(ex-officio member) Chris Simmons came to Duke in 2006 after having served in advocacy roles for the Association of American Universities (AAU) and the American Council on Education (ACE) in Washington, DC. Prior to working for the higher education associations, Simmons was a policy analyst for the National Commission on the Cost of Higher Education and Assistant Director of Admissions at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. He is the past Chairman of the Board for the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science and is a recent co-chair for the Ad-Hoc Tax Group. He is a former member of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU) Board of Directors and AAU Council of Federal Relations Steering Committee. Click for more info.