BRIDGING THE GAP
A $1.6 billion charitable endowment gives New Hanover County a shot to raise many boats.
4 UP FRONT
6 POWER LIST INTERVIEW
Speedway Motorsports CEO Marcus Smith describes his climb at the dominant NASCAR track operator.
10 NC TREND
A Guilford County family farm keeps poinsettias blooming; Private road courses face bumps near the finish line; PNC expands its footprint; Key healthcare group taps a new leader; Chapel Hill investors have big plans for the next pandemic.
78 POINT TAKEN
North Carolina’s massive defense establishment has plenty of room to grow.
24 ROUND TABLE: TRAVEL &
TOURISM
Experts discuss challenges to an industry that attracts 43 million visitors a year.
72 COMMUNITY CLOSE UP: JOHNSTON Investments, workforce development and transportation improvements are attracting foreign and domestic companies to Johnston County.
PORT PAYOFF
Ex-Boston lawyer Dan Winslow takes the helm at the New Hanover Community Endowment, which may change Wilmington’s trajectory.
BY DAVID MILDENBERG
SMALL BUSINESSES OF THE YEAR
The 2024 winners include a Johnston County construction company, a Davidson County trailer dealership, a Halifax County distillery and a Buncombe County malt house. BY CHRIS BURRITT, KEVIN ELLIS AND DAVID MILDENBERG
CENTRAL TIME
Success at the state’s smallest public campus propels Karrie Dixon to a bigger challenge at N.C. Central University.
BY MIKE MACMILLAN
TOP DOCTORS
A report on the state’s most respected doctors in 65 specialties as selected by their peers.
BY BUSINESS NC
UP FRONT David Mildenberg
NEVER BORING
As Business North Carolina readers know, this is an interesting period in the journalism world.
Public respect for the media is hitting historic lows. The incoming president hinted that he wouldn’t mind if someone took a shot at a pack of reporters. (Yes, it was a bad joke, not a serious threat.)
Closer to home, Melanie Sill, the former editor of the News & Observer of Raleigh and a news industry critic, vilified the New York Times’ coverage of the 2024 election, then urged subscription cancellations after Donald Trump’s victory. The most famous U.S. news organization didn’t cover his anti-democratic actions with sufficient rigor, she argued.
That sparked chuckles from my conservative friends, who view the Times and other traditional media outlets as unabashed advocates of Democratic Party candidate Kamala Harris.
Bottom line, this year fulfilled expectations that anger and division would dominate news and society, spreading negativity all around.
So how is your statewide business magazine supposed to respond in this raucous environment?
Keep pounding, to steal the Carolina Panthers’ slogan, and leave the pontificating to others. We're continuing our agenda of spotlighting people, businesses and trends that are influencing our state.
The goal is to be accurate and fair, to never be boring or waste our readers’ precious time, and to reflect the diversity of our state on many levels. We don’t attain those goals every day, but they are always on our mind.
Every business and businessperson has a story, so the challenge is selecting the best options given time and manpower constraints. Longtime readers will notice we’re doing shorter articles on more people and enterprises, rather than longer, in-depth stories. That reflects our sense of the times.
We’re constantly thankful for tips from readers and writers that lead us to better story ideas than we can develop on our own. Please keep them coming.
Producing a monthly BNC magazine is our primary, joyful, 44-year tradition that continues to draw strong support from sponsors and readers. Providing an opportunity for advertisers to share their messages makes the enterprise possible. Our survival doesn’t rely on foundations, government or wealthy contributors, which is becoming the media norm.
Editorially, we offer special thanks to Creative Director Cathy Swaney, along with Mike MacMillan, Shannon Cuthrell, Kathy Blake and other freelance writers for their strong contributions.
But today’s journalism requires a 24-7, multifunctional effort, which is displayed in our increasing emphasis on breaking digital news stories at www.businessnc.com, 13 newsletters published every week, special events, podcasts and other ventures. Our online readership has spiked significantly over the past two years, which is a credit to hard work by my colleagues Ben Kinney, Kevin Ellis, Ray Gronberg, Dan Barkin, Chris Burritt, Brad King and Chris Roush, who departed this fall for a job at Elon University.
Moreover, our events such as the MfgCon event for the manufacturing industry, inaugural N.C. Rural Summit and Best Employers gala created some terrific opportunities to build networks and friendships. The world needs more of that in 2025!
It also was a painful year as we lost longtime writer Ed Martin, whose awardwinning stories made him BNC’s heart and soul. More recently, Gary Ball, whose tech skills have kept us afloat, died of cancer. His cheerful, patient attitude will be sorely missed.
Controversy sells in journalism, for valid reasons, and we love for BNC writers to mix it up as much as anyone. But calling balls and strikes in a fair manner is a vital journalism value that remains our North Star. Thank you for your continuing support, and have a joyous holiday season.
Contact David Mildenberg at dmildenberg@businessnc.com.
PUBLISHER Ben Kinney bkinney@businessnc.com
EDITOR David Mildenberg dmildenberg@businessnc.com
MANAGING EDITOR Kevin Ellis kellis@businessnc.com
ASSOCIATE EDITOR Ray Gronberg rgronberg@businessnc.com
ASSOCIATE EDITOR Cathy Martin cmartin@businessnc.com
EDITORIAL INTERN Natalie Bradin
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Pete M. Anderson, Dan Barkin Chris Burritt, Jonathan Bym, Ross Howell Jr., Mike MacMillan
CREATIVE DIRECTOR Cathy Swaney cswaney@businessnc.com
GRAPHIC DESIGNER Lauren Ellis
MARKETING COORDINATOR Jennifer Ware jware@businessnc.com
ADVERTISING SALES
ACCOUNT DIRECTOR
Melanie Weaver Lynch, eastern N.C. 919-855-9380 mweaver@businessnc.com
ACCOUNT MANAGER AND AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT SPECIALIST Scott Leonard, western N.C. 704-996-6426 sleonard@businessnc.com
CIRCULATION: 818-286-3106
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REPRINTS: circulation@businessnc.com
OWNERS
Jack Andrews, Frank Daniels III, David Woronoff, in memoriam Frank Daniels Jr.
PUBLISHED BY Old North State Magazines LLC
PRESIDENT David Woronoff
MARCUS SMITH
PARTY PLANNER
Speedway Motorsports CEO Marcus Smith joined High Point University President Nido Qubein in the Power List interview, a partnership for discussions with influential leaders. Interview videos are available at www.businessnc.com.
Marcus, I’ve admired you as a leader who picked up the legacy of your father, who was recognized across the state. I used to think all you did was the Charlotte Speedway and NASCAR racing. The more I dug in, the more I realized you’ve got something going on all over this country. You’re in California, New Hampshire, Texas and other places. Tell me about Speedway Motorsports.
Well, the biggest thing is we have great people. We have a great team. It’s really just amazing to think about our 12 di erent properties around the country. Sonoma in California, the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, places like New Hampshire Motor Speedway, our home base in Charlotte. We host big NASCAR weekends and drag racing and car shows and music festivals and all sorts of things. It really starts with Christmas. Great people and Christmas light shows. ose are fantastic for the communities we’re in.
Marcus Smith, 51, grew up loving NASCAR and racing at his family’s Charlotte Motor Speedway, which his father Bruton Smith cofounded in 1959. It is now a 1,200-acre complex in Cabarrus County. As a teenager, the younger Smith cut grass, picked up trash and sold tickets. He was named president of Speedway Motorsports in 2008 and CEO in 2015. He led the effort to take the publicly traded company private in 2019. It had revenue of about $460 million in its final year as a public company. It now operates 11 tracks.
What does it mean to have a speedway? What is the asset?
So we own the land and in a lot of cases we built the speedways and in others cases we’ve bought existing properties and built up or added on and improved. But when you own a speedway, you’re in charge of a lot of plant and equipment, so to speak. at property is there to operate not just NASCAR races, but all sorts of events. One weekend, for exampke, we had an IndyCar race at the Nashville Superspeedway. We had a motocross and monster truck show in Dallas, Texas. We had a 3,500-person event out at the Sonoma Raceway. And we had a big party at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. ere’s always another event, another NASCAR weekend that we’re getting ready for.
How many employees do you have?
We have about 700 full-time employees, and then every event will ex up to whatever is needed. For a NASCAR weekend, that is about 2,500 employees.
Do people rent the facility? What is the relationship between the speedway and the race or the event?
At most of our events, we are the host and the producer of the show. Sometimes we co-produce, like, with a company like Feld Entertainment, where we host motocross and supercross events. ey will bring in the motorcycles or Monster Trucks. en our team handles what we call back of house, including beverage, parking, security and maintaining the site.
What are your revenue sources?
Running the concession stands, parking, selling paraphernalia and T-shirts are major revenue sources. ere are also TV broadcast rights. Like any major sporting event, there’s a sharing formula between the athletes and the owners and so forth.
The biggest race in Charlotte is the Coca-Cola 600. Who are the major people who take part?
Rick Hendrick with Hendrick Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing. Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin with 2311. Roger Penske with
Penske Motorsports. They are the titans of industry and sports entertainment that have NASCAR teams. We have a long-term agreement with NASCAR where we host the Coca-Cola 600 on Memorial Day weekend. We handle the party, so to speak. NASCAR operates the event, what happens on the track and in the garage and we handle everything else.
There are about 700 trailers that move from track to track in the NASCAR world every time there is a racex. You’ve got the television compound, souvenirs and food and beverage and security and communications.
What’s the toughest part of your job?
I mentioned earlier how we have 700 full-time people, but then 2,500 for a single event at one venue. The toughest part is training that 2,500 that come in to help us put on events, when you’re not doing it every day. It’s a little bit like golf, where you don’t have the Masters every weekend at Augusta, right? But everybody knows Disney and that venue is operating every day and they have tomorrow. I always tell our team we don’t get tomorrow. The big event is on big event day and tomorrow, that’s when we clean up.
So we have got to get it right. So every time we have had a successful event, we really struggle to make sure that it is something you want to come back to. My dad always said, “Sell to sell again.”
What’s the capacity of the Charlotte Speedway?
Charlotte is about 150,000 people, plus all the people who work there. The Highway Patrol does a phenomenal job to help us with the traffic management, along with local law enforcement and a great team of people that help the event go along.
How many events do you hold in the course of a year?
Charlotte Motor Speedway hosts two NASCAR weekends a year, the Coca-Cola 600 and the Bank of America Roval 400. We’ve got two big car shows every year, the Christmas show that starts up around Thanksgiving and goes through New Year’s Day. We usually have a music festival or two. We just finished up with our motocross event. We’ve got a great dirt track that is active a couple of times a year. Every summer we host this great event called the Summer Shootout, which is made up of race cars that we build in Harrisburg, called Legends Cars.
About 75% of the current NASCAR drivers started with a Legends car at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Which of the 11 race tracks is the biggest one?
The Sonoma Raceway is actually our largest, with over 1,800 acres. Las Vegas Motor Speedway, has close to 1,500 acres. Our biggest event overall is an event at Las Vegas Motor Speedway called the Electric Daisy Carnival. It’s a huge music festival, one of the biggest in the world with 165,000 people a night for three nights in a row. We have more than 10,000 campsites at this event. It’s really tremendous.
Marcus, what’s unique is you never wanted to do this stuff. You wanted to be a doctor?
That’s right. Or a journalist. I really wanted to be a pediatrician. My mother dropped this seed. When I was young, she always said, ‘You know, you’d be a great doctor.’ I also was pretty active with kids through camp counseling and that sort of thing. I enjoyed spending time with younger children.
So when I was in high school, people started asking me, what do you want to major in college? So I would say, I’m going to go to Chapel Hill, and I’m going to study medicine and, and be a
pediatrician one day. But calculus in my freshman year didn’t go so well. That does it for a lot of people and it did it for me. So I thought, OK, I’m going to try this racing thing out.
I had picked up a lot of trash, mowed a lot of grass and sold tickets, but I never had what I call an inside job in the business end of racing. After my first summer working on the inside at Charlotte Motor Speedway, I got hooked. I loved it and I haven’t looked back since.
What is the greatest lesson that your dad taught you about business?
He always said, inspect what you expect and do the right thing. He was very determined and hardworking, but always wanted to have fun as well. I started tagging along with my dad when I was a teenager. At the automobile stores or a speedway, he would always say to our teammates, I hope you’re having fun. And, he said, I don’t really like that word work. It’s got a negative connotation. I hope you have fun.
What made Bruton Smith think of the speedway idea in the first place? What was his first step?
My dad grew up in the era of the Great Depression, and he was born in Oakboro, North Carolina, on a farm, the youngest of eight. He knew very early that he didn’t want to work on a farm all of his life. He wanted to get off the farm. His first job was at a sawmill, but the first time he had an opportunity to promote a race, he was 17 years old. He and his friends liked auto racing, and, and they needed somebody to promote a race. He went to the local parks and recreation person about leasing a track and he struck a deal with a handshake. He said he made a little bit of money and decided to do it.
The first car he sold, he was also 17 years old. He had a car. He sold it for more than he paid for it, and before you know it, he’s in the car business.
What is it called?
Sonic Automotive, which has about 200 franchise automotive dealerships coast to coast. My brother David is the CEO. We have a brand called Echo Park that sells pre-owned cars around the country.
Much of NASCAR is really based around Charlotte, while the France family that started NASCAR is based in Florida, where they have the Daytona International Speedway. Are they a competitor of yours?
We host NASCAR events and they host NASCAR events. They own NASCAR. It’s a very unusual sport. And, it’s not a league as much as it is a tour of competitors and teams. We work together. If it’s a good event somewhere that is not ours, that’s still good for us and good for the sport.
Marcus, what do you see in the future of your business?
You’ve got a lot of technology in NASCAR now. Every race team is using predictive technology to understand strategy on the track in an event. Lots of aerodynamic and performance technology is developed and tested in the NASCAR world. At our events specifically, we provide a really nice opportunity to test mobility options. We work with advanced mobility companies on driverless vehicles, battery electric vehicles and all sorts of OEM testing opportunities. It’s an important part of our future. I imagine a day when maybe you hop in a car that can drop you off, and then it gets other people. Sort of an advanced Uber idea where you don’t have to drive, but it’s more automated .■
CREATING PURPOSE AND IMPACT
This is the thirty-fourth in a series of informative monthly articles for North Carolina businesses from PNC in collaboration with BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA magazine.
As North Carolinians continue to open their hearts and pocketbooks to help those impacted by Hurricane Helene – and with the traditional season of giving now underway – philanthropy is top-of-mind for many families throughout the state.
While philanthropy may bring to mind traditional charitable giving – writing a check to a nonprofit organization, for example – a new class of family funders is redefining what it means to deploy capital to create impact.
And at PNC Private Bank ® and PNC Private Bank Hawthorn, a new class of professionals is helping families deliver on their purpose , which can take the form of philanthropy, purchase power, purpose-driven investing, or a combination of these approaches.
Charlotte-based Brett Coffman, a senior vice president and wealth strategist for PNC Private Bank, is one such advisor who is laser-focused on helping families preserve their legacies, prepare for business succession and create impact.
“Because families of great wealth are often motivated to create impact, charitable goals are front and center when discussing wealth strategy, estate planning and business succession holistically,” says Coffman, who concentrated the scope of his Ph.D. studies on family business dynamics and succession preparedness. “For these families, success is measured not just by the assets they accumulate, but by the difference they can make for organizations and causes that are meaningful to them. Our role as a trusted advisor is to help families define their purpose and then translate that purpose into action through the framework of their wealth strategy.”
To help families and individuals identify and execute their purpose, Coffman and his colleagues collaborate closely with the Hawthorn Purpose Team within PNC Private Bank Hawthorn to take a layered approach through the activation of three main levers: Philanthropy & Impact, the Hawthorn Institute for Family Success and Purpose Driven Investing.
DEFINING A FAMILY'S PURPOSE
Led nationally by the head of Hawthorn Purpose, Avery Tucker Fontaine, the group leverages quantitative and qualitative strategies in working with each family or individual
client to gain a sophisticated understanding of the external – or community – engagement necessary to deliver on their purpose, the human side of wealth and whether aligning investments with purpose is right for them.
These conversations often begin with questions about the family’s patriarch or matriarch, with advisors encouraging family members to share the story of how their family’s wealth was created. During the course of these discussions, families will often reflect on the sacrifices they made in order to build that wealth, and this family storytelling lens often brings to light shared values that have emerged from personal experiences in a manner the PNC Private Bank Hawthorn team views as integral to understanding and articulating a family’s unique purpose.
Having open and candid dialogue with family members is particularly important for business owners who are planning to sell or transition a business. “When a business has been such a major part of your life for 30 or 40 years or more, it’s important to think about what the meaning of life becomes once you move on from that business,” says Jim Benedict, the Charlotte-based managing director of Business Owner Solutions at PNC Private Bank Hawthorn. “Purpose occupies a central role in that consideration.”
TURNING PURPOSE INTO ACTION
Coffman and Benedict emphasize that only after these meaningful conversations have occurred can advisors and the family begin identifying and implementing the appropriate vehicles to achieve the family’s desired outcomes.
For example, private family foundations continue to be both popular and useful in a stack of vehicles to drive change or support a specific cause. Private foundations enable families to effect direct contributions with a great degree of specificity in how the funds are used – such as endowing a scholarship or professorship or underwriting research.
Another strategy, which has increased in popularity in recent years because of its lower monetary threshold and ease of administration, is establishing a donor advised fund (DAF), a charitable fund sponsored by a 501(c)(3) entity.
By giving to a DAF, usually managed by a financial institution, public charity or community foundation, a donor may receive an income tax deduction at the time a contribution is made –and then make recommendations for distributions to charitable beneficiaries over a longer period. Its structure can be particularly helpful when a funder is interested in front-loading their giving for tax reasons, while maintaining long-term flexibility to make decisions regarding distributions. Additionally, donor advised funds can name successor advisors, and therefore represent a way for funders to leave a charitable legacy for future generations to continue.
Regardless of the giving vehicle leveraged, Coffman says it’s important for families to be intentional about creating a mission
REGIONAL PRESIDENTS:
Weston Andress, Western Carolinas: (704) 643-5581
Jim Hansen, Eastern Carolinas: (919) 835-0135
statement that guides their philanthropy. “While it can be a unifying experience for a family to come together in support of a shared cause, this unity can turn to conflict when communication regarding values and funding priorities is left to chance,” he says.
“Because families of great wealth may be approached by organizations representative of a wide range of causes, it’s even more important for them to be able to articulate their mission and collaborate with organizations that can help them maximize their impact and ultimately deliver on their purpose.”
Finally, it is important to focus on both the human side of wealth and external functionalities. “Addressing various aspects of wealth sustainability – including risk management, wealth strategy, philanthropy and purpose, and business owner solutions – often translates to more defined and impactful families who are meaningfully engaged with their communities,” says Fontaine.
“As the Great Wealth Transfer plays out, we’re working with more families who not only see and feel community problems deeply, but also seek to address the root causes and current needs simultaneously. Solving challenges in a way that acknowledges the environment in which they were created requires a deep understanding of one’s purpose, and we are committed to helping families navigate the complexities of delivering on that purpose.”
These materials are furnished for the use of PNC and its clients and do not constitute the provision of investment, legal, or tax advice to any person. They are not prepared with respect to the specific investment objectives, financial situation, or particular needs of any person. Use of these materials is dependent upon the judgment and analysis applied by duly authorized investment personnel who consider a client’s individual account circumstances. Persons reading these materials should consult with their PNC account representative regarding the appropriateness of investing in any securities or adopting any investment strategies discussed or recommended herein and should understand that statements regarding future prospects may not be realized. The information contained herein was obtained from sources deemed reliable. Such information is not guaranteed as to its accuracy, timeliness, or completeness by PNC. The information contained and the opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
Neither the information presented nor any opinion expressed herein constitutes an offer to buy or sell, nor a recommendation to buy or sell, any security or financial instrument. Accounts managed by PNC and its affiliates may take positions from time to time in securities recommended and followed by PNC affiliates. Securities are not bank deposits, nor are they backed or guaranteed by PNC or any of its affiliates, and are not issued by, insured by, guaranteed by, or obligations of the FDIC or the Federal Reserve Board.
SLEEPING BEAUTIES
A family owned greenhouse in Stokes County marks 45 years of growing poinsettias.
By Ross Howell Jr.
North Carolina is a poinsettia-producing powerhouse, ranked second only to California in the number of plants grown annually.
A greenhouse outside Charlotte grows more than 3 million poinsettias a year, selling to major retailers in the Southeast. An operation near Salisbury produces 500,000 poinsettias annually. In Raleigh, a family greenhouse and garden center grows 30,000 poinsettias in more than 50 varieties.
And Mitchell’s Nursery & Greenhouse in King in Stokes County, just north of Winston-Salem?
“We grow 12,000 a year,” says Judy Mitchell, who cofounded the nursery and greenhouse with her husband Jim in 1979. “ is season we have more than 80 varieties.”
e lion’s share of the poinsettias are sold directly to consumers or to garden clubs and service organizations purchasing them for fundraisers.
e Mitchells are able to o er so many varieties because each year they participate in breeder “trials.” Breeders supply cuttings of varieties in development, and as a participating nursery, the Mitchells display samples of each variety so customers can vote for their favorites. e nursery tabulates the results, providing breeders with valuable market feedback.
“Want to see this year’s crop?” Judy asks.
We hop on a golf cart in front of the nursery o ce and head out.
e Mitchells grow a diversity of plants. ere are rows of trees and shrubs and greenhouses lled with alleys of brilliantly colored pansies in ats.
A er the poinsettias are sold, the greenhouses are prepared for the spring crop of geraniums.
“We grow even more geraniums — 18,000,” she says. “ e garden clubs really take a lot of them!”
A er passing a structure full of Boston ferns, we pull up at a complex of greenhouses. Since it’s September and nights aren’t yet long enough, I’m looking at a vast quilt of varying shades of green. e plants are grouped by type and height. Each one is individually potted, some with plastic rings to support their branches.
Judy explains the process.
In August, cuttings set in strips arrive from the breeders and are then individually potted. At the end of that month, the tops are pinched o by hand to enhance branching and manage height.
Fertilized automatically by irrigation, the poinsettias grow in the greenhouse through September, shaded only if the sun raises the greenhouse temperature too much. e plants need plenty of natural light.
By October, nights have grown longer than daylight periods. On cooler nights, the greenhouses are heated because poinsettias, indigenous to Mexico and Central America, will not survive the cold temps at our latitude.
“Everybody is real careful to cut o their headlights when they turn in to come to work,” Judy says. “We don’t want the plants to think it’s daylight!”
As the poinsettias acclimate to longer, sleepy nights, their bracts begin to display their beautiful colors.
“ anksgiving is when our customers really start showing up,” Judy says.
Judy’s interest in greenhouses stems from growing up on a dairy farm in Hickory. “But Jim’s a city boy.”
Jim smiles. “My Dad was in a Raleigh garden club,” he says. “I spent a lot of time with him in the back yard growing owers.” In sixth grade, Jim started rooting azaleas in a sandbox and selling them in cans he brought home from the school cafeteria.
e couple met at NC State and were married by the time they graduated with degrees in horticulture. A er Jim took a job as a pesticide inspector with the N.C. Department of Agriculture, they bought a house in King.
In 1979, the Mitchells purchased an adjacent lot and started
Over a span of 45 years, the nursery has moved and expanded to some 13 greenhouses, with additional property nearby for a potting shed and growing area.
When I ask Judy and Jim if they’re ready to kick back and let the new generation take over, they chuckle.
“Oh, I think we’ll just keep on keeping on,” Judy answers.
Mitchell’s now has seven sta members, along with their son Jay, who joined the nursery in 2001, a er working at a large greenhouse operation in Raleigh. Jay’s wife Melissa, a high school math teacher, updates spreadsheets and balances the company checkbook. And there are grandkids.
Jim nods.
“ is nursery really is the dream of a lifetime,” he adds. And their business.
“ is nursery really is the dream of a lifetime,” he adds. And a beautiful dream it is. ■
START YOUR ENGINES
By Jonathan Bym
Owners of expensive sports cars may soon have some options for steering their vehicles at high speeds in central North Carolina.
In April, auto industry magnates Rick Hendrick and Marcus Smith are opening Ten Tenths Motor Club, a 100-acre complex next to Charlotte Motor Speedway. It will include a lighted 1.7-mile road course, 20,000-square-foot special event facility, garages for members and other amenities.
“The facility will offer concierge vehicle maintenance and repair for nearly every exotic or high-performance car on the market,” Hendrick said in a release. He’s CEO of Hendrick Automotive Group and owner of Hendrick Motorsports, while Smith is CEO of track owner Speedway Motorsports.
Separately, developers for two motorsports parks in Moore County hope to make the area another getaway for high-end vehicle aficionados. Both sites are about 70 miles east of Charlotte.
The Moore County tracks hang in bureaucratic limbo, however, with concerns over noise and light pollution being the biggest worries from neighbors.
The Uwharrie Motorsports Park is a proposed $100 million project by Raleigh-based Autoport LLC on nearly 400 acres in northwest Moore County, adjacent to Montgomery County. At a public hearing last summer, developers presented plans for a three-mile road course, a kart track and a clubhouse with a restaurant. It would include 165 private “car condos” ranging from 1,400 to 6,500 square feet.
The project could create more than 280 jobs and have an annual economic impact of about $2 million, says Autoport CEO Kristi Maluchnik, a Triangle-area commercial real estate broker. Since the project was announced in May, about 500 people have registered for membership, she says.
North Carolina’s first private road courses are moving down the track.
Raleigh-based Autoport hopes to open Uwharrie Motorsports Park and Resort in Moore County in 2027. The $100 million project faces some opposition by members of the community concerned about increased traffic and noise pollution.
Moore County Economic Development Partnership CEO Natalie Hawkins says the effort may spark 30 fulltime and 100-part-time positions. A key beneficiary of the development could be Robbins, a Moore County town that has struggled financially after some large employers shut down in the early 2000s.
But opposition to the project arose at two community meetings this summer, mainly from neighbors who worry about increased traffic and noise from the sports cars. A rezoning of the property, which is owned by Mount Gileadbased Jordan Lumber, was scheduled to be discussed at a rezoning hearing in late November.
Members of the Moore County Board of Commissioners emphasized they want to hear resident input on the project. While the track would be 12 miles from Robbins, the town buys water from Montgomery County and would supply the resort by patching into an existing line. Use of as much as 100,000 gallons per day would bolster Robbins’ finances, Town Manager Clint Mack says. But Moore County’s planning board has voted to oppose the effort.
If Autoport receives zoning approval by Moore County, Maluchnik says the plan is to start construction next year and open in 2027.
Meanwhile, a smaller racetrack project located about 25 miles from the Uwharrie plan is being discussed by the town of Cameron with a different development group. The 100-acre site, labeled Cameron Motor Condos, calls for a road course, off-road course and 60 to 80 condominiums and garages for car collectors.
After developers presented the plans informally at a town planning board meeting in July, Town Clerk Wendy Butner says there has been no more contact. The development could have a $25 million tax base with the condos selling for $300,000 to $500,000.
While the facility will be private and relatively low-profile, the business plan includes community events for locals to use the track and facility, according to a story in Car and Driver magazine.
