Peter McPherson was President of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) for 16 years. APLU’s members are the large public universities in the United States and select public universities in Canada and Mexico. Before joining APLU, McPherson served as President of Michigan State University for 11 years. McPherson served as a Special Assistant to President Ford. Under President Reagan, he served as the USAID Administrator and Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. He was a principal negotiator in the final weeks of negotiations for the Canadian Free Trade Agreement, the precursor to NAFTA. McPherson is a tax lawyer who served as the managing partner of the Washington, D.C., office of a large Midwestern law firm. He also served as an Executive Vice President of Bank of America, overseeing the bank’s operations in Canada, Latin America, and international private banking. He was Chair of the Board of Dow Jones & Company. McPherson was a Peace Corps volunteer in Peru in the 1960s. He is the Chair of the Board of the International Federation of Election Systems (IFES), Co-Chair of the Board of HarvestPlus Solutions, a member of the Board and Chair of the Budget Committee of the Inter-American Dialogue, and a member of the Board of Visitors of Virginia State University.
