Clayton Morgan Elected NCBA President-Elect
Clayton D. Morgan of Raleigh is the new president-elect of the North Carolina Bar Association. He was elected on Friday, June 18, during the 2021 NCBA Annual Meeting at the N.C. Bar Center.
Morgan will be installed as the 128th president of the NCBA next June at the 2022 Annual Meeting in Wilmington, and will also serve in 2022-23 as president of the North Carolina Bar Foundation. He will serve as president-elect of the NCBA and NCBF in 2021-22 and chair the Audit & Finance Committees of the Association and the Foundation.
Morgan’s name was placed in nomination by LeAnn Nease Brown, immediate past president and chair of the Past Presidents’ Council, which annually selects the nominee for president-elect. Seconding speeches were provided by Matthew Martin (Chief Counsel, Senior VP and Corporate Secretary at First Citizens Bank) and McKinley Wooten (Assistant Secretary of the North Carolina Department of Revenue).
President-elect Clayton Morgan is joined by two longtime colleagues who seconded his nomination, McKinley Wooten (left) and Matthew Martin (center).
Morgan serves as Associate General Counsel at Duke Energy. He has been with Duke Energy and its predecessors since 1996, serving as Associate General Counsel since 2004.
Morgan graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1987 with a Bachelor of Science degree in radiologic science. He completed the joint JD/MBA program at Wake Forest University in 1991, earning the Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the Babcock Graduate School of Management and the Juris Doctor from Wake Forest University School of Law.
Since 2014, Morgan has served on the Legal Aid of North Carolina Board of Directors, where he is completing a two-year term as Chairman of the Board of Directors. In addition, Morgan is co-chair of the NCBA Awards and Recognitions Committee. He is a past chair of the Corporate Counsel Section, past chair of the Nominating Committee, and past co-chair of the NCBA Minorities in the Profession Committee. He has been a member of the NCBA and the Corporate Counsel Section for 30 years, and was recently honored as the third recipient of the section’s Corporate Counselor Award.
Morgan served from 2011-14 on the NCBA Board of Governors and the North Carolina Bar Foundation Board of Directors.
Following his election, Morgan provided the following remarks:
To the Past President’s Council for selecting me as the nominee for President Elect; to the Immediate Past President LeAnn Nease Brown for placing my name into nomination; to my former colleagues Matt Martin and McKinley Wooten for your gracious second nominations; and to the membership of the North Carolina Bar Association for your heartfelt affirmation, I want to begin by thanking you all for your overwhelming vote of confidence this morning.
As a member of this respected and admired organization for over three decades now, I am honored to be chosen as your president-elect, and alongside our incoming President, Jon Heyl, I will always strive to uphold the key tenets of the North Carolina Bar Association.
And in doing so, I relish the opportunity to strengthen existing friendships which have been forged over decades – to form new and lasting relationships with those both in and out of our membership base, and to always keep in the forefront the core purpose of how we as attorneys have been gifted with distinct yet diverse skillsets, and how we show up with various backgrounds/experiences/capabilities and circumstances – all wrapped around our respective boundless creativity and ingenuity.
It is that diverse creativity and ingenuity which collectively underpins our effectiveness as an organization and will help generate the ideas and solutions to an ever-evolving slate of legal issues.
In short, the public looks to us for guidance on key issues. They listen to our words – but more importantly gauge our actions, and they seek encouragement and direction from a body like this on the most fundamental to the most controversial of subjects.
So, having volunteered alongside many of you for years and having seen the wonderful work, the tireless work ethic and the genuine individual and collective commitment that NCBA members bring to the table each and every day, I therefore remain ever so encouraged that our members will continue to utilize our academic talents to advance the program initiatives of the NC Bar Foundation and to provide your valuable input and perspective on appropriate issues taken up by the NC Bar Association.
Together, this organization’s synergistic positivity is distinctively positioned:
- to work whenever the need arises;
- to work with whomever is required; and
- to work wherever the task takes us.
So, as we step up each day in our respective Committees, Sections and/or Divisions to address the burgeoning needs of our citizens, corporations and society at large, it is indeed my privilege to work alongside each of you in carrying out the NCBA and NCBF Mission.
Therefore, as your President-Elect, I will do all I can to help both our incoming President and Executive Director continue to make our North Carolina Bar Association and our NC Bar Foundation the benchmark from which all others in this country will gauge success.
Thank you again for your vote of confidence.
Russell Rawlings is director of external affairs and communications for the North Carolina Bar Association.