“Our track design will be tight, less than two miles, and will barely have a straightaway,” project leader Charles Gregg told the magazine. He’s the CEO of Pinehurst Surgical Clinic. “So there’s nowhere anyone could go full throttle for very long.” ■
BIG BANKS BRANCH OUT
PNC Bank, the sixth largest U.S. bank, plans to add 35 branches in North Carolina over the next ve years, with 10 going to the Raleigh area and 25 in the Charlotte market. e move is part of an overall $1.5 billion investment by PNC to add 200 branches in 12 U.S. cities.
While digital banking is accelerating, branches still play a key role to attract and retain customers, PNC Regional President Jim Hansen says. “Clients want to see and feel their bank and go to our branches.”
PNC’s move comes as JPMorgan Chase, the largest U.S. bank, has added about 40 o ces in the Charlotte, Triad and Triangle markets in recent years, with plans for many more. While the New York giant has built its own network, Pittsburgh-based PNC entered the state in 2011 through the $3.5 billion purchase of Royal Bank of Canada’s U.S. operations. At the time, RBC was heavily weighted to eastern North Carolina. But PNC has focused on the state’s major metropolitan areas. It now has about 100 branches in North Carolina, with 25 in the Triangle and 10 in the Charlotte region.
In February, PNC announced a $1 billion investment that would see it expand by 100 new locations in Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio in Texas, along with Denver and Miami, along with 1,200 branch renovations.
e additional $500 million investment doubles the number of new branches and brings to 1,400 the number of branch renovations. PNC also will add branches in Atlanta, Orlando, Tampa and Phoenix.
North Carolina has added more than 1.3 million people since PNC arrived, Hansen notes. It has bene ted from that growth and wants to continue investing in the state, he adds.
U.S. banks added a net 94 branches in 2023, the rst increase since 2012. In September, Charlotte-based Bank of America said it would open 165 new branches by December 2026, including eight in North Carolina. ■
HOSPITALS’ NEW CHIEF
T
he N.C. Healthcare Association, one of the state’s most powerful trade groups, named Raleigh political veteran Josh Dobson president and CEO. He succeeds former ECU Health executive Stephen Lawler, who retired after seven years in the post. Dobson, 43, stepped down as N.C. Labor Commissioner in November. The healthcare group represents 135 members, including some of the state’s biggest employers such as Atrium Health and Duke Health.
Officials said Dobson was picked after a national search because of his legislative and political experience, strong relationships and policy expertise.
“It is crucial that we have policies in place to ensure [hospitals’] financial sustainability, while continuing to deliver high-quality, high-value care. I am honored to lead this effort,” Dobson said.
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Dobson is an Avery County native who was a McDowell County commissioner for two years, then a state representative from 2013-20, representing Avery, McDowell and Mitchell counties in western North Carolina. He was a chair of the House Appropriations Committee and House Health Standing Committee.
He was elected to one term as Labor Commissioner, a job best known for the photos included in inspection reports in the state’s elevators, although Dobson ended that tradition. In November, Raleigh lawyer Luke Farley was elected to the post, which includes an annual salary of about $150,000.
Dobson’s new pay wasn’t disclosed, but the position has involved more than $1 million in compensation in recent years. ■
PREPPING FOR DISASTER
A Chapel Hill drug development group seeks $200 million to help combat a future pandemic.
By Mike MacMillan
he Rapidly Emerging Antiviral Drug Development Initiative, or READDI, is tackling a monster challenge with a simple mission.
“We’re trying to look into the future and create medicines against viruses we’ve never seen,” says CEO James Rosen.
The nonprofit biotech company was launched in April 2020 by founding partners UNC Chapel Hill, the Structural Genomics Consortium and the Eshelman Institute for Innovation to support the development of broad-spectrum, small molecule drugs that could be deployed in response to a future pandemic. Its co-founders include Ralph Baric, a professor at UNC Chapel Hill and a global authority on coronaviruses, noroviruses and dengue viruses.
To pay for this ambitious undertaking, READDI is creating what looks to be the first-ever investment fund with assets consisting of a portfolio of antiviral drugs that are still under development.
To explain how the math works, Rosen harkens back to the COVID pandemic when seven main products were launched, including four vaccines; three main therapeutics (Paxlovid, Remdesivir, and Molnupiravir;) plus a few monoclonal antibodies therapeutics. Vaccines are intended to limit transmission by stimulating immunity, while therapeutics are used to treat a disease.
The products generated about $250 billion in revenue over the three years following their launches.
Modeling from the CDC and others suggest a 20% chance of another pandemic in the next 10 years, and a 60% chance in the next 30 years, says Rosen. Assuming the next pandemic would result in a similar level of spending, one can back into a present value calculation of prospective future revenues.
The expected value of a $250 billion payout sometime over the next 10 years is about $50 billion; with a 60% chance over 30 years, the expected value is about $150 billion.
The question then becomes, says Rosen, what would an investor pay today for a future claim on this potential payout? “Would you invest $200 million for a $50 billion payout sometime in the next 10 years,” Rosen asks. “It’s no different than buying a share of Amazon. You don’t buy a share of Amazon for what it’s worth today. You buy it for what you expect it to be worth in the future.”
All in the families
The Amazon analogy is interesting, if imperfect. Amazon is a going concern; READDI is investing to address what have been irregularly occurring events. But organizers say this isn’t really about money. It’s about finding the solution to an increasingly high-profile public health problem: Preparing for the next pandemic.
There are about 20 virus families known to infect humans, and about 270 individual viruses in total, per the National Institutes of Health. But there are only eight families with the properties known to cause pandemics, says Rosen.
These properties include transmission over the air or through a mobile vector like a mosquito, an incubation period that allows the virus to spread asymptomatically and the ability to infect others easily. “If you can create drugs for these eight virus families, you’ve taken a seemingly infinite problem and turned it into something manageable,” Rosen says.
While this seems reasonable, it has not been tried, according to the READDI CEO. It’s expensive, for one thing. Historically, big pharma companies and other biotechs have mainly focused on creating drugs for a single disease. The problem is that “viruses are constantly emerging and mutating. Precision medicine against a constantly moving target is not the right approach,” Rosen says.
By contrast, READDI targets “common features within viruses so that you can have a single drug for every virus within a given virus family and the disease that it causes.” The idea is to concentrate on proteins and enzymes “that allow viruses to infect a cell, hijack that cell’s machinery, and then propagate to other cells.”
“[Big pharma and other biotechs] have not taken a broad spectrum approach because they believe you can’t test a drug for a disease that doesn’t exist,” says Rosen. “We slightly disagree.”
The plan is to set up conditions in which drug developers have a high level of confidence that a drug will work in a new virus, as long as it comes from the same virus family. While viruses may mutate, “virus families don’t emerge at a high rate,” says Rosen. “The likelihood of the next pandemic coming from a virus family we’ve never seen before is almost nil.”
Funding challenges
As with antibiotics, companies and governments have been reluctant to fund research on treatments with a speculative future. A report published in the National Library of Medicine in 2021, the authors wrote that, “The central problem of the empty antibiotic pipeline is not scientific but economic.”
Something similar applies to antivirals, says Rosen. “We don’t have a science problem. We have a business challenge.
“The way to capture that ($50 billion) value is by creating an antiviral investment fund,” he says. The money would help underwrite research and early-stage trials, and invest in drugs for the fund or options on the future value of the drugs. The fund itself would trade on the value of a portfolio of therapies that could “treat every virus we ever expect to see with pandemic potential,” he says.
“By owning a share you create a liquid asset in what would otherwise be viewed as illiquid.” And the investment could help prevent a future pandemic.
Owning equity would not mean waiting around for that next catastrophe. Other viruses could be treated by drugs in the portfolio, including Eastern Equine Encephalitis, spread by mosquitoes. There was an outbreak of Mpox in Africa earlier this year. There is dengue fever, a one-time tropical disease that is increasingly showing up in the U.S. While none has risen to a pandemic level, the diseases present potential applications for small molecule drugs being developed by READDI and its partners.
Other monetizable steps also exist, with successful advances in therapies adding value to the portfolio. The drugs are subject to the same phased FDA approval process as any other therapy. Larger pharma companies could also step in to buy promising treatments.
Collectively, these events should create volatility in the shares, and trading opportunities for investors. Catastrophe bonds are an example of a financing vehicle that provides funds to ensure against prospective hurricanes and other disasters. As of September, about $45 billion in capital was deployed in that market, according to the trade publication Risk & Insurance.
READDI is hoping to raise as much as $200 million with the fund and $2 billion in total to produce two Phase-2 ready compounds across the eight identified virus families. Beyond private investment, it is looking at securing finances from philanthropies and governments. “We want to open all channels to R&D money,” is how Rosen puts it.
Project leaders
Managing risk
Measuring and managing risk has been a preoccupation of civilizations for millennia. Many pioneering developers of probability theory were gamblers, with mathematicians following close behind. From Thomas Bayes to Jakob Bernoulli, they laid the foundation for modern risk management. In his 1996 book, “Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk,” Peter Bernstein writes that, “The revolutionary idea that defines the boundary between modern times and the past is the mastery of risk: the notion that the future is more than the whim of the gods and that men and women are not passive before nature.”
The READDI fund would be another way to spread risk. Will investors be interested? The early indications are promising. Rosen says that READDI has discussed a possible listing on the London Stock Exchange. High-ranking executives there told him that if he gathers a pipeline of drugs, “then you absolutely can put a fund wrapper around it and trade it freely on an open exchange.”
Heather Wyckoff, an investment funds lawyer at Alston & Bird in New York, says, “You can set up a fund to do almost anything where people are pooling money together and pursuing any type of strategy.” The investors are, she says, “signing up for the ability of the (fund) manager to pick those opportunities that are likely to be valuable.”
READDI is pitching the idea to investors, including sovereign wealth funds in Singapore, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia and reinsurers, who could use it to hedge against future pandemic-related claims. In May, Rosen made a workshop presentation to the Milken Institute that included officials from J.P. Morgan, Fidelity, John Hancock, Alphabet (Google), and 35 other organizations. “There was probably something like $10 trillion of investment capital (in the room),” he says.
When READDI launched in April 2020, the program goals cited raising “$125 million to generate five new drugs with human safety and dosing data in five years to be ready for the next pandemic.” To put this in perspective, Covid 19 began marauding around the globe in January 2020 and countries began to shut down in March. Vaccines would not appear until the summer of the following year. There was an urgent need to do something.
The landscape has shifted since then. Rosen says READDI has made “tremendous progress” in the interim, working with collaborators at more than three dozen research institutions around the world and generating a pipeline with more than 30 “high-quality projects.” They are in touch with “almost everybody who’s doing this kind of work.”
North Carolina is at the epicenter of this global effort. With its multiple clinical research organizations, pharmaceutical manufacturing capabilities, and university-driven research base, the state is well-positioned to play a big role.
“We have this end-to-end capability within the state. It’s a perfect place for READDI.” ■
“We got lucky” says READDI CEO James Rosen of Paxlovid, an early treatment for COVID 19. A precursor to the drug had been in development at P zer for nearly two decades before the emergence of the novel coronavirus, allowing for its quick adaptation to meet the demands of the pandemic.
But there is no reason to believe the world will be that lucky again.
Hence the Rapidly Emerging Antiviral Drug Discovery Initiative, or READDI. e nonpro t was co-founded by UNC professors Ralph Baric, Mark Heise and Nathaniel Moorman in 2020, with Rosen joining in 2022 to lead the e ort. Before READDI, Rosen led a biotech spinout from Yale University and was deputy director of venture investing at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He also was a partner at Durham-based Intersouth Partners.
e group’s 11-member board of directors includes six UNC Chapel Hill leaders, including Provost Chris Clemens and the university’s chief legal and nance o cers, Tom Shanahan and Nathan Knu man. Other directors include former U.S. Sen. Richard Burr, a consultant for the London-based DLA Piper law rm, and Dr. Perrin Jones, a Charlotte anesthesiologist and UNC Chapel Hill trustee.
NC TREND
CHARLOTTE
CHARLOTTE
Lithium company Albemarle plans to lay off 7% of its workforce, or about 500 of its 7,000 staffers. CEO Kent Masters said the cost-cutting is due to the falling price of lithium. The company reported a loss of more than $1 billion in the third quarter, while revenue declined 41%.
Crescent Communities started constructing a 318-unit apartment complex in its 1,400-acre River District project bordered by Charlotte-Douglas International Airport and the Catawba River. It is eventually expected to include 2,350 multifamily units and 2,300 singlefamily homes, along with 8 million square feet of commercial space, 500,000 square feet of retail space, and preserved land.
Concert for Carolina put on by Explore Asheville raised more than $24.5 million at a Bank of America Stadium show that attracted more than 82,000 country music
fans. North Carolina natives Luke Combs and Eric Church helped arrange the concert and Tepper Sports & Entertainment donated the cost of the venue to help relief efforts in western North Carolina after flooding from Tropical Storm Helene.
The Southeast U.S.-Japan Association Conference hosted hundreds of Japanese corporate officials and economic development representatives from seven states. The event also involved trips to Honda Aircraft in Greensboro, Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord and the North Carolina Research Campus in Kannapolis.
Museum Tower, a multifamily high-rise in uptown acquired by the Northwood Ravin commercial real estate for $153.5 million, according to Mecklenburg County property records. The seller was Childress Klein, which developed the 394-unit apartment building atop the uptown Mint Museum in 2017.
BELMONT
Piedmont Lithium has reduced its number of employees by more than half in 2024 to cut costs. The company said it had 63 employees at the end of 2023, but now has in the mid 20s after layoffs
in February and October. Piedmont has stakes in lithium mines in Ghana and Canada, and it is seeking to establish a mine in northwest Gaston County.
CONCORD
Sports apparel company Tegra Global will close its plant here on March 31, putting 61 people out of work. The plant had been in operation for more than 30 years under different owners. It cited reduced business as the reason for the closing. Korea-based Sae-A Trading acquired the Atlanta-based company in April.
MOORESVILLE
The Planning Board unanimously denied a rezoning request for a 399-acre site in Mooresvillle Technology Park from Earnhardt Farms, an entity managed by Teresa Earnhardt. She is the widow of the late Dale Earnhardt Sr., an iconic NASCAR driver.
STALLINGS
SellEthics Marketing Group will invest $17 million to move its headquarters from Matthews to a 6-acre site in Union County.
The move will shift 89 jobs. SellEthics has other offices in Virginia, Alabama and Florida and more than 200 employees work with clients in food sales and analytics.
STATESVILLE
International Paper will shut down its container facility by Dec. 18, resulting in the loss of 74 jobs. The closure is part of the Memphis, Tennessee-based company’s plan to lay off a total of 650 of its more than 39,000 workers.
Kewaunee Scientific acquired Minneapolis-based NuAire for $55 million. Kewaunee officials say complements its existing business in designing, manufacturing and installing laboratory, healthcare and technical furniture and infrastructure products.
EAST
LILLINGTON
Cory Hess, president of Cape Fear Valley Harnett Healthcare, will step down at the end of the year to pursue entrepreneurial opportunities. Hess became president of Harnett Healthcare in 2018 and was responsible for two hospitals and multiple clinics.
FAYETTEVILLE
Accreditation of the Methodist University medical school took a step forward after the Liaison Committee on Medical Education moved its designation up to “candidate” status. LCME could vote on preliminary accreditation as early as next fall. Construction of the $60 million, five-story facility on the Cape Fear Valley Medical Center campus started in September. The school hopes to open in mid-2026.
Cumberland County launched construction of its $145 million, 134,000-square-foot Crown Event Center in the downtown area, between the old courthouse and current one. The Crown Event Center will replace the Crown Arena and Crown Theatre, which were built in the 1960s. It is intended to host concerts, performances, banquets, conventions and other activities.
NEW BERN
German-based Dradura will shut down its facility that makes wire baskets for dishwashing machines, resulting in the loss of 119 jobs. Layoffs will begin around Dec. 31 and continue until June 30.
PLYMOUTH
Washington Regional Medical Center filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to help the hospital restructure its finances. The 25-bed critical access hospital remains open. Affinity Health Partners bought the hospital in 2019. Debts include $300,000 for utility bills and $150,000 in county taxes, Carolina Public Press reported.
WILSON
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has removed Wilson Medical Center from “immediate jeopardy” status. Interim CEO Lindy White said the 294-bed hospital is no longer in jeopardy of losing its ability to receive Medicare payments for its medical services. It is owned by Duke LifePoint Healthcare.
TOPSAIL ISLAND
Danielle Mahon, owner of Topsail Steamer, a family-run company specializing in ready-to-cook seafood boils, sold an 18% stake in the business for $350,000 during an appearance on the ABC reality show “Shark Tank. Todd Graves, founder of Raising Cane’s restaurants, and entrepreneur Lori Greiner made the investment.
TURKEY
Phinite, a Clinton-based ag tech and fertilizer manufacturer, will establish a plant here, creating 23 jobs. The company will invest $5.5 million in a 69,000-square-foot facility that will transform manure into an odorless fertilizer that it says will benefit farmers and the environment.
NAGS HEAD
East Carolina University and UNC Chapel Hill are partnering on a multimillion dollar renewable energy project for coastal communities. Researchers from the universities will work to improve marine technology and storm response while identifying the best renewable resources for the community.
NC TREND ››› Statewide
WILMINGTON
Chicago-based insurance brokerage Hub International Limited acquired Wade Associates, a brokerage with expertise in construction, manufacturing, healthcare, life sciences and technology. Wade had offices here and in Davidson, New Bern and Raleigh. Hub has more than 18,000 employees in North America.
Financial technology company nCino agreed to buy FullCircl, a London-based software as a service platform, for $135 million. FullCircl will add data capabilities to nCino’s cloud banking business. The companies formed a partnership in 2023 and they have several mutual customers.
California-based Headlands Research has acquired clinical research firm Trial Management Associates. With the addition of TMA, Headlands now has 21 sites across the U.S. and Canada.
Clean Eatz named 30-year restaurant veteran Eric Wyatt as its first CEO. He had prior C-level leadership roles at Boston Market and Corner Bakery Cafe and
senior positions at Hardee’s, Panera Bread and Starbucks. Clean Eatz began in 2011 by offering customers whole foods and balanced portions. It now also sells frozen meals and healthy snacks. It has 115 franchise locations in 24 states.
TRIAD
HIGH POINT
Winston-Salem-based HanesBrands’ sale of its Champion brand business in September for around $1.5 billion is prompting permanent layoff of 75 workers at its High Point distribution center. Some employees will lose their jobs around Dec. 31, others will stay on until around Jan. 31.
GREENSBORO
Syngenta Crop Protection showed off its new $140 million North American headquarters, where about 650 employees work on a 70-acre complex. When
Salem Academy and College will transform an 80,000-square-foot campus building into a $30 million hotel. Mayfair Hospitality Group will redevelop the former high school building into an 86-room inn, which will include a restaurant and bar. It’s scheduled to open in 2027. The hotel brand hasn’t been determined.
Switzerland-based Syngenta started the project in March 2020 it was expected to cost $68 million, but the final figure ended up more than doubling. Local governments are providing about $3.6 million in incentives to retain the business here.
Welsh semiconductor manufacturer IQE plans a $305 million investment that will create 109 jobs at its existing operations, which now has about 72 employees. The deal includes more than $5 million in local incentives. It manufactures epi wafers for the defense and aerospace industries. Expansion plans call for selling to the electric vehicle market.
Triangle-based Gilero will invest $6.4 million and create 37 jobs when it moves into a 60,500-square foot building to make components for medical and pharmaceutical devices. Gilero expects to begin operations by summer 2025. Part of Germany-based Sanner Group, Gilero has other N.C. operations in Durham and Pittsboro.
MOUNT AIRY
Insteel Industries paid $70 million in cash for Ohio-based Engineered Wire Products, a manufacturer of welded wire reinforcement products. Engineered Wire Products had revenue of $93 million in its past fiscal year. Insteel is the largest U.S. manufacturer of steel-wire reinforcing products for concrete construction applications in the western U.S.
TRIANGLE
CARY
Voters’ rejection of a park and recreation bond on Election Day put the future of the town’s long-proposed sports facility in doubt. The planned $300 million Sports & Recreation Community Center was pitched as a key part of the South Hills mall redevelopment and a potential attraction.
NC TREND ››› Statewide
SAS is taking over the principal so ware assets of Hazy, a London-based rm. SAS projects the move will bolster its data and AI portfolio with the expansion of AI occurring across multiple industries. Terms were not disclosed.
CHAPEL HILL
Beer and wine sales are now allowed at UNC men’s and women’s basketball games at the Smith Center and Carmichael Arena. Sales began in November.
DURHAM
Chipmaker Wolfspeed is cutting sta because of market conditions and the pending closure of a wafer production line at its factory here. e move will eliminate 10% of roles across the company, and follow another 10% reduction earlier this year. Wolfspeed had 5,013 people on sta as of June 30, a postpandemic high. It plans to open a factory in Siler City next year that is expected to employ 1,800 people by 2030.
Durham School of the Arts broke ground on its new location in the north part of the city, marking the rst step in the $240 million project. e new DSA is expected to open in the fall of 2026. Once construction is complete, DSA will move out of its nearly 100-year home downtown.
MORRISVILLE
Forge Battery’s lithium-ion battery gigafactory is under construction and set to be operational by 2026, and eventually employ about 280 workers. e company received a $100 million grant from the Department of Energy through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that will allow for capacity expansion.
RALEIGH
Burlington, Massachusetts-based Progress So ware, which makes applicationdevelopment, data-integration and infrastructure so ware, closed on its $875 million purchase of ShareFile on Oct.
31. Days later, it told state commerce o cials it would permanently cut 199 jobs at the Hillsborough Street o ce where ShareFile was based.
Most of the state’s UNC System athletic departments will split $10.7 million in sports betting tax revenue this year, more than twice the amount expected. Athletic directors at 13 public universities were expecting around $300,000, but instead will get about $820,000. Gamblers spent more than $1.9 billion in bets from March, when it became legal in N.C., through June. Athletic departments at UNC Chapel Hill and NC State do not participate because they have other sources of funding.
Saint Augustine’s University signed a $7 million loan agreement with Durhambased Gothic Ventures, which granted the Raleigh-based historically Black university the possibility of getting as much as $30 million total. e loan carries a 24% interest rate, plus a 2% “loan management fee” and a $75,000 “due diligence and documentation fee.” e struggling university said it needed the money to continue classes this fall.
ROXBORO
Tech giant Microso paid about $27 million for the 1,350-acre Person County Mega Park, e Redmond, Washingtonbased company declined to discuss its plans in detail, but local o cials expect the site to host a large data center. e country’s third-largest company, based on market capitalization, has spent billions on data centers and developing AI in recent years.
WEST
ASHEVILLE
Wicked Weed Brewing laid o most of its sta for its sour and barrel-aged beer-focused Funkatorium brewpub and adjoining
Cultura restaurant. O cials cited the impact of Tropical Storm Helene and the citywide water outage. InBev, the global business that owns Anheuser-Busch, bought Wicked Weed in 2017.
BLACK MOUNTAIN
Ingles Markets estimated Tropical Storm Helene caused between $35 million and $55 million of inventory and property loss. e 198-store grocery chain is headquartered along the Swannanoa River, which crested to record-shattering level during the Sept. 27 storm. Four Ingles stores – in Morganton, Newland, Swannanoa and Spruce Pine –remain closed from sustained damage. ey are expected to reopen within three to nine months.
FOREST CITY
Northern California-based Abstract Ice will invest $14.7 million and create 26 jobs in its rst manufacturing site on the East Coast. e company, founded in 2018, transforms frozen water into crystal clear cra ice used for cocktails. e company has 30 employees and two other manufacturing sites in the San Francisco area, and another in Portland, Oregon. It recently raised almost $12.4 million from 68 investors. One of the investors knew about the Forest City site, which has been involved in handling frozen meat products, CEO Todd Stevenson said.
NEWLAND
A 20-foot tall Frasier r nicknamed “treemendous” will be harvested from Cartner’s Christmas Tree Farm in Avery County to be installed in the blue room of the White House. e White House has chosen a North Carolina Christmas tree a record 16 times. ■
GOOD TIMES EXPECTED
There’s plenty to see and experience in North Carolina. Why else would more than 43 million visitors make it their destination, whether for a work meeting or vacation, every year? But ensuring the travel-andtourism industry continues to be an important part of the state’s economy, in good times and bad, takes effort. Business North Carolina gathered a group of experts from within the industry to discuss its current state, the challenges it faces and where it’s headed next. The conversation was moderated by Publisher Ben Kinney. The transcript was edited for brevity and clarity.
Photography by Bryan Regan
HOW HAS HURRICANE HELENE AFFECTED TRAVEL AND TOURISM IN NORTH CAROLINA?
The discussion was sponsored by:
•Greenville-Pitt Convention & Visitors Bureau
•North Carolina Central University
•Pinehurst Resort and Country Club
•Robeson Community College
•Visit North Carolina
TUTTELL: Each hurricane teaches us two things. First, many visitors don’t understand geography. They called us right after the hurricane, asking if it was OK to visit the Outer Banks. And people recover at different rates. You always have people ready to go immediately afterward. Five counties in North Carolina’s portion of the Great Smoky Mountains were only grazed by the storm, so they’re enjoying a fall season. But the storm’s impact was tremendous elsewhere. It hit at peak season. It was like a hurricane hitting
the Outer Banks July 4 weekend, which has never happened. The region is responsible for about $2.1 billion in direct spending each autumn. It’s the region’s biggest season, and October is the busiest month for many. About 46,000 tourismrelated jobs are at stake, along with thousands of businesses and millions of tax-revenue dollars.
Our responsibility is safety, rescue then recovery. It has been a challenging process. The coast has big bridges, so it’s easy to block one, controlling how people arrive and depart. There are many small bridges in the mountains. You have real challenges when they’re compromised.
You can’t fix them by slapping down asphalt. So, while the state usually bounces back quickly from hurricanes, this recovery will take a long time.
Our unique challenge is alerting visitors to where they can go and how to get there, while staying away from potentially dangerous locations and not interfering with recovery efforts. We use an online interactive map to accomplish that. Regions ready for visitors, for example, are colored green. Yellow means they’re partially open, and red means stay out. But even for businesses in green and yellow places, we encourage visitors to call ahead. Google Maps will choose a particular route, but what if it’s filled with recovery vehicles?
Locals will offer alternate routes. Many hiking trails look open online, but they haven’t been checked or cleared. We also used marketing that targeted people in Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina,
Alabama and Florida. It invited them to regions that were open and offered travel routes that didn’t interfere with recovery efforts. Communication is key. But things are changing quickly, so it’s a delicate and timely message. I tell my staff that what we say today may not be what we say in three days.
More and more of the region is coming back online every day. Potable water was back in more than 60% of Asheville by the end of October. And we think most of the region will be open to tourism in November. We’ve talked with the state’s ski areas, and the winter season will be saved. We’ll begin promoting that soon. But there will be pockets, including stretches of the Blue Ridge Parkway, that will be closed for a long time. A website — shopwnc.com — is connecting affected businesses with customers by sharing which ones are
open, creating an online marketplace for their goods and announcing upcoming events. People all the way from eastern North Carolina and beyond have done amazing things — gifts, charity and more — to help. It has been remarkable.
