Ed Adams is a community relations and public affairs consultant whose clients include the IBM International Foundation, IBM South Africa and State Farm Insurance. Prior to his retirement from IBM on April 1, 2000, he managed community relations and public affairs for IBM’s manufacturing and development sites in the western United States. (Austin, TX; Boulder, Colorado; Rochester, MN; San Jose, CA and Tucson, AZ). Mr. Adams started working for IBM in 1967, and had various positions of increasing responsibility in many functional areas of the company until his retirement in 2000.

In November 1999 Gov. George W. Bush appointed him Adams to the Texas Council on Workforce and Economic Competitiveness. Mr. Adams was a member of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board’s Higher Education Planning Committee and chaired it’s Task Force on Access and Success. Mr. Adams is a past chairman of the Texas State Technical College System Board of Regents. He is immediate past president of Texans for Education, a public interest group supported by major employers helping to shape public education policy in Texas. He is a member and past Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Huston-Tillotson College; past Chairman of the Board of the Austin Area Urban League; past member of the Texas Defense Economic Adjustment Advisory Council and a former Vice Chairman of Governmental Relations of the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce. He was Vice President of Governmental Relations for the Texas Computer Industry Council.

Mr. Adams also served the City of Austin as Chairman of the Brackenridge Hospital Advisory Board. He is a member of Board of North Austin Medical Center and a Governor of the Austin Community Foundation.

He was a member of the Board of Directors of Texas Taxpayers and Research Association where he served as chairman of the research committee of its predecessor organization, the Texas Research League, He also served on the board of Capital of Texas Broadcasting (KLRU-TV). He served as Chairman of the Federation of Austin Industrial Rate payers (FAIR) and represented Austin’s largest electric power users in negotiations with the City of Austin’s Electric Utility.

Mr. Adams received his Bachelor of Industrial Engineering Degree from New York University and is an Alumnus of the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University where he was a Stanford Sloan Executive Fellow. In 1989, he was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Humane Letters by Huston-Tillotson College.

 In 1989, he received the Austin Area Urban League’s prestigious Whitney J. Young, Jr. Award. In November of 1998, Mr. Adams and his wife, Mary Lou Adams, Ph.D., were honored by the Austin Project for their “Service to Children and Families”. In November 1999 he received an award from the Texas Business and Education Coalition (TBEC) in recognition of his founding work and long time efforts in education reform.

back