Mebane Rash

Mebane Rash is the founding CEO and editor-in-chief of EducationNC. In 2021, she was awarded the Friday Medal, which honors "significant, distinguished and enduring contributions to education through advocating for innovation, advancing education and imparting inspiration." Mebane is a public school kid, attending Irwin Elementary, First Ward Elementary, McClintock Middle, and East Mecklenburg High School in Charlotte. She graduated from the University of Virginia in 1990 and the UNC School of Law in 1993. At the UNC School of Law, she was a member of the North Carolina Law Review. She has been a member of the North Carolina State Bar since 1993, and she is admitted to practice in both the state and federal court systems. After law school, she worked for Carolina Legal Assistance, a mental disability law project, before joining the nonpartisan N.C. Center for Public Policy Research as the policy analyst from 1994-98, the director of law and policy from 2006-14, and the executive director from 2016-2021. She was an adjunct professor at the UNC School of Law from 1995-99, and she was an attorney for the ACLU-NC from 1998-99. Mebane was in the Hunt Institute's inaugural cohort of ElevateNC: Higher Education, and she served on IEI's steering committee for ReConnectNC. She is the past president of the Board of Trustees of the National Governmental Research Association. In 2018, she was invited to attend the Aspen Executive Seminar on Leadership, Values, and the Good Society. In 2013, she was one of 60 women from 25 countries invited to spend a week at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government to study Women and Power: Leadership in the New World. She served on the inaugural Z. Smith Reynolds Leadership Council. In 1997, she was selected to be a William C. Friday Fellow for Human Relations, a fellowship for emerging leaders across North Carolina.