KUESTER: Recovery won’t be easy. But the tourism industry will rise to the occasion, returning better than before. Many people have a passion and strong connection to the Mountains. Raleighbased clothing-maker Peter Millar, for example, designed a hurricane-recovery logo, which they applied to a quarter-zip shirt. All proceeds from its sale went to recovery efforts.
HOW HAS THE INDUSTRY PERFORMED RECENTLY?
TUTTELL: We’ve enjoyed two recordsetting years. Visitors spent more than $33 billion in 2022, an increase of maore that
15% from the year prior. They spent more than $35 billion in 2023, making North Carolina the country’s fifth most-visited state. We’ve been tracking toward an increase this year, but we’ll see what effect the hurricane had. But it’s a huge state, and it’s a big industry. We’re hopeful for a new record.
KUESTER: This might be Pinehurst’s mostsignificant year in its130-year history. This year’s U.S. Open was the first hosted under USGA’s anchor site announcement, whose $2 billion economic impact will be felt statewide. It also was the first of five U.S. Opens at Pinehurst through 2047. The best comment about June’s U.S. Open that I heard came from locals, who said the local vibe never lost its friendliness. I also heard that Pinehurst felt like a college town. That’s something you never hear, because 9 p.m. usually is late here. That tournament brings people from across the country and around the world to a small community, which never lost its authenticity. Moore County visitors spent more than $800 million — the state’s 10th largest tourism economy — in 2023. That’s significant for a population that’s slightly more than 100,000.
Pinehurst Resort opened Pinehurst No. 10, its first new golf course since 1995, in April. That adds one more destination within our destination. It’s a pillar of Pinehurst Sandmines, 900 acres that eventually could include one more course, a short course, lodging, food and beverage, and other amenities. And the World Golf Hall of Fame returned in May after spending about a decade in Florida, re-establishing its roots in Pinehurst, where we believe it rightfully belongs.
Golf has had two significant bumps. The first was Tiger Woods. The COVID pandemic, when travel and group restrictions forced people to find outdoor activities, was the second. The effects of the latter are still being seen at private clubs and public courses nationwide. When you look between the lines, the game is growing with people of color and women, who are the fastest-growing segment. That didn’t happen before. The sport is getting
younger; it’s getting more fun. People are participating off the course, which is seen in the phenomenon of Top Golf, Puttshack and Drive Shack.
WHY CAN IT BE DIFFICULT TO RECRUIT TOURISM AND HOSPITALITY WORKERS? WHAT ARE SOME SOLUTIONS?
TUTTELL: Tourism workers must show up every day. Their jobs aren’t virtual. That’s a challenge. Pay is one reason these jobs get a bad rap. Trade group U.S. Travel Association has studies showing you can advance faster in tourism than any other industry. We need to do a better job in schools, talking to students about the industry. It has fun and interesting jobs. You get to see and do things. You impact people’s lives. That makes tourism special and a great career.
BRADFORD: I don’t know how to change the narrative. Sometimes I blame industry people for what they tell students while recruiting them. You either love hospitality work or you don’t. Some students bitten by the bug become disenchanted during an internship. You must push through those early years, which are filled with grunt work. That’s a challenge for many, though I don’t know if that’s unique to hospitality. Serving people is demanding. It can be physical. But you need intelligence, too.
Somewhere we’re not sending the right message. About a decade ago, there was a misconception that work would be perfect in the hospitality industry. But I grew up in a house where my Dad told us they mistreated Jesus, so who are you? We’re probably fighting that more. Our students are required to intern. I see it in students who work for a small event planner. They love putting on the events, but they’re frustrated with the low pay. The owners are making the money. I tell them they have a decision to make.
I’ve taught international students, including many from the Caribbean. They have a very different view of hospitality careers than U.S. students. I had a brilliant young lady from Turks and Caicos, and she
has done very well. She went home but recently returned to work in the U.S.
KUESTER: We lean into international work visas. Workers with J-1 visas arrive, and you don’t want them to leave. They embrace the culture of hospitality. I don’t know where we would be without that program. We want to hire and promote from within North Carolina. But we’re caught in this cycle: You’ve got 2,000 employees and rooms need to be cleaned and golf courses prepared. It’s a great solution that I don’t see disappearing anytime soon.
INGRAM: You need passion for this career. If that isn’t deep within you, then it’s not going to work. Experiencing how restaurants or events are run teaches you what to do and what not to do. I tell them to find a place where they can grow. Don’t go to a mom-and-pop restaurant with aspirations to go beyond being a line cook. If you can’t grow there, there’s no reason to be there. I hate to say that, but that’s how it is.
SCHMIDT: We can be the world’s best marketer or business attractor, but the frontline workers are the most important people. They have moments of truth and interaction with visitors. If visitors don’t have a good experience, then my work, regardless of what I do, goes down the drain.
Hospitality is unique. It relies on that faceto-face interaction for people to have a good experience. But it’s a hard industry, which has more turnover than many others. We need frontline hospitality workers who stay for the long term. That way they learn the community and can answer guests’ questions. Without the front desk and waitstaff, without that person at the museum, you can’t provide that one-onone service, then none of it matters.
If we attract and meet the needs of visitors, then small businesses are helped, and people are employed. The community’s tax base expands, helping push economic development projects. Destination and tourism attracts a different type of money. Fast-growing communities have a growing tax base, but that revenue has to cover
services — roads, schools and more — for all those people. Visitors come, spend their money then go home. That money can be used for whatever is needed.
HOW ARE WORKERS BEING DEVELOPED FOR THE INDUSTRY?
INGRAM: Robeson Community College offers associate degree programs for culinary arts and baking and pastry. There are seven certificate programs, too. We’re trying to make our students marketable everywhere.
I train students to be chefs. That includes explaining the realities of kitchen work. Our internship program is called workbased learning. Students start with classroom knowledge, and some return from their internships with a different view of real-life work. It’s a learning opportunity of what to do and what not to do when you land a job, start your business or approach your employees. So, record those observations, and apply them to your goals and plans. Practice your downfalls during your internship, then you’re better equipped to avoid them when you start your thing.
BRADFORD: North Carolina Central offers a four-year bachelor’s degree program for hospitality and tourism administration inside the school of business. It’s management focused. Our graduates work for Marriott, Disney, boutique hotels, event planners and many others. We’re seeing more entrepreneurship; graduates want to hire themselves, starting a business. The university primarily serves a firstgeneration population. Hospitality is a good choice for a long career.
The average recent college graduate changes jobs about five times within 18 to 24 months. It’s understood that people will only work for a period. That’s the reality, and I don’t see it changing. The hospitality industry stopped training, which is why this problem has lingered for 15 years. So, the industry is beginning to take a different approach. Companies are investing more in their people. Management and other training programs are returning. The good students, the focused students, are
staying for at least that year of training. I promote the narrative of a long-term career versus a job. I try to help students understand that. If you’re drafted, to use a sports analogy, you’re hot right now. But the situation will be different in a few years, when you’re competing against younger players. They need to understand that it can be beneficial to stick with a company and not leave before you have your next job.
Students want something different. Many are OK with living at home longer. I want them to have the tools, skills and knowledge. I bring in industry representatives, engage them and plant the seed. Many of them circle back. We’re having longer relationships with students. They leave to do all sorts of things, then they return to tap into career services or networking, because they’re looking for a job.
We have in-person and online programs. We’re seeing individuals in their late 20s, who’ve been working in the hospitality industry for a spell, use the online program to advance their career through more study. We’ve had to pivot in how we serve our students. It’s an opportunity, because they also return more mature and more focused.
KUESTER: Training can’t be over emphasized. We changed our recruiting efforts. We traditionally have gone to culinary and hospitality schools. We also go to community colleges and high schools now. We look outside Moore County. We tour students through the resort a couple times each year, and executives, managers and culinary folks speak with them. They describe kitchen life, what a marketing person does or how golf courses are maintained.
We also have done a niche career pathway program concerning golf-course maintenance with Sandhills Community College. That’s a challenging career with a low entry wage. But it’s vital to Pinehurst Resort, which must maintain grass on 10 18-hole courses, a short course and putting course. Students aren’t saddled with debt when they leave the program, and there’s a job waiting.
HOW CAN TOURISM DESTINATIONS WORK TOGETHER?
SCHMIDT: Our community understands it advances everyone’s cause. When someone in eastern Carolina does well, we all do well. We’re excited about that. We work with nearby tourism partners. Pitt County has assets that it doesn’t. Washington, for example, has a waterfront, and we have assets that it doesn’t. It’s a good partnership. It happens often in the sports tourism
arena. We combine facilities and use our hotels and bigger city amenities. Historically rural, Greenville and Pitt County are growing quickly. As a destination marketer, we have a large stake in that. We want to attract conventions, meetings, sporting events and leisure travel for that economic impact dollar. One of biggest current goals is exposure. Every event we bring includes first-time visitors to Greenville
or Pitt County. We want to show off how we’ve grown and maybe change their perception of the region. That also can be a revelation for people who haven’t visited in a while. And it can spur a return visit for different reasons. We’re promoting our Pitt County Brew and ‘Que Trail, which includes craft brewers and barbecue restaurants. We’ve diversified our offerings with an AfricanAmerican Cultural Trail. And we’re adding outdoor adventures to the mix. It’s a well-rounded destination.
WHAT’S AHEAD FOR THE INDUSTRY?
TUTTELL: From a state perspective, we expect 2025 to be a really good year. This year brought inherent challenges along with an unexpected one. Presidential election years are tough on travel. We’ve always seen that. A portion of our tourism business originates in and around
Washington, D.C. But presidential election years bring uncertainty, so people cut back. It’s difficult to advertise during those years. Almost every spot is filled with a political advertisement. Those issues will disappear next year. One concern for next year is the cessation of pandemic relief funding, which many communities were spending on tourism promotion. We’ll need to find other sources.
SCHMIDT: We set a record — more than $312 million in visitor spending — last year. That put us 25th out of the state’s 100 counties. We were thrilled. We anticipate breaking that record. Our convention center is already booked for most of next year. A new student center gives us one more large space to market. There are more amenities, such as hotels, to market as a sports tourism destination.
BRADFORD: The industry will garner more respect. The recent pandemic
revealed its significance. It requires a more sophisticated employee, and that’s good for us in academics. I see more diversity in job offerings. You can be a journalist, for example, but the travel blog that you write puts you in the industry. One challenge, particularly in the African-American community, is a resistance to work in the industry. Historically, jobs were limited for its members. People are traveling more and seeing more. Youth travel is on the rise. Young people will spend $49 of their last $50 on a trip, not caring if they return broke. I admire their courage. I’m excited. Hospitality and tourism education will continue in a nontraditional direction. More people will secure their credentials, such as certificates, online. We’ve seen some of that already. Some freshman arrive with ServSafe food and alcohol safety training, which they completed while in high school. That gives them and us a jump.
INGRAM: More students means more qualified workers who understand the industry’s regulations and requirements. I expect an enrollment boom within the next three years. Businesses within the industry need qualified workers. Who else better to properly manage your front desk, waitstaff or kitchen than someone with these credentials? That’s a huge difference. You want a manager who treats people with respect and dignity, not one who doesn’t
care. Customers notice if workers are well taken care of. It’s just a downhill slide if they’re not.
KUESTER: We’re cautiously optimistic. We sell into two markets — leisure and corporate. Leisure was up about 20% compared to October 2023. Corporate is as strong as ever. Leisure travelers bounced back from COVID restrictions sooner than corporate. We’re currently 70% leisure and 30% group. Hotels are going up in Moore County. We’re adding lodging at course No. 8. Economic development projects, including bringing back commercial flights to Moore County Airport, are being discussed. And a highend auto park resort has been proposed for northern Moore County. Its estimated $100 million economic impact diversifies the tourism economy. ■
REALLY BIG DEALS
Profiles of our four Small Business of the Year winners.
Selecting Business North Carolina’s Small Business of the Year winners is always challenging. So many entrepreneurs in the Old North State diligently serve their customers and acknowledge the importance of their employees and supportive communities. We received 49 nominees offering compelling stories of achievement. These four enterprises topped the judges’ list.
• RiverWild Construction, a Johnston County-based brand for a group of companies started by husband-and-wife team Reid and Jaclyn Smith. Their construction company is the largest enterprise, but there’s also real estate, a direct-to-consumer meat company that features their home-grown Wagyu beef, and a foundation.
• North Carolina Trailer Sales, a Davidson County-based business that Johnny Shelton took over from his parents in 2015. The dealership added a second store in Winston-Salem last year.
• Weldon Mills Distillery, a Halifax County-based business started by friends Bruce Tyler and Michael Hinderliter on a lark. It now posts $4 million in annual revenue and has received awards for its spirits.
• Riverbend Malt House, a Buncombe County-based business that has been serving the craft beer industry since 2011. Owners Brian Simpson and Brent Manning created the first craft malt operation in the Eastern U.S. and are helping Asheville-area brewers respond to damage from Hurricane Helene.
This year’s contest judges were Jerry Pedley, the president and employee owner of Mertek Solutions in Sanford. Mertek
Solutions, which designs and builds automated test and assembly equipment, was a Business North Carolina Small Business of the Year winner in 2017; Byron Hicks, the state director of the N.C. Small Business and Technology Center; and Business North Carolina Publisher Ben Kinney.
The judges considered creativity, community impact, persistence and other factors in making the selection. The business had to be in operation for at least five years and have fewer than 100 employees.
The four selected businesses employ between 16 and 88 employees.
"It is always a privilege to read such impressive stories of the nominated small businesses that have overcome challenges, found ways to innovate and those that build a culture to support their staff and build teams. This year was no different,” says Hicks.
Pedley noted his respect for Riverbend, saying it “turns local agriculture produce into a product.”
This marks the 29th year Business North Carolina has published the Small Business of the Year award. The goal is to honor smaller businesses that form the backbone of the state’s economy. Duke Energy is this year’s sponsor.
Small businesses are often celebrated as the “lifeblood” of the economy for their oversized role in job creation and contributions to overall GDP. In 2022, firms with fewer than 20 employees held the largest share of total private employment in North Carolina, at 18%, followed by firms with 50 to 249 employees at 13%, and those with 20 to 40 workers at 10%, according to the N.C. Department of Commerce.
TASTE MAKERS
By David Mildenberg
When Brent Manning and Brian Simpson founded Riverbend Malt House in 2011, they like to joke that the only thing local about Asheville beer was the water. At the time, the hops tended to come from New Zealand, the barley from Germany or England and the yeast from California.
Fourteen years later, the founders of the first craft malthouse east of the Mississippi River, and third in the nation, is thriving after helping to bolster one of the nation’s most popular craft brewing scenes. From about a dozen breweries in 2011, Asheville now has about 40.
Business North Carolina’s contest judges were impressed with how Manning and Simpson sell to more than 300 customers and have ranked in the Inc. 5000 “Fastest Growing Private Companies in America” for three consecutive years. Revenue grew 34% in 2022, 21% in 2023 and was on pace for 18% growth this year, until an unexpected crisis struck.
For small businesses, the challenges never end. And Riverbend is facing a massive one, with Hurricane Helene knocking out about a quarter of their revenue. The decline reflects the storm’s impact on many brewers in the Asheville region, which bore the brunt of the disaster on Sept. 27. The properties of many brewers suffered significant flooding damage, while the lack of tourists and potable water is hampering efforts to rebound. Many brewers are paying from 10 cents to $1 per gallon for bottled water that can be used to brew fresh beer.
During an early November interview, the founders emphasized the company’s resiliency and devotion to their 17 colleagues, who have continued to receive full pay. Both showed a steely confidence that Helene was just another obstacle in a successful journey. Their motivation is about creating living-wage jobs that include health insurance and a long-term horizon.
“If it weren’t for our employees, we wouldn’t be here,” says Simpson, who is the CEO. “Laying them off is not interesting to us at all. We need them here and we don’t want them having to get unemployment and not have health insurance. We want to do the right thing.”
Riverbend has helped employees and customers recover from the storm in varied ways. One example was when several staffers helped an Asheville brewery recover a walk-in cooler that contained more than 150 kegs of beer. It had floated a mile down the Swannonoa River, stopping near a fast-food restaurant.
A few days after the storm, Simpson says he experienced “the most Asheville thing I’ve seen since I moved here.” Walking down Haywood Road in storm-ravaged west Asheville, he saw a guy playing his guitar, while another fellow had set up a tent to provide mental health services, another guy was providing massages, and a brewpub was hosting some acoustic musicians.
As of mid-November, a few Asheville breweries had restarted production. “There’s a bunch of relief projects going on, and we’re trying to be supportive of them,” says Manning, who oversees sales.
SPIRITED EXPANSION
While no one expected a disaster of Hurricane Helene’s magnitude, Riverbend made some business decisions that look astute given the storm’s impact. One was expanding beyond North Carolina; it now buys grain from farmers in North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia, while it has customers as far away as California, Canada and Puerto Rico. Tar Heel customers make up half of revenue, with Charlotte and the Triangle as key markets.
Another important move was expanding into distilleries, which now make up more than 20% of business and could reach 50% someday, the founders say. One distiller customer often requires as much malt as four or five brewers, Manning notes.
Such diversification didn’t seem necessary a few years back when craft breweries were opening at a dizzying pace. Production at smaller brewers soared between 2010 and 2019. Since then, growth tapered as consumers' demand for alternatives exploded. Manning jokes that eight friends gathered for a drink now typically choose eight different beverages, including one or two nonalcoholic ones.
Part of it relates to folks who were in their 20s and 30s at the height of the craft beer craze cutting back on their drinking as they age. There’s also a generational shift.
“Generations younger than us are drinking a little less, but they’re picking what they drink,” Manning says. “Cocktails play really well into that. If I’m going to have one beverage tonight, it’s going to be a high-end bourbon or some cocktail, and I’m going to spend some money on it.”
Nationally, craft brew volume sales declined by 2% in 2022 and 1% last year, with 405 breweries closing in 2023, according to the Brewer’s Association. Two of the five largest U.S. craft malt makers also closed.
Riverbend has bucked the trend, which Simpson and Manning credit to a focus on high-quality grains from a dozen or so farmers who share a commitment to excellence; an efficient manufacturing process; and solid customer service. The malters often pay twice as much for barley as grain that is produced for livestock feed, but it has to meet high standards.
The company stepped up its game in 2018 by expanding to a 70,000-square-foot facility in south Asheville, about five miles south of the Biltmore Estate. That necessitated building a sales staff and becoming more effective marketers.
“It was no longer this little precious jewel in Asheville,” says Manning. “We spent 2018 and up to the pandemic introducing ourselves to everyone.”
Having probably met with 1,000 brewers and distillers over the years, “now we know our audience. We spend more time building projects and collaborations, even full-blown events,” he adds.
ROOM FOR INNOVATION
Manning and Simpson both grew up in eastern North Carolina, coming from farming families in the Fayetteville and Tarboro areas, respectively. They had been co-workers at an environmental consulting firm with a shared love of the outdoors, sustainability and entrepreneurship, before launching Riverbend.
Malt, which is mainly barley, joins hops, water and yeast as the four prime ingredients in beer. The malting process involves germinating grain, then halting the process by drying. Enzymes develop and change the grains’ starch into types of sugar.
For distilleries, other grains tend to be key ingredients, but the main difference is timing. Brewers can whip up a solid batch within several weeks, while a good craft whiskey takes five or six years of incubation, Manning says.
“It’s a really interesting category because there is so much room for innovation,” he adds. He cites a recent project involving peach wood for a whiskey that won’t be released until 2030.
Perhaps because so much advance planning is required, distillers tend to be more secretive than brewers, who love to talk, Manning says. Fortunately for Riverbend, malts can make a big impact on taste and quality, he adds.
Simpson gives a nod to former CEO Scott Hickman for helping the founders understand the potential for malt as the craft brewing market exploded. The former Sun Microsystems executive is now the board chair.
“He offers us an unbelievable amount of financial education,” Simpson says.
Looking ahead, Riverbend officials hope North Carolina economic development leaders will recognize the big opportunity presented by the craft brewing industry, even as its growth plateaus. “Look at what a small investment in the North Carolina wine industry did to build a tourism base across the North Carolina foothills,” Manning says.
“I think we could start a conversation that looks a lot like that and bring North Carolina up a level.” ■
RIVERBEND MALT HOUSE
OWNER Brent Manning, Brian Simpson
LOCATION Asheville
NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES 16 YEAR FOUNDED 2011
ROANOKE REIGNS
By Chris Burritt
As Weldon Mills Distillery started racking up national awards in 2021 for its whiskey, co-owner Bruce Tyler told his business partner Michael Hinderliter they needed to talk.
Just a year earlier, the distillery in the northeastern North Carolina town of Weldon produced its first bourbon, Soldier’s Cut, originating from the Roanoke River. The venture stemmed from a favorite pastime of the owners: drinking booze and smoking cigars together. The business grew rapidly along with the awards from organizations such as the International Whisky Competition, the San Diego Wine and Spirits Challenge and the Craft Distillers Spirits Competition.
"We opened this distillery to be a small little operation so we’d basically have a bigger liquor collection than our friends,’’ Tyler recalls. "But once we started winning awards, we realized we had something different here.’’
Backed by investments topping $2 million, twice what Tyler had envisioned, the venture generates more than $4 million in annual revenue. Sales come from the company’s stores in Weldon and Durham, online and through most of the state’s ABC stores. Revenue is roughly doubling year after year, and the owners hope to hit $10 million annually within a few years. The operation employs 35 people.
The distillery can produce 30,000 gallons of small-batch bourbon and 50,000 gallons of other spirits annually. Next year, bourbon capacity will climb to 160,000 gallons a year, Tyler says. In the next three years, the company plans to add a mass production facility capable of producing 3 million gallons of bourbon yearly.
Weldon Mills Distillery has made a name for itself in North Carolina’s grain-to-glass movement as one of several dozen distilleries producing small batches of varied spirits. An online guide from VisitNC, the state's tourism promotion agency, lists the distillery along with nine other craft liquor makers in the first Southern state to enact Prohibition in 1920.
“While national Prohibition ended in 1933, North Carolina remained a dry state until 1935, the heyday of hooch, eventually giving birth to the firewater-fueled sport of NASCAR,’’ VisitNC says. “While moonshine once lost its luster with cheaper and more accessible liquor, it truly never died. New micro-distilleries are opening every year here, crafting small-batch gin, rum, whiskey, vodka — and, of course, moonshine. And this time, it’s legal.’’
Clap of Thunder Rum, Rey Coyote Tequila and Royal Rhubarb Gin are among Weldon Mills Distillery’s three dozen products, which mostly retail for $25 to $65. Another is Rockfish Gin, named after the striped bass that spawn in the rapids of the Roanoke River, where Tyler led the transformation of two vacant buildings. They include a circa-1892 grist mill and a 1950s garment sewing factory.
The distillery is located in the former sewing plant, while the restoration of the brick-and-timbers mill created the bar and space for weddings and other events. A tour bus shuttles people between the buildings, while several acres of riverfront property offer overnight accommodations for RV campers.
A majority of visitors to Weldon Mills Distillery are from outside of North Carolina, partly due to the town’s proximity to Interstate 95 midway between Miami and New York City, according to Tyler. That is why he and Hinderliter, who has interests in
commercial real estate, are investing in Halifax County projects other than the distillery.
Five miles away in Roanoke Rapids, the pair purchased a venue with a troubled past. Opening as the Randy Parton Theater about 20 years ago with state backing, the roughly 1,700-seat facility failed under the management of Dolly Parton’s brother. It sat vacant for more than a decade until the new owners reopened the space as the Weldon Mills Theater and began booking shows. Nearby, they’re wrapping up the renovation of a 30,000-seat outdoor amphitheater. Plans call for the first concert there in April.
CRYSTAL CLEAR
In the fall of 2018, Tyler was sitting on his back porch, sipping bourbon and puffing on a cigar, when he texted Hinderliter with an idea for a business. “Make booze” drew an affirmative response from his longtime friend.
Tyler scouted for distillery sites within an hour’s drive of Rocky Mount. After finding the historic Weldon mill online, he visited the property, which was for sale. Standing on a bridge over the Roanoke River, he was taken by the clarity of the water.
“You can see all the way down to the bottom,’’ he says. Later, he learned that the river water is hard, another favorable condition for making liquor. “It just became a no-brainer. That was where we were going to do business.’’
The partners purchased the mill and the old garment factory in early 2019. Neither knew how to make liquor, so Tyler connected with master distiller Mike Norman on a distillery organization’s site. A native of Franklin in western North Carolina, Norman grew up making moonshine before working at a distillery in Iowa. Enduring one Midwestern winter was enough, prompting him to move back to North Carolina and set up Weldon Mills’ distillery from scratch.
"Once we brought him on board, life became a whole lot easier,’’ Tyler says. "He completely filled that knowledge gap and took care of
WELDON MILLS DISTILLERY
OWNER Bruce Tyler, Michael Hinderliter
LOCATION Weldon
NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES 35 YEAR FOUNDED 2018
us. I'm a firm believer in that people are put in your lives for reasons.’’
While Tyler manages the business and Hinderliter concentrates on administrative duties, both knew they needed marketing help as revenue climbed. Tyler’s father recommended his son reach out to family acquaintance Monsell Darville, a former marketing executive with liquor giant Bacardi.
Tyler invited Darville to visit Weldon Mills Distillery. “He thought he was coming down for just a date, but he didn't realize I was tricking him into getting married,” Tyler says. “This guy’s the real deal. He brought us Grey Goose and Bombay Sapphire and a bunch of other products.’’
Darville joined the distillery and recommended the owners hire the St. Louis-based Collina Digital marketing firm. They now handle all digital efforts and produced a “website that went from looking like my son did it to looking professional,” Tyler says.’
The distillery’s first product was Soldier’s Cut, which at 82-proof had significance for Tyler because he had served in the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade. A portion of profits from Soldier’s Cut goes to Gold Star Families, a program that supports families of fallen service members.
Tyler’s brother-in-law Josh Silverman died in December 2013 when an improvised explosive device brought down the Black Hawk helicopter he was piloting in Afghanistan. Only one of the seven soldiers aboard survived.
“I got to see firsthand what the Army did well and what they didn't do well,’’ Tyler says.
The distillery began producing Soldier’s Cut in 2019, with plans to start selling the bourbon the following summer after it had matured. The onset of the pandemic in early 2020 didn’t interfere with the maturation process, but forced the distillery’s bar and grill patrons to keep their distance from one another.
A visitor at the scenic river setting suggested that Tyler host RV camping. He signed up the distillery as a member of Harvest Host, an RV camping website. The distillery doesn’t charge camping fees, but it sells liquor to visitors, which helped generate sales during the pandemic.
"We had just gotten started, and then the rug got ripped out from underneath us,’’ Tyler says.
In early 2020, Weldon Mills Distillery made hand sanitizer that it gave to visitors, first responders and others at no charge. “People were paying $300 a gallon for the stuff,” he adds. “That seemed predatory to me. I thought the right thing to do was help out the community.’’
Earlier this year, Tyler and Hinderliter expanded distribution by opening a speakeasy-style bar and event venue in downtown Durham. Hinderliter, 40, lives in the building penthouse. Tyler, 50, lives in Rocky Mount, where he started looking for a new adventure as he was preparing to retire in 2020 from the U.S. Army and N.C. National Guard.
