Business North Carolina February 2021

MANDY COHEN TAKES HER BEST SHOT HOUSING PRICES SOAR • SPENCER ROBBINS’ HIGH COUNTRY IMPACT • A JEWEL OF THE TRIAD

FEBRUARY 2021 Price: $3.95 businessnc.com

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As the state’s executive suites and boardrooms become more inclusive, BNC profiles an array of distinctive leaders.

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+ DEPARTMENTS 4 UP FRONT 8 NC TREND

FEBRUARY 2021

Robust year for N.C. real estate; Spencer Robbins’ huge footprint on the mountains; Two Wake Forest University grads capitalize on the kombucha craze; Fast fashion fuels fleet females.

74 TOWN SQUARE

A mining town in the early 1800s, Jamestown’s central location between Greensboro and High Point and developing downtown make it an increasingly popular locale.

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+ SPONSORED SECTIONS COVER STORY

DYNAMIC DIVERSITY

26 ROUND TABLE: ECONOMIC FORECAST Industry leaders share their views of the state’s economy, including its current status and likely trends over the next 12 months.

North Carolina’s executive suites are diversifying, our first list of power brokers from historically underserved communities shows. Look for the pace to accelerate.

62 POWERING N.C.

Clean-energy offerings present new opportunities for public and private sector cooperation.

STRAIGHT SHOOTER

68 COMMUNITY CLOSE-UP

CO V E R CO L L AG E B Y R A L P H V O L T Z

Gaston County is strengthening its economic base and improving the quality of life for residents.

February 2021, Vol. 41, No. 2 (ISSN 0279-4276). Business North Carolina is published monthly by Business North Carolina at 1230 West Morehead Street, Suite 308 Charlotte, NC 28208.

Telephone: 704-523-6987. Fax: 704-523-4211. All contents copyright © by Old North State Magazines LLC. Subscription rate: 1 year, $30. For change of address, send mailing label and allow six to eight weeks. Periodicals postage paid at Charlotte, NC, and additional offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Business North Carolina, 1230 West Morehead Street, Suite 308 Charlotte, NC 28208 or email circulation@businessnc.com.

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A relative newcomer to North Carolina, public health chief Mandy Cohen’s forthright manner earns respect while leading the state’s pandemic response.

BY MIKE MACMILLAN

Start your day with business news from across the state, direct to your inbox.

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UPFRONT

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► David Mildenberg

A NEW DAY

ever let a crisis go to waste is a strategy long used by business leaders. As new national leadership steps up, consider the remarkable shifts and challenges in this pivotal time: Government promises to become more influential than ever.

Unprecedented federal stimulus shows our society can avert poverty if so desired.

But there’s a cost. The Biden administration is pledging the most left-leaning agenda since FDR. An hourly $15 minimum wage and required boardroom diversity, once viewed as fringe ideas, appear locked in. Universal basic income may be next.

Such measures follow a pandemic that revealed that inequality was worse than we thought.

Americans in the top 75% of the income strata saved an extra $1.3 trillion and stocks soared, while the virus hit the poor much harder. Our nation has 10 million fewer jobs than a year ago. As many as 25% of Americans are considered “food insecure,” and several million households are behind on rent or mortgages. The achievement gap between students at elite and struggling schools has accelerated.

Meanwhile, technology progressed five or 10 years faster than expected.

Use of Zoom soared from 10 million users to 300 million within a year. DoorDash is likely to make 1 billion deliveries this year versus 200 million in 2019. Few want to visit the office five days a week, scaring the commercial real estate trade. While Amazon assembles 6 million square feet of N.C. warehouse space, tech-deficient small businesses are scrambling.

Wall Street’s hottest sectors are related to climate change, clean energy and health care.

Traditional energy is getting rocked as many alternative energy deals become feasible. The president wants to invest $2 trillion on climate-change initiatives.

After seeing success in COVID-19 vaccines, maybe spending so much on health care is a good idea, after all.

More people believe a rising GDP may not be the best measure of success.

Goals beyond maximizing profit are gaining popularity. Demand for greener, healthier lifestyles, less inequality and more

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diversity and inclusion is accelerating. Our Dynamic Diversity report this month suggests these trends are taking hold.

Some obvious challenges will test our nation: Can key societal institutions survive our deep divides?

Constant fighting doesn’t solve problems. Failure to retain U.S. leadership in technology, science and education and to prudently fund infrastructure ensures our national decline. Muzzling unpopular viewpoints will only inspire more conspiracy theories and violence. Focusing on unity instead of division is essential.

China’s centralization of power — and arguably stronger economy — is the biggest threat to our nation since World War II. Through the pandemic, U.S. debt per capita has increased by nearly $13,000 — before the new $1.9 billion stimulus plan.

That compares with $5,300 in Germany and France and $1,200 in China. While less bombastic than his predecessor, the new president must promote an effective strategy to counter Chinese power.

How can Big Tech’s influence be mitigated without muzzling innovation?

CEOs Bezos/Cook/Zuckerberg/Pichai appear more powerful than Biden/Harris and Schumer/Pelosi. Maybe that’s a good thing. But multinationals can’t override our shared values for privacy, free speech, open markets and human rights.

Will we be ready for the next pandemic?

It’s less an issue of money than managerial competence and willpower. North Carolina’s performance in curbing COVID-19 seems to have exceeded the response in California and New York, for example.

Let’s not let this crisis go to waste.

For much keener insight, check out our round table of bankers, economists and industry recruiters who discuss what’s ahead for North Carolina, starting on Page 26.

V O L U M E 4 1 , N O. 2 PUBLISHER

Ben Kinney

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Cathy Martin

cmartin@businessnc.com SENIOR CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

Edward Martin

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CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Dan Barkin, Mike MacMillan, Vanessa Infanzon, Bryan Mims, Shannon Cuthrell, Jennings Cool, Virginia Brown, Michael Solender, Connie Robbins Gentry CREATIVE MANAGER

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BNC ONLINE Melanie Sill @melaniesill

As a Brunswick [County] resident, glad to see more reporting on the unusual Bald Head Island ferry plan from @PortCityDaily @ wectnews and now @BusinessNC. Question I’ve never seen answered: Why wasn’t this route simply added to NC’s established ferry system?

We love getting feedback from our readers.

Here’s a sampling of what you had to say about Business North Carolina on social media last month.

Selling Bald Head Island’s ferry creates a ruckus

ptpix This is the third cover out on the stands right now that I shot! This is @businessnorthcarolina cover story about the @usnwc and their CEO Jeff Wise. Hard to shoot this one as the center had just drained their rapids! We had some well timed zip line riders pop in to add some fun to the shot. Thanks for the all star assist @dmeimagery. Couldn’t have done it without you!

91omg.biz Startup news + events from NC Beach

Thank you to the entire BNC team for your informative newsletters each day.

@91OMGbiz

- Leah Hughes Randolph County

The fine people at @BusinessNC do a great job of personalizing the news How what is happening in the world impacts their lives and maybe your lives.

Nice job @davemildenberg Important information about the hospital and finances in #WilmingtonNC #ILM

Daily Digest

Gardner Law PLLC

Daily Digest, Jan. 18

We are proud to announce that our founding attorney, Gigi Gardner, was elected to Business North Carolina’s Legal Elite 2021 Hall of Fame in Immigration Law! Each year the magazine asks active members of the NC Bar to vote for the state’s best practitioners in their fields, and this year Gigi won the most votes in immigration law among her peers. The winners were asked to describe their favorite activity they picked up during the 2020 pandemic. To learn more about Gigi and her favorite quarantine hobby, check out her story.

Laura Bingham

Board director | Strategy | Governance | Leadership Great piece on a great fellow! Salt of the earth, wise and humble, boots full of kindness.

The whitewater center’s rollicking ride

Read these stories and more at

businessnc.com.

Pillars of North Carolina: Steve Stroud

Jim Holmes

Andrew Miller Congratulations! Great job & well deserved!

Managing partner, Sentinel Risk Advisors

Lizz Anderson Yeah Gigi Gardner congrats

A true NC Icon Pillars of North Carolina: Steve Stroud

Horacio Chavez Amazing!!! Congratulations GIGI! Glenda Polanco You truly are amazing!!!! Congratulations

Shirleen Hodge

đ&#x;‘?đ&#x;‘?đ&#x;‘?

Houda Idrissi Congratulations Gigi Gardner. You soooooo deserve it!!!! Keep on rocking!:) Art Register This is amazing Gi, so awesome to hear!!!

Becky Morgan Congratulations Gigi Gardner we are all so proud of you! You’re awesome!

â?¤

Another success raised in my hometown, the foothills of Rutherford County, NC. Great job Steve.

Pillars of North Carolina: Steve Stroud

B U S I N E S S

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FOLLOW US Business North Carolina @BusinessNC Business North Carolina @businessnorthcarolina

Jon "JB" Barcelo

89.9 WDAV Classical Public Radio The Charlotte region is stronger because of the USNWC. Bravo Jeff.

The whitewater center’s rollicking ride

Dori Franklin Wow GiGi!!! That is such an accomplishment!

Proud of you!

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NC TREND

First take: Real estate

■ KOMBUCHA

■ SPENCER ROBBINS

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Page 10

■ APPAREL Page 16

■ STATEWIDE Page 18

RED HOT REAL ESTATE B Y TAY L O R WA N B A U G H

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hough 2020 proved to be a challenging year because of the pandemic and resulting economic strife, historically low interest rates and strong inmigration created a boom in North Carolina real estate values. Population growth in the Old North State over the last decade exceeded that in all other states east of the Mississippi River except Florida and South Carolina, with the population gaining nearly 1% last year to 10.6 million, according to the Carolina Population Center.

North Carolina ranked No. 6 in United Van Lines’ recent study of top states for inbound residents in 2020. Despite stay-at-home orders issued on a statewide level in the spring, Realtors were considered essential workers and remained active, though plummeting inventory has become one of the industry’s biggest challenges. “Demand is high while supply remains low,” says Mark Zimmerman, senior vice president of external affairs for nonprofit trade association NC Realtors.

TRADING SPACES STATEWIDE SALES The number of residential properties sold each month was considerably stronger in 2020 than a year earlier, with the exception of April (-8%) and May (-23%) when government-mandated shutdowns and stay-at-home orders limited activity. More than 15,000 homes were sold in each of the last seven months of the year, including September, which had a 32% increase from the previous year.

CLOSED SALES VOLUME The sum of statewide residential properties sold also soared 15% last year to $54.3 billion. The month with the largest change from 2019 to 2020 was September, with a 54% increase.

SOLD 2019

2020

20,000

2019

2020

$47.2

$54.3

billion

15,000

billion

10,000 5,000 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

source: NC Realtors

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2019

ACTIVE LISTINGS While home sales were red hot in 2020, the number of properties for sale statewide sunk sharply and ended the year at fewer than 20,000. That is about half as many homes on the market as a year earlier, which is great news for sellers, less so for buyers.

2020

40,000 30,000 20,000 10,000 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

AVERAGE HOME VALUE

400,000 300,000 200,000 $100,000 2017

2018

2019

2020

2021

2022

In such a strong sellers’ market, the value of homes naturally increased. Statewide, the average N.C. home was valued at $220,710 as of December, a 7.6% increase from 2019, according to the Zillow real estate website.

The company estimates that N.C. home values will rise by 10.2% over the next year. Home values are accelerating in each of the state’s large metropolitan areas.

ST. MARY'S

North Carolina Charlotte Raleigh Wilmington Asheville Greensboro

HIGH COUNTRY HITTING RECORDS The High Country saw record sales in 2020, with 3,253 residential listings trading for a combined $1.18 billion in Alleghany, Ashe, Avery and Watauga counties, according to the High Country Association of Realtors. Like most of the state, inventory is incredibly limited: As of Jan. 6, there were 496 properties on the market compared with 1,227 a year ago.

Median sales price 2020: $285,000 2019: $240,500

Residential sales 2020: 3,253 2019: 2,608

(up 18.5%)

(up 24.7%)

Total residential sales value 2020: $1.182 billion 2019: $804.7 million

Land sales 2020: 1,145 2019: 656

(up 46.9%)

(up 74.5%)

BEACH BOOST As more residents spend time outdoors during the pandemic, coastal communities are seeing a major boost in population. Wilmington was the No. 1 city in 2020 for inbound moves in the U.S. on a per capita basis, according to a recent study from United Van Lines. The luxury market reported a particularly large boost as the area saw record sales of its million-dollar homes.

363

Total luxury properties (valued at $1 million or more) sold in 2020 in Brunswick, New Hanover or Pender counties. The previous record was 266 in 2005.

$597 MILLION

Total sum of sold luxury properties. A combined $409 million was sold in 2005.

$2.65 MILLION

Most expensive home sold in the region in December. The Bald Head Island property was purchased by a Raleigh tax lawyer.

sources: NC Realtors, Zillow, High Country Association of Realtors, Just for Buyers Realty F E B R U A R Y

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NC TREND

Spencer Robbins

HIGH COUNTRY HERO Spencer Robbins was a force in western North Carolina tourism and real estate development dating back more than half a century. He and his older brothers, Grover Jr. and Harry, helped create regional attractions such as Blowing Rock’s Tweetsie Railroad Wild West theme park. The trio were pioneers in the state’s skiing industry through the Beech Mountain Resort and helped popularize a once isolated region. Robbins passed away Nov. 13 at 93. Spencer Robbins' daughter, Connie Robbins Gentry, paints a picture of her father’s contributions to the High Country.

BY CONNIE ROBBINS GENTRY

“W

▲ Jack Nicklaus, left, Grace and Spencer Robbins and son Shane, 1983

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▲ Spencer, left, and Harry Robbins in Elk River Clubhouse in Banner Elk, 1985

nity — and later developed Beech Mountain Resort, the now-defunct Land of Oz theme park — it still hosts the largest Wizard of Oz festival in the country — and residential communities Linville Land Harbor and Elk River Club in Banner Elk. These were just some of the opportunities they developed in what has become one of the state’s most vital industries. In 1968, the N.C. Travel Industry Association recognized the three brothers for their contributions.

Of the three, Spencer was the people person who connected with everyone he met on a personal level. It wasn’t superficial; he genuinely found out what mattered to people and he remembered each one individually. Relationships that started in business transactions inevitably endured as friendships.

“Spencer was a rare individual, a no-nonsense person whose word was his bond,” says Bill Hensley, a Charlotte-based public relations executive who served as North Carolina’s director of travel and tourism from 1965 to 1971. “If he told you something, you could bank on it. Honesty was his tradition whether it was in business or his personal life. And he had a sense of humor that was legendary — he was great to have around for business or pleasure.”

His humor and penchant for storytelling were cherished qualities,

PHOTOS COURTESY OF CONNIE ROBBINS GENTRY

hat Boone needs is a convention center so people can come here for meetings and conferences and see what a beautiful place it is to live and visit.” That’s what Spencer Robbins said in early November, as he surveyed the development underway in his beloved hometown.

My father dedicated his life to promoting economic development, tourism, job creation and an enhanced quality of life for the High Country. He leaves a legacy that spanned generations and set the stage for communities in western North Carolina to continue to prosper.

Along with his brothers, he developed some of the area’s most popular travel attractions and highly acclaimed resorts. Preserving the history and character of the region were paramount, so in 1957, the brothers returned a storied steam locomotive to the community, creating Blowing Rock’s Tweetsie Railroad Wild West theme park — North Carolina’s first. In the ’70s, they restored the nearly 130-year-old Green Park Inn to the splendor of bygone eras.

The Robbins brothers were also known for their role in Boonebased Hound Ears Club — their first golf course and resort commu-

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Spencer Robbins

▲ One of Spencer Robbins' legacies is Blowing Rock's Wild Westthemed Tweetsie Railroad, North Carolina's first theme park.

beauty and splendor of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Elk River Club opened in 1984 as the state’s first Nicklaus-designed course.

and he interjected them into his business dealings in ways that made people want to become part of the developments in western North Carolina. He had a vision for what the area needed and concocting creative ways to entice people to come from near and far.

Bringing in the big guns In the heyday of TV westerns, Dad brought celebrity cowboys to Tweetsie and to its sister attraction in Pigeon Forge, Tenn. (Today’s Dollywood was originally a Wild West-themed park called Goldrush Junction acquired by the Robbins brothers.) He liked to make the visits personal for the stars — Doc and Festus of Gunsmoke fame ate home-cooked dinners at our house to “give them a chance to relax and feel normal,” Dad would say.

When folks laughed at the concept of skiing in the South, Dad recruited ski instructors from Austria, taking them to Atlanta and Charlotte for Thanksgiving Day parades and to promote the sport at major shopping malls, just in time to inspire winter ski trips to western North Carolina.

In the early ’80s, he and Harry asked Arnold Palmer to design the golf course for their Banner Elk property, but the famous PGA star had several other projects underway. Instead, they approached Jack Nicklaus, who had never designed a North Carolina course.

Nicknamed the Golden Bear, he headed one of the world’s largest golf course-design companies.

Nicklaus returned their call with a single question: Could he bring his wife because she had not seen this part of the country?

Nothing could have pleased Dad more; he delighted in sharing the

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The Robbins brothers spent hours atop Beech Mountain, hiking and taking in the views. With the Land of Oz, Dad wanted to highlight the natural beauty of the land. So they brought in Jack Pentes, a Charlotte-based artist who worked with them at Tweetsie and later designed the Elk River logo. Pentes and Dad were business partners and great friends. It was at our dinner table one night that Pentes was sketching the property’s gnarly trees, as enamored with the setting as Dad and Harry, and, in a flash, Pentes could see those trees throwing apples at a scarecrow, tin woodsman, and cowardly lion. The Land of Oz opened in 1970. Legend has it that only one of those magical trees was cut down to make room for the yellow brick road.

Rick Foster, president of Elk River Realty, remembers the reverence for the land witnessed time and again across the more than 40 years he worked alongside my father. “Whenever something would be planned, it had to blend in with the mountains,” Foster says.

“Utilities had to go underground because it would look better. At Elk River, the waterfalls had to be a park. I’d say, ‘We could sell a hundred condos there.’ And he’d tell me, ‘Those waterfalls have to be for everybody.’”

The 1,200-acre tract that is home to Elk River Club was developed with extremely low density to minimize the number of trees cut and preserve the natural setting. “There are only about 300 total residential units in the club, about 100 condos and 200 homes,” Foster says. “How the end product would look was always a consideration for Spencer; the estate tracts along the ridge of Elk River were larger so that as people look across at that ridge, they don’t see house after house. And he insisted on everything being built with

PHOTOS COURTESY OF TWEETSIE RAILROAD

Love of the land

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native materials from the mountains.

Foster recalls a prospective buyer who was irked that Spencer had to approve the number of trees cut to make room for the house he wanted. “They don’t have anything better to do?” the incredulous buyer asked. “Actually they don’t,” responded Foster, who joined the Robbins brothers’ business while in college and has spent his career there. “I remember being astounded back in the ’80s to learn that their business was the third-largest employer in the area.” Only Appalachian State University and the TRW electronics manufacturer were larger at the time.

“Not long ago, a man came up to thank Spencer when we were having lunch at a little diner. Back when they were developing Beech Mountain, Spencer and Harry worked with Lees-McRae [College in Banner Elk] to develop a trade school that provided free classes and tools to address the shortage of construction labor.

That man told your Dad: ‘You taught me the construction business, and I’ve been employed ever since. I still have that hammer I got in school.’”

Another close friend was Harris Prevost, vice president of the nonprofit Grandfather Mountain Stewardship Foundation. “Spencer was my hero and mentor when I was just starting out at Grandfather Mountain in the mid-’70s, and he remains my hero to this day,” Prevost says. “When I started working for Mr. [Hugh] Morton [former owner of Grandfather Mountain], he told me to watch Spencer and learn from him.”

Prevost and Dad worked together in the formation of the North Carolina High Country Host, an organization that was a cohesive

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marketing network for all of the tourism businesses in the region, where Dad served as president from 1980 to 1982. “Due to his hard work, his extraordinary vision and, more importantly, who he was, businesses trusted and respected him,” Prevost says.

My father’s legacy included his integrity, his treatment of others and a sincere desire to promote his community. After their oldest brother lost his battle with cancer at age 50 in 1970, Dad and Harry launched the Grover C. Robbins Jr. Memorial Golf Tournament.

The event raises money for the Seby B. Jones Regional Cancer Center in Boone. (Harry Robbins died in 2007, at 82.)

Dad served on the Appalachian Regional Healthcare board for many years, receiving a lifetime achievement award in 2011 from the hospital’s foundation.

Awards were appreciated, but what made him glow was the people who would come back into his life. During hospital stays, nurses and staff would remind him: “Remember: I worked for you at Tweetsie?” “I was a Dorothy at Oz.” “You helped me get through school because I was able to work at Hound Ears or Beech Mountain.” The list goes on.

“He built relationships that lasted years, and people just felt good working with him.” Foster says. “He made you feel like family.” ■ Editor’s note: Spencer Robbins was a fine businessman, but an even more extraordinary family man, Connie Robbins Gentry notes. He is survived by the love of his life, Grace, his wife of 64 years; four sons and daughtersin-law; one daughter and son-in-law; nine grandchildren; and two greatgrandchildren.

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NC TREND

Kombucha

WHAT’S UP, DOG? A HOBBY FOR TWO WAKE FOREST STUDENTS HAS GROWN INTO ONE OF THE REGION’S BETTER-KNOWN KOMBUCHA PRODUCERS.

BY JENNINGS COOL

O

livia Wolff and Lauren Miller, both 26, had no idea that their first batch of kombucha brewed in a Wake Forest University dorm room five years ago was the start of a flourishing business. But that’s how UpDog Kombucha, a handcrafted, small-batch kombucha microbrewery, was born. UpDog’s drinks can be found in Sycamore Brewing in Charlotte, Piecewise Coffee in Cayce, S.C., and about 90 other breweries, markets and shops. The beverage is also sold at a few farmers markets.

“We built UpDog from the ground up ourselves. I am proud of the brand we built and the product that we make,” Wolff says. “We have built a really relatable brand, and we are always working at bettering ourselves.”

Kombucha, a fermented, fizzy beverage made using tea, sugar, bacteria and yeast, contains probiotics, prebiotics and antioxidants, contributing to several health benefits. UpDog Kombucha’s recipe is constantly undergoing fine-tuning and changes, according to Wolff. “This is mostly because kombucha is raw and unpasteurized, meaning it is a ‘living’ beverage, and flavor can vary.”

Though Wolff wouldn’t reveal specific revenue figures, she says the business has been profitable since Day 1. Bottles and glasses on tap typically cost about $5 per beverage, while growlers retail between $10 and $18.

In fall 2015, Wolff began making her own kombucha as a hobby during her senior year at Wake Forest. She realized how much kombucha she was buying at the store, so she saved money by compiling a few recipes and making her own batch.

When friends and family started showing interest in her brewing process, she started selling bottles for a small amount of money to people she knew and trusted.

