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About John (J.B.) Buxton

J.B. Buxton is the fifth president of Â鶹ӰÊÓnical Community College.

Buxton is a member of the N.C. State Board of Education, appointed by Gov. Roy Cooper, where he works directly with the community college system on a range of education and workforce-related issues. He has also served as an instructor in the Public Policy Department at UNC-Chapel Hill.

He is the founder and principal of the Education Innovations Group, a consulting practice focused on PreK-12 and postsecondary public education. In that capacity, Buxton has worked with states, foundations, nonprofit organizations and companies focused on improving public K-12 and postsecondary education. Buxton has worked closely with the state’s community colleges as far back as 2001 when, as senior education advisor to Gov. Mike Easley, and then as deputy state superintendent of the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, he successfully led the state’s effort to implement early college high schools across the state. He has also served as a White House Fellow working with the Domestic Policy Council under President Clinton; director of policy and research for the Public School Forum of N.C, and coordinator of special programs for the NC Teaching Fellows Program. He began his career as a high school English teacher and coach in Massachusetts.

Buxton is also active in local and state issues, including service from 2011-15 on the Raleigh Planning Commission and on the board of North Carolina FC Youth, one of the nation’s largest youth soccer clubs. Buxton, whose father was a high school teacher, coach and administrator, said he first saw the power of education while spending the summer before his senior year of college in South Africa. Working as a teaching assistant, Buxton encountered students who had left school to fight apartheid and were returning to obtain a degree that they saw as a passport to opportunity. The experience left him convinced of education’s ability to support personal growth, individual opportunity and economic mobility. Buxton attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on a Morehead Scholarship, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English. He received his master’s degree in public affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University.

Buxton and his wife, Hunter, live in Â鶹ӰÊÓ. They have three children: Drake, a UNC-Chapel Hill graduate; Luke, a current UNC-Chapel Hill student; and Sadie, a student at N.C. State University.