The new facility mixes and bottles spirits, but doesn’t distill there. “I don't want to put something that can explode in the middle of downtown Durham,” Tyler says. ■
BWILD LIFE
By Kevin Ellis
efore discussing the mechanics of how RiverWild became a brand for a family of companies, Reid Smith says it’s important to know the motivation behind starting the business.
“RiverWild was founded on a guiding principle to impact people and develop people. That’s our first priority,” says Smith, who started working with his wife, Jaclyn, in 2014. “My wife and I thought, ‘If you’ve got to work somewhere, why not pick a place where you will enjoy it and have pride in what you do.’”
A people-focused business approach gives employees freedom from micromanagement and the ability to create a work-life balance. That’s what he wanted, too, he says. Examples can be found in unlimited personal time off for managers and a 24-hour gym for RiverWild construction employees at the Clayton headquarters. Good employees get the job done without baby-sitting, he says. For clients, it involves being transparent, valuing long-term relationships and giving them access to decision-makers if problems arise.
He believes that’s the secret behind the success of a company that began in residential real estate a decade ago, but has evolved to include commercial construction, development, a faith-based foundation and the more recent enterprise of selling Wagyu beef. The latter is headquartered on a 1,200-acre Sampson County ranch that the Smiths purchased in 2021 for $7.19 million.
“We wanted to have a company that did it differently,” says Reid Smith.
Differences include establishing their One Compassion foundation, which provides a range of services from regional
disaster relief, to providing toys at Christmas for Johnston County children and buying local farm products to donate to food banks. It logged more than 1,000 volunteer hours last year, served more than 2,300 meals and served 291 families.
“We knew when we started, that wherever the business went, it would take the community to help get us there, so we wanted to give back hand-in-hand,” he says.
RiverWild Construction President Nick McKeel says he could tell the company was different when he joined them in January 2021 as a project manager. It was then known as Providence Construction.
By January 2022, McKeel was in his current role and the company had rebranded to RiverWild. “Our company’s ability to be proud of our faith and address that publicly is pretty cool,” says McKeel, a Wilson County native and 2007 East Carolina University grad with a degree in construction management. McKeel’s wife, Jenna, is a director at One Compassion.
Reid Smith is a Johnston County native. He and his wife, who’s from a Philadelphia suburb, met while both were on the golf teams at Campbell University. Both graduated in 2008. He earned a business degree, while she studied elementary education. By 2014, Jaclyn Smith had her real estate license and Reid Smith was a homebuilder. That was also the start of their business relationship.
“She would list them and I would build the homes,” he says.
Within three years, the company expanded from a residential neighborhood developer to a construction company doing site work on larger industrial projects
including schools, apartment complexes and grocery stores.
RiverWild provides grading work as well as water, sewer, stormwater and asphalt in preparing sites for construction. RiverWild tries to work within an hour’s drive of Clayton in Johnston County. That puts them in areas of high growth such as Raleigh and Durham, but also smaller communities like Apex, Garner and Selma.
“We’re just blessed to be in a good location economically. A lot of things happen here,” says McKeel. “The most rewarding thing to me is rather than just throwing out bids, we are able to have a lot of repeat business with key customers and owners.”
In construction, various companies fill different roles to move a project toward delivery. For RiverWild, that means weekly meetings and communication about the challenges of a project and a continuous snapshot of the status of the work, Smith says.
“We try to make sure that the client has all the information they need and that we’re communicating with them the best that we can,” Smith says. “We want to provide value engineering, save money, and be a partner with them, rather than it just be a business transaction.”
Anthony Gallo, a senior project manager for Raleigh-based Salisbury & Moore Construction, was at a different company when he worked with RiverWild in 2020 on construction of an elementary school in Johnston County. He has since worked with them on a water treatment plant in his current role.
RiverWild has the right people on the job site at the right time, while other companies often try to employ the same people on a variety of tasks at varying levels of quality. RiverWild workers do what they’ve promised, says Gallo. “What they’re doing is a testament to their hard work,” he says.
Smith says the company likes to tell clients “we bid it the way we’re going to build it.” If problems arise, a client can talk to a decision-maker to make it right. “We prioritize the longer-term relationship and the longer-term value with our clients rather than any short-term victory,” says Smith.
Everything starts with caring for the employee and the client, he adds.
“The projects and business stuff takes care of itself when you start with caring for the people. Our clients feel that we care about them, their kids, their life journey. We just happen to do site work for them.”
In the first quarter of this year, RiverWild budgeted $6.7 million of revenue, but the company reached nearly $9.4 million, which was 159% more than the same period a year earlier.
WILL TO WIN
RiverWild also includes RiverWild Development, RiverWild Construction, RiverWild Homes, RiverWild Real Estate, Wilders, Wilders Wagyu and One Compassion. The “Wild” part of the name is an acronym for “Will to win; Intentional adaptability; Live compassionately; and Disciplined execution.”
The “Wild Way” can be seen at their ranch, where they provide birthing plans and toys and bubbles to keep calves entertained. “Happy, healthy cows make for a better experience for everyone. Food production is inevitable, but how our animals get to that end matters,” according to their website. They ship their Wagyu beef and Berkshire pork products online, while also selling at a general store near the ranch in Turkey, at farmers markets and in partnerships with several restaurants.
RiverWild enters 2025 with a good backlog of business although Smith says things have slowed overall compared with two or three years ago. “The inflation battle that the world is fighting right now is real. We’re not looking to grow just for the sake of growing,” he says. “Anything we do, we need to be intentional and impact our people in a positive way.”
He puts a premium on company culture. “It’s like a marriage,” he says. “You’ve got to earn it every day. We come to work every day to earn our people, to attract talent, to retain talent.”
RIVERWILD CONSTRUCTION
FOUNDERS Reid and Jaclyn Smith
LOCATION Clayton
NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES 88 YEAR FOUNDED 2017
And success? It’s more than just a number, Smith says.
“The people we’ve met, the people we get to do life with every day, we have succeeded in that regard.” ■
TRAIL BOSS
By Kevin Ellis
The competition can’t hide in the sale of trailers, and Johnny Shelton could see more large dealerships sprouting in lots along the highways near his North Carolina Trailer Sales business in Thomasville.
To fight back, North Carolina Trailer Sales changed the way it attracts customers, focused on getting repeat business and borrowed some strategies from auto sales to make it easier for people to buy from him.
Those changes are paying off as NC Trailers grew from $4.7 million in sales in 2017 to $7.5 million in 2020 and $10.6 million last year. Trailer unit sales increased from 800 in 2015 to 1,500 in 2021.
NC Trailers also expanded its physical footprint by opening a second lot in November 2023 about 25 miles north in Winston-Salem. The expansion proved challenging, but appears to be paying off.
“There’s a lot of people between us and those two locations,” says Shelton. Because it’s in a larger city, the Winston-Salem location also should have excellent growth potential.
Trailer sales tend to follow the economy, with individuals and businesses buying them out of need, Shelton says. Trailer registrations, which are a market indicator, increased steadily between 2010 and 2019, and then exponentially in 2020 through 2022.
The number of large trailer dealerships within 80 miles of Shelton’s Thomasville location grew from 15 to 22 between 2020 and 2022, he says.
A steep drop in registrations followed in 2023 and has continued this year. The level is now down to the pace of 2015. Reasons for the decline include a slower overall economy, higher interest rates and a post-pandemic market correction, Shelton says. NC Trailers sells about a dozen product brands and 10 different types, everything from concession and food trailers, landscape and utility, enclosed trailers and ones that come with a dumping feature. More than half of NC Trailers’ customers live within 80 miles of the store and about 95% are within 120 miles. Online reviews are one way to attract customers, Shelton says. People may not be familiar with the differences between trailer brands and types, so they have to rely on the dealer’s help. NC Trailers has more than 1,400 reviews with at least a 4.8 out of 5-star rating on Google.
“Early on we set out to be the bestrated dealer in the Carolinas,” says Shelton. “It helps customers build trust in our brand.”
Shelton’s parents started NC Trailers in 1996. He spent his boyhood working on the lot after school, on weekends and during the summers. After he earned a civil engineering degree from UNC Charlotte in 2005 and spent several years in engineering-related jobs. In 2011, he returned to the family business, which then had two employees. By 2015, when he bought the company, it employed six.
Shelton says he wanted to grow the business. One way was to attract return customers. He hired a mechanical staff to work on trailers, whether the
customer had bought a boat trailer, horse trailer or a custom food trailer. He wanted someone who could help customers by assembling equipment, adding accessories or doing repairs. NC Trailer now has six employees doing those jobs.
“There’s a lot of trailers being sold, but there’s not a lot of people willing to work on them, and that’s one thing that sets us apart from our competition,” Shelton says. They’ve also expanded into recreational vehicle repairs, truck bed servicing and accessories and fifth-wheel hitch installation.
Having a robust service department similar to automobile dealers pays dividends in other ways, such as providing service reminders to customers, organizing processes and nurturing leads to help sell more trailers, Shelton says. The company works with Davidson-Davie Community College to help train workers, he adds.
To further grow, Shelton studied how automobile dealers arrange financing. Most of Shelton’s trailers cost between about $3,500 and $30,000. “If someone has $7,000, but they need a trailer that costs $10,000, we have expertise in-house that can help,” says Shelton. “We’ve truly got into a true financing and insurance department in the last four years.”
The different operations diversify the business, and prepare it for further growth, he says. “It’s almost like running three separate businesses,” he says. The ultimate goal is to continue expanding with more stores. By 2031, NC Trailer expects to add four dealership locations at undetermined North Carolina locations. Some stores will be new locations and others acquired businesses, he says.
OWNER Johnny Shelton
LOCATION Thomasville, Winston-Salem
NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES 22 YEAR FOUNDED 1996
Experimentation has also helped grow the business. In recent years, NC Trailers has created content for blogs, social media channels from Facebook to TikTok and websites. Monthly newsletters, email and text campaigns are part of the mix. A lot of little things can make a big difference, he says.
“The customer is the true test. They tell us with their wallets as much as they do their words,” he says.
Software changes have streamlined the customer experience and made it easier to shop online and see available inventory, Shelton says. Those changes made the transition of adding a second store in Winston-Salem smoother.
“We’ve had to learn a lot to operate that location efficiently,” Shelton says. The Winston-Salem store has three employees and an inventory of between 80 and 100 trailers, about one-third of what’s available in Thomasville, Shelton says. Most office functions such as financing take place in the original location.
The software changes also help NC Trailers share inventory information, improve hiring and training practices and ensure that sales leads go to the right store.
In the past year, NC Trailers has conducted more than 100 employee training sessions and recognized 200 employee achievements during company meetings.
“We believe in working together to support the significant moments in each other’s lives, our customers and our community,” says Shelton. ■
MOON SHOT
New Hanover County sold its hospital for peak value, creating a rare chance to better the community. Dan Winslow is at the helm.
By David Mildenberg
Talk about a great gig: Dan Winslow’s job is to help a $1.6 billion endowment eventually give away $80 million a year or more for worthy causes in an area totaling about 242,000 people.
Formed by the sale of the Wilmington area’s main hospital in 2021, the New Hanover Community Endowment instantly became among the state’s largest nonpro t charitable organizations. It's larger than the Winston-Salem Foundation, which has $744 million in assets a er operating for nearly 80 years. And it’s slightly larger than the Rocky Mount-based Golden LEAF Foundation, which taps its $1.4 billion portfolio to support dozens of North Carolina counties that formerly relied on the shrinking tobacco industry.“
“Our mission is to create transformational change for all citizens throughout New Hanover County, so that all can thrive,” says Shannon Winslow, an endowment board member who chaired the search committee that recommended hiring Dan Winslow. ( e two aren’t related.)
As the endowment’s CEO since October, Winslow is now the quarterback for a community foundation that he says may have more money per capita than any other in the U.S.
e group expressly limits its giving to organizations in New Hanover County, which was the state’s most powerful county in the late 19th and early 20th century because of its port and railroad hub.
Groups across the bridges in Brunswick County and other nearby counties need not apply, based on the logic that only New Hanover taxpayers backed the debt that nanced the hospital’s growth. Many question that logic because patients from outside New Hanover make up a majority of the hospital system’s revenue. But no one thinks the rules will change.
WIRED FOR THE JOB
Winslow’s key job is to ensure the group's philanthropy creates long-term value, which is where things get interesting.
“Transformational change is bigger than funding routine, mom and pop 501(c)3s,” says endowment board member Woody White, who played a key role in its formation. “I never intended for the endowment to be a clearinghouse for local nonpro t grant writers.”
Winslow has his shot because the endowment’s rst leader, Willam Buster, le the job in February, two years a er his hiring. Reasons are unclear. Buster and board Chair Bill Cameron won’t say what happened. Buster was paid about $330,000 in 2022, according to the group’s last public ling. Winslow’s starting salary is $325,000. e departure surprised the community because Buster had an impressive resume, with key previous roles at large charitable groups including Dogwood Health Trust in Asheville and the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation in Winston-Salem. But something didn’t click between him and the board, which is dominated by representatives of some of in uential Wilmington families.
Other endowment o cials also le this fall, including Lakesha McDay, who had been interim director a er being among the group’s initial hires.
In response, the endowment hired Durham-based search rm Moss+Ross to lead a nationwide search. A er looking at 164 candidates, the 13-member board hired Winslow. It was an unusual decision. e Massachusetts native, 66, has never worked in North Carolina or the South, nor has he worked at a large charitable organization.
But Winslow has had an unusually diverse career, working his way up to partner at a large Boston law rm, serving as an appointed district court judge and an elected Bay State lawmaker, helping build a publicly traded so ware company and running a statewide legal foundation, among other things.
“Dan’s leadership across multiple sectors really distinguished him among a deep, talented pool of candidates,” says Mary Moss, a partner and cofounder of Moss+Ross. “His passion for the work of community building combined with skills and experience to deliver results – that’s what got him the job.”
Director Shannon Winslow, who works for WebMD, says the new CEO is “wired” for the job. “Dan clearly appreciates the mission, and he will make sure that the people hired at the Endowment believe and live the mission,” she says.
Powerful jobs invariably draw skeptics. A vocal critic is Harper Peterson, a former mayor and state senator who wants elected o cials to oversee the endowment, not community insiders. “Mr. Winslow’s credentials are impressive, but he has no reason to be the head of this group. He’s a libertarian ideologue who does not know the priorities of this community,” he says.
Sonya Taylor, leader of the county chapter of the National Black Leadership Caucus, says hiring a white male to replace Buster, who is Black, was disappointing. “William Buster’s credentials showed he had done some amazing things,” she says. She questions leaders’ commitment to diversity, noting that New Hanover County’s rst Black school superintendent was red in July. Shannon Winslow says the endowment board is diverse, with two Black members and one Hispanic. Dan Dan Winslow says he will listen to all voices and focus on results.
LARGEST NORTH CAROLINA FOUNDATIONS & ENDOWMENTS
BOSTON BACKGROUND
Holding a tension- lled role isn’t new for the CEO. e Wilmington job provides an opportunity “to become a social innovation laboratory to test and try new thinking to solve old problems,” he says. “ ere’s not a problem that exists in New Hanover County that doesn’t exist somewhere else in the United States.”
Solving challenging problems is a continuing thread throughout his career, he says, and that impressed the search committee, which included board members Cameron, Shannon Winslow, White, Cedric Dickerson and David Sprunt.
In his sole term as a Republican legislator in Massachusetts from 2011-13, Winslow sponsored a bill to make it easier for children with intellectual disabilities to qualify for bene ts as adults. It passed with bipartisan support in a legislature dominated by Democratic members.
Earlier in his career, Winslow worked for two years as chief legal counsel to Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who is now retiring as a U.S. senator from Utah. He’d met Romney while working on voting-rights-related matters when the business executive ran for Senate against Ted Kennedy in 1994. He sums up lessons from his Romney days succinctly: “Show up for meetings on time and hire the best people.”
From 2013 to 2021, Winslow was the top lawyer at Las Vegasbased Rimini Street, a third-party so ware support company formed in Silicon Valley in 2005. He helped the company go public in 2017 and assembled a team of more than 60 lawyers to monitor contracts. Rimini Street has struggled nancially in recent years, and its stock was trading in November for less than $2, down from its IPO price of $10.
For the past three years, Winslow led the New England Legal Foundation, which promotes free enterprise principles including traditional property rights and limited government. He helped the group raise more than $1 million in 2022, a record amount with backing from large corporations and law rms, among others.
A common thread in those stops was a desire to make the world a better place, Winslow says. His Wilmington job, “is the culmination of all of those jobs,” he says. “Each of these diverse jobs has given me an opportunity to make a di erence in some small way.”
While new to the Port City, Winslow has visited o en. Two brothers are cardiologists in New Hanover and Brunswick County, while another is a nancial adviser in Wilmington. One of his brothers tipped him o about the endowment job.
Winslow emphasizes that the compounding of annual returns means that the endowment expects to make billions of dollars of investments over the decades.
Starting in 2028, the endowment is required to place at least 5% of its assets in the community. “It’s amazing if you think about it,” he notes. e portfolio is managed by New York-based BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager.
e endowment has made about $100 million in grants and pledges for a wide variety of causes. Winslow points to an investment of 30 beds for unhoused residents as an example of an important initial impact. In December, the group announced more than $53 million of grants, highlighted by a three-year, $22 million commitment to boost the number of healthcare workers trained locally.
One of the larger grants is $6.8 million for a nonpro t food cooperative in north Wilmington, which local o cials call a “food desert” for area residents. It’s about a mile northeast of the central business district.
As part of the group’s founding, New Hanover leaders set up the endowment as a private organization, so it doesn’t face the disclosure requirements of a public entity. eir hope was to make the group less political, though former Mayor Peterson calls it a “mindblogging, sophisticated political heist. is is a continuation of rich, white corporate insiders running the show and expecting everyone else to move with them.”
Winslow had no role in designing the endowment, but calls it an inspired, perhaps unique approach with board members holding very diverse views. “How o en have you ever seen politicians willing to give up money and power,” he says. Novant Health appoints six directors, the county commission names ve and two are picked by the board itself.
“ at insulation gives us a bit more freedom to be bold, to be innovative,” he says. “We can go for the moonshot.”
NEW HANOVER COMMUNITY ENDOWMENT BOARD MEMBERS
BILL CAMERON, CHAIR, REAL ESTATE INVESTOR
SHANNON WINSLOW, VICE CHAIR, HEALTHCARE EXECUTIVE
DR. PATRICK MAGUIRE
JACK BARTO, RETIRED HOSPITAL CEO
DR. KHADIJIA TRIBIÉ REID
MARY LYONS ROUSE, PRIVATE-SCHOOL FUNDRAISER
DR. EDELMIRA SEGOVIA
BILL BLAIR, LOGISTICS COMPANY PRESIDENT
CHRIS BONEY, ARCHITECT
SPENCE BROADHURST, BANKER
CEDRIC DICKERSON, INSURANCE AGENT
DAVID HARRISS SPRUNT, REAL ESTATE INVESTOR
WOODY WHITE, LAWYER
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
The New Hanover Community Endowment’s formation provides insight about Wilmington and healthcare.
In many parts of the state and nation, county governments gained ownership of hospitals in the early and mid-20th century because of nancial and regulatory pressures. A county referendum in 1961 approved creation of New Hanover Regional Memorial Hospital, which led to the merger of James Walker Memorial Hospital and Community Hospital. e latter mainly served Black residents a er its formation in 1921.
Walker Hospital was named a er a Scottish-born developer who moved to Wilmington in 1857. It opened in 1902, four years a er white supremacists staged a coup that killed as many as 60 Black residents and drove hundreds of people away from New Hanover County. For much of its history, Black physicians were prohibited from practicing at Walker, which had a separate annex for patients who were not white.
e coup is considered the only successful overthrow of a domestic government in American history. It has attracted increasing attention to Wilmington because of journalist David Zucchino’s 2020 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “Wilmington’s Lie: e Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy.”
about the idea. Many county boards across North Carolina either sold their hospitals or created not-for-pro t authorities over the past 25 years. e theory is that hospitals operate better with stand-alone boards focused on healthcare, with less scrutiny from elected county o cials whose work covers public schools, social services and other matters. Industry executives typically prefer more independence, which has enabled higher compensation.
White, who grew up in Bladen County, has practiced law in New Hanover County for more than 20 years. He was a New Hanover County commissioner from 2012-20, including two stints as board chair. He led the e ort to lower the county’s property taxes for two straight years, a rst in county history. He was appointed to the UNC System Board of Governors in 2023 a er serving on UNC Wilmington's board from 2018-21.
In November, PBS’s Frontline program debuted a two-hour documentary about the coup. An initial screening was held at alian Hall, the downtown Wilmington venue where white supremacist Alfred Waddell successfully pressed white residents to remove Black and sympathetic white o cials about 126 years earlier.
In 1898, Blacks made up a majority of Wilmington’s population and held three of 10 Town Council seats. A er the coup, the city didn’t elect a Black city leader until 1972. In November’s election, Jonathan Bar eld, the only current Black county commissioner, was ousted a er 16 years by 244 votes.
WELL PLAYED
New Hanover County built a new hospital in 1967, which grew along with Wilmington over the next 50 years. It employed more than 7,400 people and reported annual revenue topping $1 billion by 2019.
It is a key medical center for seven counties, bene ting from North Carolina’s Certi cate of Need laws that protect hospitals from competition. While CON faces constant criticism from some lawmakers who favor free-market healthcare, the hospital industry argues that the regulations help the state avoid wasteful spending on facilities and equipment, holding down medical costs.
White says most people were initially opposed to a sale because the hospital was operating pro tably and scored well on industry quality surveys. He was persistent, however, noting that it was increasingly hard to compete with larger rivals and that the county was facing a major debt burden to nance a list of $2 billion in needed capital projects.
In July 2019, the county board agreed to study the matter, and three months later voted 3-2 to explore a change in ownership. A 21-member Partnership Advisory Group, including in uential leaders, was formed to study the hospital’s future. “I thought it was a 50-50 deal, that they would either recommend selling it or say, `Heck no, we can’t do that,’” White says.
A er several months, the advisory group and county board set up a sales process that led to bids from six big hospital operators, including Atrium Health, Duke Health and HCA International. e public auction process helped drive the price higher, culminating in the February 2021 sale of New Hanover Regional to Novant Health. e state’s second-largest hospital operator agreed to pay $1.25 billion to the new endowment; $300 million for a county revenue stabilization fund; $50 million for mental health services; and about $2 billion of hospital capital projects over 10 years.
ree and a half years later, Novant Health’s operation has sparked some community criticism about sta ng levels and declining quality.
Geography also aids the Wilmington hospital, because the Atlantic Ocean borders the county. No competitors are nipping away from the east.
New Hanover, like many municipalities, periodically studies the nancial status of its key assets, including the hospital. ey received a report by Charlotte-based bond consultants First Tryon Advisors about the potential of creating a di erent corporate structure.
Still, the sale wasn’t a top-of-mind issue in 2018, when county commission Chair Woody White asked local leaders their thoughts
e Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services now ranks New Hanover Regional Medical Center with a 2-star rating, putting it in the bottom 30% of U.S. hospitals. It had a three-star rating in 2019, the last year it was ranked before Novant Health’s purchase. By comparison, the WakeMed, Duke Health and UNC Health hospitals in the Triangle each have 4-star or 5-star rankings, the highest available.
But the concerns at the coast haven’t risen to anywhere near the controversy in Asheville following HCA Healthcare’s 2019 purchase of Mission Hospital. While some N.C. hospital o cials contend Novant Health overpaid for New Hanover Regional, the healthcare system has continued its acquisitive ways. In February, it paid $2.4 billion for three South Carolina hospitals with combined revenue of $550 million, about half the amount of the New Hanover enterprise.
CENTRAL TIME
Success at the state’s smallest public university propels Karrie Dixon to a bigger challenge in Durham.
By Mike MacMillan
NC CENTRAL FAST FACTS
(Fall 2024 data)
Total students:8,579 (7.7% increase)
Undergraduates6,579 (10.4%)
Graduate students1,984 - (0.4% decrease)
Underrepresented minorities - 88%
Students from Durham and Wake counties - 2,380
Students who received federal Pell grants - 56.6%
Average federal debt for bachelor’s graduates - $19, 244
source: UNC System
For most of her life, North Carolina Central University Chancellor Karrie Dixon considered herself to be a “ rst generation” college graduate. But a er her father earned a bachelor’s degree in Bible studies from Piedmont International University in Winston-Salem in 2019, the narrative was a little scrambled.
Aldine Gibson’s degree earned at age 61 throws a light on the value that the Dixon family places on higher education. Dixon, a Winston-Salem native, is all in. Now, she is stepping up her game, having le her post as chancellor at Elizabeth City State to take the reins at the state’s second-biggest historically Black university in June.
It’s an exciting time for HBCUs, which are receiving record nancial support while confronting many of the same challenges as other higher education peers. Examples include a $100 million Lilly Endowment donation to the United Negro College Fund; a $100 million gi to Atlanta’s Spelman College; and $36 million shared with six schools by various donors. In September 2023, a philanthropic group supported by the Gates Foundation, MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon founder Je Bezos, and others gave $124 million to support HBCUs.
Over the past two years, N.C. Central has received equipment and other in-kind contributions totaling about $9.4 million from Cisco, which has been a major Durham employer for many years.
Meanwhile, federal funding totaled a record $17 billion for HBCUs between 2021 and 2024. In North Carolina, the ve public HBCUs in the UNC System receive about $440 million annually from state co ers.
Like many U.S. universities, HBCU undergraduate enrollment is strengthening a er some at-to-down years. N.C. Central enrolled 8,579 students this fall, 1,026 more than two years earlier. It has been the fastest-growing UNC System school for two consecutive years.
It is a good time to be at Central, Dixon says. “ is is the place to be,” she says. “It’s a wonderful university. It plays a signi cant role in the community. I’m really excited about the work that’s being done.”
Dixon had led Elizabeth City State since 2018, and enrollment there has gained nearly 70% since 2016 through this past fall, to about 2,160 students. e campus also raised $24 million in private gi s, while attracting nearly $300 million from state and federal partnerships.
at was no mean feat for a school that had been beset for years by a series of scandals and infrastructure problems. Prior to her arrival, enrollment had plummeted to 1,357 students.
Dixon pushed to make building repairs, secured more state funding and boosted the number of transfer students from eastern North Carolina’s community colleges. Elizabth City State also bene ted as a charter member of North Carolina Promise, which lowers in-state tuition to $500 a semester.
Dixon also focused on expanding Elizabeth City’s unusual aviation program, which provides training for air tra c control, aviation management and unmanned aircra systems. “Chancellor Dixon was a true ambassador for Elizabeth City State and for Elizabeth City,” says the city’s mayor, Kirk Rivers, noting that she o en traveled to Raleigh to make the university’s case to legislators. “ e growth of ECSU allowed the city to grow.”
DOUBLING UP
At N.C. Central, Dixon succeeds Johnson Akinleye, who had the job since 2017. She is the second person to serve as chancellor at two separate universities within the UNC System. (Harold Martin, who held the position at both N.C. State A&T and WinstonSalem State, is the other). She traces her interest in higher education administration to the classroom at UNC Greensboro, where she taught in the communications department from 1998-2000.