“Friends would Venmo me for a Mason jar of kombucha, I would drop it off and they would pay for refills. I was like the milkman,” Wolff says. She later wrote about her kombucha experimentation in the Wake Forest chapter of Spoon University, a food publication.

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Lauren Miller and Olivia Wolff

Miller, then a Wake Forest junior, read the article and was intrigued by Wolff’s homebrewing process. Miller followed Wolff’s directions, made her own batch and was sold on the product, so she joined Wolff’s brewing team.

That winter, the homebrewers officially launched the UpDog Kombucha brand. Its cheeky French bulldog logo and yogainspired drink names, including Happy Baby and Sphinx, come from the founders’ love of dogs and yoga.

“At the time, there were a few photos on the internet floating around of French bulldogs doing various yoga poses,” Wolff says. “This was the inspiration for the UpDog dog.”

Wolff and Miller initially sold UpDog Kombucha to Wake Forest students through social media direct messaging. Students would send their orders, pick up their bottles in dorm room lobbies and later return their bottles for refills. “The brand ended up catching on like wildfire,” Wolff says.

During the first day, Wolff and Miller decided to cap at 40 orders. To their surprise, they hit the 40-bottle mark in less than an hour, which was a nudge of encouragement for the days to follow. They later sold roughly 160 bottles of kombucha each week, which was carefully fermented in Miller’s college suite and prepared in a dorm room kitchen.

The students kept UpDog Kombucha’s dorm room operation under the radar until it was moved to a commercial kitchen space. It later found its more permanent home in a transformed 2,000-square-foot warehouse also in Winston-Salem, featuring fermentation tanks, coolers and triple-basin sinks.

Wolff graduated from Wake Forest in 2016 with a degree

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in health and exercise science, and Miller followed in 2017, majoring in economics. Miller manages operations in WinstonSalem, and Wolff handles the Charlotte market in addition to a few South Carolina accounts.

Kyle Cameron joined as head brewer in 2017. “He has basically learned everything on the fly and has grown with us. He really cares about the product he puts out,” Wolff says.

Over the last five years, Wolff and Miller have built a recognizable brand with a loyal customer base. “We want to make the experience of our customers and the people who support us a good experience, so we do whatever it takes to make it

positive for people,” Wolff says. “If you have a problem with something, you can bet we are fixing it.”

Wolff and Miller have kept the business debt-free and alive during the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of statewide regulations, UpDog Kombucha shifted its business model slightly, adapting home-delivery services to stay ahead of the economic decline.

“When COVID really came to a head in the spring of 2020, we decided we had to adapt and pivot our business to accommodate direct-to-consumer [sales] since previously most of our business had been wholesale customers, and a lot of those spots were temporarily closed or operating at a very limited capacity,” Wolff says.

Wolff and Miller added an e-commerce option to the website and started a home-delivery service last March, dropping off 12-pack cases on customers’ doorsteps. A case costs $40, according to an early January website offer. “We have been going strong with it ever since. We never anticipated that we’d be in the direct-to-consumer space, but we are glad that we were able to adapt quickly so we could provide our customers with our product,” Wolff says. ■

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FINDING BLISS ASHEVILLE-BASED BLYSS RUNNING GAINS A NICHE MAKING PRACTICAL GEAR FOR WOMEN ON THE MOVE.

BY VIRGINIA BROWN

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lyson Neel was a late bloomer when it came to running. Picking up the activity at age 41, the Asheville resident immediately noticed a major issue in the apparel market: a lack of comfortable, practical running clothes for older women. Much of the apparel she saw was too hot, too short or had unrealistically small pockets. She was set to run a race in Brevard, and with summer just around the corner, she “didn’t want to wear capris.”

So Neel, 51, designed a custom pair of shorts that fit her personal needs. Soon, other runners were asking about her new threads.

She saw an opportunity to fill the gap in the apparel market and launched Blyss Running in 2015. At the annual Cooper River Bridge Run race expo in Charleston, S.C., Neel recalls her first customer, Melanie, trying on a Blyss skirt. “[She] said it was exactly what she was looking for, and when I saw her face, I was like, OK, there are other people out there.”

Five years later, Blyss is a thriving business focused on running gear for women, with online sales more than doubling in 2020.

Sports apparel generated about $181 billion in global revenue in 2019, an increase of more than $7 billion from the previous year, according to the Statistia research firm. It’s estimated to reach $208 billion in 2025.

“What I am making, there’s a need for,” says Neel, who attended the Bradley Academy for the Visual Arts in Pennsylvania and received a bachelor’s degree from the American College for the Applied Arts. “I’m designing for the customer like me: They’re not elite athletes, and it’s not something their daughters would wear.”

Alyson Neel

Blyss designs have longer inseams — 5 inches or 8 inches, compared to a more common 3 inches — and are made, in part, with elastic intended to prevent ride-up or chafing. Many of its products, which include skirts, skorts, capris, tights, crops and shorts, are made with an antimicrobial fabric, which wicks away moisture and provides UPF sun protection. They also have multiple pockets, including one large enough to hold a phone.

“For me it was about safety,” she says. “I was trail running, and I would go out alone, so I needed my phone in case I fell or my kids’ school needed to be in touch with me.”

Stepping stones To get Blyss off the ground, Neel teamed up with Mountain BizWorks, an Asheville-based nonprofit that offers entrepreneurship classes and loans. “Not only did I go through their program, but they were there [throughout] with coaching,” she says. “I took more classes as I progressed as a business.”

A major challenge was finding a manufacturer to produce her gear. “At the start, I got a lot of nos,” she says. “Nobody wanted to take on my project because of the complexity of what I was designing. They didn’t think they’d be able to manufacture for the price I wanted to sell it for.”

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Today, Blyss clothes retail from $15 to $100 and are made in a small factory near Lancaster, Pa. Though Blyss sells shorts and tights, Neel says, “Women love running skirts, because they provide coverage over a tight short, and it makes them feel good; they’re cute.”

Skirt designs have gotten more colorful over the years — “I’m a very black and gray person,” Neel says — and some aspects of the aesthetics are also practical. “In the running trail community, a number of customers asked me for blaze-orange items because of the hunting season.” They needed to be visible while running in the woods.

Rebounding from the COVID-19 crisis The COVID-19 pandemic canceled in-person events, which made up half of Neel’s revenue. “The beginning of [2020] was quite stressful,” she says. “I never thought I would make up that difference.”

She already had a well-functioning website and was set up to sell online. “People were turning to running in droves because they wanted to be outside,” she says. So she invested more in digital marketing and her online presence.

Planning also helped. She had ordered her materials for the year early on, so she didn’t experience supply-chain issues that crippled some businesses.

Helping others also played a key role, Neel believes. “I held fund-

raisers and donated fabrics to my factory for making [personal protective equipment], and I think my customers wanted to support that,” she says. The donated mesh used to line the pockets of her shorts was repurposed to outfit the interior of masks, which helps with breathability.

Community backing After five years in business, Neel is committed to sustainability. “My goal is to have everything using recycled materials in 2022.”

Helping others reach their goals is what she likes best about her job. “That’s the joy in doing this,” she says. “If you’re feeling comfortable, you’re more likely to follow through.”

Mostly, she credits her community. “If I weren’t in the Asheville community, I don’t know if I would have done this,” she says.

“There’s so much support, and the running community is huge.” ■

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GREENVILLE INVESTORS PLOT HOTEL, FOOD HALL

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group of investors from longtime Greenville families is backing plans to renovate two old tobacco warehouses into a boutique hotel, food hall and market.

The Ficklen project is slated to open in September 2022 and entails an investment of $30 million.

The Stark Group plans the 70-room Ficklen Hotel on the site of the E.B. Ficklen and Star Tobacco buildings where tobacco was housed for decades. It’s about three blocks from East Carolina University and two miles from Vidant Hospital.

The hotel will include a restaurant, bar and 10,000-squarefoot event space.

The project also calls for an adjacent 76,000-square-foot food hall called the Star Warehouse Market, the first of its kind in eastern North Carolina, according to investor Tucker Stallings. It is slated to offer food from area restaurants and new chefs, along with a retail market for produce, meats, flowers and crafts.

“Greenville is growing, and there are so many great restaurants, shops and cultural venues in the uptown area,” Tucker Stallings says. “What doesn’t currently exist is an upscale boutique hotel destination with services to match.”

Stallings and his father, Clark, are partnering with Will and Edwin Clark and Phil Gibbs to develop the project. The hotel will be part of Marriott International’s Tribute Portfolio brand, which allows local developers to incorporate their own designs. It will be the state’s first Tribute Portfolio hotel.

The Stallingses are heirs of the late Bill Stallings, who sold

▲ Rendering of The Ficklen

his subprime consumer finance company to BB&T (now Truist) in 1997. The family has continued in lending while also adding Jersey Mike’s franchises, real estate, insurance and other businesses. The Clark family owned the Trade Mart convenience-store chain that became Trade Wilco and is now part of Marathon Petroleum’s Speedway. They continue to own the land for those stores, while operating various other businesses.

Some other hospitality projects have been announced in downtown Greenville, including a plan by ECU to lease a parking lot to Greensboro-based hotelier Daly Seven for a 125-room inn. Separately, the city council in August approved a 90-room Hilton Garden Inn developed by Greenville Ventures. Construction on those hotels had not started as of midJanuary.

BUNCOMBE’S BIG GREENHOUSE Canadian-owned Lakeside Produce opened a $30 million, 15-acre greenhouse in Mills River that is growing tomatoes and mini-cucumbers.

The operation employs 55 people but expects to expand to a total investment of $100 million and 90 additional jobs, owner Chris Cervini said in a Hendersonville Times-News report.

Lakeside owns 116 acres at the Buncombe County site,

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which is part of a growing cluster of agribusinesses in Henderson County. The area’s cool nights and warm days are well-suited for growing produce in greenhouses, which yield about 10 times more produce per acre than traditional farming, Cervini said. Family-owned Lakeside Produce is based in Leamington, Ontario.

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TRIANGLE RALEIGH Developers of Raleigh’s Downtown South project bought a 45-acre parcel for $38 million as part of their plan for a $2 billion mixed-used site anchored by a soccer stadium. Organizers Kane Realty, Steve Malik and TradeMark Properties have acquired the south Raleigh property.

Construction is slated to start this year.

COURTESY OF EPIC GAMES

CARY SAS Institute secured a $49.9 million contract with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to use the company’s artificial intelligence capabilities to ensure drugs are safe for humans. The five-year agreement allows SAS to assist the FDA in modernizing drug-regulatory programs

Video game company Epic Games is purchasing Cary Towne Center to convert the mall into its headquarters in a deal worth $95 million. It also acquired Kirkland, Wash.-based compression technology firm RAD Game Tools, marking its third acquisition in three months. Financial details were not disclosed.

and provide drug-manufacturing facility surveillance.

Bryan Harris, who has been with SAS since 2013, was named executive vice president and CTO following President Oliver Schabenberger’s departure. Harris has been senior vice president of R&D engineering.

DURHAM Calyx, a spinoff of life-sciences firm Parexel, launched its dual headquarters here and in the United Kingdom. The company has 2,300 employees and offers medical imaging, clinical trial-management systems and electronic data-capture services.

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Adverum Biotechnologies, a California gene-therapy company, plans to build a manufacturing site here that’s expected to create more than 200 jobs with average annual salaries of $94,000. The $83 million project will more than double Adverum’s current workforce.

APEX The town released a Downtown Master Plan calling for a major revitalization of its commercial center, including new businesses, a boutique hotel and more apartments. The plan has been in the works for years and was created in

Fintech company Verify4 raised more than $2 million from undisclosed sources in an equity-debt round. The business is operating without leased office space, according to co-founder James Hervold, but plans to launch later this year.

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partnership with Stantec, a designconsulting firm. Redesigning the streetscape will cost $2.5 million. $1.2 million will be spent on parking lot expansions and $500,000 will be spent on redeveloping alleys. The town council will consider the plan in June.

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Ribometrix landed a deal that could be worth as much as $1 billion to further develop its RNA technology with biotech giant Genentech. The drug-development company will receive a cash infusion of $25 million as part of the deal.

IMMvention Therapeutix raised $3.9 million from four investors to further its therapies, which combat inflammation.

The company was one of three finalists in LaunchBio’s recent Big Pitch competition for the most promising life-sciences or biotech startup in the U.S.

CHAPEL HILL A Wegmans supermarket is set to open on Feb. 24, marking its third location in the Triangle. The 99,000-square-foot store is slightly smaller than the Cary and Raleigh stores, which have opened since 2019. A Wake Forest location is set to open in May.

TRIAD GREENSBORO Estes Forwarding Worldwide, a global freight forwarder, acquired Lewis Logistics to create a full-servicing warehouse network in the Triad. Lewis Logistics has eight locations here and employs 95.

James Renick, who was N.C. A&T State University chancellor from 1999 to 2006, died at 72. His health was rapidly declining due to ALS. During his time at N.C. A&T, the student population increased by 30% and the university met the doctoral/research intensive classification of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Cone Health CEO Terry Akin and CFO Jeff Jones will step down for personal reasons. Akin is leaving when the company’s merger with Sentara Healthcare is completed later this year. His successor is Chief Operating Officer Mary Jo Cagle. Andy Barron, senior vice president of financial services, will replace Jones. Cone and Sentara plan to create an organization with 17 hospitals and $11 billion in annual revenue.

COURTESY OF WEGMANS, CONE HEALTH, NC COMMUNITY COLLEGES

PITTSBORO Michael Smith, executive director of the Sanford Area Growth Alliance in Lee County, was named president of the Chatham County Economic Development Corp. Smith hopes to reel in big developments at the county’s two major megasites: Triangle Innovation Point manufacturing park and the Chatham-Siler City Advanced Manufacturing Site.

Michael Smith

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UNC Greensboro replaced Jim Coleman as provost six months after he took the post. Terri Shelton, who oversees the university’s research operations, was named interim provost. Coleman, who remains a faculty member, was removed due to “behavior that did not meet expectations for senior leaders at UNCG,” according to a statement.

STATESVILLE The closure of J.C. Penney’s In-Home Custom Window business will mean the loss of 65 jobs as the fabrication center shuts down between Feb. 27 and March 13. A few employees may be offered positions at other J.C. Penney locations.

Dentsply Sirona, a dental-products manufacturer and distributor, acquired Los Angeles-based Byte, a privately owned clear aligner provider, for $1.04 billion. Byte has a network of dentists and orthodontists that provide clear aligners to straighten teeth.

CHARLOTTE

CHARLOTTE MOORESVILLE Eleanor Health, an addiction services and treatment center based here, plans new locations in Wilmington and Cary.

The Wilmington location is set to open by the end of the month and will offer in-person and virtual services. Eleanor Health now has seven clinics in North Carolina.

The Carolina Panthers NFL team named former Seattle Seahawks executive Scott Fitterer as general manager.

About 15 candidates were considered for the job after the Panthers fired GM Marty Hurney in late 2020.

Developer Childress Klein is proposing a $350 million industrial office park near the intersection of Interstates 85 and 285.

Pending a rezoning, the project could include 2,000 jobs.

The Tri at the Trump, an annual triathlon at Trump National Golf Club, was permanently canceled due to controversy surrounding the former president. The triathlon, which started in 2014, was facing protests at this year’s race planned for October.

Glatfelter purchased Georgia-Pacific’s U.S. Nonwovens Business for $175 million. Georgia-Pacific has a manufacturing facility in Mount Holly and a productdevelopment center in Memphis, Tenn., employing about 150. Glatfelter is a public company that moved its headquarters here last year.

Driven Brands Holding, the parent company of auto-service franchises such as Meineke Car Care Centers and Maaco collision and paint centers, made an initial public offering that raised $700 million. Shares rose 21% on the first day of trading.

Jeep Bryant, president of the Charlotte Arts & Science Council, said he was leaving after less than two years in the position. Bryant, a former communications executive in the financial-services industry, said he has no immediate plans.

Pactiv, Carolina Beverage Group and Niagara Bottling plan to expand their manufacturing operations here. Pactiv, a producer of paper and plastic packaging, plans to invest $15 million, while Niagara Bottling will invest $12.2 million to build a 180,000-square-foot warehouse.

Carolina Beverage Group’s $9 million expansion will add as many as 70 jobs to manage a new malt beverage line in its existing facility.

Jeep Bryant

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PHOTO COURTESY OF DENTSPLY, ASC

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EAST WILMINGTON Alcami, a pharmaceutical company, will invest $2 million to expand its 140,000-square-foot campus. It is expected to be complete by the second half of this year.

FAYETTEVILLE MetroNet, an internet company based in Indiana, will invest $70 million to build a fiber-optic network here, offering prices for gigabit-speed at about $60 a month. The company

will provide broadband and other services across Cumberland County and parts of Hoke County. The project is expected to take two years to complete.

Cloud Real Estate Holdings bought the nCino headquarters building for $16.3 million. The locally owned group plans a five-story parking deck on the property. The garage would hold more than 640 spaces if approved by the city.

The N.C. State Ports Authority announced a new partnership with Omaha, Neb.-based Scoular to build an agricultural transload site at the Port of Wilmington.

The site, set to be completed this summer, will transfer bulk agricultural products to containers for export on ocean carriers.

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MANTEO After a long battle with ALS, former N.C. State Senate President Pro Tem Marc Basnight died at age 73. The longtime restaurant owner spent 18 years as the Senate leader, from 1993 to 2010, after entering politics in 1977 as a member of the state transportation board.

ASHEVILLE Buncombe County approved a rezoning for Pratt & Whitney’s $650 million, 1 million-square-foot manufacturing plant, which is expected to create 800 jobs by 2027.

Production should start in late 2022.

The plant will make turbine blades for jet engines. Annual salaries at the plant are expected to average $68,000, 30% higher than the county average.

WEST System Logistics, a German-owned technology provider, is investing $3 million in an expansion with plans to add 47 jobs.

It has an existing 124-person staff. The current jobs pay an average of $34.61 per hour, while the new ones will average $32.

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Tribal Council bought a Caesars Entertainment casino in southern Indiana for $250 million. The move sparked protests from some tribal members over how profits would be distributed.

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PHOTO COURTESY OF PRATT & WHITNEY

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ROUND TABLE

ECONOMIC FORECAST

FEELING BETTER Forecasting is a tricky business, whether it’s tomorrow’s weather or the coming year’s economy.

A year ago, no one foresaw the disruption that COVID-19 was about to unleash on the world. The ensuing pandemic affected every sector of North Carolina’s economy, closing some businesses and changing others’ operations, eliminating jobs, and pushing many workers and students into a virtual world of videoconferencing. On top of all that, a new administration was voted into the White House, one-third of a complete political-party change in Washington, D.C. While a COVID vaccine means there’s hope on the horizon, businesses are still struggling to see what’s ahead.

Business North Carolina assembled leaders from several industries to offer some direction. Each shared their view of the state’s economy, where it’s at and where it could go over the next 12 months.

FROM YOUR PERSPECTIVE, HOW WAS 2020? WHAT ARE YOU EXPECTING THIS YEAR?

Business North Carolina Publisher Ben Kinney moderated the discussion.

The transcript was edited for brevity and clarity.

The discussion was sponsored by Bernard Robinson & Co., First Bank, North Carolina Military Business Center, Piedmont Triad Partnership, Campbell University and North Carolina Railroad Co.

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STECKBECK: A year ago, I believed North Carolina was poised for a great 2020. But an economy is a complex system with many variables. Even if everyone received a COVID vaccination within the next six months, we’d still have a long way to go to return to where we were prior to the pandemic. North Carolina is in a good place relative to other states and the world when it comes to COVID exposure. About 35% of North Carolina

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workers have jobs that bring a high risk of exposure. That actually makes it one of the country’s safest. Most of those people work directly with customers in retail, hospitality, service, health care and similar sectors. The state took some hits, but things overall weren’t as bad as most people thought they would be 10 months ago. The state’s gross domestic product was about $602 billion at the start of 2020, but it was down 34% in early January from February 2020. It has rebounded quite a bit, reaching $594 billion annualized in early January. So, while it’s still down, continued growth — about 5% —

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is expected this year. Different indices are looking good for new manufacturing orders. We had an induced unemployment cycle. The unemployment rate was 6.1% in early January, down from 6.2%, which is relatively good. That put the state about 19th in the country. It’s expected to fall to about 5% by the end of this year.

Nonfarm jobs are at about 4.4 million, up from about 4 million in October but still down about 222,000 for the year. Many of the ones lost are in the service and restaurant industries. Those are expected to come back, though how many is tied to the response of diners. They may not feel protected enough from COVID to eat at restaurants, for example, once they fully reopen. Initial unemployment claims were about 8,700 for the week ending Dec. 26, down from about 9,400 the week prior. That’s still above the normal weekly amount, 3,000 to 4,000. But remember, they peaked at about 140,000 in April. People also are spending less time unemployed. The coincident index, which

offers a broader measure of nonfarm payroll, shows hours of work, manufacturing and wages are up. It went from 138 in January 2020 to 125 in February 2020, but it was back up to 135 last month.

North Carolina real estate is doing well.

Price Waterhouse Cooper ranked Raleigh the country’s No. 1 real estate market for 2021. Residential building permits are up about 12% over the previous year. We saw greater demand relative to supply in the third quarter. But it’s catching up. That will be good because home prices will probably still rise, too. United Van Lines ranked Wilmington as its customers’ No. 1 destination. While that’s a limited data set, people are moving to North Carolina.

It’s one of the better places to be right now. So, things are looking up for the coming year, though it will depend on COVID vaccinations, which we have done a poor job with so far — only about 1.3% of the population was vaccinated by early January.

CURRIE: As an industry, we expected massive credit losses and a liquidity crisis. But the credit losses, at least for us, have been minimal so far. We’ve been dealing with low interest rates for a long time, so most financials are swimming in liquidity, as are some individuals from stimulus payments. Many bankers seem to have PTSD from PPP. And here comes round two of the Paycheck Protection Program. We’re figuring out how to distribute it. The recession has been referred to as the Great Dispersion. There are people and businesses that are struggling, and we see and feel that. Other industries are thriving. Working in North Carolina is very helpful. Few states are performing as well or have been as big of a beneficiary from the pandemic as North Carolina. Success, right now, is industry specific, location specific and group specific. You can’t be a good enough operator to have it in some industries. And you can’t be bad enough not to have it in others. It’ll be that way for a while.

PANELISTS

Courtney Coker CPA and assurance partner, Bernard Robinson & Co.

Stan Kelly president and CEO, Piedmont Triad Partnership

Adam Currie regional president, First Bank

Phil Mintz director, North Carolina Manufacturing Extension Partnership

Scott Dorney executive director, North Carolina Military Business Center

Mark Steckbeck associate professor of economics at the Lundy-Fetterman School of Business, Campbell University

Carl Warren president and CEO, North Carolina Railroad Co.

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ECONOMIC FORECAST

MINTZ: A manufacturer’s success during this time is directly tied to what it makes.

