Business North Carolina May 2021 by Business North Carolina

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NASCAR banks on diversity and a recast image to regain a winning edge.

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+ DEPARTMENTS 4 UP FRONT 8 PILLARS

Asheville native Bill Hensley made his mark on North Carolina as an innovator in public relations.

MAY 2021

12 POINT TAKEN

Military spending has a big impact on North Carolina. Shrewd efforts are making it even bigger.

14 NC TREND

Ana Shellem shucks seafood statewide; Cox family hawks Harleys; Spoonflower capitalizes on e-commerce; $150 million-plus gifting boosts N.C. nonprofits.

82 TOWN SQUARE

Set amid farms and rugged terrain, Waynesville’s small-town charm makes it a western N.C. visitor favorite.

+ SPONSORED SECTIONS

COVER STORY

DRIVING DIVERSITY

30 ROUND TABLE

Six leaders from the life-sciences industry discuss how the sector has evolved over the past year and where it’s headed.

63 WORKPLACE CULTURE

Great benefits, attention to employee wellness and a healthy work-life balance are all important pieces in recruiting and retaining a talented workforce.

CO V E R P H O TO B Y P E T E R TAY L O R

May 2021, Vol. 41, No. 5 (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.

BY MICHAEL J. SOLENDER

HIGHER EDUCATION

Our annual look at key enrollment and admissions data at N.C. colleges and universities. BY JENNINGS COOL

UNDER THE RADAR

68 COMMUNITY CLOSE-UP

With an economic past rooted in agriculture, Lee County is sowing seeds in high-tech industries and modern amenities.

NASCAR’s leaders say embracing inclusion is a key strategy — and the right thing to do.

Elizabeth City State University takes flight with a passionate chancellor, dashing rumors of the historic school’s demise. BY VANESSA INFANZON

Start your day with business news from across the state, direct to your inbox. SIGN UP AT BUSINESSNC.COM/DAILY-DIGEST. M A Y

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UPFRONT

► David Mildenberg

BRIGHTER DAYS

peaking to Triad business leaders on April 21, Gov. Roy Cooper said that 35% of North Carolina residents were fully vaccinated, including 70% of the state’s residents who are 65 and older. By Memorial Day, the numbers should be much higher. The light at the end of the pandemic tunnel is clearly evident. It may not be as simple as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ view that if you get a vaccine, “You’re immune and so, act immune.” But optimism is in the air. So who are North Carolina’s winners and losers after nearly 18 months of sorrow, turmoil and disruption? Here’s one observer’s list: Gov. Cooper. His handling of the crisis helped him get reelected in a state won by former President Donald Trump. Cooper’s approach was controversial, but compared with his peers in New York and California, he looked like Abe Lincoln. Elder care. The crisis exposed the fragile nature of senior housing networks. About 82% of N.C. COVID-19 deaths involved those 65 and older, many in congregate care. N.C. GOP leadership. Phil Berger and Tim Moore retained power. Their fiscal approach left the state ready for a rainy day, while coming at the expense of working-age adults who lack jobs or health insurance. Educators. My teacher friends never worked as hard. But the profession lost respect, sadly, because some leaders overreached in opposing school reopenings despite data showing it was the right thing to do. Homeowners. Valuations soared because of a supply-demand imbalance and the state’s attractiveness. Apartment living lost some appeal. Public school students with bad internet service. Let’s hope voluntary summer school helps these learners recover from many months of lost time.

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North Carolina’s economic prospects. People are flocking here because of the climate, relatively low costs and job opportunities. Small businesses. Their collective revenue in March was more than 20% lower than in January 2020, a UNC Chapel Hill study shows. Bigger firms are generally eating their lunch. Drug companies. The speed in producing vaccines showcased the advantages of profit-motivated drug development. Billions of dollars in public subsidies helped. Gym owners. Few states clamped down harder on fitness centers than North Carolina. That didn’t make much sense because not many physically fit people got sick or died from the virus.

V O L U M E 4 1 , N O. 5 PUBLISHER

Ben Kinney

bkinney@businessnc.com EDITOR

David Mildenberg

dmildenberg@businessnc.com MANAGING EDITOR

Taylor Wanbaugh

twanbaugh@businessnc.com ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Cathy Martin

cmartin@businessnc.com SENIOR CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

Edward Martin

emartin@businessnc.com SPECIAL PROJECTS EDITOR

Pete Anderson

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Dan Barkin, Vanessa Infanzon, Jennings Cool, Bryan Mims, Michael J. Solender, John Wolfe, Emory Rakestraw CREATIVE MANAGER

Peggy Knaack

pknaack@businessnc.com

Golfing, tennis and hiking. They are essentially the same thing, though one involves a more leisurely pace and greater cost. North Carolina thrives on outside activity.

ART DIRECTOR

Professional and college spectator sports. Sitting to watch a couple of hours of activity is losing its appeal.

jware@businessnc.com

Hospitals. North Carolina’s large health care systems positioned themselves as the center of the medical universe. Drugstores and doctors’ offices trailed.

Ralph Voltz

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Peter Taylor

MARKETING COORDINATOR

Jennifer Ware

AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT SPECIALIST

Scott Leonard

sleonard@businessnc.com

ADVERTISING SALES ACCOUNT MANAGERS

Sue Graf, western N.C. 704-523-4350 sgraf@businessnc.com

Community colleges. Enrollment slumped even as the need for skills training in construction, health care and many trades soared.

Melanie Weaver Lynch, eastern N.C.

Corrugated box companies. More than 90% of U.S. product shipments come via these packages.

EDITORIAL: 704-523-6987

919-855-9380 mweaver@businessnc.com CIRCULATION: 818-286-3106

REPRINTS: circulation@businessnc.com

BUSINESSNC.COM

Smiles. Those horrible masks! Dogs. Unthreatened by the virus, all they got was much more, totally deserved attention. ■

OWNERS

Jack Andrews, Frank Daniels Jr., Frank Daniels III, Lee Dirks, David Woronoff PUBLISHED BY

Old North State Magazines LLC

Contact David Mildenberg at dmildenberg@businessnc.com.

PRESIDENT

David Woronoff

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BNC ONLINE

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.

Catapult A #behindthescenes look at an upcoming #podcast with Catapult’s co-CEOs and Business North Carolina #LetsCatapult

Natalie Dean Hawkins, PMP We are so excited to have the USGA’s second headquarters in Pinehurst!!! #USGA #pinehurst #golf

Steve Matthews @SteveMatthews12 Great tribute to former Charlotte Observer publisher Rolfe Neill — a terrific and charismatic leader and wildly influential in Charlotte in the 1980s in a way that would be unimaginable today. The Observer was amazingly important in Charlotte — and still is on a smaller scale.

Rolfe Neill’s legacy

Mebane Rash @Mebane_Rash The Weekly Roundup podcast

Rev Racing @RevRacin

"We were not afraid to be caught loving our community," says Rolfe Neill. This is why @EducationNC operates as we do in service to schools and community colleges and our state. I love this man.

Rolfe Neill’s legacy

A little frontstretch action today @CLTMotorSpdwy with @LavarScott @Nicksanchez080 @rajahcaruth_ and Dalanda Ouendeno. @BusinessNC

USGA drives excitement in Sandhills

Randy Trent

Read these stories and more at

Great leadership brings forth great change! Well done Leigh Cockram. Your footprint will have an impact for generations to come.

businessnc.com.

Rockingham County gains momentum

Lynette Cardwell, MBA Fantastic! Grow Rockingham County

NCEast Alliance @NCEastAlliance Thank you Dan Barkin and @BusinessNC for an excellent article on the importance of developing I-87. "Some interchanges, some asphalt and some right-of-way acquisition can help change the economic trajectory of this region."

Rockingham County gains momentum

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Biden infrastructure push raises hopes for northeast N.C. growth

Business North Carolina @businessnorthcarolina

Check out Business North Carolina’s weekly podcast on Wednesdays at 10 a.m. at

businessnc.com/ podcast/.

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BILL HENSLEY The Asheville native made his mark on North Carolina as an innovator in public relations. His promotional ideas helped attract tourists from around the world to the state’s beaches, mountains and golf courses.

BY VANESSA INFANZON

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▲ Bill Hensley

Let me start with Arnold Palmer. I met him in 1948. I was a sophomore when he came to Wake Forest [University]. He started winning all these tournaments and became very well-known [across] the state as a great golfer. I did one of the first feature stories on him, and he never forgot that. I think The Charlotte News ran my story on him. We were friends for 50-something years. My friend was the travel director of Georgia, and I was the travel director of North Carolina. [Georgia] was doing well with welcome centers. I met with my friend and

PHOTOS COURTESY OF BILL HENSLEY

lthough Bill Hensley’s achievements have been recognized with numerous awards, his part in getting a Charlotte referendum measure that allowed diners to order mixed drinks at restaurants passed in 1978 may be his crowning glory. Hensley, 95, served in the U.S. Naval Construction Battalions in World War II before enrolling at Wake Forest University. He accepted a position with the Asheville Citizen newspaper in 1950. The FBI lured him away with a $5,000-a-year salary, double his reporter’s pay. He spent two years capturing fugitives (two in his first day) and conducting background checks in New Haven, Conn., and Chicago. But he missed his home state, so he returned to become the sports information director at Wake Forest and, later, N.C. State University. In 1960, Hensley moved to Charlotte to work in public relations at the R.S. Dickson investment company and Wachovia Bank. After five years, he was tapped as the state’s director of travel and tourism, serving under Govs. Dan Moore and Bob Scott. Later, Carowinds founder Earl “Pat” Hall hired Hensley as the theme park’s first director of marketing when it opened in 1973. By 1977, Hensley launched Hensley Associates with five steady publicrelations clients focused on business and travel. They included Piedmont Airlines, then run out of Winston-Salem, and Asheboro-based Stedman Mills. In 1979, his son, Bruce, joined the staff. In the early 1980s, Hensley formed High Country Host, a cohesive marketing network for the tourism businesses in northwest North Carolina, with Grandfather Mountain’s Hugh Morton and Tweetsie Railroad’s Harry and Spencer Robbins. High Country Host has since grown into a multicounty organization. Over the years, he has represented many N.C. golf developments. Hensley has been inducted into four North Carolina-based halls of fame, is a resident of the Cypress retirement community in Charlotte and still enjoys golfing at Hound Ears Club in Boone. Comments are edited for length and clarity.

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asked him to explain how to do this. I met the [woman] who handled it, and we hit it off real well. So I hired her to leave Georgia and come to North Carolina. We put together about five welcome centers at key places [across] the state. They operated seven days a week, and they were very effective. I would get 15 to 20 people from North Carolina to go with me to Europe or South America. We would have a big cocktail party for travel agents. We would show films on North Carolina and [give] them literature. We’d bring in country music entertainers like Lulu Belle and Scotty. They were well-known nationally. It was effective because we spread the word about North Carolina in places it needed spreading.

The mountains had good promoters. [High Country Host] was a promotional organization that I started with two others. Hugh Morton owned Grandfather Mountain. Harry Robbins owned Tweetsie Railroad, Hound Ears and the Blowing Rock [attraction]. We [entertained] a lot of travel writers. That was my strong point. I knew a lot of travel writers, and I invited them to the area. We wined and dined them pretty good, and it paid off. We worked hard at it. We didn’t fool around. The thing I am the proudest of is the liquor-by-thedrink [referendum]. The [Charlotte] Chamber of Commerce tried to get some big shots to be the chairman of this committee, but no one would take it. Three or four people turned them down because it was controversial. Churches don’t like drinking. There’s a lot of conflict with liquor. I volunteered, and they accepted me. One of the things that really got us going was one remark that I happened to come up with. I would say that in those days, “you could buy liquor by the gallon, but you couldn’t buy liquor by the ounce,” which made no sense. We tried to teach the churches that this was an economic campaign and not a lifestyle campaign. The churches never got upset with me. I think I got two or three calls or letters in this whole campaign. It meant new restaurants and new businesses. Hugh Morton was one of the best promoters I’ve ever known. He was consistent. As a publicity stunt, he got Billy Joe Patton, one of the state’s best golfers, to come up to Grandfather Mountain and hit some golf balls a mile [from Grandfather Mountain’s mile-high swinging bridge]. Billy Joe Patton was from Morganton. He went to school at Wake Forest and almost won the Masters [Tournament] one year as an amateur. He came within a stroke or two of winning it. He was the most colorful person I’ve ever known. You had to love him the minute you met him. He did a lot to promote North Carolina and golf here. I give him a lot of credit for helping golf.

