Alumni and Friends Directory

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Biography

Robert C. (Bob) Gross is a proud Aggie Alum and a 1972 Pre-law and business graduate.

For more than three decades, Bob has served as a business and commercial attorney and corporate legal counsel and secretary; a business executive, CEO, and director; a nationally recognized government leader and advisor; a trusted mediator and facilitator; an educator; and a corporate governance and leadership consultant. He is also a highly sought professional and public speaker.

After receiving his law degree, Bob was named Legal Counsel for FMA Financial Corporation in 1979, representing the corporation’s financial affiliates. In 1984, he was named Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of Continental Bank & Trust and, in 1986, of First Interstate Bank of Utah, N.A., where he served on the Senior Executive Committee. In 1990, Bob was named Executive Vice President of Retail Banking and was later named President and Chair of the Executive Board of Directors in 1991. During his five-year tenure as First Interstate Bank president, the bank enjoyed record profitability each successive year. He also served on the Utah Bankers Association Board of Directors and the American Bankers Association Government Relations Council.

In 1996, Utah Governor Michael O. Leavitt named Bob as the founding Executive Director of the Utah Department of Workforce Services, where he led a consolidation of six existing state agencies into what became a nationally recognized streamlined and innovative one-stop deliverer of employment and job training services, unemployment insurance, and other critical temporary family support services. During the last two years of his tenure, Bob was the elected president of the National Association of Workforce Service, headquartered in Washington D.C., and served during a time of major Congressional changes in the national welfare, job training, and unemployment insurance programs, testifying on several occasions before Congressional committees and subcommittees.

In late 2003, the White House and the United States Department of Defense named him as an SES 6 and the Senior Advisor to the Iraq Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs in Baghdad, where he served for six months as a senior executive member of the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Upon transition of governmental sovereignty by the Coalition to Iraq and his redeployment to the United States, Bob joined the law firm of Jones Waldo, where he chaired the Banking Section. In 2006, he was named president, chief executive officer, and board member of the Blue Healthcare Bank.

In 2008, Bob formed Robert C. Gross Associates (www.robertcgross.com), a corporate governance and leadership consulting firm. In 2011, he was named “Of Counsel” to the law firm of Mackey Price & Mecham. He is a highly trained and widely experienced commercial and public policy mediator and serves as mediator on the panel of Utah ADR Services.

Bob is very active in community affairs. He has served on the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce Board of Governors; the Salt Lake United Way Board of Directors; and as a trustee (and treasurer) of the Utah Opera Company, and the Utah Partners in Education, and numerous civic and community nonprofit boards. He currently serves on the board of the Utah Chapter of the National Association of Corporate Directors, the Utah Council on Conflict Resolution, and the Utah State University College of Humanities Advisory Board, where he chairs the Executive Committee.

Bob is a board member and treasurer of the Employers Services Assurance Corporation and a director for Potash Ridge Corporation. He has taught courses in several MBA programs and has lectured on a number of business, legal, leadership, and current events topics.

Bob graduated with distinction from the Ohio Northern University Pettit College of Law and received a B.S. in pre-law and business from Utah State University. He is an honors graduate of the Pacific Coast Banking School at the University of Washington (where he later served on the Board of Trustees), and received his mediation training through the Pepperdine College of Law Straus Institute and from several advanced mediation training courses.