Fran Ulmer

Longtime Alaska resident Fran Ulmer has spent over 30 years in public service at the local, state, and national levels. She is the former chair of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, appointed by President Obama in March 2011 and serves on the National Parks Conservation Association Board and chairs the Global Board of the Nature Conservancy. In June 2010, President Obama appointed her to the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. From 2007 to 2011, Ms. Ulmer was chancellor of the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA). Ms. Ulmer served as an elected official for 18 years as the mayor of Juneau, as a state representative, and as Lieutenant Governor of Alaska. She also spent time as Director of Policy Development for the state of Alaska. She has served on dozens of nonprofit and government boards and commissions in Alaska, such as the Denali Commission, Commonwealth North, Big Brothers/Big Sisters, March of Dimes, Salvation Army, Alaska Gas Pipeline Committee, The Nature Conservancy, and many more. At the national level, Ms. Ulmer served as a member of the Federal Communications Commission’s State and Local Advisory Committee, the Federal Elections Commission’s State Advisory Committee and cochaired the National Academies of Science’s Committee on State Voter Registration Databases. For more than ten years, she served as one of the US Commissioners on the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission, appointed by President Bill Clinton. Ms. Ulmer earned a J.D. cum laude from the University of Wisconsin Law School, and has been a fellow at the Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and the Cox Visiting Professor at Stanford University. Fran currently is a Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School. She has two adult children and one grandson.