North Carolina was one of the few states that deemed manufacturing essential at the pandemic’s start. There was a brief time when companies closed, figuring out what was happening. But factories quickly restarted, providing products for their customers. So, manufacturing never ground to a halt, as was the case elsewhere. We helped manufacturers gear up to meet the large demand for personal protective equipment. Many manufacturers survived, at least temporarily, by pivoting to PPE production. However, some were distraught about not getting as much of that business as they thought they would. In the meantime, companies were deciding how to keep operating and their workers safe. We’re helping the struggling companies, those selling into depressed markets such as hospitality, entertainment and travel. We don’t know when those will rebound, so we’ve been doing a lot to help them weather the storm. We’re helping many diversify until their core business returns. It’s simple things. One business, for example, makes snacks and nuts served on cruise ships. It was a multistate company, but it consolidated here because of the pandemic. There’s a lot of optimism about the COVID vaccine and how it may change things later this year. The pandemic has been a boon for some manufacturers, including those making home-improvement

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products. My neighbors were working on their homes all summer. Home Depot, Lowe’s and similar retailers were busy.

It’s an interesting mix. We’re fortunate that all of those things are in play in some form in North Carolina. There are manufacturers selling into all those booming markets, and we’re getting great business from them.

COKER: Construction was deemed an essential business from the start of the pandemic, and the number of building permits is up in many markets. Multifamily housing and commercial construction are going strong. So, overall, construction is doing quite well. Many general contractors are doing great. But some in specialty markets or services are having some difficulty. I have one client whose largest customer develops shopping and strip malls. It and many others in the brick-and-mortar retail sector aren’t doing well. So, what can they do differently?

How can they adapt to new markets? It’s about thinking outside the box, finding ways to adapt or provide new services so you can keep making money.

DORNEY: Your situation and outlook depend on what you make. But they also have a lot to do with your customers.

Our name may be North Carolina Military Business Center, but we help businesses identify opportunities, compete for contracts, and sell goods and services across

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the federal government. The Department of Defense has a $66 billion impact on our economy — the second-largest sector. About 12% of the state’s GDP is connected to military and defense contracting. I call it a ‘supermarket.’ It includes many industries. General Motors subsidiary GM Defense, for example, was selected to build infantry squad vehicles for the Army late last year. They’ll be built in Concord through a partnership with Hendrick Motorsports. Last year was a boom year for the sector. While others were down, defense contracting set state records. DOD contracts executed in North Carolina were more than $6 billion for fiscal year 2020, though final numbers won’t be available until next month.

Include all federal agencies, and that number is at $9.5 billion. That’s a $2.4 billion increase from 2019, which was $1 billion more than 2018. The pandemic had a significant impact on federal contracting. It accelerated production of medical-surgical products, pharmaceuticals. Demand was up at the DOD, Department of Health and Human Services, and Veterans Affairs, which has large medical centers in Asheville, Durham, Fayetteville and Salisbury. Concerns among businesses in this market during the pandemic include maintaining their workforce and supply chain. Looking forward to this year, businesses are focused on sustaining their contracting pace. But we don’t see any slowdown. Construction is about 35% of defense contracting in the state. It was a boon to last year, mostly with the Navy, which awarded about $1.7 billion for recovery construction at Camp Lejeune and Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point after Hurricane Florence. That work will take place over the next two to three years and represents subcontracting opportunities for trades, specialty contractors, designers and construction suppliers statewide. I never thought I’d say that a hurricane had a positive impact, but this one did, in the form of tremendous new construction opportunities. Even with a new administration in Washington, D.C., we predict DOD spending will remain steady this year. COVID responses will dominate the content of federal contracts. The federal SPONSORED SECTION

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ECONOMIC FORECAST government has gone further online, like the rest of us, so information technology and artificial intelligence will be big, too.

Cybersecurity, especially in the wake of the recent SolarWinds hack, which targeted federal government networks, is growing in importance, and that means more opportunities for North Carolina businesses. The DOD has enacted cybersecurity standards that all contractors must meet.

Prime contractors are requiring compliance from the small businesses that they work with. We’re working through the North Carolina Interagency Cybersecurity Coordinating Committee to make sure our small businesses are informed about them. There are many resources available to help them become compliant. There will be many large service-related contracts, including construction and IT, this year. We have to focus the state’s small businesses on these large opportunities, either on their own or as part of a team.

The biggest challenge remains the unknowns. When will COVID be resolved?

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What will be its effect on federal purchasing? Will it impact recruiting businesses that can compete in the federal market to North Carolina?

KELLY: I’m encouraged and optimistic with each passing quarter. Things will only get better and better. Businesses in our region have announced about 4,500 jobs in the past six months. That’s a good number in this environment.

They’re positioning for the economy to return to a place that we’d deem normal.

We’ll enjoy a tailwind as we work our way through the next several quarters.

But progress won’t be linear. It will look more like a hockey stick — straight with a quick upward turn at the end — as we make our way from the fourth quarter of 2020 through this year’s fourth quarter, when some sectors, including service, accelerate.

FINDING SKILLED WORKERS IS ALWAYS A CHALLENGE. HOW HAS THE

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PANDEMIC AFFECTED THE SEARCH? COKER: The trade-labor shortage, which has been an ongoing issue, remains.

You would think rising unemployment numbers, such as during the pandemic, should have solved that problem.

But they didn’t. Trade schools and high schools are working to train more people for our industry. I talk to my clients about three things — diversification, adaptation and cross-training. You can’t run a business when a handful or more employees are out sick. So, we look at ways to cross-train employees, so business isn’t interrupted by absences. Many employers worry about how many people are hesitant to return to work out of fear of contracting COVID. Most laborers are fine; they’re working outside and in open spaces. But people working in an office or other enclosed spaces, who are responsible for accounting, administration and other tasks, are worried or, worse, getting sick.

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STECKBECK: Many of the jobs lost during the pandemic won’t return once COVID is under control. While retail sales are up, most are happening online.

Brick-and-mortar retail is down. People who worked at those stores will need to find new skills and jobs. That’s a big deal, but a bigger one is how women have been hit hardest. Many left their jobs to stay home, caring for children who were remote learning. But when they’re ready to get back to work, some won’t have jobs to return to. Workers are part of the supply chain. But in terms of human labor, human capital, people will have to adapt, find new skill sets to work these new jobs.

WHAT HAS BEEN THE PANDEMIC’S EFFECT ON THE SUPPLY CHAIN? HOW WILL IT RESPOND THIS YEAR? STECKBECK: Supply chain management is one reason COVID makes any prediction for the new year tentative. Chicken

producers, for example, had chickens slated for sale to restaurants when the pandemic started. But when they closed, producers were able to pivot and sell those chickens to grocery store shoppers. As restaurants reopen, that part of the supply chain will return. So, that’s a supply chain reforming. The entertainment industry faced disruption, too. I have a longtime friend who travels the world playing music. He and most of his fellow professional musicians have been out of work since early last year. But when we’ve got everything back closer to what we would call normal, coordination problems are going to hinder a smooth transition. Performers with big followings will be stuck playing small venues, and those with smaller followings will be stuck playing larger venues until we get some continuity within this supply chain. These are only two examples. It’s an issue whether you’re talking about chemicals and plastics from Fayetteville, especially when they’re part of interna-

tional trade, or agricultural products such as livestock, which are about 65% of that industry in North Carolina. They all will take time to get back in order. Even once we get all the vaccinations administered and COVID settled, it could take an additional 12 or 18 months.

COKER: Construction’s supply chain has seen some interruptions, including availability of appliances, cabinets and other materials. But that will bounce back. Obviously, there are still unknowns. Lumber prices, for example, spiked significantly prior to the end of last year.

KELLY: Everyone probably underappreciated how important supply chains are to our economy and how much they could be disrupted. Economies that are historically manufacturing heavy have faced challenges. But supply chains can play to our favor as we come out on the other side of the pandemic. They are being regionalized. We see it. Companies are put-

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ECONOMIC FORECAST ting first-cousin manufacturing enablers close to their headquarters, so they have more control. We see significant increases in distribution, from industrial site and job growth perspectives. Some of that comes from our — Carolina Core and North Carolina — location at the crossroads of major roads, rails and air.

MINTZ: The pandemic highlighted some persistent underlying challenges.

Trade disputes, for example, had been bubbling up when it hit. We couldn’t recharge some supply chains that stretched to foreign countries. That was a big disruption for some large multinational manufacturers. Many of those needed items had not been made domestically. Medical masks and semiconductors are prime examples. Now they’re made overseas, and we buy them almost exclusively. The pandemic has created an urgency to reshore more manufacturing. Companies want to relocate here, move factories stateside.

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They’re working on that. But it isn’t always easy. Will we be able to support ourselves if more manufacturing is done domestically? Will we always depend on importing some components and raw materials? Those questions will take time to answer.

WARREN: There’s a lot of discussion about supply chains. I’ve heard it firsthand, in my current role, which started in August, and prior, when I was working at CSX. When I left CSX, the pandemic had just begun, and I was already witnessing impacts on the commodities it moved. Once people started losing confidence in the economy, car sales, for example, fell. So, the railroad wasn’t moving as many finished vehicles. Then steel mills were affected because vehicle production was slowing. That meant less steel for the railroad to move.

And less steel meant less raw materials were needed, further reducing

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the railroad’s shipments. The effects keep going, through the supply chain’s entire length. And as a transportation provider, you have to figure out how to scale back from plans built on 2020 being a big year. You no longer need the crews and assets that you thought you would. Add to that international issues such as factories closing and opening in China. That impacts the movement of shipping containers, for example, which need to be in the right place at the right time. There are activity spikes, but resources have been reduced, so prices rise. Everyone feels that. The friend of a reliable supply chain is an environment where demand is predictable. But we’ll only return to a state of predictable demand when the pandemic is put to bed with a solid base of vaccinations. I’m not a public-health expert, but it seems intuitive that more stability comes when COVID is under control.

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WHAT FINANCIAL CONCERNS OR TRENDS DO YOU EXPECT IN THE NEW YEAR? COKER: Interest rates are low, so the residential real-estate market is booming.

Many houses are on the market for only a week. People are building, and people are buying.

CURRIE: The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield went back over 1% in January, the first time since last March. So, the long end of the yield curve is pushing up a bit. That’s quite a sea change from where we’ve been and predictive of more stimulus dollars and bigger deficits. It’s probably too early to tell how that’ll affect inflation. Our industry would welcome higher interest rates. Be we also worry about more regulation. That’s a concern in everything that we do. It’s important that we return more manufacturing stateside, for example, but that’s difficult to do in an environment with more regulation.

STECKBECK: One of the things we see is people adding more to savings because of the stimulus payments.

We’ll see how that plays out in terms of investment.

WHAT’S THE OUTLOOK FOR ECONOMICDEVELOPMENT PROJECTS? KELLY: Project activity has been robust in the Piedmont Triad region and statewide. Reshoring efforts are growing in volume. We’re seeing that in our region, too. We’ve received a number of calls from companies in the Northeast over the past three months. They want to move south, and North Carolina is getting a look at many of those projects.

Put those in the mix with a growing population, and we’re an attractive place for industries that enable what’s happening in our households. And we do a lot of that in North Carolina, from fabrics to furniture.

WARREN: North Carolina is fortunate.

And at the North Carolina Railroad Co., we haven’t seen a drop in the number of projects in our pipeline or enthusiasm dampen for pursuing long-term projects. Our economic-development folks are busy. Economic-development projects in which businesses are relocating include modifications and investments in their supply chain. I see that as especially encouraging because our space works in the long term.

WHAT OTHER CHALLENGES WILL NORTH CAROLINA BUSINESSES FACE THIS YEAR? DORNEY: We’ll have some real challenges in the defense and federal market. But those challenges equal opportunity for businesses that haven’t historically been in it. Regulations continue to be a challenge. Cybersecurity, for example, is important to everyone.

But meeting those requirements for

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ECONOMIC FORECAST federal work is challenging. There are more regulation challenges, for example, that come with PPE production.

Many businesses can make it, but making it so FDA standards are met and inspections passed is a different story.

There are many regulatory obstacles that need to be cleared before you can be successful in the federal and defense market. The construction market, for example, will see issues with support industries such as lodging and hospitality. Will COVID restrictions allow them to accommodate the contractors and workers needed for the almost $2 billion of awarded work? But the biggest hurdle to growing the federal and defense market is businesses thinking it’s too much for them to handle. It isn’t if they take advantage of available resources. There are programs that help small businesses land the 23% of prime contracting that’s earmarked for them or participate as a subcontractor on larger projects. When construction slowed between 2008 and 2011 elsewhere, everybody wanted to be in North Carolina, where a $7 billion construction boom was underway. Finding workers, subcontractors or materials weren’t issues. Now there is demand, and materials are short.

KELLY: Technology — especially its effect on how we work — will present challenges and opportunities. The pandemic has spurred remote working and videoconferencing. That has many implications going forward, including how office space is used and how much employees travel. It affects the hospitality industry, too, and the cultural dynamic of working independently at home rather than as part of a team in an office. Companies will be challenged to sort through these changes, which will be with us forever. There will be good things coming from them. I’m on the board of a private company that has struggled with finding North Carolina-based talent. So, during the pandemic, it started hiring people who live and work out of state. Where you work and live is decoupling. That’s a sea change.

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MINTZ: People are deciding that not getting together is a long-term strategy. They’ll use technology, including videoconferencing, to save money and protect workers.

STECKBECK: Restaurants make up about 11% of employment, and they’ve been hit hard by the pandemic. According to National Restaurant Association, about 110,000 U.S. restaurants — about 17% — have closed permanently since the spring. That’s huge. Even when life gets closer to normal, will people dine in, continue to use takeout or stay at home? It will be a challenge for existing and new restaurants, all of which already operate on a very thin margin.

CURRIE: It will be interesting to see which changes to work life will remain after the pandemic. I believe people still want to conduct business face to face with people who they know. Does that mean that they’ll keep getting on a plane to see a client in California every other week? Maybe not. But as COVID-induced restrictions are lifted, it will be interesting to see how quickly those types of meetings return and to what extent.

HOW WILL RECENT CHANGES IN WASHINGTON, D.C., AFFECT NORTH CAROLINA BUSINESSES? COKER: I work with many small to medium sized family-owned businesses, and the amount of taxes that they have to pay drives a significant number of their decisions, such as what kind of equipment they’ll buy and when. And with one political party controlling the White House, Senate and House of Representatives, how will that change the business environment in regards to taxes, laws and regulations? We have to recognize that is a big unknown at the start of this year. Some business owners may be reluctant to make decisions or investments because of the unknown.

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WARREN: There are two aspects to the changes in Washington that the transportation sector must take into account. First is from the regulatory point of view. How will changes in regulations affect site development?

Will companies and developers receive timely permissions, such as those made by the Army Corps of Engineers that direct land use, or will those definitions change? The other aspect concerns transportation. Will the policy shifts make it better for shippers and tougher for railroads? We’ll see. On the positive side, there will be more investment in transportation infrastructure, especially given the interest in good environmental policy. That could bode well for partnering on development projects that involve railroads, which can move more goods with less energy and impact on the environment. It’s like anything. There are some good things, and there are some not so good things.

Then there are the things in the middle.

Change is good for business. And I’m confident we are prepared to react and make the best out of whatever comes our way.

DORNEY: We expect more emphasis on sustainable energy and anything climate related. Medical, environmental and construction will remain strong.

Federal contract awards may not match 2020 levels, but the market will remain strong and execution of already awarded contracts will be ongoing. There will be many opportunities for small businesses.

MINTZ: The problem all along has been when does the pandemic end? We know it’ll be better one day. But how far out do we have to look? And that’s what everybody is struggling with right now. ■

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A relative newcomer to North Carolina, public health chief Mandy Cohen’s forthright manner earns respect while leading the state’s pandemic response.

By Mike MacMillan Photo by Bruce DeBoer

I

n late 2019, the secretary of the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, Mandy Cohen, was mostly just another face in the state bureaucracy, exhorting the legislature to take up Medicaid expansion, working to address the

opioid crisis and warning about the dangers of the seasonal flu.

Meanwhile, a world away in China’s Hubei province, events were conspiring that would soon make her a household name across North Carolina, with the power to influence the lives of virtually every resident. On Nov. 17, 2019, the first case of what would become known as COVID-19 was detected, according to the South China Morning Post. By Jan. 20, 2020, the disease had arrived in the U.S. By March 3, North Carolina reported its first case. Less than 10 days later, Cohen was out suggesting a number of now familiar actions that could be undertaken to slow the spread of the virus.

“As we move through this, there may be a time when we, the government, have to enforce some closures. … We’re not there yet,” she said. But we soon would be, and Cohen would become the “figurative and literal face of North Carolina’s ongoing fight against COVID-19,” as the Raleigh News & Observer noted in citing her as its Tarheel of the Year. It’s been quite a wild ride for the 42-year-old who arrived in the state less than five years ago.

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Having an impact “at scale” Health care is something of a family enterprise for Mandy Krauthamer Cohen, who grew up on New York’s Long Island.

Her mother, whom she cites as the inspiration for her career, was a nurse practitioner in emergency medicine; her father was a junior high school counselor in New York City. Her husband of 11 years, Sam Cohen, is an attorney with Raleigh-based Curi, a physician-owned company that mainly offers malpractice insurance. The two met when she was a resident at a Boston hospital and he was a law student at Harvard University. The Cohens have two daughters, ages 6 and 8, who attend Wake County public schools, which are currently operating under a hybrid in-person/remote-education plan. “I leave the home schooling to my husband,” she says.

Cohen’s academic pedigree reads like a Cook’s tour of the Ivy League: She received her undergraduate degree from Cornell University, graduated from the Yale School of Medicine in 2005 and earned a master’s in public health from Harvard. Cohen trained in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, though she spent only a modest amount of time in actual practice, quickly gravitating to the administrative side of the health care industry. (She’s a board-certified internist but does not hold a license to practice medicine in North Carolina.)

“I always knew I wanted to have an impact at scale,” she says.

That path took her to Washington, D.C., after medical school, where she landed at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, serving as deputy director of Comprehensive Women’s Health Services. In 2008, she helped found Doctors for Obama, a nonprofit group that later morphed into Doctors for America, with a mission of promoting access to affordable health care.

Co-founder Vivek Murthy became President Barack Obama’s surgeon general — and now President Joe Biden’s — while Cohen was executive director.

Five years later, and early in Obama’s second term, she joined the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and rose to become chief operating officer and chief of staff at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which oversees Medicare, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

The department also had responsibility for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare), which meant Cohen had to help sort out the disastrous initial rollout of the Obamacare website, healthcare.gov.

That experience has played an important role in how she has approached the coronavirus crisis. “We spend a lot of time getting as much as we can on our dashboard,” she told an interviewer earlier this year, referring to the state’s public-facing coronavirus tracking website. “It’s not perfect, because the way we collect data is not perfect. But communication and transparency, I think, are core to being able to respond in a crisis.”

Gov. Roy Cooper appointed Cohen to her current role in 2017, putting her in charge of a department of 17,000 employees with an annual budget of $20 billion. Her salary is $206,000. Much of the work involves oversight of the 14

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state-operated health care facilities and Medicaid, the federally backed program that provides insurance to nearly one in five North Carolinians. But it’s the public health role of directing the state’s COVID-19 response that has dominated Cohen’s time over the last year, giving her a much higher profile than previous DHHS leaders such as Aldona Wos or Lanier Cansler.

Cohen has received widespread praise across the state for her reassuring presence at weekly press conferences and for her management of the state’s coronavirus response. She strikes

We are seeing that this virus kills, it kills quickly, and it strains our hospital systems very quickly.

— Mandy Cohen

a lively balance with Cooper’s more measured style. Critics have slammed the governor for holding virtual Q&A sessions with the press rather than in-person gatherings that facilitate tougher scrutiny. Outside those sessions, Cohen has been more accessible to reporters, whom she often calls on by name. Both Cooper and Cohen have shown a sense of empathy for victims of the disease.

Early on, the pandemic looked like a nail, so the idea was to hit it with a hammer. Epidemiologists and infectious disease experts advised the country to stay at home as a way to “bend the curve” of growing infections and increased hospitalizations.

Cooper and Cohen embraced this approach, repeatedly citing a desire to “follow the science” in what became a national mantra.

On March 14, Cooper issued an executive order closing public schools for two weeks and prohibiting gatherings of 100 or more people and instituted the press conferences that brought Cohen regularly before the public eye. Dine-in restaurant service was halted, followed by a statewide stay-at-home order on March 27.

Still, key economic sectors were allowed to operate, including meat-processing plants and other agricultural facilities, over the objections of some progressive groups that contended that modestly paid, mostly minority workers were bearing the brunt of the pandemic. “We never shut down our essential businesses,” Cohen says. But they did work closely with the companies to put in new protocols to protect the workers. “We were bringing in medical-grade masks, putting up dividers, recommending staggered shifts, and introducing on-site testing,” she says. As a result, the spread of the virus slowed, and the plants stayed open.

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Cohen has pounded home a simple message in press conferences and interviews: Follow the three Ws — do it to protect yourself, your loved ones and your community. If wearing a mask is an indicator of success, the strategy seems to be moving the needle. An August study found that about 60% of North Carolinians were generally wearing a mask, though the rate varied significantly from county to county. Five percent reported never wearing masks. By October, more than 80% of state residents were wearing masks in public “most or all of the time,” according to data from Carnegie Mellon University.

In prioritizing the state’s response, Cohen’s strategy has emphasized controlling infections while avoiding an overload of the hospitals. Ambulances stacked up outside an emergency room today tend to trump future mental health issues. As she puts it, “We are seeing that this virus kills, it kills quickly, and it strains our hospital systems very quickly.”

Based on mortality data, the approach of Cooper and Cohen appears to have paid off. As of Jan. 18, the state reported 77 virus-related deaths per 100,000 residents, tied for 11th lowest in the U.S. with Kentucky. Among Southern states, only Virginia had a lower ratio, at 67 deaths, while neighboring Tennessee and South Carolina reported 122 and 121, respectively.

Another important metric is contact tracing in which public health officials identify people who have been exposed to the virus. North Carolina appears to be above average, identifying the source of about 50% of its cases, according to Cohen.

In this case, there may be natural limits to how successful this can be. “Some people don’t pick up the phone and talk to us,” she says. Other cases are just not possible to track. “It’s a virus.

Sometimes you don’t know where it comes from.”

An innovation put in place by DHHS has been the SlowCOVIDNC Exposure Notification App, designed to notify users if they have been near anyone with the virus. It does this anonymously, without disclosing names, location or other personally identifiable information. But there’s a catch: Many people need to have the app to make it effective, and they have to self-report if they’ve become ill. The Associated Press reported in early

Senior sorrow

More than 80% of the deaths related to COVID-19 recorded by the state through Jan. 16 involved people who were 65 or older.

Age range

Percentage of COVID-19 cases

Percentage of COVID-19 deaths (total deaths)

75-plus

7%

60% (4,532)

65-74

8%

23% (1,728)

50-64

20%

13% (1,022)

25-49

39%

4%. (286)

December that just 482,000 North Carolinians had downloaded the app, limiting the effectiveness of something that depends on crowdsourcing to work.

