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Coleman D. Ross

Coleman D. Ross Master of Accounting Endowed Fellowship

The Coleman D. Ross Master of Accountancy Endowed Fellowship was established in 2005 by Carol Ross, Coleman's wife, in honor of her husband's deep loyalty to UNC and its accounting program. It provides an annual fellowship to a student attending the Master of Accounting Program at Kenan-Flagler Business School and is awarded based on the academic achievements of the recipient. Carol provided the following about her husband at the time she established the fellowship.

It is with great pleasure that I establish a Master of Accounting fellowship in honor of my husband, Coleman DeVane Ross. And it is with a deep sense of love and appreciation that I share with the recipients of this fellowship some biographical information about Coleman, so that others might come to know this fine man.

Coleman Ross was born in Pleasant Garden, North Carolina on March 18, 1943, the youngest of four children of Guy Matthews Ross and Nancy Coleman Ross. He was fortunate to have parents who valued education, encouraged thriftiness, and endowed their youngest child with wholesome self-esteem. From age eleven, Coleman was encouraged to maintain both morning and evening paper routes and reminded by his father of the need to save money for his college education. Although his father had not had the opportunity to attend college, Coleman’s mother and two maiden aunts, who lived with the family, were all school teachers and all educated at Winthrop College in Rock Hill, South Carolina. His father worked as a bookkeeper for a coal and fuel oil company and also, in the summers, as the business manager for the Greensboro minor league baseball team, a farm club first for the Red Sox and then the Yankees.

As a youth, Coleman loved all sports. He spent many hours at the Greensboro baseball park where his father worked, played varsity basketball and ran track in high school, even winning the Guilford County championship in the 880-yard run. He was an excellent student, graduating third in the Pleasant Garden High School Class of 1961. He was the recipient of the school’s Civitan award for citizenship, represented the school at North Carolina Boys’ State, and was the school’s nominee for the prestigious Morehead Scholarship. It was during a week in Chapel Hill for Boys’ State, following his junior year in high school, that Coleman first fell in love with the Carolina campus. The Morehead nomination, while unsuccessful, became the means by which Carolina selected him for admission.

Very few of Coleman’s high school classmates chose to attend college, and when his father died during Coleman’s senior year in high school, it became questionable if Coleman would be able to do so. Thanks to a Belk Scholarship he received for his freshman year, the savings from his paper route, and loans from his Aunt Mary Bess, Coleman entered Carolina as a rather naïve freshman in September 1961. Throughout his college days, he helped finance his education by working part-time during the school year, principally at a men’s clothing store on Franklin Street, and during school breaks and the summer at a furniture manufacturer in Pleasant Garden.

While Coleman wasn’t sure what major he should attempt, he had a natural aptitude for math and quickly discovered that accounting courses, the dread of many of his classmates, were easy for him. Being somewhat rebellious, a major in accounting was initially difficult for him to accept, as he didn’t necessarily want to follow in the footsteps of his bookkeeper father and accountant brother. Finally, he accepted the fate that genetics had willed him and declared himself a business school student majoring in accounting. He learned under two giants of the Carolina accounting faculty, Professors Harold Langenderfer and Ike Reynolds, and he flourished with a newly found sense of purpose. Late in his sophomore year, he was invited to join the professional business fraternity, Delta Sigma Pi, and was elected president of the fraternity for his senior year. Also during his senior year, he received a job offer from the renowned independent accounting firm, Price Waterhouse, and decided to forego graduate study in order to marry me in August 1965 and then begin to repay his aunt for her financial support.

It is somewhat rare today for anyone to discover that his first job is the right job, and to stay with that job until retirement. Coleman worked for Price Waterhouse for 34 years, first in Tampa, Florida; then in Hartford, Connecticut; and finally, in New York City. He was selected for a six-month international exchange assignment in Toronto, Ontario, in 1970, admitted into the partnership in 1977, and named chairman and managing partner for the firm’s insurance practice in 1986. As an audit partner, he served large insurance and banking clients and was one of the first to be recognized by his firm as a financial services industry specialist. In 1993, he transferred to New York to lead the firm’s audit of The Equitable Companies, which was then headed by Dick Jenrette, “the last gentleman on Wall Street” and a fellow Carolina graduate. These were wonderful years for Coleman as he loved the fast pace and excitement of working in the “Big Apple.”

Coleman chose to retire from Price Waterhouse at age 56, as it was his ambition to try his hand at even more challenging opportunities within the world of finance. He started work on a Master of Arts degree in Economics at Trinity College in Hartford, but was soon hired as the chief financial officer for a property-casualty reinsurance company, Trenwick Group. This job required him to travel between the company’s headquarters in Bermuda and its other locations in Stamford, Connecticut, and London, England. Two years later, he became the CFO of a life insurance and asset management company, The Phoenix Companies, based in Hartford, and served in that capacity until the end of 2003. Today he serves on the American Institute of CPAs’ Accounting Standards Executive Committee; on UNC’s Board of Visitors; and on various boards of directors, putting his wisdom, experience, and knowledge to work for the betterment of stakeholders.

As a life-long learner, Coleman has also achieved several designations in addition to his Certified Public Accountant license, including Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter, Chartered Life Underwriter, Chartered Financial Consultant, and Certified Bank Auditor. Even as I write this, he is close to completing his Master of Arts in Economics degree at Trinity College and a Master of Science in Financial Services degree at The American College in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. During his public accounting career, he completed both the School of Banking of the South graduate banking program and the Kenan-Flagler Business School’s Advanced Management Program.

Coleman continues a 25-plus year involvement with the Boy Scouts of America, where he has served as the Hartford-area council president and the New England area president and has led contingents to the World Jamboree in Holland and to Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico. He is particularly proud that all three of our sons are Eagle Scouts and demonstrate Scouting skills and values in their lives. He has been recognized by Scouting with the Silver Beaver award and the Silver Antelope award for exceptional service to youth at a local and regional level, respectively.

Coleman enjoys running and completed four marathons between 1998 and 2000. He also loves Carolina sports, having funded an athletic scholarship for a UNC distance runner and maintained season tickets to Carolina basketball games from the inception of the Smith Center (despite living in the Northeast for all these years). He has tremendous respect and deep admiration for Dean Smith and the program he created at Carolina, starting during Coleman’s freshman year in Chapel Hill and including today’s disciple, Roy Williams.

It is easy to list the accomplishments of my husband, but perhaps harder to convey the fine man that he is. Always a patient and kind person, Coleman has a deep sense of integrity, honesty, loyalty, generosity, and humility. One of the delights of being his wife is having the opportunity to bask in his infectious optimism and to delight in his ability to make me laugh. Coleman always regretted not having a father to advise him along his path through adulthood and throughout his life he has strived to serve as a mentor to others. I think the loss of his father as a teenager contributed to his determination to help others find their way, particularly within the financial world. It was for this reason that I decided that a very special way to honor him would be to endow an accounting fellowship at his beloved university. It would surely be a delight and honor to have an opportunity to get to know the young people who will be helped by the fellowship over the coming years.

Coleman D Ross Fellowship recipients by academic year –
2006-07: Ryan Leece
2007-08: Randall Hucks
2008-09: Jeffrey Kite
2009-10: Stephanie Westen
2010-11: Adam Cramner
2011-12: Ben Pulliam
2012-13: Dexter Blackwell
2013-14: Sterling Price
2014-15: John Cucinelli
2015-16: Dustin Chase
2016-17: Madison Williams
2017-18: Quinton Colwell
2018-19: Elizabeth Cartrette
2019-20: Elizabeth Marks
2020-21: Paige Goodson
2021-22: Anna Concepcion

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