▲ Bill Hensley with Mildred the bear at Grandfather Mountain

Spencer and Harry Robbins were creative, and they thought of things that most people wouldn’t think of to promote. They M A Y

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▲ Top: Golf superstar Arnold Palmer, left, Hensley and golf pro Dick Tiddy. Right: Hensley bird hunting at age 90.

used to bring in a lot of celebrities like [country singer] Fred Kirby. They would pay some of these famous people who were on national television to come to Tweetsie or Blowing Rock and do something. They’d get a bunch of photographers there and take pictures of it. They’d get statewide publicity. When I was with Wachovia, I was good friends with Kays Gary, a columnist for The Charlotte Observer. We were talking one day, and he said, “Let’s do something, a promotion.” I said, “OK, I think schoolkids need more musical instruments. I think if we would furnish more instruments, we’d get more people playing.” We started a campaign that we called “Give a Toot.” Each family in Charlotte probably had a musical instrument that wasn’t being used, and we thought they’d donate them to us. We got them in good shape and then gave them to schoolkids. Somebody gave us a violin that we thought was a Stradivarius. We got a lot of publicity on that before we found out it wasn’t a Stradivarius. We would do pictures of Wachovia Bank, and we asked people to turn the instruments in at a Wachovia office. That was one of the most satisfying promotions I’ve ever been in. ■

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P O I N T TA K E N

► Dan Barkin

DEFENSIVE BEHAVIOR Military spending has a big impact on North Carolina. Shrewd efforts are making it even bigger.

etting more military contract dollars for North Carolina has been a major state priority. For 20 years, state agencies and private groups have worked to build up its ability to do that. The military is important to North Carolina. We have more than 147,000 military and civilian Department of Defense personnel, up 9% in the past dozen years. That is the fourth-largest military footprint among the states. Fort Bragg is home to 10% of the U.S. Army and sprawls over four counties in the Sandhills. Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville is the largest Marine Corps base on the East Coast. The Marines also have air stations at Cherry Point in Havelock and New River, next to Camp Lejeune. Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro is home to the 4th Fighter Wing. The Coast Guard has an air station in Elizabeth City, and the Department of Defense has its main ammunition shipping terminal at Sunny Point on the Cape Fear River south of Wilmington. In economic terms, the military makes up nearly 13% of North Carolina’s gross state product, trailing only farms and agribusiness. Last year, businesses in 83 counties were awarded $6.1 billion in prime contracts. Others control the number of military personnel based in North Carolina. But the state has some ability to influence the military contract dollars that flow into N.C. There are two tracks to expanding the military’s economic importance in the state. One is strategic, described last year in a study led by the Defense Alliance of North Carolina and executed by RTI International and the N.C. Department of

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Commerce. It focuses on North Carolina as a high-tech state that can compete for high-tech military work. The other track looks more at boosting our share of everyday products and services that the military buys. These two approaches result from a public-private platform that has been evolving with little fanfare over 20 years, consisting of state agencies such as the N.C. Military Business Center and private nonprofit groups including the influential Defense Alliance of N.C.

The strategic approach: Clusters The cluster study looked at where the military’s technological needs are growing and whether the state’s companies can meet those needs. Many N.C. companies work in autonomous systems involving unmanned vehicles, robotics and artificial intelligence. There are more than 103,000 folks working in this particular cluster, a 32% increase from 2013 to 2018. But only 17% of our autonomous-systems companies had defense contracts, so there is plenty of room to grow. In the human-performance cluster, which includes everything from nutrition to sensors that can tell how a soldier is doing, N.C.’s job growth rate led the nation, increasing 36% over five years. The state has nearly 53,000 folks in this sector, but only 13% of the companies have defense contracts. RTI executive Dennis McGurk, a retired Army research psychologist, is helping develop what he hopes will become the N.C. Center for Optimizing Military Performance. “Human performance was one of those critical areas that looked like there were enough legs already,” says Paul Friday,

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the defense alliance’s executive director, “existing legs in North Carolina that you could make some progress early on.” “The No. 1 problem for Army medical research is primary field care,” McGurk says. “Stopping people from bleeding out and dying on the battlefield. No. 2 is maximizing human potential. A former Army surgeon general once said we know more about our trucks that we do about our people.”

Scott Dorney’s world While the DANC/RTI study has provided a roadmap for North Carolina’s high-tech defense efforts, the state is leaving money on the table in the lower-tech markets because many companies do not bid on military contracts for common products and services. The state has a robust system to help businesses win military contracts, if they use it. A key component is the Military Business Center run by Scott Dorney. A retired Fort Bragg deputy garrison commander, Dorney was running the human resources department for the city of Fayetteville when he was asked to increase economic development related to the base. His team proposed an organization to help businesses navigate the complex military contracting system. Tony Rand, a powerful Fayetteville-based state senator who passed away last year, saw big potential in the program. “I still remember Sen. Rand, to this day, saying [in 2004], ‘This doesn’t need to be local. It needs to be statewide,’” Dorney says. Since then, the center has helped businesses get 3,772 contracts worth $14.8 billion. It is based at Fayetteville Technical Community College. Growth isn’t easy. To do business with the Department of Defense, businesses have to register as federal contractors. That means having a DUNS (Data Universal Numbering System) ID number and knowing your NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) code. It means getting a CAGE — Commercial and Government Entity — code. It means looking at 65-page DOD contract solicitations and understanding the FAR — federal acquisition rules. Fortunately, there are folks to help companies through this jibber jabber at the Military Business Center, the community colleges’ Small Business Center Network, and the Small Business and Technology Development Center sites at UNC schools. There’s also the N.C. PTAC, or Procurement Technical Assistance Center. The Military Business Center includes the N.C. Defense Technology Transition Office, which helps high-tech businesses and researchers who are working on something that might attract military funding. Denny Lewis, head of the technology transition office, told me his pitch to universities is: “Why don’t you let me come in to talk to folks early on in the fall semester so they know what the needs are in DOD and Homeland Security. … If

they have something that may have commercial use, maybe if they paint it green they can sell it to the Army.” I think companies without DOD experience will struggle to get military contracts unless they tap into this state network. That shouldn’t be surprising. If you want to sell to Microsoft, you have to figure out Microsoft’s procurement system. In any case, companies should be signed up on MatchForce.org, which is used by Dorney’s operation and has 23,000 N.C. businesses registered. Every day, the DOD posts contracts, and MatchForce determines if it has a company in that line of work and shoots off an email every morning with opportunities. The biggest challenge is getting more businesses into the military market. “I mean, we have a lot of businesses in the federal market,” Dorney says. “But we should double, triple, quadruple the number of businesses that we have.”

The coffee call The defense economy is its own subculture, which is evident on the weekly Friday DEFTECH Coffee Calls. It is a video-networking event hosted by Denny Lewis and Bob Burton, often with as many as 50 folks on the call. They attract impressive guest speakers such as a presenter from the Army Futures Command in Austin, Texas. Another week, it was a U.S. Military Academy cybersecurity expert. It’s a good place to meet folks who understand procurement and to get a sense of where the military is headed in technology acquisition. On a March call, Lewis gave a shoutout to Hal Aldridge, CEO of Secmation, a cybersecurity firm in Raleigh. Aldridge is a former NASA engineer, N.C. State University grad and Carnegie Mellon Ph.D. who founded his company in 2016. Secmation recently landed $1 million in funding from the Office of Naval Research for technology making it easier to provide cybersecurity for unmanned systems like drones. “You know a million-dollar win’s pretty good,” Lewis says. He asked Aldridge to briefly describe a very complex project. Aldridge gave what sounded like a well-practiced elevator pitch. The goal, he said, is to build a system for rapid prototyping of unmanned aerial vehicle drones and other unmanned systems. “The key is we’re building a system that ... builds in the security as part of the process. Twenty years ago, there wouldn’t have been much awareness in official circles of the state’s defense economy of what a 10-employee startup like Secmation had done. Now the support system in North Carolina knows about Secmation and can celebrate its win. And that’s what all this activity is about: wins. ■ Veteran journalist Dan Barkin moved to North Carolina in 1996. He can be reached at dbarkin53@gmail.com.

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NC TREND ■ MOTORCYCLES Page 18

First take: Seafood

■ E-COMMERCE Page 20

■ PHILANTHROPY Page 22

■ STATEWIDE Page 24

TIDE TO TABLE A WRIGHTSVILLE BEACH FISHERWOMAN DISTRIBUTES FRESH SEAFOOD FROM COASTAL MARSHES TO TOP RESTAURANTS ACROSS THE STATE.

BY JOHN WOLFE PHOTOGRAPHS BY MALLORY CASH

inter in the marshes of Masonboro Island: Cold, clear water flows out to the sea through winding tidal creeks, exposing the roots of the umber-colored salt-marsh cordgrass as oysters lie asleep in their beds. The crisp air is tinged with the brinesweet smell of marsh mud; there’s no sound but the distant roar of the waves against the beach, the occasional crack of the pistol shrimp and the cascading call of the willet — not silence, but the absence of noise. In the eastern sky, the sun hides behind clouds whose rippled textures mirror the surface of the water on this windless morning. This is the office of Ana Shellem, owner and operator of Shell’em Seafood, commercial fisherwoman, and queen of the salt marsh. She sells seashells not just by the seashore but also to top restaurants across North Carolina. If you’ve dined at Fin & Fino or Sea Level in Charlotte, Ashley Christensen’s restaurants or St. Roch Fine Oysters + Bar in Raleigh, or The Second Glass or Manna in Wilmington, there’s a good chance you’ve enjoyed Shell’em’s mussels, oysters, clams or stone crabs. Shellem, 30, learned to navigate these waters shortly after moving to the area nine years ago. Raised in Tennessee and Kentucky, she started working in professional theater when she was 8 years old. As a teen, the young actor spent summers in New York City and moved there after graduating from high school. Shellem was 21 and living in Harlem when she visited Wilmington for the first time. “I hadn’t experienced the ocean like this, ever in my life,” Shellem says. “I felt drawn to it — like a need to be here.”

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She got a job as a bartender in Wrightsville Beach, where she met her now-husband Jon, who lived on a sailboat, and has stayed ever since. Masonboro is a barrier island, only accessible by boat, about 5 miles southeast of Wilmington. On this bright morning, Shellem is gathering mussels destined to become part of paella this evening at Ceviche’s, a favorite local restaurant. Many fishermen have trouble selling mussels — the general public doesn’t know how to cook them — and they often get overlooked. Shellem figured out how to get around this problem by selling directly to chefs and essentially made the market for them in North Carolina. Now, they are one of her staple harvests. In boots, waders and braids, Shellem forges fearlessly through the grass, taking in textures, colors and subtle differences in soil composition to help her track down what she searches for. She zeroes in on a cluster tucked deep in the grass. A single, fluid wellpracticed motion with her hori-hori knife, and she rises up, a wide grin on her mud-flecked face, a cluster of mussels in her gloved hand. She delicately places them in her bucket and is already off in search of more. Today, the work goes easily. But there are days when the northeast wind blows strong, the tide doesn’t drop and the marsh hides her face. There are frosty mornings in winter when her gloves are frozen solid; there are sultry summer evenings when no-see-ums feast on any exposed flesh. There are long days of big orders to fill when her body aches from bending and from lugging heavy buckets of shells through the sucking mud back and forth to her trusty

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▲ Ana Shellem

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gray skiff, affectionately named Marsha. There are thunderstorms. There are duck hunters with shotguns and poor eyesight. There is the increased frequency and intensity of hurricanes. Two years ago, Hurricane Florence almost destroyed what she had worked so hard to build. She couldn’t harvest for six months. But business slowly came back, like the tide whose rhythms she has built her life around. After four years of business and with more than 30 clients across the state, the other, mostly male fishermen now take her seriously. They have learned that she isn’t going anywhere. Her clams, mussels, oysters and stone crabs, however, are going places — and fast. Whereas many fishermen sell their harvests to a wholesaler — they can sometimes be driven all the way to Georgia before ending up on a plate in Charlotte or Raleigh — Shellem personally delivers each order to her clients, often within 24 hours. She enjoys the satisfaction of working directly with chefs, knowing that if she worked with a distributor, the product would likely spend days sitting on a truck. “That’s not the way I want to treat my product,” she says. “That’s not the way I want to treat Mother Nature.” That speed makes the difference, according to Sunny Gerhart, owner and chef at St. Roch Fine Oysters + Bar in Raleigh. Gerhart has been buying Shellem’s harvest since she started the business. “The cool thing about Ana is she’s not trying to sell 10,000 bags of oysters,” Gerhart says. “She works with the folks she works with. If I say I want three bags, she’s going to harvest me three bags, and that’s it. The quality is there, and it’s super fresh coming right out of the water. We’re getting it the same day — she’s harvesting in the morning, and then she’s on the road.”

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With oysters this fresh, Gerhart says it’s best to serve them raw, on the half shell, perhaps with a little mignonette. He sometimes experiments with smoking and preserving the clams and mussels, echoing the culinary tradition of the Basque coast of Spain. Still, he keeps the preparations simple to highlight the flavor of the produce and the hard work that goes into it. “It’s a beautiful product on its own, but it’s really taken care of by Ana,” Gerhart says. “She’s a steward of the coast, doing her thing, bringing that stuff to us. We’re just trying to showcase what she’s doing, what the coast is doing.” Shellem’s harvests sometimes end up in places other than restaurants, too. Free Range Brewing in Charlotte has created its popular Sea of Companions brand with her oysters since 2018. “[Ana’s oysters] are the star ingredient,” co-owner Jason Alexander says. “They’re the saltiest we’ve ever encountered, and they’re super fresh.”