Collateral damage Here and elsewhere, what began as a one-dimensional epidemiological issue quickly morphed into a multifaceted social problem, with different demographic groups having widely different experiences in terms of hospitalization rates, fatalities and economic hardship. Domestic abuse, alcoholism, suicide and drug use have increased significantly during the lockdown.

Remote learning has affected many students, with some N.C. public schools reporting serious declines in academic achievement. At Greensboro’s Page High School, Principal Erik Naglee told The Associated Press that more than half of students were failing at least one class during the fall quarter, more than double the pre-pandemic rate.

The American Academy of Pediatrics reports that “lengthy time away from school … often results in social isolation, making it difficult for schools to identify and address important learning deficits as well as child and adolescent physical or sexual abuse, substance use, depression and suicidal ideation.”

The pandemic’s economic impact has also been stark. More than 890,000 North Carolinians were approved for unemployment benefits during the pandemic, according to state officials, and 257,000 lost health insurance as a result of being out of work. The state’s unemployment rate peaked at 12.9% in April, the highest level since 1976, then declined to 6.2% by November.

Critics of the state’s approach to the coronavirus have mostly focused on the harmful economic impacts of the lockdown.

Small businesses in the restaurant, entertainment and lodging industries have been among the hardest hit. Former Lt. Gov. Dan Forest made this a key part of his gubernatorial campaign, noting in May that “when we have over 1 million citizens on unemployment with less than half of those receiving benefits, countless medical surgeries and screenings delayed, and businesses on the brink of permanent closure, it is time to do everything possible to give people a chance to live and utilize their God-given freedom once again.” The candidate also questioned the wisdom of wearing masks as a virus deterrent. Cooper defeated Forest by a 51%-47% margin in the November election.

But dissenting voices have been getting louder as new data piles up on the long-term damage done by social isolation and economic hardship related to COVID-19. From the start, not everyone agreed that the path dictated by science was an obvious one. In a September Bloomberg opinion piece, science journalist Faye Flam wrote that “follow the science” is less a strategy than a slogan, arguing that “a strategy to deal with the pandemic needs to set priorities and incorporate values that science isn’t equipped to provide.”

Martin Kulldorff, a professor of medicine at Harvard whose

source: N.C. Department of Health and Human Services

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work focuses on disease surveillance, contends that lockdowns have inflicted unnecessary harm on the broader population.

“One of the basic principles of public health is that you do not look at one disease — you have to look at health as a whole, including all kinds of diseases, over a long period. That is not what has been done with COVID-19.”

Among other recommendations, Kulldorff advocates for a return to in-person schooling. “The lockdowns affect everybody, but they affect the working class and poor the most,” he says.

While Cohen and Cooper have made similar points, they have not pressed local school leaders to expand in-person classes.

A.P. Dillon, associate editor for the North State Journal in Raleigh, has criticized the state’s willingness to share information. She says that Cohen’s department has made it difficult to download and analyze historical data used in the agency’s coronavirus dashboard, which tracks cases, deaths, hospitalizations and other trends.

For example, fears of overloaded hospitals are often cited as driving the state’s decisions, and hospitalization data is displayed prominently on the dashboard. It lists daily information on new hospitalizations, but you can’t find a side-by-side comparison of daily hospital discharges. (Though with a couple of clicks, there is a page listing the total number of those admitted who have left the hospital.)

But there is substantial turnover in the weekly COVID-19 hospital population. This would provide valuable insight into both the course of the disease and the pressure on hospitals.

While it can be mostly gleaned from the dashboard, it’s not obvious to the casual reader. “When it comes to something that affects everyone you know, your state, your family, you need to have the highest level of transparency possible,” Dillon says.

Looking ahead Before the pandemic erupted, Cohen was making progress on a key priority: the state’s opioid crisis. Opioid-related visits to emergency departments declined nearly 10% in 2018 from the previous year, before rising slightly in 2019. Unintentional opioid deaths fell by 5% in 2018. Gov. Cooper praised those results as a “major milestone for North Carolina.”

But 2020 showed a reversal, with emergency-room visits tied to opioids soaring 24%, which officials say is likely linked to higher levels of unemployment and social isolation. For Cohen, this emphasizes the importance of expanding Medicaid to serve about 1.2 million people who lack health care insurance. “COVID shines a light on the fact that North Carolina continues to have one of the highest uninsured rates in the country. When you’re trying to fight a pandemic, that puts us behind.”

Medicaid expansion, one of Cooper’s signature efforts in office, has been blocked for a decade by the state’s GOP-led legislature.

Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger and other Republicans contend the program is too expensive and poorly managed and shouldn’t be offered to most able-bodied adults between the ages of 18 and 59. Hopes that expansion would occur in North Carolina were largely dashed when the GOP held on to control of the legislature in November’s election.

To break the impasse, Cooper formed a bipartisan study committee that met in December and January with hopes of developing some type of Medicaid expansion that would satisfy both parties.

By Cohen’s calculations, the state is leaving about $4 billion in federal funds on the table every year. “That’s a lot of money to help us fight COVID, to access mental health care,” Cohen says.

“If we had more insurance, we’d be in better shape. Folks can’t get preventative care without insurance.” In response to rising

States with lowest COVID-19 mortality rates (as of Jan. 18, 2021) Rank

State

Total COVID-19 deaths

Deaths per 100,000 residents

1

Hawaii

319

23

2

Ve r m o n t

163

26

3

Alaska

220

30

4

Maine

511

38

5

Oregon

1,801

43

6

Utah

1,493

47

7

Wa s h i n g t o n

3,971

52

8

Virginia

5,729

67

9

New Hampshire

933

69

10

Oklahoma

2,987

75

11

Kentucky

3,428

77

11

North Carolina

8,125

77

source: The New York Times

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How North Carolina’s neighbors compare (as of Jan. 18, 2021) Total COVID-19 deaths

Deaths per 100,000 residents

Virginia

5,729

67

Nor th Carolina

8,125

77

Georgia

11,906

112

South Carolina

6,237

121

Te n n e s s e e

8,312

122

State

source: The New York Times

health care costs, Cohen has promoted a collaborative approach and shown little interest in State Treasurer Dale Folwell’s push to require N.C. hospitals to publicize their insurance contracts and pricing policies.

But for now, the state is focused on getting the vaccine out. As has been the case elsewhere, the rollout has been less than smooth, encumbered by limited availability of the drugs and logistical bottlenecks. As of Jan. 18, about 1 million doses had been distributed in North Carolina, with about 302,824 administered, ranking near the bottom of U.S. states on a per capita basis.

That situation sparked unaccustomed criticism of Cohen’s work.

Writing that the vaccine rollout was “one of the most anticipated world events in memory,” NC Chamber CEO Gary Salamido issued a Jan. 14 letter to members slamming the state’s performance.

“The stakes couldn’t be higher, and our confidence couldn’t be lower,” he said, criticizing the failure of planners to engage the state’s private sector. North Carolina is home to world-class health care and logistical expertise, said Salamido, a former executive at

drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline.

A Cooper press officer responded that the pace of vaccinations had doubled over the previous week and that North Carolina had distributed more doses than all but nine states and the District of Columbia. North Carolina is the ninth-most populous state. As of Jan. 18, the state had administered 2,887 doses per 100,000 citizens, ranking 41st per capita, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In truth, Cohen’s department lacks the manpower to physically handle the vaccination process, putting most control with the state’s hospitals, county public health departments and drugstore chains. She says the state is following recommendations of the National Academy of Medicine while making some adjustments to improve and speed the process including enlisting aid from the National Guard.

Preparation for crises is critical, Cohen agrees, but she points out that long-term planning advocates often go unheard because of tight budgets and competing priorities. At the advent of the pandemic, there were shortages of personal protective equipment in North Carolina and weaknesses in IT systems needed to collect data from the lab tests that Cohen says, “I wish I’d had earlier.”

Still, she cautions against excessive Monday morning quarterbacking. “You forget what you knew at the time, what resources you had,” she says.

During her years in Washington, D.C., Cohen observed how few doctors were engaged in the machinery of government. For her, the question was, “How do you combine experience in clinical medicine with policy making?” She has successfully managed to find a home for those twin interests, first at CMS and now in North Carolina, where the 2020 emergence of a novel coronavirus has provided as tough a test as anyone could imagine for wielding health care policy to impact lives “at scale.” ■

States with lowest rate of COVID-19 vaccine administration (per 100,000 residents as of Jan. 18, 2021) Rank

State

Total vaccines administered

Vaccines administered per 100,000 residents

50

Alabama

100,567

2,051

49

Georgia

231,305

2,179

48

South Carolina

121,836

2,366

47

Idaho

46,636

2,610

46

Arizona

197,086

2,708

45

California

1,072,959

2,716

44

Nevada

83,674

2,717

43

Mississippi

84,328

2,833

42

Virginia

244,234

2,861

41

North Carolina

302,824

2,887

source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

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North Carolina’s executive suites are diversifying, our first list of power brokers from historically underserved communities shows. Look for the pace to accelerate.

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alecia McDowell’s path from east Charlotte’s Independence High School to a management committee post at Moore & Van Allen — the largest law firm based in North Carolina — is a rarity.

But becoming its first Black female partner reflects the fulfillment of a goal that the late Bill Van Allen had when he co-founded the firm in 1951, she says.

“Bill wasn’t doing much legal work by then. But the day when I made partner, he was sitting in my office, holding a note that he had written,” McDowell says. “He told me how proud he was to have me as a partner.

It meant so much to me that he would come to my office for that express purpose.”

McDowell credits her mother, who was a teacher, and other educators with giving her the confidence to excel. As a Duke University freshman, she was impressed but not intimidated with classmates who spent summers traveling to Europe or attending great education programs. “What I had was a lifetime with books, arts, imagination and the confidence my teachers had given me that I was as good as everyone around me.”

She earned bachelor’s and law degrees at Duke before joining Moore & Van Allen in 1998.

Powerful positions in North Carolina’s business and professional communities are increasingly filled by people with diverse backgrounds, thereby becoming more reflective of the overall community. That’s clear from Business North Carolina’s report on many of the state’s top nonwhite leaders who are building significant companies or exerting major corporate clout.

We developed the list after asking for suggestions from various sources and reporting by our editorial team.

While Black executives dominate, we also included Asian and Hispanic leaders. The list doesn’t include government and political officials.

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Diversifying corporate America is a national priority, accelerating following last year’s death of George Floyd that sparked a national race-relations debate. Black employees held 3.3% of executive and senior management roles in the U.S. in 2018, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Fewer than 1% of the CEOs of America’s 500 largest companies are Black, while ethnic minorities overall made up 11%, The Wall Street Journal reported in September. One of them is CEO Marvin Ellison of Mooresville-based Lowe’s (Page 46.) Black people make up about 13% of the U.S. population.

A few people on the BNC list are prominent figures in North Carolina, including CEOs Ellison, Tunde Sotunde of Blue Cross and Blue Shield, and Gene Woods of Atrium Health. Many others have lowerprofile but critical roles in the ninth-most populous state.

“With all the turmoil, there’s been significant progress, and that should not be lost,” says Donald Thompson, CEO of the Raleighbased Walk West digital-marketing company. “There are racial inequities and systemic racism, but there are also points of progress where your lantern can shine if you are doing great work.”

Thompson grew up in eastern North Carolina and dropped out of East Carolina University before graduating because he wanted to start making money.

A similar list of nonwhite powerbrokers 10 or 15 years ago would be much shorter, says Thompson, who has led two companies that were sold to larger firms. “That’s not because African Americans were not creating opportunities in business and pop culture and sports and life. But we’ve evolved to where there’s enough of a voice that we have an opportunity to let our talents shine.”

Many work for large companies, which underscores a concern of Walter Davis, co-founder of Peachtree Providence Partners, a private-equity and management advisory company in Charlotte and Atlanta. “How many really successful Black entrepreneurs do you know in Charlotte?” he asks. Davis previously had senior lending posts at Bank of America and Wachovia.

“We’ve done a decent job of diversifying the high-profile roles in the public sector,” he says. The Queen City’s mayor, police chief and city manager and Mecklenburg County’s commission chairman and public school superintendent are Black. “What we haven’t done is hit the economic inclusion piece, especially from an entrepreneurial level.”

The timing for ethnic executives to emerge may never have been better. After Floyd’s death on May 25, many companies issued statements pledging to boost their racial diversity and address injustice.

The Nasdaq stock exchange is suggesting a rule change that would require its listed U.S. companies to have at least one director who identifies as an “underrepresented minority” or as LGBTQ+. The

change also includes a requirement that an additional director be female. Most companies would have as many as two years to make the change.

None of the people interviewed say the path to power is easy. After paying $192.5 million to settle a race-discrimination class-action lawsuit in 2000, Atlanta-based Coca-Cola expanded its ratio of Black workers in executive posts from 1.5% in 1998 to 15% in 2010. The ratio then declined to 8% last year, despite big changes in its hiring, promotion and compensation practices, The Wall Street Journal reported last year.

Likewise, the number of Black executives in Charlotte-based Bank of America’s executive ranks “did a lot of backsliding” after Hugh McColl Jr. left as CEO in 2001, despite significant efforts by his successors, Davis says.

Timing is a big factor. Davis left Wachovia in 2011 to help found CertusBank based in Greenville, S.C. The group of Black bankers raised $500 million and grew to $2 billion in assets with a couple of acquisitions but fizzled within four years amid dissension with its key investors. At the time, Davis says he concluded that “not everyone is pulling for you when you look like us.”

Had CertusBank survived, however, it could have been well positioned in the current environment in which many companies — and megabanks such as Bank of America — are creating partnerships to assist Black-owned financial institutions.

Moore & Van Allen’s McDowell says she’s gained the confidence to expand her influence in ways different from the Southern tradition of developing relationships through country club memberships and golfing dates.

“A lot of people encouraged me to blend into that world, but it’s not who I am,” she says. “I am not a golfer, and I don’t live in [Charlotte’s] Myers Park [neighborhood], I live in Plaza Midwood. I get the call because of the quality of work that I do and the way that I do it.”

For Thompson, invitations to be a conference panelist for major marketing and corporate director groups and a recent three-hour dinner with the CEO of a $2 billion revenue company suggest top executives are seeking diverse voices.

“More CEOs want to build great cultures, and they don’t want to be on the wrong side of history,” he says. “They understand that you need diversity of thought and multiple viewpoints at the table to create a better company.”

Profiles were written by: Shannon Cuthrell, Vanessa Infanzon, Edward Martin, David Mildenberg, Michael Solender and

Taylor Wanbaugh.

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D. STEVE BOLAND President of retail, Bank of America Charlotte After 30 years at the giant bank or its predecessor companies, Boland heads one of its eight lines of business, is on the executive management team, and is a vice chair of the Global Diversity and Inclusion Council. His unit serves 33 million U.S. consumers who borrow through mortgages, credit lines, credit cards and auto loans. His oversight includes the lending officers who support Merrill Lynch Wealth Management and Private Bank clients.

Boland, 52, is a New York City native who earned a bachelor’s in organizational studies from Northwestern University. During his career, he has lived in many cities for a range of assignments including stints with Fleet Financial Group and Countrywide Financial, which

were acquired by BofA. He has spent the last five years in Charlotte after moving from New York.

The COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t depressed consumer interest in homebuying, says Boland, who has spent much of his career in mortgage-related roles. “Many first-time homebuyers are entering the market or considering it, and we are helping them through educational tools, grants and low down-payment loans in many markets.

These trends have underscored our commitment to providing accessible digital tools, financial education and affordable resources to help consumers improve their financial lives.”

Boland represents BofA as a member of the Executive Leadership Council, a Washington, D.C.-based national group that promotes Black leadership in business. He is also chair of the Greater Charlotte Cultural Trust Board and serves on the National Urban League board of trustees.

MALCOMB COLEY EY central region growth market leader, Charlotte managing partner, Ernst & Young Charlotte Goldsboro native Coley developed an interest in accounting while in high school, which led to bachelor’s and master’s degrees in accounting from UNC Wilmington. He’s been with Ernst & Young, an international accounting firm, for 17 years and oversees approximately 1,700 professionals across tax, assurance, strategy and transaction advisory. The company’s 200,000 clients in 150 countries include 84% of the Fortune Global 500.

Coley’s focus is on mining and minerals, manufacturing, retail, consumer products and distribution companies. As central region growth market leader, he’s engaged with entrepreneurial companies, family enterprises, and businesses backed by venture

capitalists and private equity.

Coley, 55, also has a full slate of civic gigs. He’s in line to be chair of the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance in 2022 and was appointed to the North Carolina Ports Authority in 2020

by Gov. Roy Cooper. He’s also involved with the United Way of Central Carolinas and advisory boards of the business schools at UNC Charlotte and UNC Wilmington. In late 2020, he joined with former Bank of America CEO Hugh McColl Jr. and former Duke Energy executive Lloyd Yates to form Bright Hope Capital, which plans to invest in Black and Hispanic-owned companies in the Charlotte area.

On PBS’ Roadtrip Nation program, Coley was quoted: “There is nothing wrong with saying these three words: ‘I don’t know.’

We don’t expect everybody to know everything. But be willing to work hard to get to the point where you do know.”

TODD COLLINS CEO, Red Hill Ventures Charlotte The Houston native started his real estate and technology investment company in 2005 after working for nine years at the Accenture consulting firm, where he advised clients on business strategy, change management and business processes. A Charlotte resident for 12 years, Collins has made real estate investments in North Carolina, Maryland, Texas and Washington, D.C. Collins developed Red Hill Capital as an “angel investor” fund to support assets historically overlooked by other groups. In particular, he looks for minority- and

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founder-led businesses, he says. “Our typical investment shows promise and is undercapitalized or undermanaged, and we come in with great management and an operational focus on the long term. Ours is patient money.”

A recent acquisition is The City Kitch, a shared commercial kitchen operation that Collins refers to as a “WeWork” for food entrepreneurs. The City Kitch has two locations in Charlotte and another coming in Greensboro. “How we consume food will change through technology, and our business model is well positioned to play a large role in these shifts,” he says. Collins, 47, has a bachelor’s degree from Morehouse College and an MBA from George Washington University.

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WALTER DAVIS Founding member, Peachtree Providence Partners Charlotte Davis’ inspiration to become a businessman came from his grandfather, Leroy Davis, who owned a grocery store, service station and cemetery, he told a Greenville, S.C., newspaper in 2011. After graduating from the University of South Carolina, Davis worked in Charlotte for Bank of America’s real estate syndicated lending unit and later Wachovia as an executive vice president of retail credit and direct lending.

In 2011, he joined with three other veteran Black executives from Wachovia and BofA to form a holding company and raise $500 million with a goal of building CertusBank into a $5 billion-asset,

Greenville-based institution within two or three years. A series of rapid acquisitions, including taking over some institutions that failed during the 2007-09 recession, helped CertusBank reach $2 billion.

But steady losses prompted dissension with the bank’s investors and Davis’ departure in 2014. CertusBank liquidated a year later.

Davis, 56, then joined former CertusBank partners Milton Jones and Angela Webb to build Peachtree Providence Partners, a management-consulting and private-investment firm with offices in Atlanta and Charlotte. Davis works with boards and management teams to improve performance, gaining a particular expertise in Opportunity Zone investments that target economically distressed areas. A focus of the firm is helping build minority businesses, which Davis says often requires a strong commitment from CEOs of larger companies and government purchasing officers.

SRI DONTHI Executive vice president, chief technology officer, Advance Auto Parts Raleigh Originally from Hyderabad, India, Donthi came to the Raleigh-based retailer in 2018 to lead the organization through a major business and technology transformation. He’s a member of the company’s executive leadership committee and responsible for Advance’s overall IT organization, technology platforms and strategic initiatives. Prior to joining Advance, Donthi held several leadership positions at PepsiCo during his nearly decadelong tenure there, including chief information officer and senior vice president of Frito-Lay North America.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from India’s Osmania University, a master’s degree in computer science from the Illinois

Institute of Technology, and an MBA from Northwestern University.

“CIO’s are in a unique position when it comes to helping businesses unlock growth,” Donthi said at a recent National Association of Software and Service Companies conference. “There are enormous opportunities in cognitive computing, leveraging [big] data, and learning from it.”

Since joining Advance, Donthi says, his team has modernized the company’s legacy technology platform. “Technology is at the helm of everything we do. … We are building engineering talent, culture and bringing ‘tech’ into our technology organization. Over the last few years, we’ve seen customers increasingly shift to e-commerce for purchases, a trend that has accelerated since the COVID-19 pandemic began and one I think will continue in the longer term. As a result, we have continued to invest in and prioritize new digital capabilities to benefit our customers.”

DEREK ELLINGTON Triad market president, mid-South business banking executive, Bank of America Merrill Lynch Greensboro Ellington was the voice of experience when he recently described his bank’s million-dollar pledge to N.C. A&T State University as a step toward “dynamic careers.” He’s had one.

Not long after, other A&T alumni again popped up in prominent national roles, including Michael Regan, nominated by President Joe Biden to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and Ebony Thomas, who was named late last year to head BofA’s racial equality and economic opportunity initiatives.

Ellington, 50, has risen to a prominent role in a region that encompasses Greensboro, High Point and Winston-Salem, with more than 1,600 BofA employees. He has inserted himself deeply in civic affairs

in a career that is both dynamic and built on solid ground.

He earned degrees in computer science and business administration from Alabama’s Troy University in 1992 and a master’s in international business from Birmingham-Southern College. He later completed the North Carolina Bankers Association three-year banking school at UNC Chapel Hill and graduated from Leadership North Carolina.

His community involvement has also been hands-on. Ellington is secretary-treasurer of East Greensboro Now, the city’s effort to improve economic opportunity, housing and other aspects of life in one of its stressed communities. He is a former chair of the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce and Guilford County Economic Development Alliance. He’s married with four children.

His supervisors have recognized Ellington’s efforts, awarding him the 2017 Bank of America Global Diversity and Inclusion Award.

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MARVIN ELLISON CEO, Lowe’s Mooresville The first Black person to be CEO of two Fortune 500 companies, the Brownsville, Tenn., native is enjoying terrific success at the giant homeimprovement retailer. Lowe’s shares have increased more than 60% since he became CEO in July 2018 and had a mid-January market valuation of $120 billion.

Born to sharecroppers, Ellison, 55, held convenience store and janitorial jobs while paying his tuition at the University of Memphis. He then spent 15 years at Target, working up to a corporate job before moving to Home Depot for 14 years. His last post was as executive vice president of U.S. stores. He left the Atlanta-based company after

he wasn’t chosen as CEO and took the top post at J.C. Penney in August 2015. He had little success reviving the troubled departmentstore chain before he was named Lowe’s top executive.

In his first two years in North Carolina, Ellison boosted the number of Black employees with titles of vice president or higher from eight to 15. He also has invested heavily in improving the company’s digital offerings. With more consumers opting to avoid stores because of the pandemic, Lowe’s online sales have more than doubled in the first three quarters of the 2021 fiscal year.

