Ron McCray is a seasoned corporate director, investor and former chief executive officer who has helped lead a strategic transformation, and improved top line, profit margin and profitability, and has developed over a dozen of chief executive, chief strategy, and chief legal officers, of a number of consumer products companies.
Currently, Ron serves as an advisor to RLJ Equity Partners, a middle market private equity firm and 645 Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm. He is a qualified financial expert and serves on the boards of Dallas News Corporation, Pathward Meta Financial Inc. and PowerSchool, LLC.
Ron has served on a number of corporate boards, including as chairman of the board, and as chairman of each of the audit, compensation, and nominating and governance committees. Those companies include TESSCO Technologies Incorporated, Career Education Corporation, EveryWare Global, Inc., Knight Ridder, Inc. and Kimberly-Clark de Mexico.
Ron also has served in senior executive roles such as interim ceo and president, chief administrative officer, and chief legal officer. As ceo and president of Career Education, Ron led a strategic transformation which resulted in industry leading top line, margin and profit growth. Prior to that, as the chief administrative officer at Nike, he had oversight responsibilities for the company’s global strategy, subsidiary brands, pension investments, internal audit, legal and other administrative functions. In his role as a member of the global strategic leadership team at Kimberly-Clark, Ron helped the company transform from a North American focussed business to a global enterprise.
Ron served as a Senate-confirmed, presidential appointee on the FRTIB, which oversees the world’s largest pension fund, and served as vice chairman of the board of trustees of Cornell University, where he is Trustee Emeritus and a Presidential Councillor. He is the vice chairman of Charleston Jazz, a member of the board of the Newport Festivals Foundation, and Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Ron previously served on the governing boards of Harvard Law School and Jazz at Lincoln Center. He was also a member of the Boston Celtics ownership group.
Ron graduated from Cornell University, where he earned several academic and athletics honors. He then attended Harvard Law School, where he served as the editor and business manager of the Harvard Civil Rights/Civil Liberties Law Review, and has been named Traphagen Distinguished Alumnus.