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Art and chemistry combine in creating this rich wintertime porter, with notes of salted chocolate. A malty backbone of roasted oats and wheat is blended with a touch of hops to add balance and bitterness. Each 200-gallon batch includes more than 600 oysters, boiled in the wort like a stew during the last stage before fermenting. “As the beer is in the kettle, we recirculate it through a separate vessel with the oysters in it,” Alexander explains. “That allows us to fully cook the oysters, which causes them to open so they release their liquor inside. It allows us to break down the meat and release some proteins, which contributes to the body of the beer, and it allows us to strip some of the minerals from the shells, which enhances the flavor of the beer.” Shellem’s Mussel Beach, a stout made with ribbed mussels harvested by Shellem, will be released later this spring. Wherever her harvest ends up, it always points back to this marsh, to one hardworking woman and a dream. Our day out here is coming to a close — time to head home and wash the mud out of these pants — but Shellem will be back out here tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. The pull of the moon on the tide pulls her, too. Even on days she doesn’t have orders, she often finds herself on a busman’s holiday, back out in the marsh, exploring new spots or just pausing to appreciate the beautiful surroundings. “I didn’t start [fishing] for the money,” Shellem says. “I started because it made me happy.” Out here, amid the grass and the mud and the water and the sky, it’s easy to see why. ■

North Carolina’s shell game

$300 million Estimated economic output from the state’s wild-caught seafood industry

5,500 Jobs created by the industry

19.2 million pounds Seafood landed by N.C. fishermen during the first half of 2020

5.5% Women’s share of the state’s 5,449 commercial fishing licenses in 2014

National Shellfish Initiative A nine-state program that provides federal assistance for oyster farming and habitat restoration sources: N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries, N.C. Coastal Federation

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Motorcycles

CRUISER CONTROL AN ASHEBORO FAMILY CELEBRATES 60 YEARS OF SELLING FAT BOYS, SOFTAILS AND OTHER ICONIC HARLEYS.

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says. “He was always really conservative. When someone hears motorcycle club now, they think of motorcycle gang, but the majority of his motorcycle club attended church with him.” Despite deep roots in the state’s geographic heart, Cox’s HarleyDavidson is a modern business case study. Its two dealerships reflect 60 years that parallel North Carolina resilience and transition from textiles to high tech. While Recil Cox worked at Asheboro’s family-owned Bossong Hosiery Mills, he earned a reputation for keeping Harleys running. “He’d grown up on a farm in Randolph County, and as the oldest child, he was kind of the default mechanic for farm equipment,” Stephen says. He initially turned down an offer from a Harley factory representative asking him to open a shop. A year later, he relented,

PHOTOS COURTESY OF STEPHEN COX

eems certain, Recil and Poochie would be pleased as Asheboro-based Cox’s Harley-Davidson begins its seventh decade as one of the state’s largest sellers of the motorcycles that have virtually defined two-wheel travel. Hosiery-machine mechanic Recil Cox would be beaming because the enterprise he founded in 1961 likely will sell $20 millionplus in bikes and accessories this year at stores in Asheboro and Rock Hill, S.C., across the state line from Charlotte. Likewise, Recil’s son Poochie — his real but rarely used name was Gary — would be proud of his own son Stephen’s stewardship of the 50-employee dealership. The business thrives on traits from when Tar Heels worked in mills, mechanics worked under backyard shade trees, and marketing worked without focus groups. “Grandpa did a wonderful job with outreach,” Stephen Cox

▲ Recil Cox put up $60 to sell cycles in 1960. A Texas Harley-Davidson dealership was listed for sale at $5.6 million in April, an online ad shows.

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▲ Cox dealerships in Asheboro and Rock Hill, S.C., expect to sell more than 900 motorcyles this year.

building a two-bay garage next to his house. “He had to pay a $60 deposit in 1960 to become an official Harley-Davidson dealer,” Stephen says. The first Harley dealership opened in Ohio in 1912. Recil continued working his 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. hosiery mill shift, opening his motorcycle shop in afternoons and on weekends, until his dealership was solidly grounded. “He was extremely conservative [and] of strong faith,” Stephen says. “He was far from the stereotypical biker. He bound that small community of motorcycle riders in this area together through rides, cookouts and various celebrations.” Cox’s Harley-Davidson rolled through the 1970s and 1980s, weathering the manufacturer’s miscues and increasing competition. Struggling to compete with foreign-made bikes, Milwaukeebased Harley was acquired in 1969 by bowling and athletics equipment manufacturer AMF, which slashed costs amid pressure from Honda and Yamaha models. The one-time standard of American manufacturing was mirroring Tar Heel furniture and textiles industries in losing share to foreign competition. In 1981, investors, who included some members of the founding Davidson family, bought Harley for $80 million. Fortunately for the company, then-President Ronald Reagan provided a lifeline by slapping a 45% tariff on imported heavyweight motorcycles. “The hardest time was in the 1970s when AMF owned HarleyDavidson,” Stephen says. “It suffered from the quality issues. But President Reagan, whether on purpose or not, wound up marketing Harley-Davison as the American-made dream.” Under its new owners, Harley had a strong rebound and became a public company in 1986. As of mid-April, the company had a market value of $6 billion and annual sales of more than $4 billion, and it operated nearly 1,400 dealerships, including 630 in the U.S. Recil Cox ceded control of Cox’s Harley-Davidson to Poochie in 1995. “He was a huge personality,” Stephen says of his father. “Even his mom and dad referred to him as Poochie, and he became known throughout the corporate Harley-Davidson dealership network.” In 2004, he acquired the Rock Hill store. Like his father, Stephen was born into bikes. “When I was a young boy, I was taking inventory, folding shirts, washing motorcycles, do-

ing whatever needed doing.” He graduated from Elon University with a business degree in 2002. “I can’t say I came on board at any certain date,” says Stephen, whose mother, Jan Cox, is still the Cox’s Harley-Davidson corporate principal. “I was just always here.” Recil died in 2017 at 91, outliving Poochie, who succumbed to colon cancer seven years earlier at age 56. Cox’s Harley-Davidson carries on their traditions, such as an event where as many as 1,000 bikers carry toys from Asheboro to the Baptist Children’s Home in Thomasville and Motorcycles for Mammograms, which funds breast-cancer screening for Randolph County women without health insurance. Cox has no plans to expand. “We’re in a comfortable spot right now,” he says. “The Rock Hill store is on Galleria Boulevard, and the Carolina Panthers practice facility and headquarters are going in just one exit up from us. The whole area is growing like it’s on steroids.” Selling a motorcycle with a bad-boy persona, Cox’s HarleyDavidson now faces an unlikely rival: “Our biggest competition is other family activities,” Stephen says, so the dealerships added patios, picnic tables and umbrellas, food trucks and other features. This year, the Asheboro location may sell 400 or more bikes, and Rock Hill, possibly 500. Motorcycle sales have been spurred by pandemic-induced outdoor interest that has seen Tar Heel parks, fishing sites and campgrounds swamped. Cox’s personal bike is a $29,000 Ultra Limited, less than top-ofthe-line models that approach $50,000. He’s on it less than he’d like, bowing to business and family pressure. He has two children, and his wife owns a Greensboro interior-design firm, Kara Cox Interiors. When he does ride, however, the Recil gene resurfaces. “A lot of people say, ‘Hey, I haven’t done this in a long time,’ and this is what I enjoy. They reconnect with something they love, and we’re lucky to be part of that.” ■

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E-commerce

DESIGN ON-DEMAND SPOONFLOWER’S ONE-OF-A-KIND DESIGNS AND E-COMMERCE MODEL HAVE LED TO EXPLOSIVE GROWTH.

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Pandemic pump-up As many people spent more time at home during the pandemic, home-improvement projects and online shopping skyrocketed. Whether it was redecorating with elaborate wallpaper or adorning throw pillows in custom fabric, the newly found interest in sprucing up put Spoonflower on the map. “We’re not a pandemic blip. We’re a business that was undiscovered and became discovered as a result of more people shopping online,” says Chief Revenue Officer Jessica Lesesky. She views Spoonflower as having the potential to join the ranks of companies valued at $1 billion or more. In 2020, consumer e-commerce spending totaled $861 billion, marking 44% year-over-year growth. Creative online consumer markets such as Etsy, which focuses on artists and craftmakers, reported an 87% seller increase from 2019 to 2020, with 39.4 million active buyers worldwide. Similarly, Shopify, which enables users to set up an online store, experienced full-year revenue growth of 86%. Spoonflower saw a 111% increase in its year-over-year sales

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in the fourth quarter of 2020 and a 137% gain in new customers. Specific financial details were not disclosed. Lesesky, who joined Spoonflower in the midst of initial lockdowns, met with her team virtually. To keep up with the growth, she established a sales and account management team to work directly with interior designers and buyers. CEO Michael Jones joined Spoonflower in January 2020, just two months prior to Lesesky. The pair had previously worked together at established e-commerce companies ChannelAdvisor, eBay and RetailMeNot. “I was one of the first people in e-commerce development. I’ve been able to see a lot of different businesses in different verticals and how they scale or stall over time and what are some of the key components of success,” Jones says. “For Spoonflower, I believe so strongly it’s not your typical e-commerce site. It’s artists across the world creating millions of independent designs with a maker community buying fabric or interior designers buying home goods and wallpaper."

Something new Davis says Spoonflower was the first of its kind in the textile creative consumer economy. At the time, design options were limited, and custom fabrics printed at about $50 to $150 per yard. Makers also had few markets for promoting their work.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF SPOONFLOWER

hen Stephen Fraser’s wife couldn’t find a yellow polka-dot pattern for a pair of drapes, she thought, “There has to be a website for this.” Fraser says the idea inspired him and Gart Davis, who both had experience in the digital world — Davis as co-founder and Fraser as director of communications and marketing of Morrisville-based online self-publisher Lulu — to start Spoonflower. What Davis now refers to as the YouTube of textiles, Spoonflower began as a fabric-on-demand e-commerce business, operating in a 400-square-foot space with two printers. The company has since expanded into the home-decor market and offers more than 1 million designs. It is attracting 30,000 new customers each month. Last year, Spoonflower expanded to a 110,000-square-foot location in Durham, adding 100 employees and two industrial printers. It also has a site in Berlin, Germany, that opened in 2019.

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“Back in the day, we didn’t really have a lot of the product launch websites that we do now,” Davis says. “We essentially did that.” It hasn’t always been triple-digit growth, though. The company started as invitation-only with designs outsourced to a printer in Cary. Fraser and his wife put in much of the legwork, hand-cutting the fabric themselves. An increase in orders led to a $40,000 bank loan that provided funding for a printer and a Mebane location. Their big break came in 2015 when the company raised $25 million from investors led by Boston-based North Bridge Growth Equity, which is now named Guidepost Growth Equity.

Switching lanes With the funding, Spoonflower expanded into Europe by adding a Berlin office and ranked on Inc. magazine's list of fastest-growing U.S. companies in 2015. But a year later, the company cut 31 employees in Durham, or 18% of its staff, citing slowing growth and a need to restructure. Playing to the strength of short-term digital fabric printing, Spoonflower entered other markets including apparel and home decor. Launching home-decor site The Roostery in September 2016, Spoonflower now prepackaged fabrics for home decor. The Roostery has since been absorbed into Spoonflower. Today, Spoonflower’s print-on-demand items include throw pillows, tea towels, duvet covers, sheet sets and more. Amid the pandemic, the company added custom-printed face masks. Spoonflower has put a strong focus on marketing and community building. The company hosts monthly artist and maker spotlights and weekly design challenges publicized on its Instagram account, which has more than 325,000 followers. To promote creative, handmade products, Spoonflower provides awards of company credit to as many as 20 small businesses annually.

they were actually redoing office space for Google.” Officials say partnerships with hotels, restaurants and breweries will hopefully open doors for more retail and wholesale customers. Other recent partnerships include The Honest Co. and a nationwide product launch at HomeGoods. For Jones, design is an international language with a love of certain patterns and styles transcending geographical tastes. “You see so many unique designers from all over the world. You’re not limited by location. It’s possible on the platform you’d buy wallpaper, fabric or home decor and the design would come from someone in Europe.”

