Roger Blaine Porter
Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation, Trustee
TERM AS TRUSTEE:
August 10, 2004 through Present
BIOGRAPHY:
Roger Blaine Porter is an American professor currently serving as the IBM Professor of Business and Government at Harvard University. He is also a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.
Porter was selected as a White House Fellow (1974–75) and served as Special Assistant to the President and Executive Secretary of the President’s Economic Policy Board (1974–77) in the Ford White House. He joined the faculty at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 1977.
Porter returned to government service at the beginning of Ronald Reagan’s administration, serving as executive secretary of the Cabinet Council on Economic Affairs and as director of White House Office of Policy Development. He rejoined the Harvard faculty in the fall of 1985 as the IBM Professor of Business and Government and faculty chair of the Senior Managers in Government Program. He returned to the White House at the beginning of President George H. W. Bush’s administration, where he served as Assistant to the President for Economic and Domestic Policy from 1989 to 1993.
He is a member of the President’s Commission on White House Fellows, a member of the board of directors of the White House Historical Association, a trustee of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation, and a member of the advisory board of The Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University.
An alumnus of Brigham Young University, Porter was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where he received his B.Phil. degree. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University.
GERALD R. FORD ORAL HISTORY PROJECT:
Read Oral History Interview with Roger Porter
President Ford and Roger Porter in the Oval Office on December 10, 1976. (Photo Courtesy of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library)
