February 2024 Meeting

Our guest speaker will be Ed Cox, Chairman of the New York State Republican Party.

From 1981 to 1983 Cox served in the Reagan Administration as the Senior Vice President and General Counsel of a government corporation, The United States Synthetic Fuels Corporation. He has served Presidents Richard Nixon and George H.W. Bush in the international arena. He has visited with numerous officials, including heads of state or government, in more than 30 countries including China, Russia, Israel, Cuba, England, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Italy, Greece, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia.

He was commissioner of the Commission on Judicial Nomination (nominating candidates for New York's highest court, 1991 to 2009) and Chairman of the New York Council of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (1995 to 2008).

He was a Trustee of the State University of New York (SUNY) from 1995 to 2009. From 1999 to 2009 as Co-Chairman and Chairman of SUNY's Charter School Committee, Cox founded SUNY's Charter School Institute and led the authorization of fifty charter schools.

Cox was born in Suffolk County, Long Island and was raised in Yorkville, New York City, where he graduated from Trinity High School. He received his B.A. degree in 1968 from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. After attempting a career in architecture at Yale in 1968 and 1969, he earned his J.D. degree from Harvard Law School in 1972.

He is a proud veteran having joined in 1964 the Reserve Officers Training Corp (ROTC) at Princeton where he put together and accredited a seminar on war and commanded the cadet battalion. He completed officer and airborne training at Fort Benning, Georgia, and served as a reserve officer with the 11th Special Forces Group.