One-of-a-kind designs

Homegrown

Under Spoonflower’s best-selling wallpaper, a beige background depicts a quaint forest camping scene — until you realize one of the campers is being abducted by an alien spaceship. Other designs include multicolored jellyfish swimming in a navy seascape, bees and lemons, fireflies and even art deco swans. Spoonflower’s unusual designs have been featured on HGTV and in Cooking With Paula Deen. Jones says there would be no Spoonflower without its thousands of artists, who receive a 10% commission on sales. Unlimited creativity paired with a Rolodex of options has led to popularity with both individuals and giant corporations. “We had someone order a full line of wallpaper,” Jones says. “What happens is we look at large orders, and they get a swatch. In one case, it was wallpaper with cheeseburgers all over it, and

Davis says North Carolina has been the perfect fit for the business. In a state with a rich textile background, the transformation from analog to digital is only par for the course. “Little old Spoonflower is the largest on-demand textile printer," Davis says. "You can look at textiles as the last media to convert. Of course, you expect a table and exercise minimizing failure and maximizing success. Whenever a project is as successful as Spoonflower has been, even your failures are successes to get to the scale of where we’re at. That being said, my expectation is that the transformation of textiles as a medium from analog to digital is only beginning.” ■

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Philanthropy

PRIME DELIVERY PHILANTHROPIST MACKENZIE SCOTT DONATED MORE THAN $150 MILLION TO N.C. INSTITUTIONS THAT SHE EXPECTS TO MAKE A MAJOR SOCIAL IMPACT.

n December, United Way of Greater Greensboro President and CEO Michelle Gethers-Clark assumed an email she received from MacKenzie Scott was yet another phishing attempt to steal personal data. Fairly quickly, she realized the message was real: United Way of Greater Greensboro was the recipient of $10 million from the California philanthropist. The gift from Scott is 10 times larger than the previous record received by the group, says Gethers-Clark, who left Greensboro last month to become chief diversity officer at San Francisco-based Visa. “The impact is game-changing,” she says. “It really changes the dynamic of what we are able to accelerate now.” Scott, an author and philanthropist, is the third-wealthiest woman in the world after her 2019 divorce from Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, according to Forbes. She detailed her decision to give about $4.2 billion to 384 nonprofits and universities in a December Medium article. “[My staff] took a data-driven approach to identifying organizations with strong leadership teams and results, with special attention to those operating in communities facing high-projected food insecurity, high measures of racial inequity, high local poverty rates and low access to philanthropic capital,” Scott wrote. More than $150 million found its way to North Carolina, includ-

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ing $90 million for three historically Black universities: $45 million for N.C. Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro, $30 million for Winston-Salem State University and $15 million for Elizabeth City State University. The donations were records for each school. Officials at N.C. A&T and Winston-Salem State declined to comment on specific plans for the donations. (See story on Elizabeth City State on Page 52.) Other nonprofit groups in North Carolina that received donations from Scott include YMCAs in Charlotte, High Point and Raleigh. The YMCA of Greater Charlotte says it was gifted $18 million, the largest single donation in its history. Other YMCAs declined to talk about the amounts or their plans for the money. United Way of Greater Greensboro turns 100 years old next March. Its service area covers 500,000 people, including the city of Greensboro, where 25% of children and nearly 20% of adults live in poverty. The group’s focus is to break the cycle of poverty by coordinating services across the entire community rather than offering stand-alone programming. “This money is going to be funding innovations as it relates to generational poverty, solutions that address the root cause,” GethersClark says. “It is really about how do we bring together our commu-

PHOTO COURTESY OF N.C. A&T STATE UNIVERSITY

B Y VA N E S S A I N FA N Z O N

▲ Scott's $4.2 billion in gifts targeted nonprofits including food banks, credit unions, YMCAs and historically Black educational institutions. N.C. A&T State University in Greensboro, above, received $45 million.

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▲ Alan Winstead, executive director of Meals on Wheels Wake County, left, says the organization received a $1.5 million donation from Scott.

nity in an innovative way and make strategic and smart investments that really accelerate the work? We believe this grant was to act as an accelerant and to also act as leverage as we continue to engage our community and other funders.” Meals on Wheels groups in Durham and Raleigh also received support from Scott, including $1.5 million for the Wake County operation. That equates to about half its annual operating budget for delivering prepared food to homebound senior adults in the county, Executive Director Alan Winstead says. Last year, it delivered about 452,000 lunches, a 25% increase from the previous year because of the pandemic, he says. His group has 11 full-time staff, 22 part-time staff and about 150 volunteers.

In three years, the nonprofit group turns 50, and the donation will help provide a plan for its next half-century. Winstead will solicit feedback from staff and community stakeholders to determine the most effective approaches for programming and infrastructure. He foresees reviewing the best practices for nutrition and seeing how the organization can grow its “more than a meal” philosophy. Most important to Winstead is that the group develops a way to sustain any new services or added capacity. “We want to be intentional with how we spend that money,” Winstead says. “[We want to use it] as a transformative opportunity for us. We are taking our time and really reflecting on how we want to use that money.” Scott’s gifts were among the largest in the history of U.S. charitable giving. Still, her net worth remains more than $50 billion, including a 4% stake in Amazon, making her the world’s 22nd-richest person, according to Reuters. She married a Seattle science teacher in March. ■

PHOTOS COURTESY OF AMY AKROYD

On Dec. 15, 2020, MacKenzie Scott announced she was donating $4.2 billion in gifts to 384 organizations across 50 states, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. Fifteen institutions in North Carolina made the list: ■ Elizabeth City State University

■ N.C. A&T State University, Greensboro

■ Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina, Raleigh

■ Self-Help Ventures Fund, Durham

■ Goodwill Industries of Northwest North Carolina, Winston-Salem

■ United Way of the Greater Triangle, Durham

■ Goodwill Industries of the Southern Piedmont, Charlotte ■ Latino Community Credit Union, Durham ■ Meals on Wheels Durham ■ Meals on Wheels Wake County

■ United Way of Greater Greensboro ■ Winston-Salem State University ■ YMCA of Greater Charlotte ■ YMCA of High Point ■ YMCA of the Triangle, Raleigh

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PURCHASING POWER

ess than a year and a half after going public, Wilmington-based PPD is being acquired by life-sciences giant Thermo Fisher Scientific for $17.4 billion, or $47.50 a share. The deal includes taking on the contract research firm’s $5.3 billion in debt and is expected to be completed by the end of the year. High Point native Fred Eshelman started PPD in 1985 as a one-person shop. He arranged financing with brothers Sandy and Ronnie McNeill, whose Wilmington family owns nursing homes and other medical businesses, and later repurchased most of their stock. PPD went public in 1996 and was acquired for $3.9 billion by two big private equity firms, Carlyle Group and Hellman & Friedman, in 2011. The company went public again in February 2020, initially trading for $27. It now has about 26,000 employees in 47 countries with revenue of $4.7 billion and net income of $160 million in 2020. As COVID-19 swept the globe last year, it was hired by Moderna to oversee its vaccine trial sites. PPD employs about 1,700 in the Triangle and 1,800 in Wilmington, where its 12-story downtown headquarters opened in 2007. Thermo Fisher, which has annual sales topping $30 bil-

lion, bought Durham-based Patheon for $7.2 billion in 2017. In December, the company said it would add 500 jobs at its Greenville plant over the next two years. About 1,500 people now work at the Pitt County campus. The company also has about 700 employees at sites in Asheville and Weaverville.

PPD’S PERFORMANCE Revenue (billion) 2020 $4.7 2019 4.0 2018 3.8

Net income (million) 2020 $160.6 2019 52.8 2018 106.9

ouisiana-based private equity group Bernhard Capital Partners has discussed offering more than $750 million to Fayetteville in return for an agreement to manage the city-owned water, sewer and electric utilities. Mayor Mitch Colvin says the potential offer is intriguing, but an agreement would require significant study by local officials. A 2017 state report suggested N.C. cities and counties will need to spend as much as $26 billion over the next 20 years to pay for improved water and wastewater needs. Hefty increases in taxes or user fees are likely. Bernhard has been talking with mayors and other city officials in dozens of N.C. cities over the past year about public-private partnerships, according to Jeff Jenkins, who joined Jim Bernhard to co-found the investment firm in 2013. Bernhard is former CEO of Shaw Group, a utility construction and engineering company acquired by Chicago Bridge & Iron for $3 billion in 2013. Officials in Greenville, New Bern, Shelby and Wilson turned down Bernhard’s plans, Raleigh’s News & Observer reported.

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Bernhard is proposing upfront payments in return for multidecade “concession agreements.” The company raised about $2 billion between 2016-19 to make investments in industrial and infrastructure businesses. Investors include the United Auto Workers pension fund and endowments at Harvard University and the University of Michigan. Fayetteville, the state’s sixth-largest city with about 210,000 residents, has the only city-owned electric generation plant in the state, according to its website. The city has “lots of needs that far exceed our revenue,” Colvin says. He cites neighborhoods that were annexed as many as 15 years ago but remain without sewer and water connections. “[Bernhard] would provide us with upfront capital that would enable us to take care of some needs without adding to the tax burden on our citizens,” he says. But private investment in municipal utilities is opposed by many local officials who doubt that private operators can provide more efficient service.

COURTESY OF THERMO FISHER SCIENTIFIC

MUNICIPAL PARTNERSHIPS

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TRIANGLE S SANFORD U.K.-based life-sciences company Abzena plans a $213 million manufacturing plant and may add 325 jobs with average annual salaries of $63,308. Abzena, which is owned by the Welsh Carson private equity group, could receive more than $6.9 million in state incentives over 12 years if it meets investment and hiring targets.

DURHAM Brii Biosciences, a Chinese biotech company with an office here, raised $155 million in funding from Invesco Developing Markets Fund, GIC, Lake Bleu Capital and three current investors. It follows a $260 million round in 2018 backed by Sequoia Capital, Chinese billionaire Jack Ma and other groups. Resilient Ventures, a fund that targets Black-led startups, closed on $3.45 million from 24 investors. Prior to the pandemic, the venture had hoped to raise $10 million.

COURTESY OF IGDB

Startup Lolli, which provides Bitcoin rewards to users, raised $5 million from investors including tennis star Serena Williams and her husband, Alexis Ohanian, a co-founder of the social media site Reddit. Previous investors include actor Ashton Kutcher. The company has raised more than $8 million since 2018. An Arizona-based real estate-investment trust, Healthcare Trust of America, paid $16.3 million for Duke Medical Plaza North Duke Street. The seller, New York-based Dovini, bought the property for $13.1 million in 2008.

Medical-device producer Bioventus bought rehabilitative solutions company Bioness of Valencia, Calif., for $45 million in up-front consideration, with up to $65 million of contingent consideration, depending on completion of certain milestones. Bioness had $40 million in revenue in 2020. ROI Industries, which operates as ROI Machinery & Automation, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, estimating its assets at approximately $377,000. The manufacturer cited “historical debts and the impact of the COVID pandemic.”

Plant Response acquired WISErg, a Seattle-area startup that helps convert food waste into agricultural products. The deal marked Plant Response’s third acquisition. Koch Industries and Bayer are among the company’s investors.

Publix signed a lease for a 45,000-squarefoot space at the Marketplace at Ellis Crossing shopping center. The Floridabased retailer will add about 150 jobs. An opening date has not been announced.

Highwoods Properties is buying the CapTrust Tower and 150 Fayetteville Street office buildings in Raleigh and Capitol Towers and Morrocroft Centre sites in Charlotte from Atlanta’s Preferred Apartment Communities for $769 million. The deal includes two development sites in downtown Raleigh.

MORRISVILLE Medical-software company Myocardial Solutions raised $11.2 million from 33 investors. The company’s services are based on technology developed at Johns Hopkins University by radiology professor Nael Osman.

RALEIGH

CARY Epic Games completed a $1 billion funding round that valued the company at $28.7 billion, compared with a valuation of about $18 billion last July. Among the dozen-plus investors was Sony, which has now put $450 million into the company.

Brian Hamilton, the co-founder and former CEO of Sageworks, is among an investor group that has raised nearly $16 million for videoconferencing company LiveSwitch, which investors hope will compete with Zoom.

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CorVista Health raised $65 million. Jointly based here and in Toronto, the company plans to use the funds to fuel the development and commercialization of its noninvasive diagnostic system to assess heart disease.

CHAPEL HILL

CHARLOTTE CORNELIUS

UNC Chapel Hill head basketball coach Roy Williams retired after 18 seasons and will be succeeded by assistant coach Hubert Davis. Davis, whose compensation will initially total about $1.8 million, will be the first Black head coach in the program’s history. UNC Chapel Hill and the town unveiled a partnership to revitalize downtown. The Carolina Economic Development Strategy expects to increase UNC’s economic impact on the town and across the Triangle. A council of UNC leaders will advise the program.

Ross Mortgage, a residential lender headquartered in Troy, Mich., opened its first North Carolina market with a branch here.

STANLY COUNTY American Racing Headers & Exhaust is investing nearly $4.8 million in a new manufacturing plant and adding 63 jobs with an average annual salary of $52,552. The company, which creates exhaust products for the racing industry, may receive a $175,000 grant from the state.

GASTONIA Polykemi AB, a Swedish manufacturer of plastic compounds, will build its first U.S. production plant at Gastonia Technology Park. The company will invest $11.8 million and add 22 jobs with an average annual salary of $59,132.

