, there used to be a website located at “MargaretSpellings.com“. Now that page says, ‘Come back Later’.
Using the Wayback Machine, it looks like the website went dead around February of 2014. The last capture of the active website for MargaretSpellings.com was on January 6th, 2014.
That address for Margaret Spellings & Company is 1333 New Hampshire Avenue NW, Suite 601, Washington, DC. That is right on the edge of the very pricey Dupont Circle.
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