One of four Black CEOs on the Fortune 500 list of largest U.S. companies as of late 2020, Ellison has consistently urged other corporate leaders to fight racism. “I didn’t have to see the horrific murder of George Floyd to understand that there was racial injustice in America,” he said at a conference last year. “I live it every day.”

GEOFF FOSTER CEO, owner, Core Technology Molding Greensboro Connections literally explain how the N.C. A&T State University graduate has copped awards for entrepreneurship while building a 30-employee plastics company into a burgeoning supplier for automotive, pharmaceutical, medical and other industries.

Foster’s injection-molded electrical connector, for which he and his former employer share a patent, has been used in more than 31 million vehicles built by Ford Motor. “They owned all the rights,” he says, which convinced him that he should create his own company. It wasn’t easy.

Five frustrating years lapsed after he got the Ford connector patent, but his commitment to founding his own business remained solid. “I didn’t want to go to my family and friends to borrow, so we used what money my wife and I saved up and tried to get a loan,” he says. “It was tough. It was always like, ‘How many customers do you have?’ and the answer was that we were a startup. Then crickets.”

Originally from Freehold, N.J., Foster came to Greensboro to attend N.C. A&T. He married Greensboro native and nursing student Tonya Oliver, which anchored him in North Carolina.

They have a daughter, a Clemson University graduate and high

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school teacher in Charleston, S.C., and son at A&T who has a baseball scholarship.

Between receiving his first patent in 1999 and starting Core Technology in 2006, Foster was an operations manager at Becton Dickinson’s Durham manufacturing plant. “That’s how I learned clean-room, medical-sterile technology.” He also earned a Wake Forest University MBA. Foster’s business has grown to include clients in 150 countries such as BMW USA Manufacturing Group and its 11,000-employee plant in Greer, S.C. “We’re making parts — connectors — for every X3 and X4 in the world,” he says, citing BMW’s biggest-selling SUV models. Other high-profile clients are HewlettPackard and Merck & Co., for whom Core makes millions of plastic plungers for syringes. It’s the kind of product Foster hopes to cash in on as drugmakers produce coronavirus vaccines.

Already, Core Technology is working multiple shifts in its 30,000-square-foot new plant, an anchor tenant at the Gateway Research Park joint venture of UNC Greensboro and N.C. A&T. “We’re working around the clock and worked 350 days last year,” he says.

Foster was named Launch Greensboro’s entrepreneur of the year for 2019, has twice been chosen as minority supplier of the year by the Carolinas-Virginia Minority Supplier Development Council and recently was chosen as Southeast Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young, which cited the company’s ability to “pivot quickly during COVID-19.”

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FRANK EMORY JR. Executive vice president, chief legal officer, Novant Health Charlotte Emory is an example of leadership emerging from adversity.

He grew up in Wilson in the 1960s when the tobacco town was foundering as real estate, banking and job opportunities slipped away. Decades later, he has left a major imprint on the state’s public and private affairs.

After a lengthy legal career at large Charlotte law firms, Emory joined Winston-Salem-based Novant Health in early 2019. CEO Carl Armato said he hired Emory because “he has more than 30 years in practice, with extensive experience in the financial services industry, as well as publicly traded and privately held companies.”

Now, Emory oversees Novant’s risk management, legal affairs and government relations at the fast-growing hospital system, which post-

ed $5.4 billion in revenue in 2019.

Emory is also a civic leader, having been appointed board chairman of the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina, the state’s primary economic-recruiting agency, in 2017. Before moving to Novant, he was managing partner of the Charlotte office of Hunton Andrews Kurth and is a past president of the Mecklenburg County Bar. He spent eight years on the N.C. Board of Transportation and has been chosen a top lawyer by several publications, including Business North Carolina.

Emory is a 1979 graduate of Duke University, majoring in public policy and economics as an Angier B. Duke Scholar — that’s the school’s top academic scholarship. He later earned a law degree at UNC Chapel Hill. On the personal front, he’s married and has two sons and in 2001 received the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, the state’s highest civic honor.

MICHIMASA FUJINO President, Honda Aircraft Greensboro It’s not the biggest employer — nearby repair and maintenance operator Haeco Americas has 2,100 people — but Honda Aircraft isn’t far behind with 1,500, and few will dispute it puts the glamour in the Triad’s bustling aviation industry.

It was Fujino, 60, whose original pencil sketches for his HondaJet have turned into a remarkable success for the Japanese company.

Fujino may be best remembered by his high school classmates for his pingpong skills. But he gave up a potential pro career and graduated from the University of Tokyo with an aeronautical engineering degree in 1984. He soon landed a post as chief engineer and then project manager for HondaJet a few years later.

Already, he was playing with the idea for a fast, relatively inexpensive light business jet in the back of his mind. One day, he says, in a

fit of inspiration, he tore the back off a calendar and began sketching. What emerged was a sports car of the air with its twin engines mounted on stalks above the wings that looked essentially like today’s $4 million-plus, 450-mph HondaJet. Honda already had a small-engine plant in nearby Alamance County, so Fujino steered the fledgling Honda Aircraft to nearby Piedmont Triad International Airport when corporate headquarters authorized commercial production of the jet in 2004.

Today, more than 150 jets have rolled off the assembly line, and Fujino has rolled up numerous awards, including the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Aircraft Design Award. (He was the first designer of Asian descent to get it.) The plane has won such honors as the Foundation Award for Excellence from the same organization.

Fujino hasn’t forgotten his past, however. In the conference room of his Greensboro office, when staff meetings are held, members meet around a pingpong table.

KIMBERLY BULLOCK GATLING

PHOTO OF FRANK EMORY JR. BY PETER TAYLOR

Partner, chief diversity and inclusion officer, Fox Rothschild Greensboro Gatling is a household name in Triad legal and civic affairs.

She’s been recognized with several esteemed titles such as the Citizen Lawyer Award by the North Carolina Bar Association, Outstanding Woman of the Profession Award by the Women’s Law Association at Elon Law School, and the Distinguished Advocate Award by the Guilford County Association of Black Lawyers. She is a member of Business North Carolina’s Legal Elite for intellectual property law. She grew

up in Hampton, Va., then earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering at N.C. A&T State University, where her father was a graduate. She later earned a law degree from George Washington University and joined Greensboro-based Smith Moore Leatherwood in 2001 after working for two years at another firm. Smith Moore combined with the 950-attorney Fox Rothschild firm in 2018.

Outside the courtroom, Gatling, 46, serves as chair of the board of the United Way of Greater Greensboro and vice chair of the Cone Health Foundation board. She also serves as a trustee for N.C. A&T, where she formerly chaired the board of visitors. She also taught public law and leadership at Elon University Law School as an adjunct professor from 2014-16.

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ROBERT HARRINGTON Partner, Robinson Bradshaw Charlotte Having chaired his firm’s litigation department since 2015, the Florence, S.C., native spends most of his time representing clients on various complex disputes. He joined Robinson Bradshaw in 1999 after earning undergraduate and law degrees from Duke University and working for a large New Orleans law firm. Harrington, 58, is on the firm’s Diversity and Inclusion and Recruiting committees.

He’s developed a specialty in representing consumer-finance companies and earned many industry kudos, including N.C. Lawyer of the Year from the N.C. Lawyers Weekly publication. He’s also active in civic affairs, formerly chairing the Charlotte Arts & Science Council, Mecklenburg County Bar (he was the fifth Black president in the bar’s history) and the county’s public library board. For many years, he’s been a board member of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a national nonprofit organization that has recently focused on promoting equal opportunity voting.

KODWO GHARTEY-TAGOE The first case that Ghartey-Tagoe was assigned in 1988 after leaving Duke University Law School was assisting a group of North Carolina cities in suing Carolina Power & Light over cost overruns at its Shearon Harris Nuclear Power Plant in Wake County.

More than 30 years later, Ghartey-Tagoe, 57, is chief legal officer at CP&L’s successor company, Duke Energy, ranking among the most powerful executives at the giant utility. No one holds a grudge, he says with a laugh.

He became the Charlotte-based company’s top lawyer in October 2019, having joined the company in 2002 as chief regulatory counsel. At that time, Duke was investing heavily in less-regulated energy businesses that appeared to have more potential than the traditional utility business. After the collapse of energy-trading powerhouse Enron showed the risks of deregulated energy investments and a series of leadership and industry changes, Duke has shifted over the years back to a concentration on its regulated businesses that keep the lights on in six states.

Ghartey-Tagoe has kept it interesting by shifting to the litigation department, returning to his original focus as vice president for state regulatory and legal affairs, then serving as South Carolina state president for nearly three years before taking his current post. Running Duke’s business in the Palmetto State was probably his most fun job, he says, because he got to see how so many people and businesses were affected by the utility’s work.

“It’s been the honor of my life to be part of all that Duke has

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done since I got here,” he says. “We have a mission that I truly believe in.”

Assuring reliable electricity is more than a slogan for GharteyTagoe, who grew up in Ghana. His mother lives in a small city in the African country where outages remain a constant problem.

Ghana has 4,400 megawatts of energy capacity serving 28 million people. By comparison, Duke Energy owns 33,000 megawatts of energy capacity in the Carolinas, serving 8.6 million people.

Among his current challenges is working to change North Carolina’s utility regulatory approach, which tends to be more restrictive than in other states in allowing Duke to recover costs from new capital investments that promise environmental benefits. A wide-ranging group of private and public officials are holding talks about the issue.

“We get criticized for not moving fast enough, and we get criticized for our rates being too high,” he says. “The regulatory construction in the Carolinas needs some modernization.”

The son of a journalist, Ghartey-Tagoe earned a bachelor’s degree at Canada’s McGill University before moving to North Carolina to attend Duke. He worked on utility regulatory issues for law firms in Washington, D.C., and Richmond, Va., before joining Duke. He and his wife, Phyllis, have three grown daughters who are graduates of Davidson College, Rice University and Vanderbilt University.

For many years, Duke has challenged its outside law firms to add more diversity to their ranks, Ghartey-Tagoe says. The utility grades firms on various metrics and has reduced assignments or dropped firms entirely for not meeting its standards.

“I firmly believe a diverse group of people will come up with a better solution than a nondiverse group. It’s a matter of using all the resources and talent available to come up with the best solutions.”

PHOTO OF ROB HARRINGTON BY ALEX CASON

Chief legal officer, executive vice president, Duke Energy Charlotte

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NASSER HASSAN CEO, Breakthrough BioAssets; COO, Atsena Therapeutics Raleigh Hassan is the founder and CEO of Raleigh-based life science and health IT firm Breakthrough BioAssets. The company licenses and develops science and technology assets, and its holdings include Raleigh startup InnovaAi and Carybased PharmaBio. Hassan also is chief operating officer for Durham-based Atsena Therapeutics, a clinical-stage gene-therapy startup focused on reversing or preventing blindness. In December 2020, the company raised $55 million for clinical trials related to a therapy for a leading cause of blindness in children. The investment led by Sofinnova Investments

will also fund a manufacturing unit and expand research for other therapies, trials and technology.

Hassan brings more than 30 years of experience to his current roles, including past jobs as global head of regulatory operations at Merck KGaA, senior director of regulatory affairs at AstraZeneca, and chief operating officer at Pfizer subsidiary Bamboo Therapeutics.

He also held senior roles at VIRxSYS, Gilead and GSK. In 2008, Hassan founded RegSource Consulting, focusing on biopharmaceuticals, medical devices and generic industries.

Hassan is also the executive director of the Foundation for Commercializing Innovation, which partners with companies, nonprofit organizations and governments on global health innovation and policy initiatives.

TIMOTHY HUMPHREY Vice president, IBM Chief Data Office; senior state executive, IBM in N.C.; senior location executive, IBM Research Triangle Park Durham The Fayetteville native’s first round at IBM started in 1995 while he was an electrical engineering student at N.C. State University. He initially worked as a technical support professional, then gained product engineering and softwaredevelopment manager roles. In 2005, Humphrey joined Lenovo following its acquisition of IBM’s personal computing division. There, he managed software development and battery technology teams.

Humphrey, 47, rejoined IBM in 2011, managing strategy for the integrated supply chain team, then holding executive vice president positions focused on analytics for IBM’s enterprise services and chief data offices. In 2018, he became vice president of IBM’s Chief Data Office, where he leads more than 100 professionals worldwide to build IBM’s data and artificial intelligence backbone. The team also works on the Cognitive Enterprise Data Platform, which provides real-time insights on the company’s applications for more than 100,000 IBM analysts, data scientists and others.

As senior state and site executive for IBM’s North Carolina and RTP operations, Humphrey develops executive relationships with state and local governments, businesses, nonprofit organizations and academic institutions. The company’s RTP site

is IBM’s biggest North American employee base. Last year, the company named him its Senior Location Executive of the year, while the NC Tech Association also gave him its Tech Executive of the Year honor.

During the pandemic, Humphrey chaired IBM’s local crisismanagement team response and employee-safety initiatives and led an expanded amenities program — including providing free snacks and beverages in the workplace. The result was a solid improvement in employee engagement.

This year, Humphrey and a team of IBM employees worked on an automated alert service that assesses supply chain risks and identifies threats in about 25,000 supply chain data centers and IBM sites worldwide. Though developed for internal use, the project has expanded to nonprofit organizations including Save the Children and North Carolina’s Day One Disaster Relief.

As a member of IBM’s Black Executive Council, Humphrey leads a corporate-wide initiative to eliminate culturally offensive or discriminatory terminology in the company’s learning, videos and documentation guides. Humphrey has hosted discussions on social justice and racial issues in America. “As an engineer at heart, I tend to look at it all from a scientific perspective: We need to consider the root cause of the problem, develop and apply hypotheses, and measure results,” Humphrey said. “Combining that way of working with a collaboration between business and government, we can help bring real, actionable change.”

Humphrey is a member of N.C. State’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Alumni Hall of Fame.

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TERRENCE AND TORRY HOLT Co-founders, Holt Brothers Construction Raleigh The brothers, who grew up in Gibsonville, have followed up their football success with a growing construction business. Torry, 44, who played football for N.C. State University and the NFL’s St. Louis Rams, Jacksonville Jaguars and New England Patriots, founded Raleigh-based Holt Brothers Construction with his brother Terrence, 40. Terrence, another N.C. State alumni, played for the Arizona Cardinals, Carolina Panthers, Chicago Bears and New Orleans Saints.

Torry serves as vice president, while Terrence is president. Holt Brothers, which has 26 employees, has grown significantly over the

last decade. Recent projects include the $65 million City of Raleigh Central Communications Center and the $58 million Raleigh Union Station.

The Holt brothers’ mother, Ojetta Holt-Shoffner, battled cancer for 10 years before passing away in 1996, inspiring the pair to start the nonprofit Holt Brothers Foundation, which supports children who have a parent with cancer. Holt Brothers Construction has also made significant donations to several local organizations such as Boys & Girls Club of Durham and Orange Counties, Communities in Schools of North Carolina, Meredith Autism Program, Eastern Guilford High School, Gibsonville Elementary School, and Gibsonville Parks & Recreation. Torry is a finalist in the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2021, which will be named on Feb. 6.

CORNELIUS “CC” LAMBERTH Computers are the brains, but Lamberth’s cabling company, Greensboro-based C2 Contractors, creates the nervous systems without which they’re high-tech paperweights.

Electronics and computer technology were his passions when he graduated from N.C. A&T State University in 1989, but he quickly found room for another.

CC Lamberth has crusaded for minority business and industry for a quarter of a century. He helped create and has headed N.C. A&T’s advisory board of visitors, and he’s a member of Gov. Roy Cooper’s Advisory Council on Historically Underutilized Businesses.

His company, which includes a general contracting branch, is certified as an historically underutilized business with the state of North Carolina and as a minority business enterprise by Greensboro. It also

holds small-business and disadvantaged-business enterprise certifications with the N.C. Department of Transportation.

Such certifications underscore the leg-up status minority businesses often need, he told a Greensboro conference last year, because they face difficulty getting financing and are sometimes stymied by local governments. They often must overcome the tendency of potential clients to do business with contractors like themselves – often nonminority.

“The system itself is not set up to do business with Black people,” Lamberth told Triangle Business Journal.

Lamberth has served as an executive-board member of the Greensboro Chamber and chairman of the local NAACP’s economic development committee.

It’s been 25 years since Lamberth founded CoMor Corp., the forerunner of today’s C2 Contractors, he says. With a history of such clients as Hewlett-Packard, he says, his company holds itself accountable for the “quality of our work and the results we achieve.”

KENNETH LEWIS Member, attorney, Nexsen Pruet Raleigh Lewis, 59, has been a trailblazer in the North Carolina legal community. After earning a bachelor’s at Duke University and graduating from Harvard Law School, he worked as a law clerk for Associate Justice Henry E. Frye of the N.C. Supreme Court. He was hired in 1987 as the first Black lawyer at Charlotte’s Moore & Van Allen, the state’s largest law firm. He later co-founded his own firm and worked for another big N.C. firm before joining Nexsen Pruet in 2014. The firm has more than 180 attorneys at eight offices in the Carolinas. Lewis has worked with companies in various industries such as financial ser-

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vices, health care, insurance, manufacturing and technology.

Highlighting women and people of color in his profession is a priority for Lewis, who made an unsuccessful bid for the Democratic Party nomination for U.S. Senate in 2010. “[I am] assuring that highly skilled diverse and female attorneys receive their fair share of opportunities to display their brilliance and value-add in serving clients,” he says, “and contributing their perspective and experience to complex problem-solving.”

In a December Triangle Business Journal column, Lewis urged N.C. businesses and citizens to do an “economic apartheid audit” to assess whether they are using Black professionals or supporting Blackowned businesses. “How can Black people achieve significant economic progress if those with 10 times their wealth fail to do business with them?” Lewis wrote.

PHOTO OF HOLT BROTHERS BY TIM LYTVINENKO, COURTESY OF WALTER MAGAZINE

CEO, C2 Contractors Greensboro

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JAMES LI Founder, CEO, Cellex Research Triangle Park With decades of experience in medical-diagnostic technology development, Li, 59, was quick to jump into action at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. His Research Triangle Park-based company, Cellex, developed a rapid test to detect the presence of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, the strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Cellex’s antibody test was the first of its kind to secure an emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration.

Li, who earned a Ph.D. in genetics and cell biology from Wash-

ington State University, founded Cellex in 2002 to develop instruments and assays for point-of-care diagnostics. Eighteen years later, the company has developed rapid tests for influenza detection and other major viruses and blood tests. The company has partnered with California-based medtech firm Gauss to launch a COVID-19 rapid antigen test.

In 2009, Li co-founded Avioq, a Research Triangle Park-based diagnostic-device manufacturer and contract organization that markets virus diagnostic assays. In 2016, the company was acquired by China-based Oriental Ocean Sci-tech for $65 million.

Prior to Cellex and Avioq, Li worked for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as a regulatory scientist for the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.

GINA LOFTEN Chief technology officer, Microsoft Corporation US Raleigh A star alumnus of Greensboro’s N.C. A&T State University, Loften has spent her career at two tech powerhouses.

After about 27 years at IBM, she moved to rival Microsoft in September 2019 as chief technology officer for the company’s U.S. Enterprise Services unit. In her current post, which she assumed last July, her work includes operating 15 Microsoft Technology Centers in the U.S. that help customers envision how to deploy the company’s products and services, she told a Colorado technology group last year. Her team “helps customers reimagine their business and achieve successful out-

comes and delivers on the promise of digital transformation across their enterprise,” according to a company bio. Loften’s many posts at IBM included leading global initiatives for its Watson artificial intelligence and natural learning program and helping small and large businesses, universities, and others develop apps on the system. She also was chief technology officer for IBM’s North American Consulting Services and Hybrid Cloud.

An electrical engineering graduate of N.C. A&T, she has served on the boards of the George Mason Research Foundation, N.C. Museum of Life and Science and Rise Against Hunger. She has written articles on how artificial intelligence can improve the mental health of veterans and the true value of data for government use. Loften has described herself as a “passionate diversity and inclusion leader.”

KAREN LEVERT Venture partner, Pappas Capital Durham LeVert is a longtime leader in the Triangle’s startup scene. In early 2020, she joined Durham-based Pappas Capital, an investment firm focused on life-sciences companies spanning biotech, biopharma, drug delivery, medical devices and other technologies. The firm formed in 1994 by Managing Partner Art Pappas wanted LeVert to expand its specialized fund management business.

LeVert brought lots of business experience to Pappas. In 2003, she co-founded Southeast TechInventures, an innovation lab focused on bringing university-developed technologies to market. LeVert started the organization with Kristina Johnson, the former dean of Duke University’s School of Engineering who is president of Ohio State University. Southeast TechInventures has several portfolio companies, including development-stage protein therapy firm Lindy Biosciences, along with a few exits, such as Advanced Liquid Logic, sold to Illumina in 2013.

LeVert came to North Carolina during a 15-year career at Nationwide Insurance, where she started as a computer programmer.

She worked through a variety of posts, including leading a 500-employee service center in Raleigh. She later bought the franchise rights to a bioremediation firm, which she sold in 2001. She then joined San Francisco-based startup Level Edge, a recruiting service for high school athletes that raised $10 million during the late ’90s tech boom but later fizzled. She also ran a business development consultancy before starting Southeast TechInventures, where she remains president.

In 2014, LeVert launched Ag TechInventures, which focuses on commercializing research and technology in the agbiotech, infotech and precision agriculture markets. The company consults industry partners on promising candidates for spinoffs and assists with raising funding. Its spinoffs include Biotality, which develops sustainable crop protection products, and Edison Agrosciences, focused on alternative rubber crops.

An Ohio native with a bachelor’s degree from Eastern Michigan University and an MBA from the University of Dayton, LeVert is also a board member for the N.C. Biotechnology Center, the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina, the N.C. School of Science and Math, and the NC IDEA Foundation.

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VALECIA MCDOWELL Management committee member, Moore & Van Allen Charlotte When she joined in 1998, McDowell was the only Black female lawyer at the largest law firm based in the city. She’s made a big mark earning key leadership roles at the firm and in the community. McDowell, 47, heads the firm’s White Collar, Regulatory Defense and In-

vestigations practice.

Her assignments include leading a team of 80 people to provide risk analysis for a big bank, representing companies affiliated with convicted Durham insurance company owner Greg Lindberg and overseeing the sexual harassment investigation of a Charlotte City Council member.

She’s also a founding member of Moore & Van Allen’s diversity committee.

With bachelor’s and law degrees from Duke University, McDowell is also a key civic leader, chairing the board of the Charlotte Arts and Science Council and previously serving as general counsel for the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance. She’s a trustee of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Community Foundation Board and is on the Charlotte Center City 2040 Vision Plan Steering Committee. She earned the Julius L. Chambers Diversity Champion Award in 2017 from the Mecklenburg County Bar and was also recognized on the Lawyers of Color “Nation’s Best” list in 2019.