KNIGHTDALE

HICKORY New Jersey-based Gusmer Enterprises is investing $38 million in a 135,000-squarefoot plant at Trivium Corporate Center and adding 73 jobs over the next few years. The average salary will be about $44,000.

CHARLOTTE Financial-services company Robinhood Markets is investing $11.7 million to establish an office in Charlotte with the promise of nearly 400 jobs. The new positions will pay an average of about $76,000 annually, higher than Mecklenburg County’s average of $71,689. Robinhood could receive more than $3 million in incentives over 12 years, based on meeting investment and hiring goals. Total Quality Logistics is adding more than 100 jobs here to its existing 100-employee local operation. Cincinnati-based TQL was founded in 1997 and topped $4 billion in revenue last year. Albert Zue is the new executive director of J.P. Morgan Private Bank’s Carolinas unit. He succeeds Matt Moore, who took on a different role.

The Wil-Mar Golf Course site is undergoing a major redevelopment, including the construction of a mix of single-family detached homes and townhomes. Natelli Communities of Gaithersburg, Md., filed plans for Allen Park earlier this year.

Chantilly, Va.-based IT services provider SolutionWorx was acquired by WingSwept, a B2B tech-services company. WingSwept, founded here in 2000, made the Inc. 5000 list of the nation’s fastestgrowing privately owned companies for nine of the past 10 years.

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Mooresville-based home-improvement chain Lowe’s is donating $1.5 million to UNC Charlotte’s College of Computing and Informatics. The money will be used to establish an endowed professorship in computer sciences and start an innovation fund to support research in artificial intelligence and machine learning. An atrium at UNCC will be named in honor of Lowe’s.

COURTESY OF PERRY PLANET, UNCC

GARNER

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Swimming pool supplier Hayward Holdings is moving its corporate office functions here from Berkeley Heights, N.J., where it employs 90. The company will also expand its production site in Clemmons, which has 850 workers. David Evans, president of transportation payment company Passport, is succeeding Bob Youakim as CEO in the second quarter. Youakim will become board chairman. Mac’s Speed Shop, which has eight restaurants, is plotting expansions in the Carolinas, Tennessee and Florida. It expects to open two sites this year.

Bank of America acquired Californiabased Axia Technologies, which launched in 2015 to focus on secure patient payments. Terms were not disclosed. Computer-software company Levvel was acquired by Endava, a London-based techservices provider. Financial details were not disclosed.

PINEVILLE Amazon.com is expected to open a 1 million-square-foot fulfillment center at Carolina Logistics Park. The project is being developed by Beacon Partners and is expected to employ hundreds of people.

TRIAD Specialty supermarket chain Fresh Market hired former Sprouts Farmers Market executive Ted Frumkin as group vice president of real estate, development and construction. Frumkin has overseen the opening of 550 stores and 150 restaurants.

COURTESY OF FRESH MARKET

Wake Forest University’s four-year medical school will add a second campus in the city’s midtown area on 20 acres near Atrium Health’s Carolinas Medical Center. An initial class of 100 will enroll in 2024.

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Wet’n Wild Emerald Pointe is reopening on May 29 after the pandemic caused the longest closure in the water park’s 36year history. The park says it is hiring as many as 600 seasonal workers. UNC Greensboro head men’s basketball coach Wes Miller is leaving after a decade to become head coach at the University of Cincinnati. The school has begun a national search for a replacement. Cone Health named Mandy Eaton as chief operating officer and Marlon Priest as chief clinical officer. Eaton will oversee the day-to-day operations, while Priest will be responsible for clinical operations. Sentara Health is acquiring the system. Omega Sports filed for bankruptcy protection in federal court, listing both estimated liabilities and assets of $1 million to $10 million. The sporting goods chain was founded in Greensboro in 1978 and closed five of its 12 stores in March. Premier Federal Credit Union plans to merge with Charlotte Metro Federal Credit Union in August, creating an institution with about $1 billion in assets. The combined institutions will have 91,000 members and 17 branches.

WINSTON-SALEM Wake Forest Baptist Health received $2.5 million from the National Cancer Institute to support a new drug testing platform that predicts treatment outcomes at Wake Forest Organoid Research Center. The center is a collaboration between the system’s cancer center and Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine.

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Walt Steele was promoted to CEO of Pine Hall Brick, becoming the fourth generation of his family to lead the 99-year-old brickmaker. Fletcher Steele, who has been company president since 1989, will be executive chairman. Pine Hall employs more than 250 people. Clothing store Cahill & Swain closed after a seven-decade-plus run. The business was a popular hangout for Coach Clarence “Big House” Gaines of Winston-Salem State University and generations of Wake Forest University basketball coaches.

JEFFERSON American Emergency Vehicles centralized its operations and manufacturing to a single, 35-acre campus. The new complex will allow expansion and increase production capacity. ASHEVILLE Health-technology company EliteHRV raised $4.5 million. The company utilizes a web-based platform that provides heart rate variability metrics and other health insights to users.

The 83-year-old Southern comfort food chain K&W Cafeteria submitted a bankruptcy reorganization plan that would keep as many as 14 stores open while paying off creditors by July 2022.

WEST

EAST

MILLS RIVER Collett Industrial is developing a 90,720-square-foot Lowe’s distribution center slated to open in the third quarter. The center will support last-mile delivery of appliances and other bulky items.

BRUNSWICK COUNTY Sales of homes in the county increased by more than 50% to 649 in March versus a year earlier. It was the third-fastest monthly growth pace in the past five years, the Realtors association said. The average sales price increased by 23% to $365,000.

BREVARD Pharmaceutical company Raybow USA is investing $15.8 million and adding 74 jobs at its North American headquarters. The company was started as PharmAgra Labs in 1999. It was acquired by China’s Raybow in 2019.

COURTESY OF ELITE HRV, RAYBOW

NC TREND

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WILMINGTON Patrick Walsh, who was recently named Alcami’s chairman and CEO, says the pharmaceutical company is exploring expansions in Wilmington, Durham and Charleston, S.C. A Netflix movie entitled Along for the Ride is set to be filmed here. Based on a 2009 novel by Chapel Hill author Sarah Dessen, the film is in pre-production. No actors or directors for the project have been announced. Local brewer TRU Colors received an undisclosed equity investment from Chicago-based Molson Coors, which will help the business accelerate its growth. The company led by George Taylor has about 65 employees, including 50 gang members, as part of a commitment to curb violence and promote community unity. Shelbourn Stevens was named president of New Hanover Regional Medical Center and Novant Health’s coastal market, which includes Brunswick Medical Center and Pender Memorial Hospital. Novant Health also named Laurie Whalin president and chief operating officer of Brunswick Medical Center.

FAYETTEVILLE EX-IQ, a startup led by CEO Christian Donehoe, raised more than $3.2 million from 21 investors. Techstars, the Amazon Alexa Fund and the Alexa Accelerator are some of the investors.

FAIR BLUFF Pipeline Plastics Holdings is opening a production center, creating 44 jobs. The pressure-pipe manufacturer will invest $4.6 million in the plant.

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LIFE SCIENCES

CHAIN REACTION The biomanufacturing industry makes products that sustain and improve life for many people. But creating vaccines, medications and therapeutics requires the right ingredients at the right time. The pandemic is rewriting how many companies do business. Whether securing raw materials, working with clients or training workers, the industry is evolving. Business North Carolina magazine, along with North Carolina Biosciences Organization, invited six leaders to discuss their industry’s current status, its biggest needs and where it’s headed.

PANELISTS

Doug Edgeton

Gary Gilleskie

Leslie Isenhour

president and CEO, North Carolina Biotechnology Center

executive director, N.C. State University’s Biomanufacturing Training and Education Center

director, N.C. Community College’s BioNetwork Capstone Center; department head, Wake Technical Community College’s biotechnology programs

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BioNetwork Capstone Center, BTEC, Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies, Nexsen Pruet and North Carolina Biosciences Organization sponsored the discussion, which was moderated by Business North Carolina Publisher Ben Kinney. It was edited for brevity and clarity.

WHAT MAKES NORTH CAROLINA SO ATTRACTIVE TO BIOMANUFACTURERS? WHY DO THEY THRIVE HERE? GILLESKIE: The industry’s workforce includes technicians and mechanics along with scientists and engineers. No one educational institution can provide them all. So, NCBioImpact — a consortium of community colleges and universities that’s focused on workforce development — is a big selling point for the state. If I’m the CEO of a biomanufacturer, my biggest concern is likely staffing. North Carolina is in as good a position as any place in the world to meet that need.

a workforce. They agreed North Carolina did a better job. Brick and mortar can be done anywhere, and somebody will always offer you as much or more money. But this industry is about people. At 2 a.m. on a Saturday, when you’re running a batch worth a million dollars, you’re not worried about saving $1 an hour on pay. You want the person who will make the correct decision so you don’t lose it. We care about labor costs but having qualified workers is most important. You can automate all you want, but you still need qualified workers to run your operation. North Carolina has invested in its people. Look at its economic history — tobacco to textiles to technology to biopharma. Its workforce has morphed, retraining to meet the needs of the industries that are working here right now.

overseas who once worked in North Carolina. If they could move back, they say their family would pack immediately. You like to hear that kind of endorsement. ROBERTS: North Carolina’s sustained commitment to the industry. We work in multiple states, so I can compare. The university system, the community college system, various collaborations and financial support from the legislature have all helped the industry. HOW DID THE INDUSTRY RESPOND TO THE PANDEMIC? ROBERTS: It has been about resiliency for our clients. We’re more than a year into the pandemic, and there has been growth during that time. They turned economic and health threats into opportunities. There are many examples of companies pivoting, such as manufacturers converting production to hand sanitizer or personal protective equipment. We heard many questions about procuring or selling PPE.

WAGNER: I worked for Merck. After we chose North Carolina for our new plant in 2004, I was called to company headquarters. Representatives from Georgia and Virginia wanted to know why they weren’t selected. All three economic development packages were similar; it came down to NCBioImpact and the investment to train and sustain

EDGETON: North Carolina has had incredible foresight over a long period of time for growing this industry by building a strong ecosystem. When we talk or work with site selectors, we’re not only the Biotech Center. We’re all the people who we work with statewide. It’s a collaborative effort, something we hear from recruiters that many other states lack. We’ve driven down the corporate tax rate, which makes us more competitive. We’re fortunate to have four level-one research universities. They generate an enormous economic impact and many ideas. And there is a great quality of life. I love talking to people from companies

Matthew Roberts

Christine Vannais

John Wagner

member, Nexsen Pruet

chief operating officer, Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies

program manager, Biotech Manufacturers Forum

VANNAIS: The pandemic affected operations and changed our employee safety programs. Things changed quickly in the first three to six months. It was challenging to keep operations going while implementing COVID countermeasures such as adjusting shifts, adding social distancing, requiring masks and more. We responded to individuals who had health concerns for themselves, their

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LIFE SCIENCES employees, their families and their colleagues. It was tremendously helpful to have occupational health nurses on-site supporting our organization. We made contingency plans, including training people as backups to ensure batches that were in process could be completed. Then we could pause until everything was ready and everyone was healthy before resuming production. It took a 115% effort and dedication to close gaps, including sending data to clients off-site who usually are on-site during critical process validation batches. As a client-based organization, building trust with our clients is a core value, which we leaned on during this challenging year. Transitioning some functions to videoconferencing is fine. However, most other functions, such as being in a manufacturing suite or laboratory, continued with countermeasures. We evolved over the entire year. We learned lessons, some of which will continue. We also learned that some

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things have to be done in person such as training new employees. We onboarded more than 100 people last year. GILLESKIE: It was a year of change for BTEC, which offers courses to N.C. State students and professionals and operates a variety of labs and a simulated good manufacturing practices manufacturing area. They all came to a halt in March 2020, when N.C. State limited the number of people on campus and courses went online. We were forced to change our hands-on mindset and quickly create a virtual lab experience. I can’t say virtual labs are better; I look forward to the return of hands-on labs, which started during the recent spring semester. But the move made us question if all our offerings had to be hands-on. We found opportunities for online courses, especially for professionals, that we wouldn’t have considered a year ago. And we’re getting better at it now that

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we have demonstrated that we can do it. There’s demand: Several companies have requested online training. We’ll continue our hands-on approach and post more quality content online, allowing us to reach more people. In addition to online training, we partnered with other organizations in producing hand sanitizer. We supply much of what’s used at N.C. State. And I would say there’s a better understanding of biopharmaceuticals, particularly vaccines. We train students on vaccine manufacturing, and I am now in the position to discuss current events and biopharmaceuticals in class. I didn’t think that way a year ago. ISENHOUR: The biggest challenge for us is envisioning what education will look like moving forward. Much of our training revolved around clean rooms and other equipment that was on campus. We were trying to create a more immersive environment for our students and indus-

