Charles Zachary Wilson is an American economist who is Professor Emeritus at UCLA's Graduate School of Education. He was the first Black individual to serve as an Academic Vice-Chancellor in the University of California System, and was among the founders of the National Economic Association.^[1]

Born in the Mississippi Delta,^[2] Wilson earned a B.S. (1952) and PhD (1956) in Economics and Statistics from the University of Illinois, completed post-doctoral training in Engineering Economics at the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1959,^[1] and later trained in Family Counseling at California State University, Northridge and Management for Entrepreneurs at UCLA.^[3]

Wilson taught at DePaul University's School of Business and then at SUNY-Binghamton, where he became the first Black full professor on that faculty. He joined UCLA in 1968 as a professor in the Graduate School of Education. In 1970, he became Vice-Chancellor of Academic Programs, where he served until 1984. From 1985 to 1996 he was Publisher of Central News-Wave Publications, Inc, one of the largest black newspapers in the United States.^[4]