“Yes, we want to create environments where everyone feels included,” McDowell said in a Business North Carolina report last year. “And yes, we want to create environments that mirror the overall population. But the actual outcomes of the work will be so much better if you have people who are bringing those different lived experiences to the table. To me, that’s really what matters for our business model beyond the fact that it’s just plain the right thing to do.”

TINO MCFARLAND CEO, president, McFarland Construction Charlotte The Indiana native launched the Charlotte-based construction firm in 2010 with his wife, Tamara. Ten years later, 45 employees report to the Charlotte office and McFarland, 45, holds an unlimited general contractor’s license in seven states.

The company has offices in Fayetteville and Virginia Beach with clients including Cabarrus and Mecklenburg counties, Central Piedmont Community College, UNC Charlotte and Virginia Tech. The company helped build Novant Health’s $166 million Heart & Vascular Institute, a seven-story building on the system’s main Charlotte campus.

Through his role as a business owner, he wants to remove gaps in inclusion and disparity. “Community, commitment and collaboration drive everything we do at McFarland Construction,” he says. “These three key considerations align our behaviors, influence our business strategy and enhance how we show up in the marketplace.”

McFarland graduated from Purdue University and earned an MBA at Indiana University. He has participated in the Bank of America Supplier Development Training, Bell Leadership Institute and Leadership Charlotte and supports several organizations including the Architecture Construction Engineering Mentor Program and the National Black MBA Association. The McFarlands have three children and are members of the local chapter of Jack and Jill of America, a nonprofit organization assisting African American children.

DAMIAN MILLS Owner, Mills Automotive Group Pineville As a student at N.C. A&T State University in Greensboro in the early 1990s, Mills went looking for summer work. Jobs selling cars were plentiful, so he walked from dealer to dealer along Wendover Avenue because he didn’t have his own vehicle. Finally, Crown Dodge

gave him a chance.

Mills was good at it. Good enough that his Mills Automotive Group, with more than a dozen Ford, Toyota, Fiat Chrysler, General Motors, Nissan and Hyundai dealerships, was chosen as Black Enterprise magazine’s Auto Dealer of the Year last year. The magazine says the Pineville-based chain is the nation’s fifth-largest Black-owned auto dealership, with more than $470 million in sales at outlets in the Carolinas and other states.

The Louisiana native, 47, came to North Carolina to attend A&T,

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where he majored in business economics and graduated in 1995. He says he had a knack for sales, but Crown Automotive Group figured his talents lay elsewhere. He was quickly promoted to finance and insurance manager and, in 1998 at age 25, he became a partner in Crown Dodge. Two years later, after Greensboro businessman Royce Reynolds sold a majority stake in Crown Automotive to Duluth, Ga.-based Asbury Automotive, Mills became sales director for 22 dealerships.

His climb to the top ranks of U.S. minority dealership owners began in 2004 when he bought a Ford dealership in Smithfield. Mills Automotive has grown steadily since with its brands including Chrysler, Jeep, Ram, Ford, Lincoln, Kia and Chevrolet, among others. Mills is a former president of the Chrysler Minority Dealers Association.

Mills was appointed last year to the board of visitors at High Point University, where two of his three children are graduates. He has a reputation as a details manager but also a risk-taker who continued expanding during the 2008 recession. One of his employees says he breaks the mold of a CEO of a business pulling in a half-billion dollars in sales a year. Stuffy? “That’s not him,” he says.

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PAM OLIVER Executive vice president, Novant Health Winston-Salem The Rocky Mount native learned a lot while spending summers on her grandfather’s farm, but mostly that she didn’t intend to wind up on the business end of a hoe in steamy tobacco and cucumber fields.

Instead, she cultivated educational and health care credentials that led to being named president of Novant Health’s 2,500-member physician network in 2019.

The not-for-profit enterprise has more than 30,000 employees and 15 medical centers in the Carolinas, Virginia and Georgia, serving 4 million patients annually. It expects to complete its purchase of New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington this year, pushing its annual revenue to about $7 billion.

Oliver, 46, and her husband, Mark, have three children. She says she grew up wanting to attend UNC Chapel Hill to study medicine. Af-

ter excelling in high school in Rocky Mount, she received MoreheadCain and Board of Governors scholarships. In her junior year, family tragedy gave her even greater motivation: Her father was diagnosed with fatal leukemia, and his care reinforced her desire to go into medicine.

She graduated in 1996 with a biology degree, followed up in 2000 with a master’s in public health and a medical degree in 2001. She completed her residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Wake Forest School of Medicine. That work and her own parenting has been essential training, she says, providing perspective on down-to-earth basics such as breastfeeding and the difficulty in obtaining child care.

She started her practice at Novant Health’s WomanCare in 2005 and has risen in the system’s leadership while maintaining a high profile in community affairs. She’s chair of the Forsyth County Infant Mortality Reduction Coalition and a member of the UNC Chapel Hill board of visitors.

TONY PARHAM Vice president of innovation and strategy, Fidelity Center for Applied Technology Durham Since moving from Boston five years ago to join Fidelity’s big Research Triangle Park operation, Parham has helped the investment giant’s Center for Applied Technology take on innovative projects and new business opportunities.

The center works with the Fidelity Labs incubator to study emerging technologies and socioeconomic trends that can boost the company’s growth and improve customer satisfaction. He also has managed a program for employee patent filings.

Earlier in his career, Parham worked for Crosstech Ventures, IBM and Lotus Development. Before joining Fidelity, Parham worked for

three-and-a-half years as Massachusetts’ first government innovation officer after being hired by former Gov. Deval Patrick. A key project included improving the data warehouse for the state’s health and human services offices with a $1 million investment yielding a $9.8 million return in the first year and $7 million annually thereafter, state officials have said. The broader benefit was infusing new thinking and attracting talented staffers to state government, he says.

Parham has a bachelor’s degree in computer science and a master’s in management from MIT, along with a master’s in computer science from the University of Southern California. He is a board member at the Council for Entrepreneurial Development and William Peace University. His wife, Lynda Morris Parham, is a psychologist who operates a private practice.

CRAIG PARKIN Senior managing director, Atlantic South Regional GM | Institutional Relationships, TIAA Charlotte The Long Island native started at Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America in 2004, ranking among the top leaders at the New York-based company’s big Charlotte operation. Parkin, 48, served on TIAA’s Charlotte Leadership Council and is the executive sponsor of the Empowered (African American & Caribbean) employee resource group. He’s taken an active role in the company’s “Be the Change’’ initiative, a

corporate-wide effort to combat racism and boost appreciation of different cultures. While organizations can always do better, Parkin said in a local news interview last fall, employees’ reactions shows him that TIAA is on the right path. “Hearing reactions from employees saying, ‘I thought I knew but I really had no idea,’ or ‘I thought I was supportive of people of color or I wasn’t racist, but I can be anti-racist,’ [was powerful].”

Prior to joining TIAA, Parkin spent seven years with Bank of America. He has a bachelor’s degree from Colgate University and an MBA from Queens University. Parkin serves on the board of advisers at the Belk College of Business at UNC Charlotte.

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DHRUV PATEL Senior vice president of technology, Signature Bank’s Venture Banking Group Durham In March 2019, New Yorkbased Signature Bank launched a Venture Banking Group to serve venture capital firms and their portfolio companies. Patel was one of several executives who left Durham-based Square 1 Bank to join Signature’s new venture unit.

From 2016 to 2019, Patel was a vice president leading Square 1 Bank’s technology banking team. The company was acquired by California-based Pacific West Bank in 2015 for $849 million, creating an entity with more than $21 billion in assets. The Square 1 brand was dropped in 2019 and transitioned into a new venture banking group.

Patel focuses on new relationship development with startups and

investors throughout the Southeast. In November 2020, the Venture Banking Group signed its 100th client, exceeding expectations for the first 18 months of operation.

For more than 15 years, Patel has built relationships with highgrowth entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and other members of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Before Square 1, Patel was an executive for a decade at the Council for Entrepreneurial Development, a Triangle-area organization serving startups and investors. He joined CED in 2006 as program manager of capital and technology development. He then served as senior program manager of CED’s lifesciences program, then program director of its annual plan and programs. He also founded and directed CED’s investor relations team.

Patel, who lives in Cary, earned an undergraduate degree at India’s Mumbai University and an MBA at UNC Greensboro.

OMAR JORGE PEÑA CEO, Compare Foods Charlotte By age 10, Peña was learning the ropes in father Francisco Jorge’s Brooklyn supermarkets. “Then from about 14 to 21, I was in a grocery store every single day, doing the same work my employees do now every day,” says the Charlotte-based head of one of the nation’s largest ethnic food chains.

Peña, 39, took a break to earn a 2003 degree in government and politics from New York’s St. John’s University and a 2007 degree from Yeshiva University’s law school, then practiced business law in New York for a couple of years. But the pull of the produce was too strong.

“I jumped back into the grocery industry,” he says, moving to Charlotte to become a partner in Compare Foods in 2009.

Today, Peña is CEO of Compare Foods in Charlotte and chairman of Aurora Grocery Group, a marketing organization that serves about two dozen Compare, GalaFresh Farms and Gala Foods stores on the East Coast. The stores cater to Latinos, including Dominicans, his family’s origins, but increasingly are known as multiethnic, with a wide range of international foods. The enterprise practically gives family business a new definition.

The immediate Peña family consists of 15 brothers and sisters of his father’s generation. In 1980, his Uncle Eligio bought a small, dilapidated store in New York City and several years later, another uncle, Ismael, bought another store in Freeport, N.Y., that would become the first under the Compare banner. His mother, Ursula Peña, was among the first wave too. His father goes by Jorge, a Dominican practice when the last name is also a common first name. The stores began popping up in New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and elsewhere.

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The first Compare in North Carolina opened in Zebulon in 2000, followed four years later with the initial Charlotte location.

“Since the 1970s, all my family has been involved in the grocery industry,” Peña says. “It’s quite a large family enterprise. Each store is independently operated by a family member or an independent licensee. I have a cousin that owns three, an uncle that owns one. We have some fun family reunions.”

After moving to Charlotte as a partner in Compare Foods and to manage the brand’s regional stores, Omar and other family members in 2012 created Aurora Grocery Group, serving all the affiliated stores.

“Aurora is not really a holding company but rather a service provider for all the stores,” he says. He compares it to the co-op model similar to Keasbey, N.J.-based ShopRite Supermarkets, which serves 50 different members with more than 300 stores in six Northeast states. “We negotiate vendor contracts to get better pricing because of the volume, and we can negotiate our financing to get better rates and schedules. We combine the buying scale of all these independent entities to leverage better deals for each store.”

In more than a decade in Charlotte, Peña has served twice as chairman of the Latin American Coalition, one of the state’s largest Latino advocacy groups. He is a former member of Charlotte’s Immigrant Integration Task Force. He’s on the board of advisers of UNC Charlotte’s Belk College of Business and has been president of the Carolinas Food Industry Council.

He and wife, Miriam, have twins, Michael and Gabriel. And an eye on the future.

“Our goal is to make sure we’re serving customers the right way,” he says. “But yes, there are other cities where we could do that, in other surrounding states such as Georgia and Tennessee. We always keep our eyes open. With our family, we have plenty of room to continue expanding.”

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VINAY PATEL President, equity owner, Sree Hotels Charlotte After graduating from UNC Chapel Hill in 1992, Patel stretched his legs, working for various hotel franchises for nearly a decade. “Then,” he says, “the family called and said, ‘It’s time to come home.’” Family is important at Charlotte-based Sree Hotels. Eight of 11 top executives are Patels, a name common in the hotel industry, according to the Raleighbased N.C. Restaurant and Lodging Association, considering that more than half of the state’s 1,700-plus hotels are owned by Indian Americans.

Vinay Patel, 51, president, says more than nepotism is a factor in the growth of what has become one of the largest chains of hotels in

the South. It has more than two dozen in the Carolinas and Ohio with brands such as Courtyard by Marriott and Fairfield Inn. The chain was started by his Uncle Ravi Patel and friend Chandra when they bought a small roadside motel in South Carolina in 1980. Vinay had grown up on the Pacific Island of Fiji, where his family was involved in grocery, lumber and hardware businesses.

They moved to Charlotte in 1985, and he graduated from Charlotte Country Day School before going to UNC. Sree recently had more than $40 million in hotels planned for the Triangle area and, despite being battered by the pandemic, was forging ahead while fighting to avoid layoffs among its more than 800 employees.

Founders Ravi and Chandra are in nonexecutive roles as chairman and vice chairman, with active Sree management passing to younger Patels such as Vinay.

MARVIN RILEY President, CEO, EnPro Industries Charlotte A former General Motors executive, Riley joined the Charlotte-based global manufacturer and diversified technology company in 2007 and was named chief operating officer in 2017, then CEO in July 2019. The company employs 5,000 in 27 plants around the world, with annual revenue of $1.2 billion from products and services sold to about 40 industries.

He holds a bachelor’s in electrical and electronics engineering from Howard University and an MBA from Johns Hopkins University.

He’s also a director of Canton, Ohio-based TimkenSteel.

“Marvin has a deep level of strategic acumen and operational expertise, not only with our Fairbanks Morse division, which he led for six years, but also with each of EnPro’s other businesses,” David Hauser, EnPro’s non-executive board chair, said when Riley was promoted to CEO. Riley, who is in his mid-40s, spoke about leading his organization through the pandemic during a podcast in mid-2020. “It’s been important to think not only about our people and stabilizing our business but about supporting our community as well,” Riley said.

“We’ve distributed N95 masks to hospitals in the U.S. and overseas and helped connect hospitals and institutions to our supply chains.”

SEPI SAIDI

PHOTO OF SEPI SAIDI BY CHRISTER BERG

CEO, SEPI Raleigh The N.C. State University grad and Iran native founded her 300-employee Raleighbased engineering company in 2001 after more than 16 years of working in transportationengineering design and management. SEPI now has offices in Charlotte, Raleigh, Wilmington, Beaufort, S.C., and Charleston, S.C., has earned top industry awards and is frequently ranked among the nation’s fastest-growing businesses by Inc. magazine. It recently acquired two planning and design firms in Florida, expanding its reach in a fast-growing state.

Saidi, 58, is active in her community, having served on the boards

of the Raleigh-Durham Airport Authority, N.C. Chamber, N.C. Banking Commission, Dogwood State Bank, Duke Raleigh Hospital, Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce, FMI Corp. and Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. N.C. State’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences named her an outstanding alumni in 2016.

Appearing on Business North Carolina’s Power 100 list in 2020, she said one of the state’s biggest challenges is creating a “more inclusive culture that provides equal opportunities for all, regardless of race, gender, national origin or sexual orientation — and having more women in leadership roles.” Women only account for about 15.7% of architectural and engineering careers, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The numbers are even lower for people of color: 6.8% Black, 13.3% Asian, and 9.2% Latino.

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NATALIA SANCHEZ President, Norsan Media Charlotte Atlanta-based media mogul Norberto Sanchez named his daughter, Natalia, as president of his company’s Charlottebased media business in early 2020. The elder Sanchez developed restaurant, food distribution and broadcast units after immigrating from Mexico in the 1970s to Atlanta, where he earned engineering degrees from Georgia Tech University. Norsan entered the Charlotte radio-station market in about 2006 and became a major force in the Hispanic community by sponsoring large festivals and partnering with many institutions including the Carolina Panthers. Norsan broadcasts the team’s games in Spanish.

Natalia Sanchez, 30, oversees three TV stations including Estrella TV Charlotte, the city’s only local Spanish-language TV station, and 28 Spanish-language radio stations in the Southeast and Texas. The company also publishes three Spanish-language newspapers, has a digital marketing arm, and organizes events and festivals targeting the Hispanic community. It has 80 employees in North Carolina.

Late last year, Norsan bought an AM radio station and FM translator in Austin, Texas, giving the company a combined reach of more than 2.5 million Hispanics in the U.S., the company said in a press release.

Sanchez is a graduate of Santa Clara University who has taken part in the Leaders Under 40 program run by Charlotte’s Community Builders Initiative. She also serves on the national Hispanic Scholarship Foundation’s Charlotte Advisory Council.

RASU SHRESTHA Chief strategy and transformation officer, Atrium Health Charlotte Being born in Kathmandu, Nepal, is just one distinction of Shrestha, who is playing a key role as Atrium Health expands into one of the nation’s most powerful health care organizations. The radiologist and medical technology expert came to North Carolina in January 2019 after an educational path that started in India and continued through Brunei, Malaysia, the United Kingdom and the University of Southern California, where he received an MBA in 2007. He has an MD from CCS University in India. He then spent 11 years at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, a leading innovator in health care with annual revenue of $21 billion. As chief innovation officer, Shrestha also helped start UPMC’s investment arm that has had several big financial successes.

Atrium proved attractive to Shrestha because of CEO Gene Woods’ vision for “reinventing the specifics of how it continues to do business across the regions here in North Carolina, South Carolina now [and] increasingly in the Georgia market as well,” he said in a podcast with the American College of Radiology. He played a key role in Atrium’s decision last year to take charge of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, a move that is prompting expansion of the Winston-Salem-based university’s medical school into Charlotte.

The Healthcare Dive newsletter named Shrestha as Executive of the Year in 2018, citing his “vibrant voice and original take.” Shrestha has become a social media expert, attracting 32,000 Twitter followers and issuing more than 74,000 tweets. “Social media, used right, can bring back trust in what matters,” he noted on Jan. 5.

“Social media has always been about connecting at an exponential scale. The value of Twitter has evolved from basic information sharing to meaningful engagement and much deeper dialogue.”

JAMES SILLS III CEO, Mechanics & Farmers Bank Durham Sills came to North Carolina in 2014 after serving as the chief technology officer for the state of Delaware. He has deep N.C. roots as his grandfather is a Shaw University graduate, his father was born and raised in Wake County, and he has other family members who live in Henderson and Louisburg.

Before his Delaware post, Sills was CEO of Memphis First Com-

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munity Bank in Tennessee, chief operating officer at Alabama’s First Tuskegee Bank and an executive vice president at MBNA, a large credit card lender acquired by Bank of America in 2006. He also started an employee verification business.

Started in 1897, M&F is the second-oldest minority-owned U.S. bank and among only 21 remaining Black-owned depository institutions. It has five offices in North Carolina. Social justice protests over the treatment of Black people, sparked by police-involved violence, prompted a record inflow of deposits to M&F in 2020. “I’ve never experienced this with so many people calling us,” Sills says.

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KIMBERLY SMITH Senior vice president, head of research and development, ViiV Healthcare Durham Smith is the head of R&D at ViiV Healthcare in Research Triangle Park. The company, which is headquartered in the U.K., is majority-owned by GlaxoSmithKline with industry giants Pfizer and Shionogi Ltd. as limited partners. Its portfolio of 13 HIV treatments generated about $6.6 billion in sales in 2019, according to GSK. A graduate of the University of Michigan’s School of Medicine, Smith joined the pharmaceutical industry after 20 years as an HIV physician and researcher at Chicago’s Rush University Medical Center. She entered the job at the height of the HIV crisis in the early 1990s. At the time, the virus was having a particularly devastating impact on communities facing gender and racial disparities. Observing the stigma encountered by individuals suffering from HIV, Smith says

her greatest accomplishment during that period was ensuring those patients were cared for and felt respected. She also has a master’s in public health from Michigan.

“It’s an experience that informs my life and approach to care that I’ve taken with me to ViiV Healthcare, where we won’t stop innovating and developing new medicines until HIV has been eradicated,” Smith says.

ViiV Healthcare is working on an HIV cure in collaboration with UNC Chapel Hill, a $20 million, five-year partnership renewed last March.

Despite pandemic challenges, ViiV Healthcare in 2020 secured regulatory approvals for a new, life-saving medicine for people living with HIV who are out of treatment options. The company also presented positive data for medicines that may reduce daily treatment doses to an injection taken once every month or two. In a rare event for the industry, the trials ended two years earlier than anticipated because of the treatment’s superior efficacy.

TUNDE SOTUNDE President, CEO, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina Durham Third World or our world, similarities abound, says Sotunde, the pediatrician-turned CEO of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina. “[In Nigeria] you often don’t have advanced diagnostic equipment like MRIs or sometimes even supporting infrastructure such as running water and electricity,” says the Nigeria native. “It’s like that in some rural areas of our country.”

Sotunde, 55, took the job last June in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which reflected higher infection and death rates among minorities. The executive’s international roots and accomplishments as a physician and businessman should enable him to help “reshape health care,” Blue Cross Chair Frank Holding Jr. said at his hiring. It’s the state’s largest insurer with more than 3.7 million members.

Predecessors at Blue Cross have for decades sparred with hospitals, doctors and other providers over reimbursement rates and other issues. A plan to partner with Cambia Health Solutions of Oregon to share administrative, operational and other services

was scuttled after the abrupt departure in 2019 of former CEO Patrick Conway, who resigned after being arrested for driving while impaired.

Born in Lagos, Nigeria, and the son of a middle-class couple, Sotunde attended boarding school in the United Kingdom, then graduated from Nigeria’s University of Ibadan College of Medicine in 1988. He spent his residency at Howard University in Washington, D.C. “The U.S. has such a solid reputation for the most advanced health care system. I was thinking about what I wanted to get from my health professional experience, and there was no question I wanted to get my training here.”

After medical school, Sotunde was pediatrics chief at Syracuse Community Health Center in Syracuse, N.Y., and practiced medicine at Port of Spain General Hospital in Trinidad. He trained medical students in Syracuse and at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn.

He later entered the insurance industry, joining UnitedHealthcare in 2001 as senior medical director in Arkansas and Tennessee. In 2008 he moved to Amerigroup, which became part of Indianapolis-based Anthem, a public company that is the largest Blue Cross operator in the U.S. In his last two years at Anthem, he oversaw its $33 billion Medicaid business unit.

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WILLIAM SPRUILL Co-founder, CEO, Global Data Consortium Raleigh Spruill, 53, is a staple in the Triangle investment scene, previously serving as a board member on the Council for Entrepreneurial Development and as a past member of the $2.6 million early-stage angel fund Triangle Angel Partners.

Spruill has more than 20 years of experience in global enterprise data management. In 2011, he and Charles Gaddy co-founded Global Data Consortium, a Raleigh-based electronic verification solution company, after the two previously worked together at another startup company. Global Data raised about $3.5 million in equity and options in mid-2020 and boasts customers such as

Stripe, Mercado Libre and DHL Global. The company has grown at an average of 120% annually over the past five years, Spruill says. Spruill currently serves on the board of nonprofit Triangle Family Services, which focuses on solutions for local families in crisis. He is also an active donor to the Durham Nativity School and the Daniels Center of Raleigh; both programs aid in education efforts for minority and financially challenged youth.

In a Business North Carolina round table discussion on diversity and inclusion, Spruill said that Global Data deposited about $3 million from its fundraising into Black-owned Mechanics & Farmers Bank to help boost local businesses. “It costs us nothing to do that. … [The bank is] doing North Carolina-based lending in communities that are not reached by traditional banks.”