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LIFE SCIENCES try partners. That disappeared quickly as industry focused on maintaining their outputs. So, we went to work on virtual learning. Many of our industry trainers retooled, becoming online-learning specialists. Our partners have appreciated that pivot. An arm of BioNetwork does digital learning. It was a piece of the training puzzle before the pandemic. Now it’s a huge chunk of the puzzle. Will companies want us to stay virtual, go back to in-person or create a hybrid of the two moving forward? That’s a question that all secondary educational entities are pondering. We have to listen to the industry. And we’re doing that now. EDGETON: The state deemed the industry essential, so production and operations continued. Growth has been rapid over the past year. We did a study two years ago. Based on interviews with the industry’s 58 largest employers, we would need between 5,000 and 7,000

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new workers over the next five years. We announced 2,800 new jobs last year. WAGNER: Those jobs are [well-paying] and stable. Hiring 1,000 people is a billion-dollar investment. You don’t move that quickly, as some industries do, chasing $1 an hour less pay or similar things. The leaders of these companies are smart. They figured out how to operate during the pandemic. But their processes are complex. Workers are worried about their families and their co-worker who sneezed. Those are distractions, and the more workers are distracted the greater the risk. You can’t lower your guard. It’s like texting while driving. You may get away with it 10 times, but the 11th time is catastrophic. So management and supervisors on the factory floor played an important role, keeping workers focused on their jobs. Our role was advocating for biomanufacturers and helping them interpret new rules and their unintended

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consequences, which could be catastrophic in a manufacturing environment. The pandemic will make businesses better. Weak points and opportunities have been uncovered. The challenges came with supply chain backward, where companies have less control. This isn’t an industry where you can change suppliers because your regular one is out of stock. Suppliers have to be validated. The pandemic pointed to the importance of securing your entire supply chain. Demand increased for critical materials. Inventory levels are usually high, ensuring companies are covered for the short term. And the government has stockpiles of some critical materials. But past a couple months, you’re relying on ongoing production, which is challenged during the pandemic. I never experienced anything like this in my 10 years running a plant. It’s like pilots. They fly on autopilot all the time. But when they don’t, you want an experienced person at the controls.

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HOW DID THE PANDEMIC AFFECT THE INDUSTRY’S SUPPLY CHAINS, SHORT AND LONG TERM? GILLESKIE: The pandemic has made sourcing raw materials and consumables a challenge. BTEC has had a difficult time getting its hands on materials needed to run labs. Much of the supply chain has been rerouted to COVID vaccine production. VANNAIS: In 2020, we supported more than 50 different projects in North Carolina. One of them is the manufacturing of the Novavax COVID-19 vaccine candidate. Since July, we have been manufacturing 24/7 under management and support of Operation Warp Speed. That included on-site help with the supply chain. That was vital, because we needed every component to run each batch. But with all COVID-19 therapies and vaccines drawing from that supply

chain, it is and will continue to be a challenging situation. You must have everything on hand before you start a batch. You’re not going to start a batch at risk. So a single consumable, a single salt, the media can prevent a batch from starting. There are many places where a supply chain delay can impact production. Many items have been single sourced in the past. Do we want to continue that way or should we find alternatives, qualifying two or three vendors or systems? That would add redundancy. We’re evaluating if that’s the new business model or simply a midterm plan until the supply chain is restored. WAGNER: Everybody will think everything is fine once we’re out of the pandemic. But there will be a lag. There are buffer inventories at every link in the supply chain. But they are depleted when stressed. It takes a

long time to refill supply chains, so some critical components will be handto-mouth for a while. Soon after the pandemic’s start, when emotions were running high, everybody was surprised at how reliant we’ve become on China for some critical items. What happens when it’s back to business and that emotion disappears? When there is emotion, costs aren’t a concern. But cost is important — that’s the reality. When the dust settles and heads cool, there should be some deep analysis around sourcing of critical components. Large corporations chase buying power, but sometimes the cheapest isn’t always the best. They also don’t focus on finding a local supply. And in situations such as the pandemic, that can be valuable. You can go and sit on someone’s desk, putting pressure on them, as opposed to them ignoring your call. An expansion of local suppliers could be a boon to the state.

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LIFE SCIENCES ROBERTS: There’s a political push for repatriating supply chains. We have several clients who are working on that. We’ll see if it’s possible. Cost will be the deciding factor. HOW IS WORKFORCE TRAINING EVOLVING TO MEET THE INDUSTRY’S NEEDS? ISENHOUR: The community college system and industry have a dynamic partnership in which the former customizes training using the latest technology to the latter’s needs and goals. It’s not something you’ll find everywhere. Most of the research and development, clinical trials and lab-based roles are found west of Raleigh, including Research Triangle Park. Most of the manufacturing is done from that point east. When I worked at Johnston Community College, I mapped the state’s major biomanufacturers. I wanted to see where my students could work and our training would be needed. Within an hour’s drive — which most people would make for a good job — is 75% of the state’s biomanufacturing. Major highways, including interstates 40 and 95, connect those companies and their communities, including Wilson, Clayton, Greenville and Four Oaks. They also connect both ends of the industry — scientific and manufacturing. Wake Tech had one degree, but you can’t get all that training to meet both lab technician and manufacturing skillsets in one twoyear program. So, we let biotechnology remain the traditional pathway to lab and scientific careers and offered that on the county’s western side. On its eastern side the focus is manufacturing, so we target our new degree there. You have to be regional. You have to look at the needs. It’s about the partnerships and listening and being strategic about how you place programs. GILLESKIE: There’s a great opportunity for outreach, spreading word of the biopharmaceutical industry, the products it makes, its prevalence in North Carolina, and its economic and societal impacts. N.C. State students

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usually start taking courses at BTEC as juniors or seniors. So, we reach out to freshmen and sophomores to recruit them into our program. There will be a big emphasis on vaccine manufacturing over the next few years. In addition, gene therapy, which has taken off here over the last five years, will continue to grow. Educational institutions need to be prepared for that. BTEC has recently added manufacturing of gene therapies to its capabilities. That capability wasn’t crucial when BTEC started 14 years ago. VANNAIS: We need to find students from middle school through college. We need to find people who want to change careers. For example, those leaving the military. We need biopharma engineers and mechanics to work on large centrifuges and large 20,000L bioreactors. We’re building the largest end-to-end cell culture facility in Holly Springs, which will be highly automated. We need automation engineers and many other professionals and trades. Some of them might not be someone who traditionally signs up for a BioWorks program. During site selection for our new facility, workforce development set North Carolina apart. Over the coming years, hiring more than 700 colleagues will not be easy. The biopharma industry is a small community in the RTP region. Knowledgeable workers are moving within it; however, retention is critical for building workplace culture and increasing efficiency. When workers move in and out of a company, it has a hard time embedding and sustaining its culture. We want to reach a broader audience, filling jobs with community college and university graduates and people coming from other states.

launched Bio Jobs Hub, promoting the life-sciences sector’s good jobs to K through 12 students and those in community colleges and universities, and eventually at the Ph.D. level. We also worked with partners in Durham to start BULLS: Building Up Local Life Sciences, which is reaching out into the community, underscoring the jobs message. The opportunities are promoted on Durham buses right now. ROBERTS: We should see more growth and collaboration among biomanufacturers and life-sciences companies. Some of this collaboration has already started happening in response to the pandemic and includes working together on supply chains and even working with folks that are in different sub-industries. Some of the trade associations facilitated that. The collaboration has been exciting. WAGNER: There will be tremendous pressure to train more workers and on the state to pay for it. Everybody likes to get the jobs, but they bring responsibility. When I helped bring Merck to the state, the deciding factor was workforce development, including the Golden LEAF Foundation’s investment in NCBioImpact Network, which includes BTEC, Biomanufacturing Research Institute and Technology Enterprise at N.C. Central University and the community college system’s BioNetwork. The industry’s employment numbers jumped in the mid-2000s then stagnated for a while. We’re seeing a tsunami now. ■

WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD FOR THE INDUSTRY? EDGETON: This year will bring growth and a continued emphasis on cultivating talent. Interest in relocating to or setting up shop in North Carolina remains strong. There’s a lot of work to do on talent development. We

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BY JENNINGS COOL

his list was compiled based on data from the National Center for

for the 2018-19 school year. Retention rates are for students who began

Education Statistics. Not all applicants who are accepted attend that

studies in fall 2018 and returned fall 2019. The overall graduation rate

school. Total cost covers tuition, fees, and room and board for the 2020-

tracks the progress of full-time students who began studies in fall 2013 to

21 school year, unless otherwise noted. The undergraduate enrollment

see if they complete a degree or other award such as a certificate within

total is full-time undergraduates only for fall 2019. Grant or scholarship

150% of “normal time” for completing the program, typically six years.

aid includes aid received from the federal government, state or local

Community college statistics are for 2019-20.

government, the institution and other sources known by the institution * N.C. Promise Tuition Plan ** no on-campus housing

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NORTH CAROLINA AGRICULTURAL AND TECHNICAL STATE UNIVERSITY GREENSBORO, NCAT.EDU

PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES

APPALACHIAN STATE UNIVERSITY BOONE, APPSTATE.EDU

Total enrollment: 19,280; undergraduate enrollment: 17,518; contact: 828-262-2120, admissions@appstate.edu; freshman applicants/ accepted: 16,664/12,831 (77%); student/faculty ratio: 16/1; total cost (in-state/out-of-state): $19,715/$34,522; average financial aid awarded: $8,114; retention/graduation rate: 88%/73%

CAROLINAS COLLEGE OF HEALTH SCIENCES

CHARLOTTE, CAROLINASCOLLEGE.EDU

Total enrollment: 476; contact: 704-355-5051, admissions@cchsmail.org; freshman applicants/ accepted: 51/18 (35%); student/faculty ratio: 6/1; total cost: $37,546**; average financial aid awarded: $1,834

EAST CAROLINA UNIVERSITY GREENVILLE, ECU.EDU

Total enrollment: 28,651; undergraduate enrollment: 23,081; contact: 252-328-6131, admissions@ecu.edu; freshman applicants/ accepted: 19,235/15,196 (79%); student/faculty ratio: 18/1; total cost (in-state/out-of-state): $22,388/$38,655; average financial aid awarded: $8,192; retention/graduation rate: 82%/66%

ELIZABETH CITY STATE UNIVERSITY* ELIZABETH CITY, ECSU.EDU

Total enrollment: 1,769; undergraduate enrollment: 1,692; contact: 252-335-3400, admissions@ecsu.edu; freshman applicants/ accepted: 2,549/1,682 (66%); student/faculty ratio: 16/1; total cost (in-state/out-of-state): $13,496/$17,496; average financial aid awarded: $8,261; retention/graduation rate: 70%/39%

FAYETTEVILLE STATE UNIVERSITY FAYETTEVILLE, UNCFSU.EDU

Total enrollment: 6,551; undergraduate enrollment: 5,644; contact: 910-672-1371, admissions@uncfsu.edu; freshman applicants/ accepted: 4,858/3,352 (69%); student/faculty ratio: 18/1; total cost (in-state/out-of-state): $17,521/$29,129; average financial aid awarded: $7,571; retention/graduation rate: 74%/34%

Total enrollment: 12,556; undergraduate enrollment: 11,039; contact: 336-334-7500, uadmit@ncat.edu; freshman applicants/accepted: 15,083/8,748,(58%); student/faculty ratio: 18/1; total cost (in-state/ out-of-state): $18,487/$31,997; average financial aid awarded: $8,607; retention/graduation rate: 79%/51%

NORTH CAROLINA CENTRAL UNIVERSITY DURHAM, NCCU.EDU

Total enrollment: 8,011; undergraduate enrollment: 6,101; contact: 919-530-6100, admissions@nccu.edu; freshman applicants/ accepted: 8,311/5,651 (68%); student/faculty ratio: 16/1; total cost (in-state/out-of-state): $24,466/$37,173; average financial aid awarded: $9,417; retention/graduation rate: 76%/49%

NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY RALEIGH, NCSU.EDU

Total enrollment: 36,304; undergraduate enrollment: 25,973; contact: 919-515-2011, undergradadmissions@ncsu.edu; freshman applicants/accepted: 31,130/14,008 (45%); student/ faculty ratio: 14/1; total cost (in-state/out-of-state): $24,259/$44,378; average financial aid awarded: $10,061; retention/graduation rate: 94%/82%

UNC ASHEVILLE

ASHEVILLE, UNCA.EDU

Total enrollment: 3,600; undergraduate enrollment: 3,587; contact: 828-251-6600, admissions@unca.edu; freshman applicants/ accepted: 3,750/3,150 (84%); student/faculty ratio: 13/1; total cost (in-state/out-of-state): $20,555/$37,903; average financial aid awarded: $7,504; retention/graduation rate: 73%/59%

UNC CHAPEL HILL CHAPEL HILL, UNC.EDU

Total enrollment: 30,011; undergraduate enrollment: 19,117; contact: 919-962-2211, unchelp@admissions.unc.edu; freshman applicants/accepted: 42,465/9,767 (23%); student/ faculty ratio: 13/1; total cost (in-state/out-of-state): $24,228/$51,407; average financial aid awarded: $16,164; retention/graduation rate: 96%/91%