“ at was my lightbulb moment. I felt the energy in the classroom and saw the challenges students faced, especially rstyear students. I knew that if I wanted to make a more meaningful impact, that meant being involved in policy,” Dixon says. “One of the most important things I’ve learned is that it’s OK to change your mind or pivot when you nd a path that truly resonates with your purpose.”
Dixon earned a doctorate in education administration from NC State University in 2003, then spent four years at the Raleigh school as an assistant vice provost. en-President Erskine Bowles tapped her for a UNC System post in 2008, and she spent 10 years there in various capacities, while developing “a love for HBCUs,” as she puts it. In 2018, then-President Margaret Spellings named her chancellor at Elizabeth City State.
At N.C. Central, Dixon joins a school ranked 11th among HBCUs and 24th for the best value among Southern schools, according to U.S. News & World Report’s annual survey. U.S. News focused on academic reputation, cost of attendance, and return on investment. In social mobility, which re ects a school’s support for economically disadvantaged students, N.C. Central rose to eighth from 10th a year earlier.
PLAYING CATCH UP
N.C. Central was founded in 1910 by Dr. James Shepard, whose statue stands at the gateway to the university, just o Fayetteville Street in south Durham. Shepard was a Raleigh native who trained as a pharmacist. In 1925, it became the nation’s rst statefunded liberal arts college for Black students and Shepard was named president, a role he held until his death in 1947. Previous institutions for Blacks had focused on agriculture and career training.
N.C. Central has traditionally received less public and private funding than most non-HBCU peers. e imbalances limit the ability to provide student aid, and to invest in programs and infrastructure.
But the campus has bene ted from major state investment in recent years. e Alston Street Apartments and George Street Residential Complex opened in late 2020, while the $55.4 million student center and the Lawson Street Residential Hall opened in early 2021. In March, the campus added a three-story, $39 million College of Business building that includes a 200-seat auditorium.
N.C. Central had an endowment of about $64 million in April, compared with $5 .7 billion at UNC Chapel Hill and $12 billion at nearby Duke University. e two Durham schools maintain the Duke-NCCU Bridge O ce, established in 2017, to advance initiatives related to workforce development, community engagement and pilot research studies. Dixon says she hopes to expand relationships with the internationally renowned university that is Durham’s largest employer.
“From the standpoint of resources, HBCUs have been historically underfunded,” says Dixon. “ at gives us the motivation to tell the HBCU story. We have to ask for the resources. We have to be advocates.”
e chancellor lists infrastructure and facilities along with increasing enrollment, safety and security of the campus as her top priorities. “Infrastructure is critical. (We need) the resources to maintain that competitive edge and a high-quality education experience.”
Growing the endowment also gures prominently in Dixon’s plans. About 50 miles west of campus, N.C. A&T State University has an endowment topping $200 million, which is the largest among U.S. HBCUs.
“Fundraising and establishing more relationships with donors and partners is very important. e endowment provides stability for the institution,” she says.
Philanthropy dollars matter in higher education. “It doesn’t take much to make a di erence at the margin,” says Katherine Meyer, a fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution think tank. “Even $2,000-$5,000 in debt can be enough to deter a family (from sending a child to college).”
OUTSIZED IMPACT
A decade ago, Students for Fair Admissions, brought the legal case against Harvard College and UNC Chapel Hill that would ultimately result in the abolishment of the use of race as a factor in college admissions, Admissions data released this past fall shows declining Black student enrollment at MIT, Harvard, UNC and other schools. But some peers, including Duke and the University of Virginia, have seen little impact.
“It’ll take a couple of years to see how that (the Supreme Court decision) plays out,” says Meyer. It will be “less about a rmative action and more about what (the end of a rmative action) does to the student body and how future cohorts perceive it.”
She adds that more minority students will likely be asking, “Is this a place I see myself?” It’s natural, she says, for “students to turn to HBCUs where they see people like them, where they have a sense of belonging.”
While only 3% of U.S. higher education institutions, the schools have long played “an incredible legacy of making contributions to American society,” says Deondra Rose, an assistant professor of public policy at Duke’s Sanford School and author of a recent book on HBCUs. Graduates of the schools make up 80% of Black judges, 50% of Black lawyers, and 40% of Black members of Congress, she says, citing the urgood Marshall College Fund. Fully 25% of STEM degrees earned by Black students come from HBCUs.
Denise Smith, deputy director of higher education policy at the Washington, D.C.-based Century Foundation, says, “People are seeing the talent that’s coming from HBCUs. ( ey see) you don’t have to have an Ivy League education to be excellent. at’s impacting how the next generation is seeing these institutions. ey can go to an HBCU and their education will take them anywhere.” ■
HBCU ROI
North Carolina will invest about $440 million from the general fund in its ve public HBCUs in 2024, according to documents from the UNC System. So what does the state get for its money?
e United Negro College Fund has done the math. Statewide, and including the six non-public institutions, its most recent report estimated that in 2021, HBCUs delivered $1.8 billion in total economic impact annually and 16,242 jobs. N.C. Central’s total economic impact in the Durham community is estimated to be $388.5 million, and 3,411 jobs, according to the report.
e numbers as compiled by the UNCF include both direct economic impact — money spent on salaries for example — and indirect economic impact — money circulating in the community through payments to vendors and other suppliers. Given this return on investment, and the outsized contribution made by HBCUs to the Black professional class and to social mobility, it would appear money well spent.
- Mike MacMillan
North Carolina’s most respected doctors in 65 specialties are presented in this annual report. Those cited were selected by their peers with a goal of saluting the state’s leading medical practitioners.
Methodology and disclaimer: This report was produced by DataJoe Research, a software and research company specializing in data collection and verification. The Lakewood, Colorado-based company conducts various nominations across the United States on behalf of publishers. To create the “Top octors” list, DataJoe Research facilitated an online peer-voting process, also referencing government sources.
DataJoe then tallied the votes per category for each doctor to isolate the top nominees in each category. After collecting nominations and additional information, DataJoe checked and confirmed that each published winner had a current, active license status with the state regulatory board. If we were not able to find evidence of a doctor’s current, active registration with the state regulatory board, that doctor was excluded from the list.
In addition, any doctor who has been disciplined, up to the time frame of our review process for an infraction by the state regulatory board, was excluded from the list. Finally, DataJoe presented the tallied result to the magazine for its final review and adjustments.
We recognize that there are many good doctors who are not shown in this representation. This is only a sampling of the huge array of talented professionals within the region. Inclusion in the list is based on the opinions of responding doctors in the region and the results of our research campaign. We take time and energy to ensure fair voting, although we understand that the results of this survey nomination are not an objective metric. We certainly do not discount the fact that many good and effective doctors may not appear on the list. DataJoe uses best practices and exercises great care in assembling content for this list. DataJoe does not warrant that the data contained within the list are complete or accurate. DataJoe does not assume, and hereby disclaims, any liability to any person for any loss or damage caused by errors or omissions herein whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident or any other cause. All rights reserved. No commercial use of the information in this list may be made without written permission from DataJoe
For research/methodology questions, contact the research team at surveys@datajoe.com.
ALLERGY IMMUNOLOGY
Jason Caldwell Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
S. Nicole Chadha Carolina Asthma & Allergy Center Charlotte
Leslie Cristiano Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Pulmonary Sleep & Allergy Winston-Salem
Heather Gutekunst Allergy Partners Of Raleigh Raleigh
Caroline Hobbs Atrium Health Allergy Asthma & Immunology Charlotte
Edwin Kim UNC Hospitals Children's Specialty Clinics Chapel Hill
Mildred Kwan UNC Faculty Physicians Center Chapel Hill
Diane Laber Allergy Partners Of The Piedmont Pinehurst
J. Gray Norris Carolina Asthma & Allergy Center Charlotte
Vandana Patel Carolina Asthma & Allergy Center Gastonia
Ekta Shah Atrium Health Allergy Asthma & Immunology Charlotte
ANESTHESIOLOGY
John Berry VII FirstHealth Providence Anesthesiology Associates Pinehurst
Matthew Buck UNC School Of Medicine Chapel Hill
Kathryn Chance SCA Health Charlotte Surgery Charlotte
David Chiu Salem Professional Anesthesiology Advance
Jenny Dhingra Scope Anesthesia of North Carolina Charlotte
Troy Gingerich Southeast Pain & Spine Care Monroe
Ashraf Habib Duke Birthing Center Durham
Brent Holway SCA Health Charlotte Surgery Center Charlotte
Freeman Jackson Jr. Providence Anesthesiology Associates Charlotte
Benjamin Judd Providence Anesthesiology Associates Pinehurst
Raza Khan Atrium Health Pineville Pain Management Charlotte
Lavinia Kolarczyk UNC Hospitals Chapel Hill
Marley Lawrence North American Partners In Anesthesia Burlington
Lindsay Lewis Mid-Carolina Obstetrics & Gynecology Raleigh
Maria Lupa UNC Hospitals Chapel Hill
David Mayer UNC Hospitals Chapel Hill
Mark Mueller Allcare Clinical Associates Asheville
Thomas Mulford Outpatient Surgery Center Of Asheville Asheville
Bryant Murphy UNC Hospitals Chapel Hill
Lindsey Nelson Medstream Asheville
Katherine Nicholas East Carolina Anesthesia Specialists Gastonia
Kimberley Nichols UNC Hospitals Chapel Hill
Matthew Oldroyd FirstHealth Interventional Pain Medicine Pinehurst
Anthony Passannante UNC Hospitals Chapel Hill
Jeff Plotkin Scope Anesthesia of North Carolina Charlotte
Jacland ReVille Jr. FirstHealth Interventional Pain Medicine - Pinehurst Pinehurst
Douglas Ririe Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Farrukh Sair Providence Anesthesiology Associates Charlotte
Joshua Schwartz East Carolina Anesthesia Associates Greenville
Kathleen Smith UNC Hospitals Chapel Hill
Emily Teeter UNC Hospitals Chapel Hill
Brian Thwaites Providence Anesthesia Associates Pinehurst
Chuanyao Tong Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
James Winkley Providence Anesthesiology Associates Charlotte
Rob Worth Scope Anesthesia of North Carolina Charlotte
David Zvara UNC School Of Medicine Chapel Hill
CARDIOLOGY
Benjamin Atkeson North Carolina Heart & Vascular Smithfield
Peter Belford Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Cardiology Bermuda Run
Daniel Bensimhon Cone Health Medical Group Heartcare Greensboro
Matthew Cavender UNC Hospitals Outpatient Center Chapel Hill
George Clinard Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute Charlotte
Cody Deen UNC Cardiology Hillsborough
Michael Elliott Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute Charlotte
Joseph Falsone North Carolina Heart & Vascular Raleigh
David Framm Tryon Medical Partners Charlotte
Theodore Frank Atrium Health Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute Charlotte
David Frazier ECU Health Medical Center Greenville
Christopher Gregory ECU Health Heart & Vascular Care Greenville
Christian Gring North Carolina Heart & Vascular Clayton
Jason Haag WakeMed Heart & Vascular Raleigh
Joseph Hakas Jr. Pinehurst Medical Clinic Pinehurst
J. Kevin Harrison Duke Cardiology Arringdon Morrisville
John Holshouser Atrium Health Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute Charlotte
Brett Izzo Asheville Cardiology Associates Asheville
Eric Janis North Carolina Heart & Vascular Smithfield
Jeffrey Klein UNC Hospitals Outpatient Center Chapel Hill
Daniel Koehler Atrium Health Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute Lincolnton
Jack Kuritzky Chapel Hill Internal Medicine Chapel Hill
Olujide Lawal FirstHealth Cardiology Laurinburg
Troy Leo Atrium Health Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute Charlotte
Jan Levene FryeCare Cardiology Associates Boone
Angelo Milazzo Jr. Duke Children's Cardiology Creekstone Durham
Chelsea Ngongang WakeMed Heart & Vascular Raleigh
Agodichi Nwosu Carolina Heart Physicians Fayetteville
K. Dale Owen Jr. Tryon Medical Partners Charlotte
Jan Pattanayak Asheville Cardiology Associates Asheville
Dermot Phelan Atrium Health Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute Charlotte
Brian Powell Atrium Health Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute Charlotte
Geoffrey Rose Atrium Health Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute Charlotte
Cheryl Russo Atrium Health Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute Charlotte
Hari Saini Carolina Heart & Leg Center Fayetteville
Jonathan Schwartz Atrium Health Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute Charlotte
Tony Simmons Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Patrick Simpson Pinehurst Medical Clinic Pinehurst
Jai Singh Atrium Health Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute Charlotte
R. Brandon Stacey Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist - County Club Winston-Salem
George Stouffer UNC Hospitals Outpatient Center Chapel Hill
H. Allen Strunk Jr. FirstHealth Cardiology Pinehurst
Sunit Yeshwant Tolia Piedmont Cardiovascular Greensboro
Bharathi Udhya Duke Cardiology Arringdon Morrisville
Peter Vassallo FirstHealth Cardiology Pinehurst
John Vavalle UNC Hospitals Outpatient Center Chapel Hill
Matt White WakeMed Heart & Vascular Raleigh
David Zhao Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
CARDIOTHORACIC SURGERY
Bret Borchelt Novant Health Cardiothoracic Surgeons Winston-Salem
Bryon James Boulton WakeMed Heart & Vascular Raleigh
Stephen Davies FirstHealth Cardiovascular & Thoracic Center Pinehurst
Peter Ellman FirstHealth Cardiovascular & Thoracic Center Pinehurst
John Frederick Atrium Health Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute Charlotte
Mark Groh Asheville Heart Asheville
Jeffrey Hagen Atrium Health Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute Charlotte
Edward Kincaid Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
William Kitchens FirstHealth Cardiovascular & Thoracic Center Pinehurst
Neal Kon Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Adrian Lata Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Thomas Maxey Atrium Health Levine Children's Congenital Heart Center Charlotte
L. Wiley Nifong ECU Department of Cardiovascular Sciences Greenville
Eric Skipper Atrium Health Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute Charlotte
Medhat Takla Atrium Health Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute Concord
Joseph Turek Duke Children's Health Center Cardiology Clinic Durham
Karl Welke Atrium Health Levine Children's Congenital Heart Center Charlotte
Judson Williams WakeMed Heart & Vascular Raleigh
John Williams East Carolina Heart Institute Greenville
CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE
Ker Boyce Pinehurst Medical Clinic Pinehurst
Herman Cheek Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Heart & Vascular High Point
John Fedor Atrium Health Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute Charlotte
Sanjeev Gulati Atrium Health Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute Charlotte
Dalane Kitzman Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Mark Landers FirstHealth Cardiology Pinehurst
Joseph Mishkin Atrium Health Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute Charlotte
Sean Regner FirstHealth Cardiology Services Pinehurst
Cary Ward Duke Cardiology Arringdon Morrisville
Hadley Wilson Atrium Health Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute Charlotte
COLON AND RECTAL SURGERY
Laura Altom North Carolina Surgery Holly Springs
Patrick Brillant Physicians East Greenville
Bradley Davis Atrium Health Abdominal Surgery Charlotte
M. Drew Honaker ECU Health Cancer Care Greenville
Kevin Kasten Atrium Health Gastroenterology And Hepatology Charlotte
Stephen Lanuti Scotland Surgical & Gi Associates Laurinburg
Christopher Mantyh Duke Ambulatory Surgery Center Durham
Julie Marosky Thacker Duke Ambulatory Surgery Center Durham
John Migaly Duke Ambulatory Surgery Center Durham
Robert Nunoo WakeMed Colorectal Surgery Raleigh
Brian Parkes Scotland Surgical & Gi Associates Laurinburg
Joseph Payne Novant Health New Hanover Regional Medical Center Wilmington
Reza Rahbar North Carolina Surgery Raleigh
Carl Westcott Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
COSMETIC SURGERY
Joseph Clark II UNC Ear Nose And Throat Chapel Hill
Claire Dillingham Cone Health Plastic Surgery Specialists Greensboro
J. Lynne Garrison Greenville Plastic Surgery Greenville
James Harper Graper Harper Cosmetic Surgery Charlotte
Charles Kays Wilmington Plastic Surgery Wilmington
Jefferson Kiltrick Pinehurst Surgical Clinic Pinehurst
Ronald Riefkohl Duke Health Durham
Andrew Schneider Forsyth Plastic Surgery Associates Winston-Salem
CRITICAL CARE MEDICINE
Mashael Al-Hegelan Duke University Hospital Durham
Shannon Carson UNC School Of Medicine Chapel Hill
Lydia Chang Asheville Pulmonary & Critical Care Associates Asheville
Stephen Cochran Pulmonary Critical Care Consultants Charlotte
Travis Dotson Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston Salem
Elizabeth Dreesen UNC Hospitals Multispecialty Surgery Clinic Chapel Hill
Daniel Files Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Kevin Gibbs Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Michael Green Atrium Health Jan & Ed Brown Center Charlotte
Douglas Haden Pulmonary Critical Care Consultants Charlotte
Michael Haley Pulmonary Critical Care Consultants Charlotte
Peter Heetderks WakeMed Pulmonology & Critical Care Raleigh
Alan Heffner Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Allison Johnson Haywood Surgical Associates Clyde
Todd Kelly FirstHealth Hospitalist Service Pinehurst
Lisa Lindauer Novant Health Tele-Intensive Care Monroe
Russell Miller III First Health Moore Regional Hospital Pinehurst
Thomas Przybysz II Pulmonary Critical Care Consultants Charlotte
Justin Swartz Atrium Health Jan & Ed Brown Center Charlotte
Alan Woodruff Atrium Health Levine Children's PICU Winston-Salem
DERMATOLOGY
James Appel Wilmington Health Wilmington
Elias Ayli Wake Skin Cancer Center Wake Forest
April Boswell Atlantic Dermatology Charlotte
Marc Carruth Carolina Skin Surgery Center Charlotte
Elvira Chiritescu New Age Dermatology Apex
Sue Cox Aesthetic Solutions Chapel Hill
Donna Culton UNC Hospitals Chapel Hill
Logan D'Souza Forest Dermatology And Medical Spa Asheville
Meredith Dasher Tryon Medical Partners Charlotte
Audrey Echt Anne Arundel Dermatology Raleigh
Hazem El-Gamal Charlotte Dermatology Charlotte
Rosalyn George Wilmington Dermatology Center Wilmington
Sasha Haberle
Metrolina Dermatology & Skin Surgery Specialists Charlotte
Jennifer Helton Steele Creek Dermatology Charlotte
Erin Hodges Tryon Medical Partners Charlotte
DERMATOLOGY
Mark Hutchin Dermatology Of North Asheville Asheville
Daniel Jones Greensboro Dermatology Associates Greensboro
Joseph Jorizzo Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
David Lane Dermatologic Surgery Of The Carolinas Charlotte
Aida Lugo-Somolinos UNC Hospitals Chapel Hill
Lisa May Biltmore Dermatology Asheville
Laura McGirt Tryon Medical Partners Charlotte
Amy McMichael Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Gilly Munavalli Dermatology Laser & Vein Specialists Charlotte
Tara Parsons Atrium Health Dermatology SouthPark Charlotte
Daniel Parsons Atrium Health Dermatology SouthPark Charlotte
Martie Price Tryon Medical Partners Charlotte
Patricia Roddey Tryon Medical Partners Charlotte
Christopher Sayed UNC Hospitals Dermatology & Skin Cancer Center Chapel Hill
Kevin Stein The Skin Surgery Center Winston Salem
Lindsay Strowd Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center Winston-Salem
Michael Sullivan Carolina Dermatology & Skin Cancer Surgery Wilmington
Nancy Thomas UNC Hospitals Dermatology & Skin Cancer Center Chapel Hill
Sarah Vieta Vieta Dermatology Pinehurst
DIAGNOSTIC RADIOLOGY
John Alley Jr. Raleigh Radiology Raleigh
Ersan Altun UNC Radiology Chapel Hill
Lauren Marie Burke UNC Radiology Chapel Hill
Christina Chaconas Charlotte Radiology Charlotte
Scott Hees Charlotte Radiology Charlotte
Shannon Hill Charlotte Radiology Charlotte
Michael Lavelle Charlotte Radiology Charlotte
Carolyn Maynor Valley Radiology Fayetteville
James Oliver III Charlotte Radiology Charlotte
Robert Raible Charlotte Radiology Charlotte
Amy Sobel Charlotte Radiology Charlotte
Robyn Stacy-Humphries Charlotte Radiology Charlotte
Taylor Stone Charlotte Radiology Charlotte
Glen Toomayan Pinehurst Radiology Pinehurst
Michael Tripp Eastern Radiologists Greenville
EMERGENCY MEDICINE
Anthony Allen Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Bradley Anglemyer Mid-Atlantic Emergency Medical Associates Charlotte
Kim Askew Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Robert Bahner Sandhills Emergency Physicians Pinehurst
Jane Brice UNC Hospitals Emergency Dertment Chapel Hill
John Bridgman Sandhills Emergency Physicians Pinehurst
Jonathan Brower Sandhills Emergency Physicians Pinehurst
EMERGENCY MEDICINE
David Callaway Atrium Health Carolinas Medical Center Charlotte
Herbert Garrison ECU Health Greenville
Michael Harrigan UNC Hospitals Chapel Hill
Laura Hester Chatham Hospital Siler City
James Lewis Sandhills Emergency Physicians Pinehurst
Emily MacNeill Atrium Health Carolinas Medical Center Charlotte
Arun Manikumar UNC Rex Hospital Raleigh
David Manthey Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Daniel Martinie Mid-Atlantic Emergency Medical Associates Charlotte
Abhishek Mehrotra UNC Hospitals Chapel Hill
Diane Miller UNC School Of Medicine Chapel Hill
Jason Mutch Mid-Atlantic Emergency Medical Associates Charlotte
Erin Smith Mid-Atlantic Emergency Medical Associates Charlotte
Linda Taylor Atrium Health High Point Medical Center High Point
Julie Verchick Sandhills Emergency Physicians Pinehurst
Matthew Vreeland FirstHealth Sandhills Emergency Physicians Pinehurst
Amanda Watts FirstHealth Sandhills Emergency Physicians Pinehurst
ENDOCRINOLOGY DIABETES AND METABOLISM
Joseph Aloi Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Francisco Bautista Vitiello Tryon Medical Partners Charlotte
Denis Becker Raleigh Endocrine Associates Raleigh
Alex Bonnecaze Pinehurst Medical Clinic Southern Pines
D. Allen Brantley Tryon Medical Partners Charlotte
Cynthia Burns Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center Winston-Salem
John Buse UNC Hospitals Outpatient Center Chapel Hill
Kelli Dunn Atrium Health Carolinas Medical Center Charlotte
Adva Eisenberg Novant Health Endocrinology Charlotte
Josh Evron UNC Hospitals Outpatient Center Chapel Hill
Cristina Gherghe Cone Health LeBauer Endocrinology Greensboro
Stacy Goldbaum Atrium Health Endocrinology SouthPark Charlotte
Kristen Hairston Atrium Health Wake Forest School Of Medicine Winston-Salem
Elizabeth Harris UNC Hospitals Outpatient Center Chapel Hill
Beatrice Hong Duke Endocrinology Clinic Durham
Nicole Jelesoff Duke Endocrinology Clinic Durham
Morgan Jones UNC Hospitals Outpatient Center Chapel Hill
Dee Kirk UNC Hospitals Outpatient Center Chapel Hill
Brooks Mays Pinehurst Medical Clinic Southern Pines
K. Patrick Ober Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Jyoti Rao Atrium Health Endocrinology SouthPark Charlotte
Gary Rolband Tryon Medical Partners Charlotte
Jennifer Rowell Duke Endocrinology Clinic Durham
Raymond Stadiem Atrium Health Endocrinology SouthPark Charlotte
Charles Upchurch Tryon Medical Partners Charlotte
Mark Warren Physicians East Greenville
Julia Warren-Ulanch Creedmoor Centre Endocrinology Raleigh
FAMILY MEDICINE
Angela Marie Bacigalupo Cone Health Burlington Family Practice Burlington
John Baker J Scott Baker MD Highlands
Amir Barzin Chatham Hospital Siler City
Lateef Cannon Pardee UNC Health Care Hendersonville
Sarah Cartwright Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston Salem
Jenny Chen Atrium Health Mint Hill Primary Care Mint Hill
Clark Denniston UNC School Of Medicine Chapel Hill
Lavanya Desai Atrium Health Primary Care Cabarrus China Grove
Crystal Dorsey Novant Health Maplewood Winston-Salem
Andrew Drabick Family Medical Associates Of Raleigh Raleigh
Jorge Franco Carolina Family Practice Centre Fayetteville
Garett Franklin Cary Medical Group Cary
Steven Gilchrist Novant Health Steelecroft Primary Care Charlotte
Mark Gwynne Chatham Hospital Siler City
Michael Harris Carolina Family Practice & Sports Medicine Raleigh
Margaret Helton UNC School Of Medicine Chapel Hill
Milton Hester Novant Health Crown Point Charlotte
Laura House Chatham Hospital Siler City
Amy Howerton Howerton Family Medicine Roseboro
Lauren Hull Atrium Health Carmel Family Physicians Charlotte
Megan Johnson Cone Health Crissman Family Practice Graham
Keli Jones Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston Salem
Thomas Jones LeBauer Healthcare Greensboro
Melissa Jones Priority Care Charlotte
Adam Kinninger McDowell Family Practice Marion
Bo Kopynec FirstHealth Family Medicine Ellerbe
Kourtney Krohn Physicians East Greenville
Susan Ladd-Snively Chestnut Family Practice Matthews
Brian Lanier Promina Health Wilmington
Andrew LePorte Scotland Health Care System - Harris Family Practice Laurinburg
James Liffrig FirstHealth Family Medicine Pittsboro
Michael McCartney Tryon Medical Partners Gastonia
Christopher Miles Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Mimi Miles Chatham Hospital Chapel Hill
Benjamin Missick Novant Health Blakeney Family Physicians Charlotte
Mary Moree FirstHealth Family Medicine - Rockingham Rockingham
Andrew Morris Hendersonville Family Health Center Hendersonville
Shahla Namak Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Urgent Care Winston-Salem
Dana Neutze Chatham Hospital Siler City
Patrick O'Connell Sentinel Primary Care Raleigh
Justin Parker Asheville Family Medicine Asheville
Augustus Parker IV Novant Health Blakeney Family Physicians Charlotte
Bhavesh Patel UNC Family Medicine Hillsborough
Brent Penhall Novant Health Lakeside Family Physicians Mooresville
Ginger Poulton MAHEC Family Health Asheville
John Redding II White Oak Family Physicians Asheboro
FAMILY MEDICINE
Ann Marie Richards FirstHealth Family Medicine Pinehurst
Emily Sawyer UNC Health Pardee BlueMD Hendersonville
Benjamin Simmons Atrium Health Primary Care Union Monroe
Tala Smith Scotland Memorial Hospital Laurinburg
Karen Smith Karen L. Smith MD Raeford
Caroline Stephens Piedmont Urology Associates Belmont
Carmen Strickland Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Family Medicine Winston-Salem
Dominick Trapani WakeMed Primary Care Raleigh
Donna Tuccero-Sanders Duke Family Medicine & Community Health Durham
Carolyn Vaught UNC School Of Medicine Chapel Hill
Christopher Vieau Atrium Health Primary Care Union Monroe
Craig White Davidson Family Medicine Davidson
Geoffrey Wrinkle Atrium Health Carmel Family Physicians Charlotte
Brian Wysong Gaston Family Practice Gastonia
GASTROENTEROLOGY
Amit Aravapalli Tryon Medical Partners Charlotte
Todd Baron UNC Hospitals Outpatient Center Chapel Hill
M. Stanley Branch Duke Endoscopy Clinic Durham
Joel Bruggen
Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Digestive Health Winston-Salem
