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During our October Timely Topic, LWV-Wake will welcome Dr. Scott Ralls, President of Wake Technical Community College. Dr. Ralls will introduce us to Wake County's hidden gem and North Carolina's largest community college. Learn about how Wake Tech is contributing to economic development in Wake County and supporting underserved students, as well as the important role Wake Tech and other community colleges have in our education system.

About Our Presenter
Scott Ralls is the fourth president of Wake Technical Community College, North Carolina’s largest community college. Wake Tech is recognized for its “laddering” strategies to connect workforce and education opportunities and ranked as a national leader in online education.

From 2105 to 2019, Dr. Ralls served as President of Northern Virginia Community College, or NOVA as it is commonly known, the second largest multi-campus community college in the nation. During his NOVA tenure, he developed a unique partnership with Amazon Web Services that catalyzed a Virginia statewide initiative between community colleges and universities to create seamless cloud computing degrees that was named 2019 Education Partnership of the Year by EducationDive. He also initiated ADVANCE, a nationally recognized joint admission program with George Mason University.

In May 2016, Dr. Ralls was named President Emeritus of the North Carolina Community College System after a prior 20-year career in North Carolina that included roles as State System President, President of Craven Community College and Vice President of Economic and Workforce Development. He has been recognized as a Power 100 Business Leader by regional business publications for both the Washington, DC region (2017) and for the State of North Carolina (2021) and testified six times to U.S. Senate or House committees or subcommittees on workforce development or student success innovations and policy. He was recently appointed by U.S. Secretary Miguel Cardona as the higher education representative to the Telecommunications Workforce Working Group, and also serves at the national level as Co-chair of the Community College Workforce Consortium and a member of the Taskforce on Higher Education and Opportunity.