UNC CHARLOTTE CHARLOTTE, UNCC.EDU

Total enrollment: 29,615; undergraduate enrollment: 24,070; contact: 704-687-8622, admissions@uncc.edu; freshman applicants/ accepted: 21,868/14,214 (65%); student/faculty ratio: 19/1; total cost (in-state/out-of-state): $25,019/$38,453; average financial aid awarded: $7,295; retention/graduation rate: 83%/64%

UNC GREENSBORO GREENSBORO, UNCG.EDU

Total enrollment: 20,196; undergraduate enrollment: 16,581; contact: 336-334-5000, admissions@uncg.edu; freshman applicants/ accepted: 9,974/ 8,179 (82%); student/faculty ratio: 16/1; total cost (in-state/out-of-state): $19,937/$35,096; average financial aid awarded: $10,444; retention/graduation rate: 75%/59%

UNC PEMBROKE* PEMBROKE, UNCP.EDU

Total enrollment: 7,698; undergraduate enrollment: 6,353; contact: 910-521-6000, admissions@uncp.edu; freshman applicants/ accepted: 5,601/4,761 (85%); student/faculty ratio: 18/1; total cost (in-state/out-of-state): $18,862/$22,862; average financial aid awarded: $4,201; retention/graduation rate: 72%/41%

UNC SCHOOL OF THE ARTS WINSTON-SALEM, UNCSA.EDU

Total enrollment: 1,086; undergraduate enrollment: 929; contact: 336-770-3399, admissions@uncsa.edu; freshman applicants/ accepted: 1,536/445 (29%); student/faculty ratio: 6/1; total cost (in-state/out-of-state): $22,637/$39,180; average financial aid awarded: $9,265; retention/graduation rate: 87%/75%

UNC WILMINGTON WILMINGTON, UNCW.EDU

Total enrollment: 17,499; undergraduate enrollment: 14,785; contact: 910-962-3000, admissions@uncw.edu; freshman applicants/ accepted: 13,287/8,637 (65%); student/faculty ratio: 18/1; total cost (in-state/out-of-state): $25,798/$39,863; average financial aid awarded: $7,057; retention/graduation rate: 86%/72%

WESTERN CAROLINA UNIVERSITY* CULLOWHEE, WCU.EDU

Total enrollment: 12,167; undergraduate enrollment: 10,469; contact: 877-928-4968, 828-227-7100, admiss@email.wcu.edu; freshman applicants/ accepted: 11,128/7,678 (69%); student/faculty ratio: 17/1; total cost (in-state/out-of-state): $18,874/$22,874; average financial aid awarded: $6,481; retention/graduation rate: 78%/62%

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WINSTON-SALEM STATE UNIVERSITY

CABARRUS COLLEGE OF HEALTH SCIENCES

Total enrollment: 5,121; undergraduate enrollment: 4,656; contact: 336-750-2000, admissions@wssu.edu; freshman applicants/ accepted: 4,773/3,246 (68%); student/faculty ratio: 15/1; total cost (in-state/out-of-state): $20,825//$31,072; average financial aid awarded: $8,294; retention/graduation rate: 78%/51%

Total enrollment: 475; contact: 704-403-1555, admissions@cabarruscollege.edu; freshman applicants/accepted: 170/48 (28%); student/faculty ratio: 7/1; total cost: $30,886; average financial aid awarded: $4,459; graduation rate: 52%

WINSTON-SALEM, WSSU.EDU

CONCORD, CABARRUSCOLLEGE.EDU

CAMPBELL UNIVERSITY BUIES CREEK, CAMPBELL.EDU

Total enrollment: 6,185; contact: 800-334-4111, 910-893-1200, admissions@campbell.edu; freshman applicants/accepted: 5,422/4,229 (78%); student/faculty ratio: 16/1; total cost: $54,331; average financial aid awarded: $21,386; retention/ graduation rate: 76%/55%

CAROLINA CHRISTIAN COLLEGE

PRIVATE INSTITUTIONS

WINSTON-SALEM, CAROLINA.EDU

Total enrollment: 64; contact: 336-744-0900; student/faculty ratio: 15/1; total cost: $14,830; average financial aid awarded: $5,670; retention/ graduation rate: 90%/100%

BARTON COLLEGE WILSON, BARTON.EDU

Total enrollment: 1,161; contact: 800-345-4973, 252-399-6300, enroll@barton.edu; freshman applicants/accepted: 4,244/1,910 (45%); student/ faculty ratio: 12/1; total cost: $46,140; average financial aid awarded: $19,880; retention/ graduation rate: 66%/55%

CAROLINA COLLEGE OF BIBLICAL STUDIES FAYETTEVILLE, CCBS.EDU

Total enrollment: 180; contact: 910-323-5614, info@ccbs.edu; student/faculty ratio: 7/1; total cost: $21,823**; average financial aid awarded: $4,614; retention/graduation rate: 50%/17%

BELMONT ABBEY COLLEGE BELMONT, BELMONTABBEYCOLLEGE.EDU

Total enrollment: 1,507; contact: 704-461-6700, 888-222-0110, info@bac.edu; freshman applicants/ accepted: 2,134/1,729 (81%); student/faculty ratio: 16/1; total cost: $32,990; average financial aid awarded: $9,287; retention/graduation rate: 62%/45%

BENNETT COLLEGE

GREENSBORO, BENNETT.EDU

Total enrollment: 311; contact: 336-517-2100, admiss@bennett.edu; freshman applicants/ accepted: 4,384/2,587 (59%); student/faculty ratio: 10/1; total cost: $34,917; average financial aid awarded: $16,942; retention/graduation rate: 50%/63%

BREVARD COLLEGE

CATAWBA COLLEGE SALISBURY, CATAWBA.EDU

Total enrollment: 1,324; contact: 800-CATAWBA, 800-228-2922, admission@catawba.edu; freshman applicants/accepted: 3,335/1,666 (50%); student/ faculty ratio: 12/1; total cost: $47,074; average financial aid awarded: $23,920; retention/ graduation rate: 72%/51%

CHAMBERLAIN UNIVERSITY NORTH CAROLINA CHARLOTTE, CHAMBERLAIN.EDU

Total enrollment: 187; contact: 877-751-5783, 980-939-6241; freshman applicants/accepted: 5/5 (100%); student/faculty ratio: 121; total cost: $39,509; average financial aid awarded: $4,109; retention rate: 100%

BREVARD, BREVARD.EDU

CHARLOTTE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE AND THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

CHARLOTTE, CHARLOTTECHRISTIAN.EDU

Total enrollment: 79; contact: 704-334-6882, admissions@charlottechristian.edu; student/ faculty ratio: 3/1; total cost: $11,125; average financial aid awarded: $2,252; graduation rate: 33%

CHOWAN UNIVERSITY

MURFREESBORO, CHOWAN.EDU

Total enrollment: 1,259; contact: 888-4-CHOWAN, 252-398-6500, admissions@chowan.edu; freshman applicants/accepted: 3,687/2,507 (68%); student/ faculty ratio: 16/1; total cost: $38,170; average financial aid awarded: $18,495; retention/ graduation rate: 56%/27%

DAVIDSON COLLEGE DAVIDSON, DAVIDSON.EDU

Total enrollment: 1,837; contact: 704-894-2000, admission@davidson.edu; freshman applicants/ accepted: 5,982/1,077 (18%); student/faculty ratio: 9/1; total cost: $70,744; average financial aid awarded: $39,494; retention/graduation rate: 95%/91%

DEVRY UNIVERSITY

CHARLOTTE, RALEIGH, DEVRY.EDU

Total enrollment: 72; contact: 704-697-1020 (Charlotte campus), 919-463-1380 (Raleigh campus); student/faculty ratio: 4/1; total cost: $38,068; average financial aid awarded: $3,829; graduation rate: 14%

DUKE UNIVERSITY DURHAM, DUKE.EDU

Total enrollment:16,686; contact: 919-684-8111, 919-684-3214, undergrad-admissions@duke. edu; freshman applicants/accepted: 41,947/ 3,356 (8%); student/faculty ratio: 6/1; total cost: $77,069; average financial aid awarded: $49,026; retention/ graduation rate: 98%/95%

ECPI UNIVERSITY

CHARLOTTE, GREENSBORO, RALEIGH, ECPI.EDU

Contact: 704-751-4558 (Charlotte campus), 336792-7594 (Greensboro campus), 919-283-5748 (Raleigh campus); student/faculty ratio: 11/1; total cost: $29,515**; retention/graduation rate: 48%/49%

Total enrollment: 751; contact: 828-884-8332, admissions@brevard.edu; freshman applicants/ accepted: 2,068/1,220 (59%); student/faculty ratio: 11/1; total cost: $43,650; average financial aid awarded: $18,739; retention/graduation rate: 65%/40%

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ELON UNIVERSITY

JOHNSON & WALES UNIVERSITY

ELON, ELON.EDU

CHARLOTTE, JWU.EDU/CHARLOTTE

Total enrollment: 7,088; contact: 336-278-2000, admissions@elon.edu; freshman applicants/ accepted: 10,500/8,190 (78%); student/faculty ratio: 12/1; total cost: $54,562; average financial aid awarded: $14,752; retention/graduation rate: 91%/85%

Total enrollment: 1,523; contact: 866-598-2427, 980-598-1100, clt@admissions.jwu.edu; freshman applicants/accepted: 3,534/3,004 (85%); student/ faculty ratio: 18/1; total cost: $52,502; average financial aid awarded: $20,194; retention/ graduation rate: 66%/59%

GARDNER-WEBB UNIVERSITY

BOILING SPRINGS, GARDNER-WEBB.EDU

Total enrollment: 3,518; contact: 800-253-6472, 704-406-4000, admissions@gardner-webb.edu; freshman applicants/accepted: 4,834/3,239 (67%); student/faculty ratio: 13/1; total cost: $46,820; average financial aid awarded: $19,225; retention/ graduation rate: 74%/56%

GRACE COLLEGE OF DIVINITY FAYETTEVILLE, GCD.EDU

Total enrollment: 187; contact: 910-221-2224, admissions@gcd.edu; freshman applicants/ accepted: 20/19 (95%); student/faculty ratio: 8/1; total cost: $22,270; average financial aid awarded: $1,912; retention/graduation rate: 80%/46%

GREENSBORO COLLEGE

GREENSBORO, GREENSBORO.EDU

Total enrollment: 1,021; contact: 800-346-8226, 336-272-7102, admissions@greensboro.edu; freshman applicants/accepted: 1,139/877 (77%); student/faculty ratio: 9/1; total cost: $32,710; average financial aid awarded: $20,387; retention/ graduation rate: 65%/33%

GUILFORD COLLEGE

JOHNSON C. SMITH UNIVERSITY CHARLOTTE, JCSU.EDU

Total enrollment: 1,494; contact: 704-378-1000, 704-378-1010, admissions@jcsu.edu; freshman applicants/accepted: 6,168/2,899 (47%); student/ faculty ratio: 13/1; total cost: $33,334; average financial aid awarded: $12,455; retention/ graduation rate: 69%/49%

LEES-MCRAE COLLEGE BANNER ELK, LMC.EDU

Total enrollment: 848; contact: 828-898-5241, admissions@lmc.edu; freshman applicants/ accepted: 1,399/769 (55%); student/faculty ratio: 11/1; total cost: $44,764; average financial aid awarded: $17,965; retention/graduation rate: 60%/46%

LENOIR-RHYNE UNIVERSITY ASHEVILLE, HICKORY, LR.EDU

Total enrollment: 2,742; contact: 828-328-1741, admission@lr.edu; freshman applicants/accepted: 4,791/3,742 (78%); student/faculty ratio: 12/1; total cost: $57,210; average financial aid awarded: $27,771; retention/graduation rate: 72%/52%

LOUISBURG COLLEGE LOUISBURG, LOUISBURG.EDU

Total enrollment: 556; contact: 800-775-0208, 919496-2521, admissions@louisburg.edu; freshman applicants/accepted: 1,165/699 (60%); student/ faculty ratio: 11/1; total cost: $34,007; average financial aid awarded: $10,315; retention/ graduation rate: 49%/23%

MARS HILL UNIVERSITY MARS HILL, MHU.EDU

Total enrollment: 1,066; contact: 866-642-4968, admissions@mhu.edu; freshman applicants/ accepted: 1,838/1,158 (63%); student/faculty ratio: 9/1; total cost: $46,829; average financial aid awarded: $23,500; retention/graduation rate: 63%/30%

MEREDITH COLLEGE RALEIGH, MEREDITH.EDU

Total enrollment: 1,810; contact: 800-MEREDITH, 919-760-8600, admissions@meredith.edu; freshman applicants/accepted: 1,936/1,258 (65%); student/faculty ratio: 11/1; total cost: $54,388 average financial aid awarded: $23,947; retention/ graduation rate: 81%/66%

