
Update (Dec. 9, 2014) U.S. Senate approves recommendation of WREG president to TVA Board (WREG, TN)
Walter, general manager of the Memphis CBS television affiliate WREG-TV, and Lodge, a Nashville business consultant who was previously commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Human Services, won 5-year terms on the 9-member, part-time board that oversees TVA.
Ronald A. Walter, Clark University alumnus and member of the University Board of Trustees, was recently nominated by President Barack Obama to fill a key Administration post on the Board of Directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Walter heads WREG-TV, the CBS Affiliate in Memphis, Tennessee, where he has been President and General Manager since 2004 and held a variety of positions after starting there in 1987. He also was Vice President of Customer Relations for the Memphis Light, Gas and Water Division from 1982 to 1987.
Walter received a B.A. in chemistry from Clark University in 1971 and received a Master of Science in Library Science from Case Western Reserve University in 1974. He worked at the Memphis Public Library for several years, where he engaged in community programs and had many public appearances in local media. Eventually, he was drawn into journalism and his career at WREG-TV.
“It’s the wonderful preparation and the competence that you get from a solid Clark education that really positions you to do practically anything, once you apply yourself,” Walter told Clark Voices in a 2012 video interview. Click here to watch.
“The TVA is such a historic institution in America’s passage to economic prosperity and resource development,” said Clark University President David Angel. “Ron will surely play an important role there, making a valuable impact — as he has done at Clark.”
Ron and his family are fifth generation Tennesseans. His wife, Marianne, is an anatomy and physiology, biology and physical science teacher in the Shelby County Public School System. Their daughter, Arianne, graduated from Clark in 2013 with a B.A. in biochemistry and enrolled this fall in a Master of Science degree program in epidemiology at the University of Tennessee College for the Health Sciences in Memphis. She is also a research assistant at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis. A son, Jon Walter, is a sophomore at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri, and their other son, Ronald Walter Jr., is working in the office of Dr. Linda Tharp, a Memphis optometrist.
About the TVA:
The Tennessee Valley Authority describes itself as “a corporation owned by the U.S. government, provides electricity for 9 million people in parts of seven southeastern states at prices below the national average. TVA, which receives no taxpayer money and makes no profits, also provides flood control, navigation and land management for the Tennessee River system and assists utilities and state and local governments with economic development. TVA has renewed its vision to help lead the Tennessee Valley region and the nation toward a cleaner and more secure energy future, relying more on nuclear power and energy efficiency and relying less on coal.”
Founded in 1887 in Worcester, Massachusetts, Clark University is a liberal arts-based research university addressing social and human imperatives on a global scale. Nationally renowned as a college that changes lives, Clark is emerging as a transformative force in higher education today. LEEP (Liberal Education and Effective Practice) is Clark’s pioneering model of education that combines a robust liberal arts curriculum with life-changing world and workplace experiences. Clark’s faculty and students work across boundaries to develop solutions to complex challenges in the natural sciences, psychology, geography, management, urban education, Holocaust and genocide studies, environmental studies, and international development and social change. The Clark educational experience embodies the University’s motto: Challenge convention. Change our world. www.clarku.edu