Ray Marshall is the current Audre and Bernard Rapoport Centennial Chair in Economics and Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin, and is president of Ray Marshall, Inc., a research and consulting firm.

Marshall was the U.S. Secretary of Labor under President Jimmy Carter. He is also a former national president of the New Commission on the Skills of the American Economy, Industrial Relations Research Association, and has worked at the American Economic Association and Council on Foreign Relations. Marshall is a member of the boards of the National Center on Education and the Economy, for which he is the chair, and the Economic Policy Institute.

Marshall has served on a number of task forces and commissions concerned with labor and economic policy. Some of the most recent include the Austin Equity Commission and Carnegie Corporation of New York’s Action Council on Minority Education, both of which he chaired; the Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, which he co-chaired; the Clinton administration’s Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations, for which he chaired of the International Working Group; the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on International Financial Architecture; and the State Department Advisory Council on Labor Diplomacy. He also served as an arbitrator on the panels of the American Arbitration Association and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service between 1956 and 1976.

Marshall has also served on the boards and audit committees of a number of corporations and foundations, including USX, Aurora National Life Insurance Company, Hyatt Legal Services, Advanced Photovoltaic Systems, Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, Spelman College and the German Marshall Fund.

Marshall is the author or co-author of over thirty books and monographs and approximately two hundred articles and chapters. He earned his PhD in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and honorary degrees from Rutgers University, the University of Maryland, Millsaps College, St. Edwards University, Bates College, Tulane University, Cleveland State University, and Utah State University.