WILLY STEWART CEO, Stewart Raleigh Growing up in Barranquilla, Colombia, Stewart aspired to become an engineer in the United States. Decades later, Stewart, who earned his master’s degree from N.C. State University, is the CEO of his more than 200-employee Raleigh-based engineering, design and planning firm. The company is responsible for projects across the state and beyond, including Raleigh’s The Dillon, East Carolina University’s Coastal Studies Institute, Carolina Panthers practice fields in Charlotte and the Durham Innovation District. It was named one of Engineering News-Record’s 500 largest design firms in the U.S. in 2019, with revenue of $32.5 million.

Over its 26 years, Stewart, 61, says diversity and inclusion have remained at the forefront of the company’s values. Last year, the

company launched a racial equity committee of 20 people focused on educating employees about the present and historical struggles of people of color, identifying organizations that are aligned with racial-equity initiatives, creating financial scholarships at historically Black colleges and universities, improving the hiring process to increase diversity, increasing purchases from minority-owned companies, and influencing policy and legislation that promote racial equality.

In addition to his work at the company, Stewart also spends about 20 hours a month chairing the board of WakeMed Health & Hospitals, which has about $1.4 billion in annual revenue. He also joined the N.C. Museum of Art Foundation board and previously served on the N.C. Governor’s Advisory Council on Hispanic/Latino Affairs, the N.C. Small Business Development Fund board of directors, and the North Carolina Board of Examiners for Engineers and Surveyors.

AARON THOMAS Starting his business in 2000 after earning a bachelor’s degree from UNC Pembroke, the Lumbee Tribe member has built the largest minorityowned construction company in the Carolinas. Initially focusing on housing projects, Metcon has expanded into commercial contracts with a major focus on K-12 and university structures. The company’s main offices are in Charlotte, Pembroke and Raleigh. It has completed more than 800 projects, and the U.S. Department of Commerce

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has twice named the company as its National Minority Construction Firm of the Year. Among its biggest projects was a 1,276-bed dormitory at N.C. Central University in Durham. The $95 million housing site is the largest contract that the state has awarded to a minority-owned company.

Metcon specializes in constructing sustainable buildings with 12 “energy-positive” projects that generate more power than is consumed. Those buildings include the first energy-positive public school in the U.S. in Jones County in eastern North Carolina.

Thomas, 44, is a past chairman of the N.C. State Building Commission and is an executive board member at the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina.

PHOTO OF WILLY STEWART BY CHRISTER BERG

CEO, Metcon Pembroke

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DONALD THOMPSON CEO, Walk West Raleigh Since joining the digital-marketing company in 2016, the veteran Triangle technology executive has overseen rapid growth at Walk West — which has been on the Inc. 5000 list of fast-growing companies for three straight years — with a variety of clients including UNC Rex Healthcare, North Hills and N.C. State University. He left East Carolina University as a junior to work full time, gained a knack for sales and was a top executive at two Triangle companies that were acquired by software giants Adobe

and India’s KPIT. More recently, Thompson has gained a higher profile because of his outspoken promotion of racial equity and increased diversity in senior business leadership. Last year, Walk West started a unit, The Diversity Movement, to train businesses on inclusiveness. He’s on the board of Vidant Medical Center, the Raleigh Chamber of Commerce and TowneBank’s Raleigh division. He’s also a frequent angel investor and director for emerging Triangle companies.

In an interview last year, Thompson said one of his key motivators is to “grow financially and spiritually enough to where I can invest enough time, effort and money into businesses that are led by women and people of color.”

ANGELIQUE VINCENT-HAMACHER Shareholder, co-chair of employment and labor practice group, co-chair of the diversity and inclusion committee, Robinson Bradshaw Charlotte An employment law specialist and certified mediator, Vincent-Hamacher partnered with clients across the state and nation to navigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Early on during the pandemic, I helped many clients deal with real crises in that they were forced to implement employee pay cuts, reductions-in-force, layoffs and furloughs due to the impact of COVID-19,” she says. “That was a difficult and stressful time. That period taught me to have even more compassion in the work that I do — more compassion for my clients and for their employees. It also served as a reminder to have more gratitude for so many basics in life that I took as a given. Happily, I have helped many of those same clients reopen their businesses, recall

their employees and restore employee pay.”

Vincent-Hamacher, 46, was born in Greensboro but moved to Rock Hill, S.C., in fourth grade. She earned a bachelor’s degree at Duke University and a law degree at Harvard University in 2000, then joined Robinson Bradshaw. She is now on the six-member board of directors at the 60-year-old law firm that has about 155 attorneys in Charlotte, Chapel Hill, Raleigh and Rock Hill. She’s won a bevy of legal industry honors while earning a rising profile in civic affairs.

She’s on the newly created 13-member Atrium Health Enterprise Board, which oversees the giant Charlotte-based health system and Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. She chairs the Quality and Equity of Care Committee of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Hospital Authority Board, and she’s outside general counsel to the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina.

DEREK WANG Founder, CEO, Stratifyd Charlotte The Beijing, China, native is among Charlotte’s most dynamic technology executives, leading a company that has raised about $55 million in debt and equity since its founding in 2015. Stratifyd’s investors have included Winter Park, Fla.based Arsenal Growth and Toronto-based Georgian Partners. Wang came to Charlotte in 2006 to work on a doctorate in computer science, which he earned at UNC Charlotte in 2011. During his doctoral work, he consulted with Bank of America, Microsoft and other companies. He also joined UNCC students Li Yu and Thomas Kraft in conducting government-sponsored research on using artificial intelligence to analyze massive amounts of data, which evolved into

Stratifyd.

Wang has become a big advocate of Charlotte and its growing research university. In 2019, Wang announced plans to move Stratifyd to a 30,000-square-foot office in west Charlotte and add at least 200 employees over the next few years. Last year, Wang named Kurt Trauth, a former executive at USAA and Lenovo, as senior vice president of customer experience strategy and analytics. Thomas Ephraim, formerly of Qualtrics/SAP, joined as senior vice president of sales. The company’s customers include financial-services giants Ally and Capital One and drugmaker Eli Lilly.

“The importance of understanding and optimizing the customer experience has never been more important,” Wang said in August.

“Yet, with companies drowning in significant volumes of human-generated, unstructured data, this is increasingly challenging.”

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FRED WHITFIELD President, vice chairman, Charlotte Hornets Charlotte Whitfield, 62, joined the Queen City’s NBA team as president in 2006, overseeing business operations for the Charlotte Hornets and the Spectrum Center. It continued a friendship with Hornets owner Michael Jordan that started in the late 1970s when the duo met at a basketball camp at Campbell University, where Whitfield played on the varsity team. The N.C. Central University law school grad, who earned an MBA from Campbell while serving as an assistant basketball coach, oversaw the team’s rebranding from the Charlotte Bobcats in 2014 and Spectrum Center’s rebranding in 2016. He also helped secure $40 million in renovations at the team’s downtown arena, the 2019 NBA AllStar Game and the 2019 ACC Men’s Basketball Tournament. He is one of two Black CEOs or presidents of business operations in

the 30-team NBA, a league in which about 80% of the players are Black.

Whitfield was named 2019 Citizen of the Carolinas by the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance for significant contributions to the area’s business growth, economic development and the community at large. Whitfield’s other recognitions include the Thurgood Marshall Award of Excellence, YMCA George Williams Volunteer of the Year award, and the key to the city of Greensboro. As the founder of Achievements Unlimited basketball program and camp, the Greensboro native has provided educational programs to more than 10,000 disadvantaged children in Charlotte and Greensboro over the last 35 years. His nonprofit HoopTee Charities assists in providing scholarships for disadvantaged kids to attend camps and educational programs. Whitfield also serves on the executive committees of the Charlotte Executive Leadership Council, Charlotte Regional Business Alliance and Charlotte Sports Foundation.

EUGENE WASHINGTON Health affairs chancellor, Duke University; president, Duke Health System Durham As their careers advance, some professionals narrow their focus. Washington has broadened his through his role overseeing three Triangle hospitals, Duke’s medical and nursing schools, and its clinics.

He earned a reputation as a health-policy expert, clinical investigator and executive at the University of California system before coming to Durham in 2015. He is renowned for his research and teaching in gynecology, obstetrics and women’s health, including studying cervical cancer and other devastating illnesses, prenatal testing, and racial and ethnic disparities in treatment outcomes.

At Duke, Washington, 69, has to protect and expand Duke’s turf in Tar Heel health care. Competition is ramping up, including in some new areas for Duke, which boasts one of the nation’s highest-ranked medical schools. It has less revenue than three competing systems, UNC Health, Novant Health and Atrium

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Health, which are expanding regionally and in medical education. Atrium and Winston-Salem-based Wake Forest School of Medicine have linked, as have Novant and UNC’s medical school. Last year, Novant outbid Duke and others in the sale of Wilmington’s New Hanover Regional Medical Center. The deal is pending regulatory approval.

Nevertheless, Duke has gained national attention for its innovations, including coronavirus research and policies. For example, researchers have developed procedures that allow patients to share ventilators, which have been in short supply. Also fewer students at the Durham campus have tested positive for the virus than at many other universities.

Washington is a 1976 graduate of the University of California at San Francisco, with other degrees from Howard and Harvard universities and the University of California at Berkeley. He is married with three adult children.

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DONTÁ WILSON Chief digital and client experience officer, Truist Financial Charlotte Wilson, 44, has had a rapid rise at the sixth-largest U.S. bank, serving since 2016 on the 13-member executive leadership team that directs the company’s vision and strategic plan.

Wilson, who has an MBA from the University of Maryland, oversees client experience, digital banking, innovation, marketing and venture investments. His work prompted Savoy Magazine to cite him among the Top 100 Most Influential Blacks in Corporate America. Under Wilson’s leadership, Truist’s mobile banking app for Apple and Android has earned a top rating from market research company J.D. Power. Truist’s Innovation

and Technology Center, scheduled to open in Charlotte this year, will promote research, design thinking, testing and delivery for original digital products. “Helping clients achieve financial confidence is more than a career; it’s a calling,” Wilson says. “We want to be there for our clients, wherever and whenever they need us.”

Wilson was born at Fort Bragg and grew up in a military family, moving 12 times before the 10th grade. He joined BB&T while attending UNC Charlotte. After various operations jobs, he oversaw the bank’s business in Alabama and Georgia. He oversees the Truist Foundation, which provided about $80 million of community giving in 2020. He founded I Am My Brother’s Keeper, an inner-city mentor program, and serves on its board. He’s on the board of advisers for the Belk College of Business at UNC Charlotte and Samaritan’s Feet.

GENE WOODS CEO, Atrium Health Charlotte Three years ago, not too long after becoming head of the state’s biggest health care system, Woods revealed in a Business North Carolina interview a side unknown to most. “Music has always been a great escape, a great way to decompress,” the sometimes blues guitarist said. “It’s always been a part of my life.”

Today, the 56-year-old is hardly singing the blues, having presided over, among other things, last year’s partnership of Atrium with the Wake Forest School of Medicine and Wake Forest Baptist Health and the rebranding and growth of Carolinas HealthCare System as Atrium.

It’s one of the nation’s largest systems, with more than 40 hospitals, 70,000 employees and nearly $10 billion a year in revenue. For his efforts, he earned $7.3 million in 2019.

The Wake Forest deal is slated to put a full-blown medical school

in Charlotte, which for years has been among the largest U.S. cities without such an institution. It’s a big coup for the Rhode Island-born Woods, coming more than 50 years after state lawmakers chose to put a med school in Greenville at East Carolina University rather than in Charlotte.

Woods, whose mother from southern Spain married a U.S. Navy sailor, grew up in the projects of Philadelphia as his family scrambled to pay light bills. He traces his roots to a North Carolina slave family and is the first member of the family to go to college, graduating from Pennsylvania State University in 1990 with an MBA and master’s in public health.

A three-decade industry veteran, Woods came to Charlotte from a post as president of Texas-based Christus Health. He’s gained a prominent role in the industry, serving as a past chairman of the American Hospital Association and appearing on national news outlets.

He’s also lobbied for affordable housing and serves as a member of the state’s Economic Recovery Task Force.

JANE WU

PHOTO OF JANE WU BY PETER TAYLOR

President, Panorama Holdings Charlotte Wu, 39, founded Charlottebased real estate developer Panorama Holdings in 2012 after roles at Wells Fargo Securities and its predecessor, Wachovia Securities. The company’s projects include the 309-unit Lumeo Apartments adjacent to the University City Boulevard light rail station near UNC Charlotte and a 14-story mixed-use tower in the Ballantyne area. It will include an AC Hotel by Marriott, office space and a rooftop restaurant.

She formed the North America Chinese Chamber of Commerce

to work with the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Embassy in China to attract and guide international investment. Wu also founded American Alliance for Economic Development, which advocates for people looking to invest in U.S. projects that create jobs in return for receiving a green card required for immigration. She moved to Charlotte in 2007 to earn her master’s degree in mathematical finance from UNC Charlotte. She has an executive MBA from the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in China.

Upon receiving the Outstanding Young Alumni Award in late 2020 from UNC Charlotte’s Belk College of Business, Wu shared a secret to her success: “Think big, and work hard.”

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AMPED UP

Ahoskie Chamber of Commerce leader Amy Braswell watched solar-energy generation spark Hertford County’s economy. Now she wants her fellow residents to feel another boost, this time from wind-energy generation.

Amy Braswell has a unique perspective on building prosperity in her community. In addition to managing her family’s 600-acre farm in Hertford County, she is Ahoskie Chamber of Commerce’s executive vice president, recruiting businesses, industry and jobs.

Lately, Braswell has been focused on renewable energy. And last December, when she accepted a North Carolina Clean Energy Champion award from San Francisco-based Chambers for Innovation and Clean Energy, she expressed optimism that renewables would spur further economic growth.

“Hertford County is a mix of industries and agriculture, and we are now adding renewable energy to our portfolio,” she said during the awards ceremony.

“We see the opportunity, and we are absolutely certain that renewables will play a role in our future economic-development planning.”

Hertford County, which abuts Virginia and the Chowan River, is home to 13 solar farms, including one of the largest in the state. Developed

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by Mooresville-based SunEnergy1, its 400,000 panels are located near N.C. 11, southwest of Ahoskie, and can generate 80 megawatts of electricity, enough to power about 20,000 homes. And more projects are on the way to the county. Contracts and permits are in place to construct three solar farms, including one that is nearly complete along U.S. 158 outside Murfreesboro. But they may be the last, at least for a while.

Last October, Hertford County commissioners placed a moratorium on constructing solar-energy farms, creating time to study their impact on local landowners. But Braswell, whose farm is almost within sight of the largest one, sees renewable-energy generation as an opportunity to make a positive impact on the quality of life of county residents. “When you improve quality of life, you can attract more people and businesses, and it is a win-win for us in every direction,” she says.

The benefits start with construction. “When we build these projects,

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people come to our county, rent hotel rooms and dine in our restaurants,” Braswell says. Tax revenue from those purchases has enabled the county, for example, to produce special events, attract concerts and stage shows at the local amphitheater.

Now Braswell is touting the development of wind energy in northeastern North Carolina. Amazon Wind Farm North Carolina–Desert Wind, the first coastal wind farm in the Southeast, sits on land leased from 60 landowners in Perquimans and Pasquotank counties. Its 104 high-tech turbines, which can generate 208 megawatts of energy — enough to power 61,000 homes — reached full commercial operation in 2017. Portland, Ore.-based Avangrid Renewables, a subsidiary of Orange, Conn.-based Avangrid, which has renewable energy projects and 6,500 employees across 22 states, developed the project. It generates more than $1 million in annual county tax revenue and lease payments.

But Avangrid Renewables’ work in northeastern North Carolina isn’t

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POWERING finished. It submitted a construction and operations plan to the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management in mid-December for the first phase of the Kitty Hawk Offshore Wind project, located about 27 miles offshore of Corolla, a popular spot for tourists and wild horses on the Outer Banks. It would cover almost 122,500 acres and is projected to generate about 2,500 megawatts of electricity, enough to power about 700,000 homes.

Braswell believes Hertford County would benefit from the Kitty Hawk project. Its Charlotte-based Nucor’s steel-plate mill in Cofield, near the banks of the Chowan River, along with a slew of North Carolina manufacturers could be links in a wind-farm project’s supply chain.

As a member of the Chambers of Innovation and Clean Energy, the Ahoskie Chamber of Commerce is part of a nationwide network that helps its members navigate and prosper in the clean-energy sector.

CICE has named North Carolina as one of its priority clean-energy states in part because it’s No. 2 in the nation for installed solar capacity and No. 9 for clean-energy jobs. The organization also touts the state’s $120 million in renewable energy grants, more than 8,000 solar and wind energy jobs, and $9 billion in solar and wind capital investment.

CICE was founded in 1995 by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and The Chamber for a Greater Chapel Hill-Carrboro. Their leaders wanted to amplify the collective voice of local businesses and chambers, says Susan Munroe, who works from Raleigh as CICE’s director of economic development. “We’ve grown to well over 1,000 chambers in our network,” she says.

Munroe calls the Kitty Hawk project exciting. She believes it will bring hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars in investment to North Carolina. “It’s the supply chain opportunity that is going to create the magic,” she says. Local chambers, such as Ahoskie’s, are perfect facilitators for county economic-development initiatives. “They’re the driving force in attracting business, industry and spe-

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cial projects like solar and wind farms to their communities,” she says.

Hertford County, which has about 24,000 residents, does not have an economic-development director. But Braswell sees her role with the chamber as filling that function. She’s passionate about bringing business and industry to a rural region historically perceived as agricultural with limited potential. She is intent on changing that perception. “A lot of people think of eastern North Carolina as being just an agricultural economy, but here in

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Hertford County, we continue to stay focused on growing our industrial base while contributing toward the state’s clean-energy goals,” she says.

— Teri Saylor is a freelance writer from Raleigh.

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WALKING A FINE LINE The public and private sectors must find common ground, developing technology and methods of production and delivery of clean energy while preserving the state’s top-rated business climate in order to help meet environmental protection goals.

As North Carolina races toward Gov. Roy Cooper’s goal of a 40% reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions by 2025, public and private organizations are uniting to transition the state’s economy to clean energy.

The move must be affordable, reliable and equitable, experts say. And public interest, power-grid needs and state policy must be top of mind. “This ambitious goal requires collaboration and finding common ground with stakeholders, which is critical,” says Diane Denton, Charlotte-based Duke Energy’s vice president for state energy policy and member of the N.C. Energy Policy Council, which advises the governor and N.C. General Assembly. “Collaboration has been a hallmark of the governor’s plan and one in which Duke Energy has been actively engaged.”

Knoxville, Tenn.-based Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, which champions energy choices that strengthen communities, calls North Carolina “the undisputed leader in solar-energy development and deploy-

ment in the Southeast.” In addition to having the nation’s second-largest installed solar capacity, the state also boasts some of the East’s best offshore wind-energy resources. In 1975, the General Assembly passed the North Carolina Energy Policy Act, recognizing that the development of a reliable and adequate energy supply that is secure, stable and predictable is in the state’s best interest — pushing economic growth, creating jobs, and expanding business and industry, Denton says.

With climate change fueling most current energy-policy debates, North Carolina’s leaders are counting on energy initiatives to protect the health and prosperity of its residents, create jobs and modernize power generation. By leveraging energy resources, innovative public- and private-sector partners, and a competitive workforce, the state is positioned to drive a far-reaching transition to a clean-energy economy. But wielding these assets must be done while keeping energy prices affordable and

maintaining North Carolina’s business climate, which Site Selection magazine ranked the nation’s best, tied with Georgia, in 2020. “I consider the ability to achieve at least 50% carbon reduction by 2030 and net zero carbon emissions by 2050 our North Star,” Denton says.

Raleigh-based North Carolina Electric Cooperatives represents 26 notfor-profit electric cooperatives, which serve about 2.5 million residents across an area that’s equal to nearly half of the state. Broad community support is the hallmark of the electric cooperatives, and they continue to make significant contributions to the communities that they serve. Nelle Hotchkiss, the organization’s chief operating officer and senior vice president of association services, says over the last five years, contributions to more than 100 economic-development projects have created more than 5,000 jobs and more than $1 billion in capital investment in rural North Carolina.

Among the cooperatives’ priorities

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POWERING are providing sustainable energy at the lowest possible cost, innovating and advancing grid operations, continuing emphasis on reliability and resilience, and encouraging community support. Hotchkiss says they developed an initiative that aligns with the state’s Clean Energy Plan, which calls for carbon neutrality by 2050.

“Our Brighter Future vision focuses on creating a low-carbon environment through sustainability and investment in low-to-zero emissions energy sources but also through integrating innovative technology that makes the electric grid more resilient, robust and flexible,” she says. “We continue to invest in power sources such as nuclear, which is carbon-emissions free, and natural gas, and we are increasing our use of renewable resources, including solar.”

The cooperatives have five microgrids in operation or under development. They add resiliency, sustainability and efficiency. The cooperatives also are expanding battery storage applications and investing in system redundancies to increase grid resilience.

“The state’s electric cooperatives are proud to play a central role in keeping our state on the leading edge of a forward-thinking energy policy discussion,” Hotchkiss says.

Like the electric cooperatives, industry and policy experts have prioritized improving the state’s energy infrastructure. “Enhancing the resiliency of the energy grid and continuing to invest in making our

system resilient and reliable can help attract business and industry that bring high-paying jobs and drive economic prosperity for our residents,” Denton says.

Hotchkiss agrees. “We’ve seen firsthand how innovation and technology that enhance sustainability, lower operating costs and provide added resiliency make North Carolina attractive to new business and industry, as well as helping retain and expand existing ones,” she says.

Steve Kalland, executive director of the N.C. Clean Energy Technology Center at N.C. State University, believes there isn’t time to waste. Other states are pursuing similar goals.

“When it comes to competition, the race to deliver clean energy and a greener, more modern utility grid will pay off in economic development,” he says.

North Carolina already has made strides in developing solar energy.

So, the Clean Energy Technology Center, which works to grow the sustainable energy economy, and the state Department of Commerce are collaborating and studying potential economic growth as well as supply chain and workforce opportunities that could come with the expanding East Coast offshore wind energy industry. “We’ve certainly seen a lot of job creation from the solar boom in North Carolina,” Kalland says. “And now we have a chance to become a player for offshore wind construction and deployment, particularly for the

The Port of Morehead City is one of the deepest ports on the East Coast and just 4 miles from the Atlantic Ocean.

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projects that will be off our coast.”

Offshore wind generation is expected to provide more than 36 gigawatts of power — enough to power more than 9 million homes — over the next decade. Kalland says that will require billions of dollars of investment, which will benefit states from Maine to the Carolinas.

And North Carolina is poised to take advantage of the opportunity. “We are one of the more manufacturing-friendly states, so there is a real push to work, to set North Carolina up to capture supply chain jobs out of offshore wind projects,” he says.

The state Department of Commerce recently started the North Carolina Offshore Wind Supply Chain Registry, which allows companies to publicly declare their interest and ability to supply wind-energy projects with components and services. Those include blades, towers, cables and wind-turbine parts, along with the infrastructure to bring power ashore.

