Fran Ulmer has spent 35 years in public service at the local, state, and national level. She served in elective office for eighteen years, as the mayor of Juneau, as a state representative and as Lieutenant Governor of Alaska, where she became a nationally recognized leader in election reform (Alaska became the first state to replace the punch card system with an optical scanning ballot counting system on a statewide basis in 1998). She served as Director of Policy Development for the State of Alaska, managing diverse programs, including coastal management, intergovernmental coordination, and public participation initiatives. At the national level, Ms. Ulmer served as a member of the Federal Communications Commission's State and Local Advisory Committee, and the Federal Elections Commissions' State Advisory Committee, and on the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission for over a decade. She currently co- chairs the National Academies of Sciences Voter Registration Task Force, and is a member of the Aspen Institute's Climate Change Commission, the National Advisory Board of the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the Board of Trustees of the Alaska Nature Conservancy, among other boards and commissions. She earned a J.D. cum laude from the University of Wisconsin Law School. She has been a Fellow at the Institute of Politics, Kennedy School of Government, where she taught and mentored students, and a Distinguished Visiting Professor and Director of the Institute of Social and Economic Research at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Since May of 2007 she has served as Chancellor of the University of Alaska Anchorage.