Rebecca Burbridge Duke Endoscopy Clinic Durham
John Clements Lake Norman Medical Group Mooresville
Jason Conway Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Digestive Health Winston-Salem
Justin Crocker Duke Gastroenterology Of Raleigh Raleigh
Stephen Deal Carolina Digestive Health Charlotte
Christopher Ferris Tryon Medical Partners Charlotte
Eric Frizzell Pinehurst Medical Clinic Pinehurst
John Gilliam
Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Digestive Health Winston-Salem
Ian Grimm UNC Hospitals GI Procedures Chapel Hill
Hans Herfarth UNC Hospitals Endoscopy Center Chapel Hill
Eric Hilgenfeldt Tryon Medical Partners Charlotte
Kent Holtzmuller Tryon Medical Partners Charlotte
Christopher Jue Digestive Health Specialists Winston-Salem
Jason Lewis
Atrium Health Gastroenterology & Hepatology Charlotte
Jyothi Mann Guilford Medical Center Greensboro
Jeffrey Medoff
Girish Mishra
Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Digestive Health Greensboro
Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Outpatient Endoscopy Winston-Salem
John Moore III Charlotte Gastroenterology & Hepatology Mooresville
Thomas Pacicco Atrium Health Gastroenterology & Hepatology Charlotte
Murtaza "Kittu" Parekh Rex Digestive Healthcare Raleigh
Rebecca Rawl Charlotte Gastroenterology & Hepatology Charlotte
James Rholl Digestive Health Partners Hendersonville
Gardiner Roddey
Charlotte Gastroenterology & Hepatology Charlotte
GASTROENTEROLOGY
Martin Scobey Atrium Health Carolinas Medical Center Charlotte
Nicholas Shaheen UNC Hospitals Endoscopy Center Chapel Hill
D. Scott Smith Tryon Medical Partners Charlotte
Thomas Swantkowski Pinehurst Medical Clinic Pinehurst
Ravikant Varanasi Pinehurst Medical Clinic Pinehurst
Kerry Whitt RMG Gastroenterology Raleigh
Farra Wilson Pinehurst Medical Clinic Pinehurst
GENERAL SURGERY
Elizabeth Acquista Novant Health General Surgery & Bariatrics Wilmington
Matthew Alleman WakeMed General Surgery Raleigh
Vedra Augenstein Atrium Health Abdominal Surgery Charlotte
Erin Baker Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Aaron Bergsman Surgical Specialists Of Charlotte Huntersville
Bryan Blitstein Surgical Specialists Of Charlotte Huntersville
Ashley Britton Christmas Carolinas Medical Center Charlotte
Brian Burlingame Pinehurst Surgical Clinic Pinehurst
Anthony Charles UNC Hospitals Multispecialty Surgery Clinic Chapel Hill
H. Willy Chu Pinehurst Surgical Clinic Pinehurst
Ann Chung WakeMed General & Bariatric Surgery Cary
Carolyn Day North Carolina Surgery Raleigh
Chirag Desai UNC Hospitals Jason Ray Transplant Clinic Chapel Hill
David Grantham Pinehurst Surgical Clinic Pinehurst
B. Todd Heniford Atrium Health General & Complex Abdominal Surgery Charlotte
William Hope Novant Health General Surgery & Bariatrics Wilmington
J. Jason Hoth Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Kent Kercher Atrium Health General & Complex Abdominal Surgery Charlotte
Cynthia Lauer Atrium Health Carolinas Medical Center Charlotte
Lori Lilley WakeMed Breast Surgery Raleigh
R. Shayn Martin Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Critical Care Winston Salem
Terri Martin Surgical Specialists Of Charlotte Charlotte
J. Wayne Meredith Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Preston Miller III Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Critical Care Winston Salem
Natalie Nowak Surgical Specialists Of Charlotte Matthews
David Overby UNC General Surgery Clinic Hillsborough
Lee Pederson Surgical Specialists Of Charlotte Charlotte
Arielle Perez UNC Hospitals Multispecialty Surgery Clinic Chapel Hill
Joshua Pratt Harris Regional Hospital Sylva
David Price UNC Health-Pardee Surgical Associates Hendersonville
Kolandaivelu Ramaswamy Mission Trauma Services Asheville
Robert Roddenberry Mission Health Physicians Marion
Bailey Sanders Pinehurst Surgical Clinic Pinehurst
Lynnette Schiffern Atrium Health Carolinas Medical Center Charlotte
Courtney Sommer Mission Trauma Services Asheville
Donald Stewart Atrium Health General Surgery Lincolnton
GENERAL SURGERY
Kristin Wagner Surgical Specialists Of Charlotte Charlotte
Matthew Wakefield Central Carolina Surgery Greensboro
Eric Wallace Surgical Specialists Of Charlotte Matthews
Raymond Washington Jr. Pinehurst Surgical Clinic Pinehurst
Christopher Watters Duke General Surgery Raleigh
Leslie Webster III SCA Health Charlotte Surgery Center Charlotte
GERIATRIC MEDICINE
Hal Atkinson Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Lee Berkowitz UNC Faculty Physicians Center Chapel Hill
Maureen Dale UNC Faculty Physicians Center Chapel Hill
Jeff Williamson Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Mia Yang Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
GYNECOLOGIC ONCOLOGY
John Boggess UNC Hospitals Chapel Hill
Jubilee Brown Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Brian Burgess FirstHealth Cancer Center Pinehurst
Ashley Case Hope Women's Cancer Centers Asheville
Erin Crane Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Brittany Davidson Duke Cancer Center Durham
Janelle Fauci Novant Health Cancer Institute Charlotte
Cameron Harkness Hope Women's Cancer Centers Asheville
Michael Kelly Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Samuel Lentz Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
R. Wendel Naumann Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Allison Puechl Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Emma Rossi Duke Cancer Center Durham
Angeles Secord Duke Cancer Center Durham
Diane Semer Physicians East Greenville
Elizabeth Skinner Novant Health Cancer Institute Winston-Salem
Linda Van Le UNC Hospitals Chapel Hill
Amy Wallace Novant Health Cancer Institute Winston Salem
HAND SURGERY
Christopher Chadderdon OrthoCarolina Charlotte
Erika Gantt OrthoCarolina Charlotte
Glenn Gaston OrthoCarolina Charlotte
John Gaul III OrthoCarolina Charlotte
Casey Jenkins Wake Orthopedics Raleigh
Christopher Johnson Pinehurst Surgical Clinic Pinehurst
L. Andrew Koman Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Gary Kuzma The Hand Center Of Greensboro Greensboro
HAND SURGERY
Kevin Kuzma The Hand Center Of Greensboro Greensboro
Christopher Lechner Carolina Hand and Sports Medicine Asheville
John Li Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Kernersville
Bryan Loeffler OrthoCarolina Charlotte
Bruce Minkin Carolina Hand and Sports Medicine Asheville
James Post Raleigh Hand To Shoulder Center Raleigh
Lacy Thornburg Carolina Hand and Sports Medicine Asheville
Harrison Tuttle Raleigh Orthopaedic Clinic Cary
Ethan Wiesler Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Julie Woodside OrthoCarolina Gastonia
HEMATOLOGY
Edward Copelan Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Andrew Farland Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Reed Friend Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Nilanjan Ghosh Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Mark Graham WakeMed Cancer Care Cary
Michael Grunwald Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Gregory Knight Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Mary Knovich Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Jonathan Levine Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
HEMATOLOGY
Alice Ma UNC Hospitals Outpatient Center Chapel Hill
David Mack Maria Parham Cancer Center Henderson
Kathryn Mileham Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Stephan Moll UNC Hospitals Outpatient Center Chapel Hill
John Owen Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Brittany Ragon Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Danyu Sun Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Hendrik Van Deventer UNC Hospitals Adult Oncology Clinics Chapel Hill
Peter Voorhees Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
HEPATOLOGY
A. Sidney Barritt IV UNC Center For Gastrointestinal Biology and Disease Chapel Hill
Jama Darling UNC Hospitals Gi Procedures Chapel Hill
Andrew DeLemos Transplant And Liver Center Charlotte
Mark Russo Transplant And Liver Center Charlotte
HOSPICE AND PALLIATIVE CARE
John Barkley Atrium Health Hospice & Palliative Care Cabarrus Kannapolis
Joshua Baru Messino Cancer Centers Asheville
HOSPICE AND PALLIATIVE CARE
Anthony Galanos Duke University School of Medicine Durham
Aaron Gavett FirstHealth Hospice West End
Carl Grey Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Laura Hanson UNC Hospitals Chapel Hill
Julie Jones FirstHealth Hospice West End
Boris Krivitsky Atrium Health Multispecialty Palliative Care Clinic Charlotte
Shenita Moore Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Matthews
Savithri Nageswaran Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Pediatrics Winston-Salem
Armida Parala-Metz Atrium Health Supportive Oncology Clinic Charlotte
Beth Susi Atrium Health Supportive Oncology Clinic Charlotte
INFECTIOUS DISEASE
Gretchen Arnoczy FirstHealth Infectious Diseases Pinehurst
Claire Farel UNC Faculty Physicians Center Chapel Hill
Thomas Gallaher ECU Health Multispecialty Clinic Kinston
Cynthia Gay UNC Faculty Physicians Center Chapel Hill
Bruce Israel Mission Infectious Disease Associates Asheville
Jasul Jawanda FirstHealth Infectious Diseases Pinehurst
Kristine Johnson Mission Infectious Disease Associates Asheville
Anne Lachiewicz UNC Hospitals Jason Ray Transplant Clinic Chapel Hill
Joseph Lang Atrium Health Infectious Disease Charlotte
Michael Leonard Atrium Health Infectious Disease Charlotte
Lewis McCurdy Atrium Health Infectious Disease Charlotte
Heather Michael Novant Health Infectious Disease Charlotte
Christopher Ohl Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Infectious Diseases Winston-Salem
Christopher Parsons Pardee Center For Infectious Diseases Hendersonville
Katie Passaretti Atrium Health Carolinas Medical Center Charlotte
Timothy Peters Atrium Health Levine Children's Winston-Salem
David Priest Novant Health Infectious Disease Specialists Kernersville
Kacy Ramirez Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Pediatric Winston-Salem
John Sanders III Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center Winston-Salem
David Weinrib Atrium Health Infectious Disease Charlotte
James Whitehouse Mission Infectious Disease Associates Asheville
INTERNAL MEDICINE
Megan Alexander Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Daniel Aquino Tryon Medical Partners Charlotte
Lorri Ayers Perspective Health & Wellness Charlotte
Anne Barnard Tryon Medical Partners Charlotte
Erika Bono Atrium Health Charlotte Medical Clinic Charlotte
Jason Brancato Atrium Health Perspective Health & Wellness Charlotte
Pattanayak Bruno FirstHealth Hospitalist Service Pinehurst
Eric Byrd Carolina Mountain Internal Medicine Hendersonville
INTERNAL MEDICINE
Aubrey Calhoun Blue Ridge Hospitalist Group Morganton
Faye Campbell Novant Health Ballantyne Medical Group Charlotte
Jason Carnes Tryon Medical Partners Huntersville
Iris Cheng Atrium Health Charlotte Internal Medicine Charlotte
Alicia Cole Tryon Medical Partners Charlotte
Cristin Colford UNC Faculty Physicians Center Chapel Hill
Gregory Collins Atrium Health Randolph Internal Medicine Charlotte
Peter Copsis Tryon Medical Partners Matthews
Christopher Cosgrove Intracoastal Internal Medicine Wilmington
Michael Daley Pinehurst Medical Clinic Pinehurst
Laura Diefendorf Duke Primary Care Henderson Henderson
Jay Fernando Carolina Physicians Group Charlotte
Charles Ferree Tryon Medical Partners Pineville
Benjamin Fischer Fischer Clinic Raleigh
Kelly Forb Carolinas Hospitalist Group Charlotte
Michelle Foster Novant Health Southern Piedmont Primary Care Monroe
Scott Furney Atrium Health Primary Care Charlotte Internal Medicine Charlotte
Kym Furney Tryon Medical Partners Pineville
Mohammad Garba Cone Health Patient Care Center Greensboro
Daniel Goodrich Cone Health Triad Hospitalists Greensboro
Jane Harrell H3 Healthcare Charlotte
Jessica Heestand Wake Internal Medicine Consultants Raleigh
Vicki Cathy Ho Carolinas Hospitalist Group Charlotte
Charles Howarth FirstHealth Hospitalist Service Pinehurst
Lane Jacobs Atrium Health Carolinas Medical Center Charlotte
Prashanth Kamath Atrium Health Perspective Health & Wellness Charlotte
Tina Kennelly Tryon Medical Partners Charlotte
Benjamin Kirk Atrium Health Primary Care Charlotte Medical Clinic Charlotte
Eric Landis Tryon Medical Partners Pineville
Andre Leonard Intracoastal Internal Medicine Wilmington
Adam Ligler Tryon Medical Partners Charlotte
Scott Luneau Pinehurst Pathology Center Troy
Bobby Maynor Jr. Pinehurst Medical Clinic Southern Pines
Justin Miller Novant Health New Hanover Primary Care Wilmington
Justin Miller Tryon Medical Partners Matthews
Walter Morris III MDVIP Southern Pines
Mohamed Noormohideen Scotland Health Care System Laurinburg
Francis O'Brien Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist University Winston-Salem
Jose Paz Cone Health LeBauer Primary Care High Point
Mark Perini Guilford Medical Associates Greensboro
Elizabeth Perry Signature Healthcare Charlotte
Caroline Pierce Tryon Medical Partners Charlotte
William Rice Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist University Winston-Salem
Gary Rosenthal Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center Winston-Salem
Douglas Schultz Randolph Health Internal Medicine Asheboro
John Sensenbrenner MDVIP Charlotte
INTERNAL MEDICINE
Amy Shaheen UNC Faculty Physicians Center Chapel Hill
G. Ryan Shelton Tryon Medical Partners Charlotte
Joshua Shoemake H3 Healthcare
David Shoemaker Wilmington Health
Alyson Shogan Atrium Health Perspective Health & Wellness
Michael Soboeiro WakeMed Primary Care
Michol Stanzione Pinehurst Medical Clinic
John Tenini Tryon Medical Partners
Kanika Varma Atrium Health Primary Care
Hala Webster Tryon Medical Partners
Julianne Weidner Tryon Medical Partners
Charlotte
Wilmington
Charlotte
Garner
Southern Pines
Charlotte
Charlotte
Charlotte
Charlotte
Amy Weil UNC Faculty Physicians Center Chapel Hill
Mary Weitzel FirstHealth Hospitalist Service Pinehurst
Ursula Poehling Whalen Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Caroline Wilds Tryon Medical Partners Matthews
Ellen Willard FirstHealth Outpatient Cancer Center Pinehurst
David Yancey Carolinas Hospitalist Group at Carolinas Medical Center Charlotte
INTERVENTIONAL CARDIOLOGY
Peter Chan WakeMed Heart & Vascular Raleigh
Kurt Daniel Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist High Point
Keith Davis Pinehurst Medical Clinic Pinehurst
Scott Denardo FirstHealth Cardiology Troy
William Downey Atrium Health Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute Charlotte
Brian Go WakeMed Heart & Vascular Raleigh
William Harris FirstHealth Cardiology Pinehurst
Sun Kim FirstHealth Cardiology Reid Heart Center Pinehurst
Glen Kowalchuk Atrium Health Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute Charlotte
Damien Marycz WakeMed Heart & Vascular Raleigh
James Mills Duke Cardiology Of Raleigh Raleigh
Mohit Pasi North Carolina Heart & Vascular Raleigh
Michael Rinaldi Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute Charlotte
Archie Tyson Jr. Novant Health Heart & Vascular Institute High Point
Sean Whalen Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Cardiology Bermuda Run
MATERNAL AND FETAL MEDICINE
John Allbert Novant Health Maternal-Fetal Medicine Charlotte
Carol Coulson Mahec OB/GYN Specialists Asheville
Elizabeth Coviello UNC Maternal-Fetal Medicine Chapel Hill
Aaron Matthew Dom Atrium Health Women's Care Charlotte
Brenna Hughes Duke Birthing Center Durham
Julie Johnson Maternal Fetal Medicine Pinehurst
M. Kathryn Menard UNC Maternal-Fetal Medicine Chapel Hill
Joshua Nitsche Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Rebecca Pollack Atrium Health Women's Care-Maternal Fetal Medicine Charlotte
Kristen Quinn Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Alison Stuebe UNC Maternal-Fetal Medicine Chapel Hill
Geeta Swamy Duke Perinatal Consultants Of Durham Durham
Lorene Temming Atrium Health Women's Care-Maternal Fetal Medicine Charlotte
MEDICAL ONCOLOGY AND HEMATOLOGY
Jing Ai Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Asim Amin Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Navin Anthony Hendersonville Hematology And Oncology Hendersonville
Jennifer Atlas Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Ethan Basch UNC Hospitals Adult Oncology Clinics Chapel Hill
Rupali Bhave Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Jeremiah Boles Rex Hematology Oncology Associates Raleigh
Gregory Michael Brouse Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Monroe
Kathryn Brownlee Novant Health Cancer Institute Charlotte
Earle Burgess Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Z. Luke Farmer Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Monroe
Julie Fisher Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Gary Frenette Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Juneko Grilley-Olson Duke Cancer Center Durham
Arielle Heeke Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Bei Hu Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Kunal Kadakia Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Jeffrey Klotz FirstHealth Cancer Center Pinehurst
Greg Knight Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Alan Kritz Rex Hematology Oncology Associates Raleigh
Charles Kuzma Pinehurst Medical Clinic Pinehurst
Glenn Lesser Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Jessica-Lyn Masterson Hope Women's Cancer Center Asheville
Matthew Milowsky UNC Hospitals Adult Oncology Clinics Chapel Hill
William Petty Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Thomas Richard FirstHealth Cancer Center Pinehurst
Caio Max Rocha Lima Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston Salem
Tracy Rose UNC Hospitals Adult Oncology Clinics Chapel Hill
Paul Savage Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Jonathan Serody UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center Chapel Hill
Gary Sherrill Cone Health Cancer Center Greensboro
Amanda Sherrod Rex Hematology Oncology Associates Cary
Ashley Sumrall Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Antoinette Tan Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Hope Uronis Duke Cancer Center Durham
NEPHROLOGY
Michael Berkoben Duke University School Of Medicine Durham
Paul Blake Metrolina Nephrology Associates Charlotte
Anthony Bleyer Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center Winston Salem
Isai Bowline Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center Winston Salem
Kathleen Doman Nephrology & Hypertension Consultants Charlotte
Matthew Elliott Metrolina Nephrology Associates Charlotte
Ronald Falk UNC Hospitals Outpatient Center Chapel Hill
Maxwell Fisher ECU Health Medical Center Greenville
Alison Fletcher Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
NEPHROLOGY
Jennifer Flythe UNC Hospitals Outpatient Center Chapel Hill
Chris Fotiadis Metrolina Nephrology Associates Charlotte
Nancy Gritter Metrolina Nephrology Associates Charlotte
Amret Hawfield Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Lexington
Gerald Hladik UNC Hospitals Outpatient Center Chapel Hill
Edward Hoehn-Saric FirstHealth Pinehurst Nephrology Associates Pinehurst
Gregory Merten Metrolina Nephrology Associates Charlotte
Michael Rocco Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center Winston-Salem
Prabir Roy-Chaudhury UNC School of Medicine Chapel Hill
John Shepherd Pinehurst Nephrology Associates Pinehurst
Jennifer Stoddard Pinehurst Nephrology Associates Pinehurst
Hanna Von Hardenberg Pinehurst Nephrology Associates Pinehurst
Kimberly Yates Metrolina Nephrology Associates Huntersville
NEUROLOGICAL SURGERY
Anthony Asher Carolina Neurosurgery & Spine Associates Charlotte
E. Hunter Dyer Carolina Neurosurgery & Spine Associates Charlotte
Lars Gardner Raleigh Neurosurgical Clinic Raleigh
Martin Henegar Carolina Neurosurgery & Spine Associates Charlotte
Laith Khoury Raleigh Neurosurgical Clinic Raleigh
Erin Kiehna Novant Health Pediatric Neurosurgery Charlotte
Richard Lytle Carolina Spine & Neurosurgery Center Asheville
Jonathan Parish Carolina Neurosurgery & Spine Associates Charlotte
Mark Smith Carolina Neurosurgery & Spine Associates Charlotte
Stephen Tatter Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Mark Van Poppel Carolina Neurosurgery & Spine Associates Charlotte
Scott Wait Carolina Neurosurgery & Spine Associates Charlotte
James Walker FirstHealth Neurosurgery & Spine Pinehurst
John Wilson Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
NEUROLOGY
Antonia Ahern Cone Health Guilford Neurologic Associates Greensboro
Richard Bedlack Jr. Duke Nephrology Clinic Durham
Liya Beyderman Charlotte Neurological Services Charlotte
Melanie Blacker FirstHealth Hospitalist Service Pinehurst
Joel Callahan Pardee Neurology Associates Arden
James Caress Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Michael Cartwright Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Jill Conway Novant Health Multiple Sclerosis Care Charlotte
Jeffrey Cooney Duke Nephrology Clinic Durham
Andrea Diedrich Atrium Health Neurology Charlotte
Danielle Englert Atrium Health Neurosciences Institute Charlotte
Ana Felix UNC Faculty Physicians Center Chapel Hill
Laura Fleck Advent Health Hendersonville Columbus
NEUROLOGY
Michael Forbes UNC Hospitals Chapel Hill
Ajmal Gilani UNC Neurology Clayton
Ryan Gleason Atrium Health Neurology Charlotte
Keith Hull Raleigh Neurology Associates Raleigh
Ilona Humes Atrium Health Neurology Concord
Delores Ann Johnson Wake Forest Baptist Health Neurology Mount Airy
Steven Lewis FirstHealth Hospitalist Service Pinehurst
Kaiwen Lin Atrium Health Neurology Charlotte
Cormac O'Donovan Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Casey Olm-Shipman UNC Hospitals Children's Neurology Clinic Chapel Hill
Scott Otallah Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Jonathan Richman Pinehurst Neurology Pinehurst
Maria Sam Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Aarti Sarwal Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Richard Sater Cone Health Guilford Neurologic Associates Greensboro
John Scagnelli Raleigh Neurology Associates Raleigh
Michael Schecter Atrium Health Carolinas Medical Center Charlotte
Alexander Schneider Mission Neurology Asheville
Rajdeep Singh Atrium Health Neurosciences Institute Charlotte
Sarah Uffindell FirstHealth Hospitalist Service Pinehurst
Angela Wabulya UNC Hospitals Chapel Hill
NUCLEAR MEDICINE
Shawn Quillin Mecklenburg Radiology Associates Charlotte
OBSTETRICS AND GYNECOLOGY
Allison Bell Atrium Health Women's Care Charlotte
Carlos Bendfeldt UNC Women's Health Clayton
Mark Bland Novant Health Rankin OB/GYN Charlotte
M. Kathryn Bohmer Atrium Health-Women's Care Eastover OB/GYN Charlotte
Breanna Bolivar MAHEC OB/GYN Specialists Asheville
Ingrid Bullard Novant Health Rankin OB/GYN Charlotte
Bari Byrd Kamm Mckenzie OB/GYN Raleigh
John Byron Southern Pines Women's Health Center Southern Pines
Grant Campbell Atrium Health Women's Care Harrisburg
Daphne Capek Atrium Health Women's Care Charlotte
Alice Chuang UNC OB/GYN Chapel Hill
Sheronette Cousins Saura Silverbell OB/GYN Greensboro
Ginger Dickerson Atrium Health Women's Care Charlotte
Andrea Dickerson A Woman's Place Fayetteville
Michael Evers Chatham Hospital Siler City
Jada Fambrough Atrium Health Women's Care Charlotte
Walter Fasolak Southern Pines Women's Health Center Southern Pines
Andrea Fernandez Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Clemmons
OBSTETRICS AND GYNECOLOGY
Amy Fletcher Thrive Carolinas Charlotte
Karen Gerancher Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Beverly Gray Duke Birthing Center Durham
Chad Grotegut Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
James Harbin ECU Health Women's Care Washington
Angela Haskins Physicians East Greenville
Jennie Hauschka Tryon Women's Center Charlotte
Laura Havrilesky Duke Cancer Center Durham
Michelle Homeister Wilkerson OB/GYN Raleigh
Jennifer Howell Duke Birthing Center Durham
Emily Hutcheson Atrium Health Women's Care Charlotte
Mohamed Ibrahim FirstHealth OB/GYN Rockingham
Lisa Jackson-Moore UNC OB/GYN Chapel Hill
Bradley Jacobs Lyndhurst Gynecologic Associates Winston Salem
Astrid Jain Atrium Health Women's Care Charlotte
Jill Jertson Greensboro Women's Health Care Greensboro
William Johnstone Jr. William M. Johnstone MD Southern Pines
Shayna Jones SCA Health Pinehurst Surgical Clinic Pinehurst
Jennifer Kalich Atrium Health Women's Care Charlotte
Pamela Kantorowski Southern Pines Women's Health Center Southern Pines
Caroline Lewis UNC Women's Health Clayton
Leslie Lindner Atrium Health Women's Care Charlotte
Lissette Machin SCA Health Surgery Center of Pinehurst Pinehurst
Diana Spahlinger McCarthyWakeMed Obstetrics & Gynecology Cary
Elizabeth Moran Premier Gynecology & Wellness Charlotte
Maria Munoz UNC Hospitals Chapel Hill
Jennifer Mury UNC Women's Health Smithfield
George Nowacek UNC OB/GYN Chapel Hill
Oona O'Neill Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Clemmons
Latoya Patterson Duke Ambulatory Surgery Center Durham
Laura Pekman Atrium Health Women's Care Charlotte
Sarah Pollock Atrium Health Women's Care Charlotte
Christie Secrest Atrium Health Women's Care Charlotte
Kiran Sigmon MAHEC OB/GYN Specialists Asheville
Aviva Stein Atrium Health Women's Care Charlotte
Erin Stone Tryon Women's Center Charlotte
Charles Termin Atrium Health Women's Care Charlotte
Smitha Vilasagar Vilasagar Gynecologic Surgery Charlotte
Kori Whitley Physicians East Greenville
Robert Wicker Jr. Atrium Health Women's Care Charlotte
Kathryn Jessica Wood Novant Health Providence Charlotte
John Yoon Kamm Mckenzie OB/GYN Raleigh
Kendall Zmiewsky Southern Pines Women's Health Center Southern Pines
OCCUPATIONAL MEDICINE
Jill Ohar Wake Forest Baptist Health Pulmonary And Critical Care Winston-Salem
Kristen Said Duke Employee Occupational Health And Wellness Clinic Durham
ONCOLOGY
Carey Anders Duke Cancer Center Durham
Chasse Bailey-Dorton Atrium Health Supportive Oncology Clinic Charlotte
Bernard Chinnasami Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist High Point
Daniel Haggstrom Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Shiaowen Hsu Duke Cancer Center Durham
Jimmy Hwang Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Carrie Lee UNC Hospitals Adult Oncology Clinics Chapel Hill
Robert Pohlmeyer FirstHealth Cancer Center Pinehurst
Bayard Powell Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Jimmy Ruiz Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Hanna Sanoff UNC Hospitals Adult Oncology Clinics Chapel Hill
OPHTHALMOLOGY
Arghavan Almony Carolina Eye Associates Southern Pines
Andrew Antoszyk Duke University School of Medicine Durham
Michael Bartiss Family Eye Care of The Carolinas Aberdeen
William Branner III Horizon Eye Care Charlotte
Christina Choe Carolina Ophthalmology Hendersonville
Derek DelMonte Carolina Eye Associates Greensboro
Anna Fakadej Carolina Eye Associates Southern Pines
John French Carolina Eye Associates Southern Pines
Matthew Giegengack Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Bermuda Run
Galen Grayson Atrium Health Ophthalmology Care Charlotte
Herb Greenman Greenman Eye Associates Charlotte
David Greenman Greenman Eye Associates Charlotte
Craig Greven Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Margaret Greven Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Kerry Hunt Raleigh Eye Center Raleigh
Joseph Krug Jr. Horizon Eye Care Charlotte
Anthony Leonard Carolina Eye Associates Greensboro
Casey Mathys Charlotte Eye Ear Nose & Throat Associates Charlotte
Daniel Messner Carolina Eye Associates Southern Pines
Tarra Millender Carolina Eye Associates Southern Pines
Andrew Mincey Carolina Eye Associates Winston-Salem
Vandana Minnal Horizon Eye Care Charlotte
Paula Pecen Carolina Eye Associates Greensboro
Isaac Porter Porter Ophthalmology Raleigh
Nehali Saraiya Charlotte Eye Ear Nose & Throat Associates Charlotte
Christopher Shah Carolina Eye Associates Greensboro
OPHTHALMOLOGY
Lisa Sitterson Carolina Eye Associates Fayetteville
Robert Stone Wake Ophthalmology Associates Cary
Jan Niklas Ulrich UNC Kittner Eye Center Chapel Hill
Keith Walter Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Bermuda Run
Kendall Wannamaker Carolina Eye Associates Fayetteville
Jeffrey White Carolina Eye Associates Southern Pines
ORAL AND MAXILLOFACIAL SURGERY
Brian Farrell Carolinas Centers For Oral & Facial Surgery Charlotte
John Nale Carolinas Center For Oral & Facial Surgery Charlotte
ORTHOPEDIC SURGERY
John Birkedal Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Spine Center Clemmons
Michael Bolognesi Duke Orthopaedics Arringdon Morrisville
