Education
Harvard Law School; Virginia Military Institute.
Harvard Law School; Virginia Military Institute.
After law school, he joined the Institute of Government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 1963 Sanford asked Esser to run North Carolina Fund, which in its five years established community action agencies across the state. He brought Nathan T. Garrett to the North Carolina Fund, and Garrett later founded he Foundation for Community Development.
Esser later was a program adviser for the Ford Foundation, executive director of the Southern Regional Council in Atlanta and executive director of the National Academy of Public Administration in Washington, District of Columbia He received the North Carolina Philanthropy Award in 1995.