Transport and assembly of components, construction staging and site-related work also create jobs.

And with ports in Morehead City and Wilmington, along with nearby Norfolk, Va., North Carolina’s coast offers opportunities to facilitate construction on shore and on the water.

Plugging into offshore wind power won’t be without issues. Kalland foresees the biggest coming from reaching a consensus among policy, political, business and industry leaders about the best strategy to facilitate these changes in energy resources. “If we take too long deciding what we should do or if we are not expansive enough in our thinking, we run the risk of falling behind neighboring states and other regions of the country that are working with some urgency on these issues,” he says. “If we do it right, we’ll continue to be a leader. And if we don’t, then we’ll be labeled a follower.”

— Teri Saylor is a freelance writer from Raleigh.

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COMMUNITY CLOSE-UP

GASTON COUNTY

ACTIVE APPROACH Gaston County is building its economic base and improving quality of life for its residents.

The town of Dallas is a quick 10-minute drive north on U.S. 321 from downtown Gastonia. It has a 100-acre park with ballfields, an equestrian show ring and fish-filled lakes. It also is home to Gaston County Museum, which recently hosted “The Bible and Gaston County,” an exhibit documenting religion’s role in textile mill history.

Any discussion of that longtime local industry is incomplete without mentioning Loray Mill in Gastonia. It was the South’s largest textile mill under one roof in 1900. While it and the city’s oldest standing mill — Trenton — have been repurposed into housing, other textile operations continue. McAdenvillebased Pharr Yarns, whose local mill was the first to be electrified, thanks to a partnership with Thomas Edison, still has manufacturing sites statewide, including its hometown and Kings Mountain.

While Gaston is holding onto its past, it also is looking toward its future.

New industries are opening, the local workforce is developing, visitors are arriving and a health care provider is investing. The intertwined efforts are building the county’s economic base

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and improving quality of life for its residents. “It’s been so much fun these last few years,” says Kristy Ratchford Crisp, economic-development director for the county seat, Gastonia. “What makes Gaston County great is we are growing.

And we are adaptable. And we plan for the future.”

MANUFACTURING Gaston’s biggest industry is manufacturing. Its almost 16,000 jobs employ about 20% of the county’s workforce, according to the N.C. Department of Commerce. While that number may be smaller than in years past — 25,000 in 2000 — it doesn’t signal a slowdown.

“I don’t think we ever lost manufacturing,” says Steve Nye, Gaston County Economic Development Commission’s marketing director. “It has just evolved over the course of time. It used to be very labor intensive, and now what we see is automation and computerization and machines getting better and more effective. So, they need fewer people, but [the level of skill] the people need to operate these machines has gone up.”

A growing number of Gaston manufacturers have foreign roots. The eco-

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nomic-development group says more than $370 million has been invested in Foreign Direct Investment Projects, which brought more than 1,000 jobs.

Gaston was named a Foreign Direct Investment Cluster by Southern Business and Development magazine in 2019. “You can find a great location, competitive prices, all utilities already in an industrial park and a place where people are willing to relocate with a lot of housing options,” says Donny Hicks, Gaston County EDC’s executive director. “You’re close to a bigger city — Charlotte — if you want to commute. So what separates us is the level of effort we put into recruiting those companies.

It’s their money and their livelihood they’re putting up, and we generate comfort and support.”

Israel-based Tosaf, which makes color compounds for plastics used in the automotive, construction and textile industries, opened its first U.S. site in Bessemer City in 1986. Belgium-based Dhollandia MFG also chose Bessemer City, investing $26 million to establish a U.S. headquarters there in 2018. “How does a company from Belgium end up in Bessemer City?” Hicks asks. “You SPONSORED SECTION

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look at how many options they have.

But we have a lot of well-developed sites. With Tosaf, that was a direct result of recruiting trips. ... It came down to between us and Atlanta. In one sense, we don’t have the horsepower of Atlanta. We don’t have HartsfieldJackson Atlanta International Airport, and we don’t fly the same places, but we can compete, and we can get you anywhere.”

Gaston has been developing Apple Creek Corporate Center in Dallas since the late 1990s. But ground for its first tenant wasn’t broken until last June.

GNT USA invested $30 million to build a food-coloring factory and create about 40 jobs on nearly 50 acres. It’s part of a family-owned company that started in Germany in 1978, when it developed technology to extract natural coloring from fruits and vegetables.

Apple Creek’s first phase was nearing completion in December when a company codenamed Project Duo was close to an announcement. Nye says the park’s remaining 13 sites would fit several industries. “Projects that are interested include some other food products, some life sciences and some advanced metalworking,” he says.

“Those kinds [of companies] will employ no more than 100 or 150, but their capital investment will be a lot greater because, going back to the evolution of the machines that are becoming more automated, they just don’t suit having a high number of people.”

Nine companies have created almost 540 jobs at Dallas-based, 422-acre Gastonia Technology Park, a mile north of Interstate 85. Chemical manufacturer Torrington, Conn.-based Dymax, which serves the automotive, aerospace, defense and medical industries, arrived in December after it announced a $21.5 million investment that would create 59 jobs in April. A $200,000 performance-based grant from One North Carolina Fund helped secure the deal.

Röchling Engineering Plastics, part of Germany-based Röchling Group, broke ground on a 75,000-square-foot warehouse expansion at the park about a year ago.

Gaston balances newcomers with longtimers. American & Efird started when waterwheels powered textile

mills. Its headquarters remains in Mount Holly, but it’s now part of Charlotte-based Elevate Textiles. “You have to work hard to keep companies like that,” Hicks says. “We get a lot of help from [Raleigh-based Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina] as we try to create the best infrastructure, and they are a huge help with extending our global marketing arm. They help take our message to the world on our behalf.”

Gaston’s future is bright. “We have worked on our utilities system, so we don’t have to spend millions on that,” Hicks says. “We have a good water source tied into Mountain Island [Lake].

We’ve really worked hard on the business side of it. I don’t see anything slowing the growth of the region. We’ve been preparing for that and taking care of opportunities.”

EDUCATING U.S. 321 passes Gaston College, where workforce development is underway. “We work with company representatives to determine the jobs to be created, the skills required for those jobs and the training to support those skills,” says Greg Smith, the college’s vice president of economic workforce development. “A comprehensive training solution and business case is developed. The funding associated with that training plan is allotted to the local community college to be expended on behalf of the company for the specific training outlined in the approved project.

The team will then meet at least quar-

terly to determine the training throughout the duration of the project.”

Gaston College’s workforce development takes several forms. Its Customized Training Program, for example, tailors teachings to specific jobs. Apprenticeship 321 partners with manufacturers in Gaston and Lincoln counties. And a youth apprenticeship program for high school juniors and seniors has been added. “We work with the EDPNC to keep abreast of incoming and expanding companies,” Smith says.

“At times we also work with the EDPNC to help recruit companies. Dhollandia is an example where we helped recruit them, met with them and built that relationship.”

In mid-December, Gaston College and Catawba Valley Community College in Hickory launched the Manufacturing & Textile Innovation Network. MTIN develops and promotes a regional workforce by connecting Gaston’s Textile Technology Center, which is based at its Kimbrell Campus in Belmont, with CVCC’s Manufacturing Solutions Center in Conover. Its first students start this fall, working toward a two-year degree in textile technology and choosing specialty tracks including textile design, textile technician or textile manager.

The N.C. General Assembly supports the colleges’ partnership. It sent a $9 million grant to the city of Conover for Manufacturing Solutions Center upgrades and $5.3 million to Gaston County for an incubator and Extrusion Center for Advanced Fibers at the Textile Technology Center. “These centers …

Gastonia’s Franklin Urban Sports and Entertainment District will include event venues, shopping, dining and housing.

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[will] be serving the industry in different ways,” says Sam Buff, vice president and general manager of MTIN. “They are very similar in that they service the textile manufacturing industry. The TTC focuses on the front end, where you start with the chemicals that make the fibers that convert into yarn. At the TTC, we primarily weave. We pass the baton to the MSC, because it’s there that instead of weave, they knit. They cut and sew and make a finished garment.”

Buff says MTIN graduates will work in a variety of industries, including furniture, automotive and fiber optics.

“There are a lot of companies that would be interested in these folks,” he says. “That [skill] level hasn’t been available in years. The smart companies are looking for young talent.”

Buff credits Gaston College President John Hauser and CVCC President Garrett Hinshaw for sewing up the MTIN deal. “We had cooperation between the two center directors and a shared vision, but we needed that higher level. Dr. Hauser came in about six months ago, and he’s the missing

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piece,” he says. “He already knew Dr. Hinshaw. In a matter of weeks, they were working on this.”

ENTERTAINING The seats are ready, and the turf has been placed. Goal posts and soccer nets sit ready for when the baseball park hosts other sports and events.

Nicknamed “The Gas House,” it’s the centerpiece of Franklin Urban Sports and Entertainment District — FUSE — on West Franklin Boulevard in Gastonia. City officials envision it attracting residents and tourists with events, shopping, dining and housing. With a construction budget of about $30 million and an expected March completion date, the ballpark should see its first game this spring.

FUSE’s baseball team, the Honey Hunters, will play as one of six Atlantic League teams, with the closest competitor being the High Point Rockers. The team is owned by Brandon Bellamy, CEO of Greenbelt, Md.-based Velocity Cos. “Our team owner is a [real estate] developer, and he is working on

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additional development pads around the stadium,” says Crisp, the city’s economic-development director. “He wants to do some more multifamily [housing] that will look down on the playing field, and a potential hotel and offices. With a lot of that, because the industries have been impacted by COVID, we need to see how the economy recovers before we start looking at more hotels. But a 120-room hotel with rooms that look down onto the field would be super cool.”

Other developments are happening nearby. Durham-based Durty Bull Brewing is investing $2 million in a 5,000-square-foot taproom, brewery and restaurant that is expected to open this spring. Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based developer Lansing Melbourne Group is investing $24.4 million in Trenton Mill Lofts, where 89 loft apartments will feature 130 years of history and modern conveniences. And construction of about 100 apartments at Center City Crossing, developed by Fort Mill, S.C.based Kuester Commercial on West Main Avenue, should begin in March.

Gaston County visitors spent more than $291 million in 2019, 5.6% more than the year before, according to Visit North Carolina, EDPNC’s tourism-development arm. That supported about 2,000 jobs with a $49 million payroll.

They come for many reasons, including the Ridgeline Craft Beverage Trail, which connects brewers and distillers in Gaston and Cleveland counties, kayaking on the South Fork and Catawba rivers, and the renowned Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden. It won’t be long until FUSE and the $6 million aquatics center, which is expected to break ground this month in a portion of Eastridge Mall’s parking lot, join that list. And their lodging choices will include two new hotels.

The Fairfield Inn & Suites Charlotte Belmont, not far from where I-85 crosses the Catawba River, opened last July with 91 guest rooms, a fitness center, meeting rooms and an outdoor pool.

“The Belmont-Mount Holly area is growing so fast, and we wanted to be a part of it,” says General Manager Jay Brown.

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Construction on the $90 million critical-care tower at CaroMont Regional Medical Center in Gastonia began last fall. The 146,000-square-foot tower is expected to open in 2023.

“We are excited to see the future development of more businesses in the area.

[It] has so many wonderful events and attractions throughout the year.”

The other hotel — Home2 Suites in Belmont, located on the other side of I-85 — has ties to Gaston’s textile history. Myrtle Beach, S.C.-based Strands Hospitality Services has managed more than 300 hotels, including Holiday Inns, Hampton Inns and Wingate hotels, mostly in the Southeast, in its 50 years.

Its president is John Pharr, whose second cousin is Bill Carstarphen. His grandfather started Pharr Yarns in 1939.

The family business sold its textile interests last year, focusing on real estate and hotels instead.

The family’s long-running relationship with Belmont Abbey College led to a Hampton Inn in 2009. “Belmont Abbey and Pharr Yarns did a 50-50 joint venture … and the college is the top customer with that hotel,” Pharr says. “So, the new hotel is an outgrowth of the old hotel. The group and one other investor went back to the Abbey and said, ‘How about another hotel on your property near the Mount Holly exit?’”

The pet-friendly Home2 Suites,

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which opened in January, has a fitness center, pool and free breakfast. “Sports tourism has increased there a lot,” Pharr says. “We’ve had experience with that in Rock Hill and in Myrtle Beach. Sports programs generate a lot of business.”

HEALING Belmont Abbey also recently signed a lease with Gastonia-based CaroMont Health, which has 4,300 employees across five counties, so construction of CaroMont Regional Medical Center-Belmont can begin this spring. It will have 66 beds, an emergency department, operating rooms, a labor-and-delivery unit and imaging services — MRI, CT, nuclear medicine and ultrasound. Medical offices and outpatient services also are planned.

The Belmont hospital is expected to open in 2023, when CaroMont also plans to open a four-floor critical-care tower adjacent to its regional medical center in Gastonia. “At CaroMont Health, we have a phrase we often use to describe our approach to projects large and small — clinically led, professionally managed,” says Ashley Long, CaroMont vice president and

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chief nursing officer. “The process to evaluate, plan and develop the future critical-care tower is a true testament to that approach.” Both projects are part of a more than $350 million investment countywide.

Each floor of the 146,000-squarefoot tower will have centralized nursing stations that are within view of 26 rooms, each offering ICU-level care.

“From the innovative floor plan, which will allow our nurses to do their jobs more efficiently, to the larger rooms that balance technology and comfort, this project will make a difference for each of the thousands of patients who depend on us to help change and save their lives,” Long says.

The CaroMont system will work with Belmont Abbey’s health-science programs, offering students clinical rotations. And workforce-development partnerships with local colleges will allow nurses to train in the tower.

“While critical care is a relatively small specialty in the medical community, it is a complex discipline that requires significant resources to care for these patients,” says Heath High, CaroMont’s medical director for critical care and the tower endeavor’s physician lead. “This project will position the care team to continue to provide highly advanced medical therapy and create a healing environment for patients and loved ones during a stressful and difficult time in their lives.”

From an economic-development perspective, Gastonia’s Crisp says CaroMont’s expansions are a big deal.

“They’re our largest employer, and their contributions to our overall economic vitality are immeasurable,” she says.

“And their place in Belmont helps secure their place regionally.”

— Kathy Blake is a writer from eastern North Carolina.

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AS GOOD AS GOLD

+ TALKING POINTS

A mining town in the early 1800s, Jamestown’s central location between Greensboro and High Point and developing downtown make it an increasingly popular locale.

JA M E S TOWN

4,148 POPULATION

$61,107 MEDIAN HOUSEHOLD INCOME

KEYAUWEE THE NATIVE AMERICAN TRIBE LIVED IN THIS REGION AS EARLY AS 1701. ▲ Jamestown’s FurnitureLand South operates the largest retail

1947

furniture store in the U.S. by size, with more than 1.3 million square feet of showroom space.

YEAR JAMESTOWN WAS INCORPORATED

BY BRYAN MIMS

HOMETOWN OF THE 74TH GOVERNOR OF N.C.

11 MILES SOUTHWEST OF DOWNTOWN GREENSBORO

PAUL MARTIN NEWBY HOMETOWN OF N.C. SUPREME COURT CHIEF JUSTICE

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he old farmhouse with the sunny yellow paint job, bookended by a pair of chimneys, has shabby shutters and scruffy floors that creak. But like the ripped women’s jeans hanging from a rack upstairs, this house has style and character, serving as a home-furnishings gallery, a coffee shop and a women’s clothing store. Steven Beck, whose daily ensemble is often Carhartt suspenders and a trucker hat, opened Black Dog Home & Cafe in 2019. “When I was younger, I always wanted to open some kind of store here in Jamestown,” he says.

He grew up in the area learning the art of woodworking from his grandfather. These days, the 32-year-old restores weathered wood into furniture, selling it at Black Dog, which is named after family dogs Hank and Scout. Lines of wood grain course like veins across tabletops, swirling around knots and creating tan-and-brown patterns that pop. Beck knew from an early age that he would craft a livelihood from working with wood. “I honestly think a lot of it has to do with working with my hands,” he says. “I love being able to look at a completed art form.”

That woodworking streak runs through the Piedmont hills like the Deep River along whose banks Jamestown is built. Just across the river is High Point, renowned for its furniture makers and twice-yearly market that is the largest home-furnishings trade show in the world. The Mendenhall family started the first lumber mills in Jamestown in the late 1700s, but the town, unlike its larger neighbor, wouldn’t claim fame through furniture. It became better known for its yarn spinning, gunsmithing and gold mining and for what went on in the basement of the old yellow house.

“The basement’s a little eerie, I’ll be honest,” Beck says. It’s where Dr. Shubal Coffin treated sick and wounded Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. Dr. Coffin established a medical school in Jamestown in 1840, one of the earliest in North Carolina. He built the house in 1855

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PAT MCCRORY

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▲Black Dog Home & Cafe, located in an old farmhouse, is home to a home-furnishings gallery, a coffee shop and a women’s clothing boutique.

overlooking the railroad “to enjoy the improved access and visibility afforded by train travel,” the historical marker says. In the war, maimed soldiers would be offloaded from trains and carried into Dr. Coffin’s home.

“I tell you what, if those walls could talk down in that basement, there is no telling what kind of operations went on back in the day,” says Will Ragsdale, a former town council member. He owns the house and several other properties in the town of about 4,100 people. Jamestown spreads across 3 square miles from High Point Lake on the west to Guilford Technical Community College on the east. “We have a lot of interesting dots of history.”

He says connecting and highlighting all those dots will put Jamestown on the map. “I like to call it the ‘Jewel of the Triad’ because it’s right smack dab in the middle of everything.”

PHOTOS COURTESY OF STEVEN BECK

Quakers, guns and good eats

Jamestown’s settlers, who arrived in the mid-1700s, were Quaker families who drifted south from Pennsylvania in search of good farmland and timber. James Mendenhall came along and built a plantation, then moved to Georgia a decade later. His son, George, stayed behind and named the village for his father.

In the early 1800s, gold was discovered near Jamestown, leading to several prosperous mines. But along came the California Gold Rush, and the local mines were abandoned. Through much of the 19th century, it was black powder that burnished Jamestown’s reputation. The town became known for craftsmen who built what came to be known as the Jamestown Rifle. In a booklet titled The Gunmakers of Jamestown, North Carolina, the writer describes the “slender, graceful, muzzle-loading rifles which, although made by many different individuals, share certain char-

acteristics which constitute the Jamestown Rifle.” It’s now prized among antique firearms collectors.

Paying homage to Jamestown’s gunsmiths, a barbecue restaurant on Main Street bears the name Black Powder Smokehouse.

It opened in November 2019 inside an old filling station, Hughes Oil Service, a town staple since 1919. After the station closed in the 1990s, the brick building sat idle for years until Ragsdale partnered with Keith Henning, a longtime chef, to renovate and expand it into a barbecue place. It still looks like the quintessential filling station, with its front canopy supported by two brick stanchions and refurbished ’70s-era gas pumps. Henning, 47, worked more than 20 years as an executive chef. Now he runs his own place in a town he loves.

“Jamestown for us was great,” he says, branding the town as a “date-night location.” The small downtown also boasts a gourmet restaurant called Southern Roots, a live music venue called The Deck, and the Full Moon Oyster Bar, all of which have opened in the past dozen years. “But,” he says, “it seemed like we were missing that family place where you can bring your kids after a soccer game and not worry about them running around in uniforms and cleats.”

The Black Powder logo includes the words “Artisan Barbecue,” which Henning acknowledges might come across as sounding “hoity-toity.” But he says cooking barbecue the time-honored way is a cherished craft. His pork (chopped or pulled), brisket, chicken and turkey are cooked slowly with the essential ingredient: smoke. “We just focus on fresh ingredients,” he says. “Not trying to cook as much barbecue as we can but trying to do it right in smaller amounts.”

Henning, who grew up in Indiana and married a Southerner, serves up those savored regional staples: mac and cheese, collard greens and sweet potatoes. Barbecue speaks to him “because it’s the most archaic form of cooking,” he says. “It’s pretty much wood, fire and meat.”

Artisan is an apt word to describe the restaurateurs and other entrepreneurs along Main Street. In 2009, Lisa Hawley moved

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her Southern Roots eatery from High Point to Jamestown. She has helped make the town a destination, wooing fans with her shrimp and grits, stuffed rainbow trout, and flat-iron steak.

Across the street, people stop to smell products at the Soap Lady Store, where owner Susan Stringer and her staff make everything from goat’s milk bar soap to sugar scrubs. And there’s the Ivy House Salon. Nikki Kepley, 32, opened it in 2020, bringing a dash of urban flair to the town where she grew up. “I love being part of this small-business scene,” she says. “This is just home.”

A cotton mill renaissance?

▲ Guilford Technical Community College’s T.H. Davis Aviation Center, which opened in 1989, houses eight aircraft, a helicopter and more than 20 system trainers for labs.

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▲ Black Powder Smokehouse opened in former 1920s gas station Hughes Oil Service in 2019 after the building sat dormant for several years.

see it just sitting there,” he says. While other towns have resurrected their old mills into homes and entertainment districts, Oakdale remains undeveloped. The buildings are still viable, he says, and it’s just a matter of time before the right investors infuse life into the place. But it would be a herculean task. “Something of that size and magnitude requires a lot of smart people around the table and a lot of good thinking.”

At 54, Ragsdale is old enough to remember the mill’s glory days but young enough to envision a modern remake. “I can see restaurants,” he says. “It would be cool to have a distillery and brewery down there.” The more he talks about it, the more animated he becomes. He can see residential units. He can see retail. He can see a greenway along the river. “I can see people kayaking up and down the Deep River, dropping their boats off and having the mill be a sort of destination.”

Even with the cotton mill shuttered, some factory life still goes on in the heart of Jamestown. Within view of Main Street is the brick smokestack of Highland Containers, which makes corrugated packaging supplies. The town is emerging as a hot spot for some pretty cool businesses. Black Dog owner Beck sees Jamestown as blossoming into something akin to Blowing Rock, referring to the mountain getaway near Boone. Barely more than a decade ago, he says, downtown was a drowsy place. “Now you have a bunch of little businesses pop up on Main Street, including us.” ■

Bryan Mims is a writer and reporter at WRAL-TV in Raleigh.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF VISITNC.COM, BLACK POWDER SMOKEHOUSE

For more than 140 years, Jamestown was home to the Oakdale Cotton Mill, set on the Deep River on the south end of town. It put generations of people to work spinning dyed yarn and twines.

In 2009, after years of competition from overseas, the assembly lines went silent. A smokestack towers over the deserted brick buildings, broken windows and littered, weed-choked lot. More than 30 mill houses built in the early 1900s are mostly empty, their white paint peeling off. At one street corner stands the former Oakdale Store, a wooden slab nailed across the front door.

Will Ragsdale’s family operated the mill from the 1880s until its closing. He worked there himself when his father, Billy, was the president.

“I remember when it was a thriving community, and I hate to

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