Mark Brenner Pinehurst Surgical Clinic Pinehurst
Scott Burbank OrthoCarolina PIneville
Eben Carroll Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Orthopaedic Urgent Care Winston-Salem
Bruce Cohen OrthoCarolina Foot & Ankle Institute Charlotte
Neil Conti Pinehurst Surgical Clinic Pinehurst
Joseph Dement Asheville Orthopaedic Associates Asheville
Kent Ellington OrthoCarolina Foot & Ankle Institute Charlotte
Jason Halvorson Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Orthopaedic Urgent Care Winston Salem
Adam Kaufman Mission Orthopedic Trauma Services Asheville
Justin Kauk Wake Orthopaedics Cary
Jeffrey Kneisl Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
David Martin Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Kernersville
Greig McAvoy UNC Orthopaedics Rocky Mount
Claude Moorman Atrium Health Musculoskeletal Institute Charlotte
Ward Oakley Pinehurst Surgical Clinic Pinehurst
Matthew Ohl OrthoCarolina Charlotte
Christopher Olcott UNC Orthopaedics Chapel Hill
Christopher Parks EmergeOrtho Wilmington
Joshua Charles Patt Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Gary Poehling Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Daniel Rose EmergeOrtho Wilmington
Shadley Schiffern OrthoCarolina Shoulder & Elbow Center Charlotte
Aaron Scott Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Kevin Stanley OrthoCarolina Mooresville
Marc Stevens Hugh Chatham Memorial Hospital Elkin
Nicholas Trasolini Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Kernersville
Brian Waterman Brian Waterman MD Winston-Salem
Bradley Winter OrthoCarolina Winston Salem
ORTHOPEDICS
Frank Aluisio EmergeOrtho Greensboro
Christopher Barsanti Orthopaedics East & Sports Medicine Center Greenville
Michael Bates OrthoCarolina Charlotte
Deanna Boyette Boyette Orthopedics & Sports Medicine Greenville
David Casey Pinehurst Surgical Clinic Pinehurst
Jonathan Chappell Wake Orthopaedics Raleigh
James Crowther The Bone & Joint Surgery Clinic Raleigh
Milan DiGiulio Performance Orthopaedic Surgery & Sports Medicine Cary
Michael Dockery OrthoCarolina Foot & Ankle Institute Charlotte
Christopher Elder Asheville Orthopaedic Associates Asheville
Cynthia Emory Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Harold Frisch Mission Orthopedic Trauma Services Asheville
Chad Greer Wake Orthopaedics Raleigh
Nady Hamid OrthoCarolina Shoulder & Elbow Center Charlotte
Curtis Hanson Wake Orthopaedics Raleigh
Christopher Hasty Orthopaedics East & Sports Medicine Center Greenville
Andrew Kersten EmergeOrtho Hendersonville
Maxwell Langfitt Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center Bermuda Run
Kevin Logel Raleigh Orthopaedic Clinic Cary
Gaurav Luther Gaurav Aman Luther MD Apex
J. Bohannon Mason OrthoCarolina Charlotte
James McDonald OrthoCarolina Mooresville
Patricia McHale OrthoCarolina Gastonia
David Pollock Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Orthopaedics Bermuda Run
Jonathan Riboh OrthoCarolina Cartilage Restoration Institute Charlotte
Michael Ruffolo Wake Orthopaedics Apex
James Sanders UNC Orthopaedics Chapel Hill
Jeffrey Spang UNC Orthopaedics Chapel Hill
Bryan Springer OrthoCarolina Sports Medicine Center Charlotte
Gregory Tayrose UNC Orthopedics & Sports Medicine Clayton
Christopher Tuohy Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Orthopaedics Winston-Salem
Kurt Wohlrab Pinehurst Surgical Clinic Pinehurst
Mark Wood Wake Orthopaedics Raleigh
OTOLARYNGOLOGY EAR NOSE THROAT
Marcus Albernaz Eastern Carolina ENT Head And Neck Surgery Greenville
John Blumer Charlotte Eye Ear Nose & Throat Associates Charlotte
Daniel Brickman Charlotte Eye Ear Nose & Throat Associates Charlotte
J. Dale Browne Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Nathan Calloway WakeMed ENT Garner
John Clinger Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Brian Downs Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Clemmons
Charles Ebert Jr UNC Ear Nose And Throat Chapel Hill
Michael Ferguson WakeMed ENT Raleigh
John Garside Rex Ear Nose And Throat Specialists Cary
S. Brett Heavner Charlotte Eye Ear Nose & Throat Associates Huntersville
OTOLARYNGOLOGY EAR NOSE THROAT
Steven Hong Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Hunter Hoover Charlotte Eye Ear Nose & Throat Associates Charlotte
Kenneth Johnson UNC Ear Nose And Throat Clayton
Darrell Klotz Charlotte Eye Ear Nose & Throat Associates Charlotte
Eric Lindbeck Eastern Carolina ENT Head And Neck Surgery Greenville
Wyman McGuirt Pinehurst Surgical Clinic Pinehurst
Brendan O'Connell Charlotte Eye Ear Nose & Throat Associates Charlotte
Jeevan Ramakrishnan Raleigh Capitol Ear Nose & Throat Raleigh
Michael Sicard Charlotte Eye Ear Nose & Throat Associates Matthews
Christopher Sullivan Atrium Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Brian Thorp UNC Ear Nose And Throat Chapel Hill
PAIN MANAGEMENT
Puneet Aggarwal Atrium Health Musculoskeletal Institute Charlotte
Kamal Ajam Carolinas Pain Institute Winston Salem
Hsiupei Chen Carolina Pain & Spine Wake Forest
Charles Clover Southeast Pain & Spine Care Kings Mountain
Kevin Costello Southeast Pain & Spine Care Charlotte
Claire Cunniff ECAA Anesthesia Associates Roanoke Rapids
Cameron Cunningham Blue Ridge Pain Management Hickory
Russell Davenport Southeast Pain & Spine Care Charlotte
James Hancock Jr. Atrium Health Cabarrus Pain Management Concord
Jon-David Hoppenfeld Southeast Pain & Spine Care Charlotte
Ankur Manvar Integrative Pain & Spine Institute Charlotte
Jennifer Oliver Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Richard Park Southeast Pain & Spine Care Charlotte
Jason Ravanbakht Atrium Health Cabarrus Concord
Binit Shah Carolinas Pain Center Huntersville
Siddarth Thakur Atrium Health Musculoskeletal Institute Huntersville
Shaun Williams Atrium Health Cabarrus Concord
Joanna Wroblewska-Shah Carolinas Pain Center Huntersville
PATHOLOGY
Kiran Adlakha Carolinas Pathology Group Charlotte
Jared Block Carolinas Pathology Group Charlotte
Robert Burks Carolinas Pathology Group Charlotte
Arthur Cohen Presbyterian Pathology Group Charlotte
Megan DiFurio Pinehurst Pathology Center Pinehurst
Akosua Domfeh Carolinas Pathology Group Charlotte
Abigail Goodman Carolinas Pathology Group Charlotte
Edward Lipford Carolinas Pathology Group Charlotte
Chad Livasy Carolinas Pathology Group Charlotte
Chad McCall Carolinas Pathology Group Charlotte
PATHOLOGY
Charles Schirmer Pinehurst Pathology Center Pinehurst
Trisha Shattuck Carolinas Pathology Group Charlotte
Elton Smith Jr. Carolinas Pathology Group Charlotte
Kyle Strickland Duke University Health System Durham
Carol Weida Carolinas Pathology Group Charlotte
James Winter FirstHealth Pinehurst Pathology Center Pinehurst
Angela Wu Carolinas Pathology Charlotte
PEDIATRIC ALLERGY IMMUNOLOGY
Jennifer Caicedo Carolina Asthma & Allergy Center Charlotte
Michelle Hernandez UNC Pediatrics At Southpoint Durham
Emily Langley Carolina Asthma & Allergy Center Charlotte
PEDIATRIC CARDIOLOGY
Richard Boruta
Atrium Health Levine Children's Congenital Heart Center Charlotte
Matthew Hazle Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Kevin Hill Duke Children's Hospital & Health Center Durham
Joseph Paolillo
Atrium Health Levine Children's Congenital Heart Center Charlotte
Matthew Schwartz Atrium Health Levine Children's Congenital Heart Center Charlotte
Nicholas Sliz
Gonzalo Wallis
Atrium Health Levine Children's Congenital Heart Center Charlotte
Atrium Health Levine Children's Congenital Heart Center Charlotte
Michael Walsh III Cone Health Wake Forest Health Winston-Salem
PEDIATRIC DERMATOLOGY
Diana McShane UNC Hospitals Dermatology & Skin Cancer Chapel Hill
Dean Morrell UNC Hospitals Dermatology & Skin Cancer Chapel Hill
PEDIATRIC ENDOCRINOLOGY
Cathrine Constantacos Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Greensboro
Lisa Houchin Atrium Health Levine Children's Charlotte
Amy Levenson UNC Hospitals Children's Specialty Clinics Chapel Hill
Jakub Mieszczak Atrium Health Levine Children's Charlotte
Mark Vanderwel
Atrium Health Pediatric Endocrinology & Diabetes Specialists Charlotte
Elizabeth Walsh Atrium Health Levine Children's Winston-Salem
PEDIATRIC GASTROENTEROLOGY
Ricardo Caicedo Atrium Health Levine Children's Charlotte
Jason Dranove Atrium Health Levine Children's Charlotte
Michael Kappelman UNC Hospitals Children's Specialty Clinics Chapel Hill
Tiffany Linville Atrium Health Levine Children's Charlotte
PEDIATRIC GASTROENTEROLOGY
Victor Pineiro-Carrero Atrium Health Levine Children's Charlotte
Anca Safta Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Ameesh Shah Atrium Health Levine Children's Charlotte
Gabriel Winberry WakeMed Children's Raleigh
PEDIATRIC ORTHOPEDICS ORTHOPEDIC SURGERY
Kristin Alves Wake Orthopaedics Raleigh
Brian Brighton OrthoCarolina Charlotte
Virginia Casey OrthoCarolina Charlotte
Christian Clark OrthoCarolina Charlotte
Jennifer Hooker Mission Children's Specialists Asheville
Sami Mardam-Bey Wake Orthopaedics Raleigh
Michael Paloski OrthoCarolina Foot & Ankle Institute Charlotte
Brian Scannell OrthoCarolina Charlotte
PEDIATRIC OTOLARYNGOLOGY ENT
Amelia Drake UNC Ear Nose And Throat Chapel Hill
PEDIATRIC OTOLARYNGOLOGY ENT
Daniel Kirse Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Joshua Levine Charlotte Eye Ear Nose & Throat Associates Charlotte
Jonathan Moss Charlotte Eye Ear Nose & Throat Associates Matthews
Sajeev Puri Charlotte Eye Ear Nose & Throat Associates Charlotte
Austin Rose UNC Ear Nose And Throat Chapel Hill
Carlton Zdanski UNC Ear Nose And Throat Chapel Hill
PEDIATRIC SURGERY
Daniel Bambini Pediatric Surgical Associates Charlotte
Katherine Chan UNC Specialty Care Sanford
Graham Cosper Pediatric Surgical Associates Charlotte
J. David Hoover WakeMed Children's Raleigh
Paul Kirshbom Atrium Health Levine Children's Charlotte
John Petty Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
J. Duncan Phillips WakeMed Children’s Raleigh
Thomas Pranikoff Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Thomas Schmelzer Pediatric Surgical Associates Charlotte
Leah Sieren Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Kristen Zeller Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
PEDIATRICS GENERAL
Amina Ahmed Atrium Health Levine Children's Charlotte
Jeffrey Baker Duke Children's South Durham Durham
Jerry Bernstein Raleigh Pediatric Associates Raleigh
Brian Bowman Cary Pediatric Center Apex
Sarah Brewington Sandhills Pediatrics Southern Pines
Jonathan Brownlee Atrium Health Levine Children's Shelby
Jeffrey Cleveland Atrium Health Levine Children's Matthews
Christoph Diasio Sandhills Pediatrics Southern Pines
Lubna Elahi Atrium Health Levine Children's Charlotte
Marisa Flores Kernodle Clinic Elon
Natalee French Sandhills Pediatrics Southern Pines
Lillian Harris Raleigh Children & Adolescents Medicine Raleigh
Charles Hayek Novant Health Twin City Pediatrics Clemmons
Marcela Heinrich Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston Salem
Lawrence Hurst Atrium Health Levine Children's Gastonia
Jon Hutchinson Piedmont Healthcare Statesville
Alison Kavanaugh UNC Pediatrics Durham
John Kerr III FirstHealth Hospitalists Pinehurst
Stephanie Kwon Atrium Health Levine Children's Charlotte
Amanda Lanier Atrium Health Levine Children's Charlotte
Anitha Leonard Atrium Health Levine Children's Charlotte
George Manousos Atrium Health Levine Children's Matthews
Gabriela Maradiaga
Panayotti Duke Children's Primary Care Durham
Nicole McMahon FirstHealth Hospitalist Service Pinehurst
Ansley Miller Mission Children's Specialists Asheville
Michael Minozzi Chapel Hill Children & Adolescents' Clinic Chapel Hill
Beatriz Morris Duke Children's South Durham Durham
Rhonda Patt Atrium Health Levine Children's Charlotte
Julie Pinder Novant Health Robinhood Pediatrics Winston Salem
Katherine Poehling Atrium Health Levine Children's Winston-Salem
Jodie Prosser Atrium Health Levine Children's Matthews
Laurie Pulver ABC Pediatrics Of Asheville Asheville
Stephen Renfrow Atrium Health Levine Children's Charlotte
Amy Ryan Novant Health Eastover Pediatrics Charlotte
Kasey Scannell Novant Health Pediatrics Symphony Park Charlotte
Anna Schmelzer Atrium Health Levine Children's Charlotte
Andrea Scholer Triad Adult & Pediatric Medicine Greensboro
Hope Seidel Cary Pediatric Center Cary
Andrew Shulstad Novant Health Pediatrics Symphony Park Charlotte
Robert Silver Atrium Health Cabarrus Concord
May Slowik Duke Pediatrics South Durham Durham
Charles Smoak Atrium Health Levine Children's Charlotte
John Templeton French Broad Pediatric Associates Asheville
Mike Villareal Cary Pediatric Center Cary
Laura Windham Chapel Hill Children & Adolescents' Clinic Chapel Hill
Amy Yoder Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston Salem
PHYSICAL MEDICINE AND REHABILITATION
John Baratta UNC Rex Rehabilitation And Nursing Care Center Raleigh
William Bockenek Carolinas Rehabilitation Charlotte
Kevin Carneiro UNC Hospitals Spine Center Chapel Hill
Alexander Chasnis OrthoCarolina Huntersville
Dana Conley Carolinas Rehabilitation Charlotte
Kelly Crawford Carolinas Rehabilitation Charlotte
Nathan Darji Carolinas Rehabilitation Charlotte Charlotte
Walter Davis Wake Forest Baptist Health Winston-Salem
Sima Desai Carolinas Rehabilitation Charlotte Charlotte
Michael Dove Atrium Health Musculoskeletal Institute Charlotte
Daniel Moore ECU Health Greenville
David O'Brien Jr. Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Terrence Pugh Atrium Health Supportive Oncology Clinic Charlotte
Vishwa Raj Carolinas Rehabilitation Charlotte
John Welshofer Carolina Neurosurgery & Spine Associates Charlotte
PLASTIC AND RECONSTRUCTIVE SURGERY
Matthew Blanton Specialists In Plastic Surgery Raleigh
Leslie Branch Forsyth Plastic Surgery Associates Winston-Salem
Peter Capizzi Capizzi MD Charlotte
Ashley Chandler Charlotte Plastic Surgery Charlotte
Lynn Damitz UNC Plastic And Reconstructive Surgery Chapel Hill
Lisa David Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Anthony DeFranzo Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Detlev Erdmann Duke Wound Management Clinic Durham
Eric Halvorson Halvorson Plastic Surgery Asheville
Enam Haque Queen City Plastic Surgery Charlotte
Scott Hultman WakeMed Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery Raleigh
Joseph Hunstad HKB Cosmetic Surgery Huntersville
Jean-Francois Lefaivre Atrium Health Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery Charlotte
Thomas Liszka Ballantyne Plastic Surgery Charlotte
Joseph Molnar Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
John Robinson Atrium Health Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery Charlotte
Christopher Runyan Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Edward Teng Atrium Health Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery Charlotte
Michael Zenn Zenn Plastic Surgery Raleigh
PODIATRY
Kevin Molan Foot & Ankle Specialists of the Mid-Atlantic Charlotte
PSYCHIATRY
Hasan Baloch Johnston Health Smithfield
Ruth Benca Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Lexington
David Freeman Sweeten Creek Mental Health & Wellness Center Asheville
Gary Gala UNC Adult Psychiatry Clinic Chapel Hill
PSYCHIATRY
Predrag Gligorovic Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston Salem
Jillianne Grayson Grayson Psychiatry Huntersville
Rabiya Hasan Atrium Health Behavioral Health Charlotte
Hassan Jabbour Vitlink Psychiatric Services Raleigh
Jason Jerry FirstHealth Behavioral Services Pinehurst
Naomi Leslie Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston Salem
David Litchford Jr. Atrium Health Behavioral Health Charlotte
Scott Lurie Scott N. Lurie MD Charlotte
Erin Malloy UNC Hospitals Chapel Hill
Mary Mandell FirstHealth Behavioral Services Pinehurst
Kevin Marra HopeWay Campus Charlotte
Mark Mason Mission Medical Associates Asheville
Jonathan McKinsey Atrium Health Behavioral Health Concord
J. Allen Melvin Allen Melvin MD Charlotte
Albert Naftel Jr. UNC Child And Adolescent Psychiatry Clinic Chapel Hill
Kateland Napier UNC School Of Medicine Chapel Hill
Jason Peck HopeWay Campus Charlotte
Kenan Penaskovic UNC Adult Psychiatry Clinic Chapel Hill
Anne Richardson North Charlotte Psychiatry & Wellness Charlotte
Donald Rosenstein UNC Adult Psychiatry Clinic Chapel Hill
David Rubinow UNC Adult Psychiatry Clinic Chapel Hill
April Schindler Renown Psychiatry Charlotte
PSYCHIATRY
Meredith Stanton FirstHealth Behavioral Services Pinehurst
Amy Ursano UNC Child And Adolescent Psychiatry Clinic Chapel Hill
J.W. Wallace Eastover Psychiatric Group Charlotte
PULMONARY MEDICINE
Christina Bellinger Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Benjamin Bringardner Atrium Health Jan & Ed Brown Center Charlotte
James Donohue UNC Hospitals Outpatient Center Chapel Hill
John Doty Atrium Health Jan & Ed Brown Center Charlotte
Michael Drummond UNC Hospitals Outpatient Center Chapel Hill
Azeem Elahi Caromont Health Gastonia
John Fogarty Physicians East Greenville
Ashley Henderson UNC Hospitals Outpatient Center Chapel Hill
Daniel Howard Atrium Health Jan & Ed Brown Center Charlotte
Scott Lindblom Atrium Health Jan & Ed Brown Center Charlotte
Leonard Lobo UNC Hospitals Jason Ray Transplant Clinic Chapel Hill
Wendy Moore Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Rodolfo Pascual Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Michael Pritchett Pinehurst Medical Clinic Pinehurst
Jaspal Singh Atrium Health Jan & Ed Brown Center Charlotte
James Snapper Duke Asthma Allergy & Airway Center Durham
PULMONARY MEDICINE
David Thornton Pinehurst Medical Clinic Pinehurst
Christine Vigeland UNC Hospitals Outpatient Center Chapel Hill
John Wynne Pulmonary Critical Care Consultants Charlotte
Stuart Zeilender Asheville Pulmonary & Critical Care Associates Asheville
RADIATION ONCOLOGY
Jeffrey Acker FirstHealth Cancer Center Pinehurst
William Bobo Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Doris Brown Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Courtney Bui UNC Hospitals Chapel Hill
Stuart Burri Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Catherine Chang Duke University Raleigh
Christopher Corso Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Carolina Fasola Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Ellen Jones UNC Hospitals Chapel Hill
Stephen King FirstHealth Cancer Center Pinehurst
Eric Kuehn Mountain Radiation Oncology And Mission Asheville
Derek McHaffie Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Benjamin Moeller Southeast Radiation Oncology Group Charlotte
Sushma Patel Pinehurst Radiation Oncology Pinehurst
Roshan Prabhu Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Hadley Sharp Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Matthew Ward Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
William Warlick Jr. Southeast Radiation Oncology Group Charlotte
Ashley Weiner UNC Hospitals Chapel Hill
RADIOLOGY
Deborah Agisim Charlotte Radiology Charlotte
Ryan Aronberg Mecklenburg Radiology Associates Charlotte
Emmanuel Botzolakis Mecklenburg Radiology Associates Charlotte
Eithne Burke Wake Radiology Raleigh
C. Peter Chang Charlotte Radiology Charlotte
Clayton Commander UNC School Of Medicine Chapel Hill
Michael Fisher Delaney Radiology Wilmington
Valerie Jewells UNC Radiology Chapel Hill
Allen Joseph Pinehurst Radiology Pinehurst
Maureen Kohi UNC School Of Medicine Chapel Hill
Brad Mitchell Charlotte Radiology Charlotte
Vishwan Pamarthi Mecklenburg Radiology Associates Charlotte
Jonathan Perry Mecklenburg Radiology Associates Charlotte
Kirk Peterson Raleigh Radiology Raleigh
John Roberson Pinehurst Radiology Pinehurst
Daniel Wallihan Charlotte Radiology Charlotte
Danielle Wellman Wake Radiology Raleigh
Christopher Whitlow Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
REPRODUCTIVE ENDOCRINOLOGY
Kelly Acharya Duke Fertility Center Morrisville
Ashley Eskew Atrium Health Fertility Center Charlotte
Kathryn Goldrick Atrium Health Fertility Center Charlotte
Clifford Hayslip Jr. ECU Health Greenville
Bradley Hurst Atrium Health CMC Women's Institute Charlotte
Michelle Matthews Atrium Health CMC Women's Institute Charlotte
Tolga Mesen Carolinas Fertility Institute Charlotte
Rebecca Usadi Atrium Health CMC Women's Institute Charlotte
David Walmer Atlantic Reproductive Medicine Specialists Raleigh
RHEUMATOLOGY
Duncan Fagundus Physicians East Greenville
Abigail Gilbert UNC Hospitals Outpatient Center Chapel Hill
Alison Johnson Tryon Medical Partners Huntersville
Beth Jonas UNC Hospitals Outpatient Center Chapel Hill
Andrew Laster Arthritis & Osteoporosis Consultants Of The Carolinas Charlotte
Gwenesta Melton Lafayette Clinic Fayetteville
Leslie Ranken Atrium Health Rheumatology Charlotte
Mohammad Shahsahebi Duke University Durham
Saira Sheikh UNC Hospitals Outpatient Center Chapel Hill
Rupak Thapa Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Amanda Wakeley Atrium Health Rheumatology Charlotte
Rachel Wolfe Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Manika Zeri Atrium Health Rheumatology Charlotte
Jill Zouzoulas Tryon Medical Partners Charlotte
SLEEP MEDICINE
Saima Athar Cone Health Guilford Neurologic Associates Greensboro
Shalu Bansal Duke Neurology Durham
Giridhar Chintalapudi Sandhills Neurologists Cary
Jacob Coleman Tryon Medical Partners Huntersville
Carmen Dohmeier Cone Health Guilford Neurologic Associates Greensboro
Kimberly Mims Atrium Health Charlotte
Andrew Namen Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Lexington
Michael Reif Atrium Health Jan & Ed Brown Center Charlotte
Ehrlich Tan Tryon Medical Partners Charlotte
Bradley Vaughn Raleigh Orthopaedic Clinic Raleigh
SPINE SURGERY
Deb Bhowmick Duke Spine Center Durham
Byron Branch Carolina Neurosurgery & Spine Associates Concord
Gurvinder Deol Wake Orthopaedics Raleigh
SPINE SURGERY
Henry Elsner Carolina Neurosurgery & Spine Associates Greensboro
Ryan Gentry Wake Orthopaedics Raleigh
John Hicks EmergeOrtho Hendersonville
James Hoski UNC Health Waynesville
Wesley Hsu Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Clemmons
Anthony Kwon OrthoCarolina Charlotte
Alexander Lemons Pinehurst Surgical Clinic Pinehurst
Moe Lim UNC Hospitals Chapel Hill
Keith Maxwell Southeastern Sports Medicine And Orthopedics Asheville
Matthew McGirt Carolina Neurosurgery & Spine Associates Charlotte
Alden Milam OrthoCarolina Charlotte
Conor Regan Wake Orthopaedics Raleigh
Vincent Rossi Carolina Neurosurgery & Spine Associates Charlotte
Bradley Segebarth OrthoCarolina Charlotte
SPORTS MEDICINE
David Berkoff UNC Orthopaedics Chapel Hill
James Blount Carolina Family Practice & Sports Medicine Cary
Kevin Burroughs Atrium Health Musculoskeletal Institute Concord
Karl Fields Cone Health Sports Medicine Center Greensboro
Brent Fisher Asheville Orthopaedic Associates Arden
Brett Foreman Carolina Family Practice & Sports Medicine Raleigh
Mark Galland OrthoNC Raleigh
Antonio Howard Atrium Health Musculoskeletal Institute Charlotte
Aaron Leininger UNC Orthopedics & Sports Medicine Clayton
Laura Lintner Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston Salem
John Neidecker OrthoNC Raleigh
Dana Piasecki OrthoCarolina Charlotte
Catherine Rainbow Atrium Health Musculoskeletal Institute Charlotte
Matthew Ravish Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Tom Starnes Carolina Hand & Sports Medicine Asheville
Jonathan Yoder OrthoCarolina Winston Salem
SURGICAL ONCOLOGY
Mark Arredondo Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist High Point
Ilan Avin Novant Health Charlotte
Dan Blazer III Duke Cancer Center Durham
David Eddleman North Carolina Surgery Raleigh
Michelle Fillion Novant Health Cancer Institute Wilmington
Meghan Forster Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Kristalyn Gallagher UNC Hospitals Adult Oncology Clinics Chapel Hill
Lejla Gusic Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Joshua Hill Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Marissa Howard-McNatt Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Clemmons
SURGICAL ONCOLOGY
David Iannitti Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Hong Kim UNC Hospitals Adult Oncology Clinics Chapel Hill
Edward Levine Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Comprehensive Cancer Center Winston-Salem
John Martinie Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Michael Meyers UNC Hospitals Adult Oncology Clinics Chapel Hill
Zvonimir Milas Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
David Ollila UNC Hospitals Adult Oncology Clinics Chapel Hill
Jonathan Salo Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Deba Sarma Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Perry Shen Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Comprehensive Cancer Center Winston-Salem
Malcolm Squires Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Karen Stitzenberg UNC Hospitals Adult Oncology Clinics Chapel Hill
Michael Sundborg FirstHealth Cancer Center Pinehurst
Peter Turk Novant Health Cancer Institute Charlotte
Amy Voci Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte Konstantinos Votanopoulos Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston Salem
Gregory Waters Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Greensboro
Mark Weissler UNC Ear Nose And Throat Oncology Clinic Chapel Hill
Richard White Jr. Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
THORACIC SURGERY
Christopher Cicci Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute Concord
Benjamin Haithcock UNC Hospitals Jason Ray Transplant Clinic Chapel Hill
John Ikonomidis UNC Hospitals Jason Ray Transplant Clinic Chapel Hill
Jason Long UNC Thoracic Surgery Clinic Chapel Hill
UROLOGY
Joseph Allen North Carolina Urology Clayton Clayton
Anthony Atala Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Marc Benevides Associated Urologists Of North Carolina Cary
Marc Bjurlin UNC Urology Medical Center Chapel Hill
Kristy Borawski UNC Hospitals Urology Clinic Chapel Hill
Peter Clark Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Manish Damani Urology Specialists Of The Carolinas PLLC Charlotte
Ronald Davis III Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Jacques Ganem Urology Specialists Of The Carolinas Charlotte
Manlio Goetzl Pinehurst Surgical Clinic Pinehurst
Chad Gridley Duke Raleigh Hospital Raleigh
Greg Griewe Pinehurst Surgical Clinic Pinehurst
Jonathan Hamilton ECU Health Urology Greenville
Mark Jalkut Associated Urologists Of North Carolina Raleigh
Carmin Kalorin WakeMed Urology Raleigh
Michael Kennelly Atrium Health Women's Care Charlotte
UROLOGY
Catherine Matthews Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
John Michalak Pinehurst Surgical Clinic Pinehurst
Majid Mirzazadeh Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Urology - Charlois Winston-Salem
Matthew Nielsen UNC Hospitals Adult Oncology Clinics Chapel Hill
Andrew Peterson Duke Urology Clinic Durham
Glenn Preminger Duke University Durham
Mathew Raynor UNC Hospitals Adult Oncology Clinics Chapel Hill
Stephen Riggs Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute Charlotte
Jonathan Routh Duke Children's Health Center Urology Clinic Durham
Angela Schang Atrium Health Urology Kenilworth Charlotte
Josh Sesek Pinehurst Surgical Clinic Pinehurst
Angela Smith UNC Hospitals Adult Oncology Clinics Chapel Hill
Hung-Jui Tan UNC Hospitals Urology Clinic Chapel Hill
Jonathan Taylor Physicians East Greenville
Eric Wallen UNC Hospitals Adult Oncology Clinics Chapel Hill
John Wiener Duke Ambulatory Surgery Center Durham
VASCULAR SURGERY
Frank Arko Atrium Health Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute Charlotte
Daniel Barzana Wilmington Health Wilmington
Jason Burgess Surgical Specialists Of Charlotte Charlotte
Matthew Edwards Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Mark Farber UNC Hospitals Heart And Vascular Center Chapel Hill
Peter Ford Vascular Solutions Charlotte
H. Douglas Hobson Atrium Health General Surgery Shelby
John Hobson Vascular Surgery At Pardee Hendersonville
Ashish Jain Novant Health Heart & Vascular Institute Charlotte
Lemuel Kirby Carolina Vascular Asheville
Douglas MacMillan Jr. Carolina Vascular Asheville
Katharine McGinigle UNC Hospitals Heart And Vascular Center Chapel Hill
Erin Murphy Institute Venous & Lymphatic Pineville Charlotte
Luigi Pascarella UNC Hospitals Heart And Vascular Center Chapel Hill
Jacek Paszkowiak WakeMed Heart & Vascular Cary
Gabriela Velazquez Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Winston-Salem
Paul Vieta Jr. Pinehurst Surgical Clinic Pinehurst
David Weatherford Coastal Vascular Institute Wilmington
Dear Business North Carolina Reader:
Business cycles may come and go, but economic fundamentals never go out of style.
