Following on a blog post from last week...

The Gillings School of Global Public Health at UNC-Chapel Hill will pay former Blue Cross Blue Shield North Carolina CEO Robert Greczyn up to $50,000 for his work as a visiting professor there.

Greczyn became a visiting professor Oct. 1 and will lecture on insurance, health care and health care reform and is expected to serve as a policy advisor and resource for the school and its students.

His exact pay depends on just how many classes he teaches and projects he works on, but will likely be less than $50,000 for the year, said Ramona Dubose, a spokeswoman for the school.

He's on a one-year contract renewable for a second year and will be paid from private funds, Dubose said.

UNC President-elect Tom Ross is leaving the corporate board governing Blue Cross Blue Shield North Carolina.

Ross, chosen late last month to head the 17-campus public university system, had joined the BCBSNC board earlier this year. Under the organization's bylaws, board members who change jobs must offer to step down, and the board then decides whether to accept the resignation.

But Ross has made clear he plans to leave the board.

(photo courtesy Davidson College)

In a Sept. 7 letter to Jeffrey Houpt. the former UNC-Chapel Hill med school dean and current chair of the BCBSNC board, Ross writes in part that membership on corporate boards doesn't make sense for him right now.

"I know that I have much to learn in my new position, and that I will have many demands on my time, particularly during the first year of my service," wrote Ross, the current president at Davidson College. "Thus I have concluded that at this early stage of my work at the university it is not in my best interest or that of the university for me to devote the time necessary to properly fulfill the duties of a corporate board member."

His resignation will be effective Oct. 15.

Ross succeeds Erskine Bowles as UNC's president on Jan. 1. He has been lauded as a builder of consensus throughout a long career largely in the public sector.

The Blue Cross board has a distinct UNC system influence. The organization's CEO, Brad Wilson, is a former chairman of the UNC system's Board of Governors and still an emeritus member. He was also a member of the search committee that interviewed Ross for the UNC post, creating a conflict of interest. So, he sat out that interview, he told the News & Observer.

A News & Observer editorial today pushes Ross to leave the BCBSNC post, saying his new job with UNC requires his full attention.

As a UNC system search committee zeroed in on Tom Ross as its top choice to run the state's public universities,  one influential member was faced with a conflict.

J. Bradley Wilson is the president and CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield North Carolina. He was also a member of the UNC search committee by virtue of his emeritus membership on the UNC system's Board of Governors, which he chaired several years ago.

Ross is also on the Blue Cross board, named to it earlier this year. As such, he would play a role in making employment and compensation decisions that could affect Wilson.

(photo courtesy cednc.org)
So when Ross's name popped up during the search committee's deliberations, Wilson said he stepped out of the room. He declined to participate in Ross's interviews to avoid a conflict of interest.

Now, Ross must offer to resign from the Blue Cross board. The organization's bylaws require that members offer to step down if they change jobs; however, the board doesn't necessarily have to accept that resignation, so Ross may indeed remain on that board, Wilson said last week. The matter has yet to be addressed.

The insurance board is heavy with members familiar with the university system. A second member of the UNC presidential search committee, Walter Davenport, sits on the Blue Cross board as well, but did not sit out the Ross interviews, according to a UNC system spokeswoman. He is not a Blue Cross employee, as Wilson is, and thus didn't have the same conflict.

Harold Martin, the current chancellor at N.C. A&T University, is also on the Blue Cross board. Prior to taking the reins at N.C. A&T, he served as a UNC system vice president.

Other board members include Jeffrey Houpt, the former head of the UNC Health Care system, and Lloyd Hackley, a former chancellor at Fayetteville State University.

Blue Cross hasn't disclosed what it's paying Ross for board work. Other board members were paid $33,047 to $51,314 last year, Blue Cross reported in a filing with the N.C. Department of Insurance.

Ross was hired last week to head the 220,000-student system. He starts work Jan. 1 and will earn $525,000 annually.