In Johnston County, investments in infrastructure, workforce and industrial real estate are paying lucrative dividends as businesses and people from the U.S. and beyond find their way to our growing, livable communities. The result has been new jobs and global investment across an array of legacy and emerging industries.
Fate granted Johnston County ideal mid-Atlantic geography, putting firms here within easy reach of millions of U.S. and Canadian consumers. Generations of visionary leaders built on those natural assets with bold investments in 21st century economic assets. At the same time, sound fiscal management has enabled us to maintain —and even cut! — property tax rates while earning the highest credit ratings from S&P Global and Moody’s.
Our economic strategy builds on partnerships with the Research Triangle Region and the BioPharma Crescent to make Johnston County a one-of-a-kind destination. Our state and federal transportation partners have responded to our rapid population growth with highway upgrades that include the widening of I-40, creation of I-42 and completion of the Triangle Expressway. Our municipalities and utility allies have added significant water, wastewater and energy capacity.
We’re also partnering with private development companies to grow our inventory of ready-to-go sites and industrial buildings. The county’s Building-Lease program deploys performancebased incentives that empower our business recruitment leaders to create high-wage jobs while helping developers manage the risks that come with building Class A spec space.
Moreover, we continue to invest aggressively in Johnston County’s greatest asset: our people. We work closely with our biopharma employers to maintain the 30,000-sq.-ft. Johnston County Workforce Development Center, and we recently broke
ground on the $35 million Advanced Manufacturing Training Center in Four Oaks. JoCo’s Commissioners Promise Grant program enables graduates of our public schools to attend Johnston Community College tuition free. JoCoWorks, another important strategy, has forged an ongoing dialogue among secondary students and teachers, parents, local business leaders and community college educators.
By all accounts, the world has taken notice. Recent years have witnessed record investments from global businesses like Spain’s Grifols Therapeutics, which bases its flagship manufacturing hub here, and Novo Nordisk, the Danish insulin maker now undertaking a $4 billion expansion at its Clayton campus. More recently, the British rice maker Veetee Foods unveiled plans to locate a 200-job processing operation here. Domestic firms also continue arriving: in May, New York-based Crystal Window & Door Systems Ltd. announced it will create 500 manufacturing jobs at Selma’s Eastfield Crossing.
While Johnston County clearly plays at the global level, we never lose touch with our special place in North Carolina’s economy and business community. Thank you for taking the time to learn more about the exciting things happening here and all we offer businesses and people from Murphy to Manteo – and beyond.
Sincerely,
R.S. “Butch” Lawter, Jr., Chairman Johnston County Board of Commissioners
A WORLD OF POSSIBILITIES
Investments, workforce development and transportation improvements are attracting foreign and domestic companies to Johnston County, and growing businesses already there.
Pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk made a $4.1 billion commitment in June, when it announced it’s building a 1.4 million-square-foot factory and adding 1,000 jobs in Clayton. The new factory will sit on 56 acres and is about four times the size of its first North Carolina location, which is across the street. The move came hours after Johnston County Commissioners approved an amended package of performance-based economic incentives for the Danish company.
England-based Veetee Foods, which makes shelf-stable food, such as heat-andeat rice meals, announced an almost $36 million investment at Eastfield Crossing, near the Interstate 95-Future 42 intersection in Selma, in September. Its 200 jobs will have an average annual salary of $58,387, which is more than the county’s average annual salary — $50,605. It was Johnston County’s fourth major industry announcement of the year.
About a dozen foreign-based companies are in Johnston County, where proximity to Research Triangle Park and interstates and highways — combined with a robust local workforce training program — create an increasingly popular destination for international investment. “We definitely can compete at the global level in a global market,” says Chris Johnson, Johnston County Economic Development director. “Our attractiveness includes the three major universities and being part of the Raleigh MSA. For all intents and purposes, we’re one big region. We’re very proud of the fact that our name is mentioned in other countries.” It’s often mentioned closer to home, too.
Work is underway to bring more companies to Johnston County. Clayton is home to The Biome, a 69-acre biomanufacturing and life-sciences campus, which is being developed by BioRealty to attract top-tier biopharmaceutical companies. Its three state-of-the-art buildings will total 475,200 square feet, all tailored for biomanufacturing, laboratory work and offices. “The Biome
is a major opportunity for Clayton to continue attracting leading companies in the biopharmaceutical industry,” says Rich Cappola, Clayton town manager. “This project will bring jobs, innovation and a significant economic boost to our community. It’s another example of how Clayton is positioning itself as a leader in high-growth industries and creating longterm prosperity for our residents.”
Developing workforce
Johnston Community College, which marked a record breaking enrollment figure in August, serves 5,708 degree-seeking students. It’s a major source of workforce development for economic development initiatives, including The Biome. Its BioWork Certificate Program, which bestows a credential that signifies the holder has the needed biotechnology skills to begin work, and connections with regional companies are significant contributors to the local life-science industry. “We feel we have the talent here in our own backyard,” Johnson says. “Like with Novo, when [the expansion becomes] operational in four years, their talent right now is in the ninth grade. If you can show the students that there is an opportunity, and you don’t have to go away somewhere and accumulate student loans, you can come out making serious income.”
Construction is underway on the 67,000-square-foot Advanced Manufacturing Training Center in Four Oaks, about 18 miles from Clayton. JCC, Johnston County Economic Development, regional industries and the General Assembly are collaborating on the $35 million investment, which should open next summer. “Our role in continuing education is to listen to what our industries and adult learners need and to act on them promptly,” says Danielle Kroeger, JCC associate vice president, workforce development and biotechnology. “Knowing that the biopharmaceutical industry in our region is expanding, JCC is adding more BioWork courses in more formats to meet this need. We are currently exploring weekend offerings to allow adults who are seeking a career change to have a buffet of scheduling options that they can choose from to accommodate their schedules.”
Kroeger says efforts to build skilled workforce aren’t limited to after high school. “[Last spring], with the support of the Research Training Zone Board and the partnership with Johnston County Public Schools, JCC was able to deploy the BioWork Certification Program in all eight Johnston County high schools, providing juniors and seniors the opportunity not only to obtain the certification but also to earn college credit toward the biotechnology associate program,” she says.
Students could directly connect with Novo Nordisk and Spanish biotherapeutics company Grifols, which has a 233-acre campus in Clayton, during the course. In fall 2025, public school students enrolled in the five-year Career & Technical Leadership Academy will qualify for JCC’s biotechnology associate degree program. “This is a great opportunity for high school students, regardless of grade level, to start their career path in biopharmaceuticals,” Kroeger says.
Grifols partnered with JCC in 2020 to create JCC’s Workforce Development Center, a 30,000-square-foot training center for life sciences and biotechnology jobs, then it broke ground on a three story 150,000-square-foot $120 million purification and filling plant at its Clayton campus a mile away. “We anticipate the same success in the Advanced Manufacturing Training Center as we’ve seen with the [WDC] in Clayton, which is state of the art,” Johnson says. “A young person can begin in high school then go to work for one of the facilities in the region and come out making $60,000 to $70,000 a year at 18 years old. It’s a win-win for everybody.”
Smithfield-based Triangle East Chamber of Commerce helps businesses through advocacy efforts, including workforcedevelopment programs, says Maureen McGuinness, its president and CEO. SizeUp, for example, is an analytics tool that supports small and midsize businesses. “[It] provides crucial information to
entrepreneurs looking to start their first business, and it can assist seasoned business owners with expanding their customer base,” she says.
More than 15,000 students have prepared for the job market with assistance and guidance from educators, businesses and community leaders through JOCO WORKS. The program is a collaborative effort of JCC; public and private schools; Johnston County Economic Development; Triangle East, Clayton and Benson chambers of commerce; and the Triangle East Economic Development Foundation. Its first participants graduated from high school this year. “This program offers hands-on career exploration for eighth-graders, particularly in industries that are essential to the local economy such as manufacturing, healthcare and technology,” McGuinness says. “By connecting students with future employers, JOCO WORKS helps ensure local businesses have access to a pipeline of skilled workers while giving students a head start on their careers.”
Revamping roads
Johnston County’s labor shed is home to about 10,000 people. Johnson says more than half of them cross a county line to work. And whether its Wolfspeed’s John Palmour Manufacturing Center for Silicon Carbide in Siler City, Toyota’s electric-vehicle battery plant in Liberty or a multitude of life-science companies to the west, employment options are growing. “So, part of our efforts is to reverse those trends, where individuals
having to leave the county for employment opportunities can be here, where we’ve recruited industries, and they can stay near residential communities, where they can live, work and play,” he says. “It’s a two-edged sword. Those big companies need suppliers, and they say, ‘We’re going to locate here, but we need suppliers within an hour’s radius.’ So, we look at that as, whatever widget they’re making there, we can recruit the supplier that feeds that manufacturer. With a mobile society, there are tradeoffs. And as we build our manufacturing base, those people in other counties will drive here. That’s the benefit of a road network system.”
Eastfield Crossing, a 400 acre mixeduse development near Interstate 95 and U.S. 70 in Selma, is where Crystal Window and Door Systems announced it was parking a $93 million factory in May. The Flushing, New York-based company expects to hire 500 people for positions such as frame assembler, machine operator, warehouse worker, quality engineer and others. The average annual salary for the jobs is $56,000.
While Johnston County offers quick access to the East Coast’s busiest interstate,
I-95, an important consideration for any business moving goods and receiving materials, work to strengthen regional connections is underway. Phase 1 of the Complete 540 project opened an 18-mile extension of the Triangle Expressway in September. It connects N.C. 55 Bypass in Apex to the Interstate 40/Interstate 42 interchange in Garner. “The opening of
Phase 1 of the Interstate 540 Southern Loop is exciting for Clayton,” Cappola says. “This extension will help alleviate traffic during peak hours for many of our residents and provide them with better access to the larger Triangle area, ensuring that Clayton remains a key player in the regional economy and a desirable place to live.”
Complete 540’s Phase 2, which is
expected to open in 2028, will extend the expressway 10 miles to the existing I-540/Interstate 87/U.S. 64/U.S. 264 interchange in Knightdale. Cappola says it address the ever-increasing transportation demands caused by rapid population growth and economic development, which benefits Clayton-area residents by easing traffic congestion.
Johnson says it’s exciting to consider how finishing Complete 540 will bring Johnston County closer to the Triangle. “It gets us to the three universities, downtown Raleigh, [Raleigh-Durham International Airport] and all the amenities,” he says. “The entire county is now 15 minutes closer. The other transformation is U.S. 70 to I-42, and the entire section will go through Johnston County, from Pine Level to Raleigh. We soon will have three interstates dissecting Johnston County.”
Booming population
Johnson moved to Johnston County in 1990, when its population was about 18,000. “Now, it’s over 260,000, and if we [continue to] grow at that rate, it will surpass
300,000 in four years,” he says. “You’re talking half-a-million by 2050.” Smithfield’s population, for example, grew to 12,829 in 2024 from 10,966 in 2010, according to U.S. Census Bureau. And Clayton, whose current population is estimated at 30,621, added 5,000 since 2020. “With that comes pressure for housing, multifamily and single family,” he says. “Our communities have been forthright in wanting to see growth occur in specific municipalities, areas with infrastructure in place, with EMS and schools as opposed to let’s create a subdivision on every acre of land possible.”
Several projects are underway in Clayton. Old Town Hall, which was built in 1925, is becoming The Station, a $1.75 million project that blends office, retail and restaurants, and marketplace space. It’s expected to open later next year. Cappola says downtown residents, local developers Kevin and Carrie Lee, along with business owners Erin Nenni and Christi Thompson, are spearheading the effort. “The renovation of Old Town Hall is more than just a construction project,” he says. “It’s about preserving Clayton’s rich history
while creating something truly special for our community. The Station will be a place where our past meets our future.”
A complete renovation of HocuttEllington Memorial Library, along with upgrades to Clayton parks, are part of the final phase of an $18 million bond project, which voters approved in 2019. The library will gain study rooms, meeting space, upgraded technology and a coffee shop. “It’s about creating a space that serves the diverse needs of our community in the years to come,” Cappola says. “The new design will make the library a centerpiece for learning and connection in Clayton with a modern look and feel that will attract residents of all ages.”
Protecting roots
House-Autry Mills, whose products include breading, batters, hushpuppy mixes, seasonings and gourmet sauces, relocated to Four Oaks in 2001. It expanded production in 2013, adding a gluten-free factory. It acquired Captain Foods in 2019, expanding its portfolio of seasonings and hot sauces.
Frank Pogue, House-Autry’s vice president of marketing and business development, says the company has grown alongside Johnston County. “Since our startup in Four Oaks, we’ve added a number of new products to our lineup,” he says. “We’ve also grown our footprint. Our products are available across the country, either serving national supermarket chains or supplying a wide range of restaurants. We still stay close to our roots. Our focus continues to be the Southeast, where it all started. Our Four Oaks location gives us great access to these markets, and Johnston County has provided a solid workforce base to hire from.”
Food production has always been at the heart of Johnston County, where U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2022 Census of Agriculture reported 964 farms, 96 of which are family owned, totaling 174,111 acres. “The ingredient market is significantly more global than in the past, so we’re competing with both U.S. and international companies for access,” Pogue says. “But our No. 1 ingredient — wheat — is primarily sourced from right here in Johnston County. The competitive pricing our farmers offer and the close proximity to
the plant help us be cost-effective.”
Michael Walden is a distinguished professor emeritus at NC State University with teaching, research and extension roles in consumer economics, economic outlook and public policy. His report — “The Economic Value of the Agriculture and Agribusiness Sector in Johnston County, North Carolina” — analyzes 2022 statistics, the latest available. Agriculture contributed 12,754 jobs, about 14% of total jobs in the county, and brought a value-added of $723 million, 8% of its GDP. “When the agriculture/ agribusiness sector expands, there are also significant economic impacts on the broader Johnston County economy,” he writes. “Local suppliers to the sector increase their production and income. Also, a significant part of the increased income from expansion will be spent in local retail stores.”
Looking forward
McGuinness says workforce development, especially for construction and manufacturing, will top Triangle East’s to-do list for the next five years. “Breaking down talent barriers in Johnston County,
like access to quality childcare, increasing transportation opportunities and educating the community about the importance of providing a range of income-aligned housing [are other priorities],” she says.
Johnson says making that happen will take local and regional efforts. “We have a strong economic system that comes with collaboration,” he says. “We’re nestled right between a lot of amazing talent and young people who are looking for opportunities. We want to make sure we provide those.”
House-Autry, which was founded more than 200 years ago in Newtown Grove, sees a bright future in Johnston County. “The relocation to Four Oaks provided HouseAutry with the opportunity to grow from a regional company to a national presence,” Pogue says. “The workforce, facilities, infrastructure and leadership … helped us grow and expand beyond our beginnings in 1812 and into the future. We don’t share roles and headcount, but our Four Oaks facility is still our national headquarters and the largest of our locations.” ■
— Kathy Blake is a writer from eastern North Carolina.
IMILITARY MIGHT
retired from daily newspaper work in 2018, and started writing for Business North Carolina. I started writing more and more about the military in North Carolina, including the bases and the companies that transact with the military. Having never served in the military, I found this new and interesting.
For the past year, I have written a weekly email newsletter for the magazine, the NC Military Report. When I talk to friends about what I do, I mention that North Carolina has the fourth-most active duty military in the nation, and this surprises them. They are also surprised to learn that the military is the second-largest sector in the state’s economy.
I have lived in the Raleigh area for nearly 29 years. The military is not very visible from Raleigh. You have to drive a ways. There is not much to see from the main roads except miles of fences, behind which warfighters are constantly training.
WHAT’S HERE
Along the coast, the Marines extend from Havelock to Jacksonville, nearly 40,000 of them, from Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point to Camp Lejeune to Marine Corps Air Station New River. There are a lot of new buildings. The Marines’ installations have seen $3.4 billion in repairs since Hurricane Florence six years ago.
for a place for artillery training. No one expected that a century later, 10% of the Army would garrison in Fayetteville.
The Air Force has a smaller footprint, with around 4,300 active duty personnel at Seymour Johnson in Goldsboro. They maintain and fly F-15Es.
What the services have in common is that they deploy a lot from these bases. The 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit left in June on three Navy amphibious ships for the eastern Mediterranean sea. The 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade arrived in Naples, Italy, in May to support the 6th Fleet. Fighters from Seymour Johnson were in the Middle East in April, and shot down Iranian drones headed for Israel. And the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade got back in July from a ninemonth deployment in the Middle East.
Fort Liberty in Fayetteville is the largest Army base by population in the U.S., with nearly 43,000 soldiers. It is home to the XVIII Airborne Corps, the 82nd Airborne Division and a lot of special operators. Fort Liberty covers 269 square miles in the Sandhills west of Interstate 95. In World War I, the Army looked
The state has nearly 95,000 activeduty service members. At a recent defense conference in Charlotte, Sen. Thom Tillis said: “We’ve got a military presence in North Carolina that exceeds the capacity of most nations.”
This is the part where people often overlook the Coast Guard. First, because it is not in the Department of Defense. It is in the Department of Homeland Security. Second, because Base Elizabeth City is up in the northeastern corner of the state. It is the same distance from Raleigh as Charlotte, but seems further away. I visited because I wanted to see the Coast Guard’s Aviation Logistics Center, which overhauls the service’s 200 aircraft. The ALC turns battered, sea-corroded helicopters into shiny ones, with the latest avionics.
HOMECOMINGS
In March, I was in Jacksonville to watch the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit come back after an eight-month deployment. A Marine Expeditionary Unit is a self-contained task force that brings everything it needs – several thousand warfighters, logistics support, aircraft, landing craft and artillery. It operates from a group of amphibious ships. The 26th had spent most of its time in the Mediterranean.
On Camp Lejeune’s Onslow Beach, air-cushioned landing craft were shuttling Marines from the USS Bataan, three miles out, making a terrific racket. A line of buses was waiting to take the Marines the last five miles to the main part of the base. I went to an open field next to Goettge Memorial Field House, where family members gathered with welcome-home signs for Marines coming in on helicopters from the Bataan. Then I finished up at Marine Corps Air Station New River, next door to Lejeune, and watched more helicopters ferrying Marines ashore.
The homecoming scenes were emotional. It is easy to think of our warfighters as one number, 95,000. But they are sons and daughters, husbands and wives, moms and dads, who have been away for many months. We have some 600,000 veterans in North Carolina, many who know what homecomings are like.
THE BUSINESS OF DEFENSE
While the military is very important to our state, and we have a lot of medium- and small-business defense contractors, we do not have the biggest prime contractors. One place that does is Tarrant County in Texas, where Lockheed Martin is building F-35s on the west side of Fort Worth. In the 2023 fiscal year, the military issued $33.5 billion in contracts in Tarrant County alone. Or look at Fairfax County in Northern Virginia, where many big defense contractors are headquartered. Fairfax had $18 billion in contracts in 2023.
We do OK, considering that we don’t build jets or aircraft carriers, and we aren’t inside the Washington Beltway. The Department of Defense issued $4.4 billion in contracts in North Carolina last year. The big three counties were Cumberland, $1.3 billion; Onslow, $1 billion; and Craven, $623.5 million. That is what comes from having Fort Liberty in Fayetteville and Fleet Readiness Center East
and Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point in Craven and Camp Lejeune and MCAS New River in Onslow. Installations need vendors to supply goods and services.
THE INFORMATION GAP
One of the problems with building a more robust defense industrial base is a lack of knowledge. The Department of Defense buys everything, but it doesn’t know all the companies capable of filling its orders. The economy is filled with companies who don’t know what the military needs. That is one reason you see a lot of DoD civilians and military officers at the industry conference. They are trying to find more vendors. But the real problem is that a lot of potential suppliers aren’t attending these conferences and trade shows.
I will give you an example of how this plays out. There was a conference in Charlotte at the end of October, the Defense Industrial Supply Chain Summit, put on by the North Carolina Military Business Center and its Defense Technology Transition Office. One speaker was Donald Schulze from the Defense Logistics Agency, which buys just about everything you can think of. Batteries, fuel, clothing, nuts and bolts. It stocks millions of items. Schulze is deputy director, Land Supplier Operations, DLA Land and Maritime. He is one of the most important logistics persons in the Department of Defense, based in Columbus, Ohio. He was talking about things in short supply, this valve and that seal. On the back of his business card, he has a QR code that would send you to a spreadsheet with all the urgently needed items.
I had gotten Schulze’s card the night before, when I met him on a tour of GM Defense near the Charlotte Motor Speedway. The next day, I pulled out the card, turned it over, and the QR code took me straight to the spreadsheet. Which is great. But I don’t make bolts for Black Hawk helicopters or gaskets for howitzers.
He needs help getting this spreadsheet around. ■
Veteran journalist Dan Barkin writes the NC Military Report newsletter for Business NC. He can be reached at dbarkin53@gmail.com.
Dan Barkin’s email on our state’s growing military business sector and its impact on the N.C. economy is a must-read. The military provides roughly 11 percent of N.C.’s employment. That’s 653,000 jobs in North Carolina, more than $49 billion in personal income, and nearly $80 billion in gross state product. These are some of the reasons why Business North Carolina created the “NC Military Report,” a weekly newsletter covering military-related business news around the stat. Subscribe today.