METHODIST UNIVERSITY FAYETTEVILLE, METHODIST.EDU

Total enrollment: 1,968; contact: 800-488-7110, 910-630-7000, admissions@methodist.edu; freshman applicants/accepted: 3,206/2,020 (63%); student/faculty ratio: 9/1; total cost: $58,462; average financial aid awarded: $20,965; retention/ graduation rate: 58%/45%

MID-ATLANTIC CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY

GREENSBORO, GUILFORD.EDU

LIVING ARTS COLLEGE

Total enrollment: 1,536; contact: 336-316-2000, admission@guilford.edu; freshman applicants/ accepted: 3,305/2,479 (75%); student/faculty ratio: 12/1; total cost: $55,290; average financial aid awarded: $25,608; retention/graduation rate: 66%/56%

RALEIGH , LIVING-ARTS-COLLEGE.EDU

ELIZABETH CITY, MACUNIVERSITY.EDU

Total enrollment: 234; contact: 919-488-8500; freshman applicants/accepted: 121/121 (100%); student/faculty ratio: 10/1; total cost: $31,782; average financial aid awarded: $4,107; retention/ graduation rate: 59%/59%

Total enrollment: 198; contact: 866-996-MACU, 252-334-2000, admissions@macuniversity.edu; freshman applicants/accepted: 253/106 (42%); student/faculty ratio: 9/1; total cost: $32,240; average financial aid awarded: $9,883; retention/ graduation rate: 40%/32%

HERITAGE BIBLE COLLEGE

LIVINGSTONE COLLEGE

DUNN, HERITAGEBIBLECOLLEGE.EDU

SALISBURY, LIVINGSTONE.EDU

Total enrollment: 66; contact: 910-892-3178; student/faculty ratio: 4/1; total cost: $23,326**; average financial aid awarded: $3,433; graduation rate: 17%

HIGH POINT UNIVERSITY

Total enrollment: 1,122; contact: 800-835-3435, 704-216-6000, admissions@livingstone.edu; freshman applicants/accepted: 6,084/3,042 (50%); student/faculty ratio: 15/1; total cost: $28,390; average financial aid awarded: $10,827; retention/ graduation rate: 56%/24%

HIGH POINT, HIGHPOINT.EDU

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FAYETTEVILLE, MILLER-MOTTE.EDU

Total enrollment: 434; contact: 910-238-3077; student/faculty ratio: 18/1; retention/graduation rate: 68%/41%

MILLER-MOTTE COLLEGE

JACKSONVILLE, MILLER-MOTTE.EDU

Total enrollment: 5,330; contact: 800-345-6993, 336-841-9000, admiss@highpoint.edu; freshman applicants/accepted: 11,298/8,474 (75%); student faculty ratio: 15/1; total cost: $57,268; average financial aid awarded: $12,889; retention/ graduation rate: 83%/65%

MILLER-MOTTE COLLEGE

Total enrollment: 365; contact: 910-778-9304; student/faculty ratio: 25/1; retention/graduation rate: 64%/50%

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MILLER-MOTTE COLLEGE RALEIGH, MILLER-MOTTE.EDU

Total enrollment: 474; contact: 919-230-6471; student/faculty ratio: 26/1; retention/graduation rate: 58%/43%

MILLER-MOTTE COLLEGE WILMINGTON, MILLER-MOTTE.EDU

Total enrollment: 2,408; contact: 910-632-5542; student/faculty ratio: 30/1; total cost: $58,569**; average financial aid awarded: $4,368; retention/ graduation rate: 9%/14%

MONTREAT COLLEGE

MONTREAT, BLACK MOUNTAIN, MONTREAT.EDU

Total enrollment: 930; contact: 828-669-8012 (Montreat campus), 828-669-9554 (Black Mountain campus), admissions@montreat.edu; freshman applicants/accepted: 999/559 (56%); student/ faculty ratio: 7/1; total cost: $42,215; average financial aid awarded: $15,145; retention/ graduation rate: 67%/34%

NORTH CAROLINA WESLEYAN COLLEGE

PIEDMONT INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY (NOW CAROLINA UNIVERSITY) WINSTON-SALEM, PIEDMONTU.EDU

Total enrollment: 668; contact: 800-937-5097, admissions@carolinau.edu; freshman applicants/ accepted: 412/119 (29%); student/faculty ratio: 12/1; total cost: $27,280; average financial aid awarded: $6,010; retention/graduation rate: 64%/41%

QUEENS UNIVERSITY OF CHARLOTTE CHARLOTTE, QUEENS.EDU

Total enrollment: 2,463; contact: 704-337-2200, admissions@queens.edu; freshman applicants/ accepted: 3,419/2,222 (65%); student/faculty ratio: 10/1; total cost: $53,107; average financial aid awarded: $21,409; retention/graduation rate: 75%/59%

ST. AUGUSTINE’S UNIVERSITY

RALEIGH, ST-AUG.EDU

Total enrollment: 899; contact: 919-516-4000, SAUAdmissions@st-aug.edu; freshman applicants/accepted: 3,086/2,253 (73%); student/ faculty ratio: 11/1; total cost: $31,306; average financial aid awarded: $13,653; retention/ graduation rate: 57%/16%

SALEM COLLEGE

WINSTON-SALEM, SALEM.EDU

Total enrollment: 709; contact: 336-721-2600, admissions@salem.edu; freshman applicants/ accepted: 833/666 (80%); student/faculty ratio: 11/1; total cost: $49,946; average financial aid awarded: $21,525; retention/graduation rate: 76%/59%

SHAW UNIVERSITY RALEIGH, SHAWU.EDU

Total enrollment: 1,291; admissions contact: 800214-6683, 919-546-8200, admissions@shawu.edu; freshman applicants/accepted: 4,311/2,716 (63%); student/faculty ratio: 15/1; total cost: $29,734; average financial aid awarded: $10,685; graduation/retention rate: 57%/17%

ROCKY MOUNT, NCWC.EDU

Total enrollment: 1,886; contact: 800-488-NCWC, 252-985-5100, admissions@ncwc.edu; freshman applicants/accepted: 3,171/1,966 (62%); student/ faculty ratio: 20/1; total cost: $46,726; average financial aid awarded: $18,800; retention/ graduation rate: 67%/41%

NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY CHARLOTTE, ONLINE, NORTHEASTERN.EDU/CHARLOTTE

Total enrollment: 22,207; contact: 980-224-8467, charlotte@northeastern.edu; freshman applicants/ accepted: 62,263/11,830 (18%); student/faculty ratio: 14/1; total cost: $75,732; average financial aid awarded: $28,449; retention/graduation rate: 97%/88%

PFEIFFER UNIVERSITY

MISENHEIMER, CHARLOTTE, RALEIGH DURHAM, PFEIFFER.EDU

Total enrollment: 1,277; contact: 800-338-2060 (Misenheimer campus), 704-521-9116 (Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham campuses), admissions@pfeiffer. edu; freshman applicants/accepted: 2,297/1,470 (64%); student/faculty ratio: 13/1; total cost: $47,290; average financial aid awarded: $22,621; retention/graduation rate: 59%/44%

M A Y

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SOUTHEASTERN BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY WINSTON-SALEM, WFU.EDU

WAKE FOREST, SEBTS.EDU

Total enrollment: 8,495; contact: 336-758-5000, admissions@wfu.edu; freshman applicants/ accepted: 12,559/3,768 (30%); student/faculty ratio: 10/1; total cost: $77,278; average financial aid awarded: $37,534; retention/graduation rate: 94%/88%

Total enrollment: 3,164; contact: 919-761-2100, admissions@sebts.edu; freshman applicants/ accepted: 252/232 (92%); student/faculty ratio: 27/1; total cost: $18,710; average financial aid awarded: $5,413; retention/graduation rate: 80%/60%

WARREN WILSON COLLEGE

SOUTHEASTERN FREE WILL BAPTIST BIBLE COLLEGE

SWANNANOA, WARREN-WILSON.EDU

Total enrollment: 791; contact: 800-934-3536, 828-771-2000, admit@warren-wilson.edu; student/faculty freshman applicants/accepted: 1,195/1,016 (85%) ratio: 11/1; total cost: $53,980; average financial aid awarded: $23,556; retention/ graduation rate: 62%/43%

WENDELL, SFWBC.EDU

Total enrollment: 59; contact: 919-365-7711, info@sfwbc.edu; total cost: $20,153

ST. ANDREWS UNIVERSITY LAURINBURG, SA.EDU

WATTS SCHOOL OF NURSING

Total enrollment: 758; contact: 800-763-0198, 910-277-5000, admissions@sa.edu; freshman applicants/accepted: 1,670/752 (45%); student/ faculty ratio: 13/1; total cost: $48,834; average financial aid awarded: $18,495; retention/ graduation rate: 49%/39%

DURHAM, WATTSSCHOOLOFNURSING.ORG

Total enrollment: 144; contact: 919-470-7348, wsninfo@duke.edu; student/faculty ratio: 11/1; total cost: $15,944; average financial aid awarded: $11,262

STRAYER UNIVERSITY

CHARLOTTE, CONCORD, GREENSBORO, HUNTERSVILLE, MORRISVILLE, RALEIGH, STRAYERUNIVERSITY.EDU

Contact: 704-886-6500 (North Charlotte campus), 704-499-9200 (South Charlotte campus), 336315-7800 (Greensboro campus), 704-379-6800 (Huntersville campus), 919-466-4400 (RTP), 919301-6500 (North Raleigh campus), 919-890-7500 (Raleigh campus), northcharlotte@strayer.edu, southcharlotte@strayer.edu, greensboro@strayer. edu, huntersville@strayer.edu, northraleigh@ strayer.edu, rtpcampus@strayer.edu, southraleigh@ strayer.edu; total cost: $28,284**

UNIVERSITY OF MOUNT OLIVE

MOUNT OLIVE, DURHAM, GOLDSBORO, JACKSONVILLE, NEW BERN, SMITHFIELD, WASHINGTON, WILMINGTON, UMO.EDU

Total enrollment: 2,805; contact: 800-653-0854, admissions@umo.edu; freshman applicants/ accepted: 2,158/1,252 (58%); student/faculty ratio: 15/1; total cost: $34,542; average financial aid awarded: $8,465; retention/graduation rate: 62%/55%

WESTERN GOVERNORS UNIVERSITY DURHAM, ONLINE, WGU.EDU

Total enrollment: 136,139; contact: 866-903-0109; student/faculty ratio: 42/1; total cost: $13,870**; average financial aid awarded: $4,308; retention/ graduation rate: 73%/21%

WILLIAM PEACE UNIVERSITY RALEIGH , PEACE.EDU

Total enrollment: 889; contact: 919-508-2000, admissions@peace.edu; freshman applicants/ accepted: 2,133/1,067 (50%); student/faculty ratio: 12/1; total cost: $48,033; average financial aid: $16,550; retention/graduation rate: 65%/37%

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BURLINGTON, GRAHAM, ALAMANCECC.EDU

Enrollment: 4,328; contact: 336-578-2002, admissions-records@alamancecc.edu; student/ faculty ratio: 14/1

ASHEVILLE-BUNCOMBE TECHNICAL COMMUNITY COLLEGE

ARDEN, ASHEVILLE, CANDLER, MARSHALL, WOODFIN, ABTECH.EDU

Enrollment: 7,003; contact: 828-398-7900, admissions@abtech.edu; student/faculty ratio: 14/1

BEAUFORT COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE

WASHINGTON, BEAUFORTCCC.EDU

Enrollment: 1,538; contact: 252-946-6194, admissions@beaufortccc.edu; student/faculty ratio: 10/1

BLADEN COMMUNITY COLLEGE DUBLIN, BLADENCC.EDU

Total enrollment: 3,681; contact: 800-755-5550, 704-233-8000, admit@wingate.edu; freshman applicants/accepted: 15,988/14,229 (89%); student/faculty ratio: 16/1; total cost: $53,606; average financial aid: $26,849; retention/graduation rate: 68%/50%

BLUE RIDGE COMMUNITY COLLEGE

WINGATE, CHARLOTTE, HENDERSONVILLE, WINGATE.EDU

Total enrollment: 29; contact: 866-766-0766, 844-YESUOPX; student/faculty ratio: 6/1; total cost: $9,552**; average financial aid awarded: $3,036; retention/graduation rate: 15%/1%

N O R T H

ALAMANCE COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Enrollment: 1,226; contact: 910-879-5500, bccadmissions@bladencc.edu; student/faculty ratio: 12/1

CHARLOTTE, PHOENIX.EDU

B U S I N E S S

Enrollment figures include students enrolled in associate degree, basic skills or continuing education programs during 2019-20.

WINGATE UNIVERSITY

UNIVERSITY OF PHOENIX

COMMUNITY COLLEGES

BREVARD, FLAT ROCK, HENDERSONVILLE, BLUERIDGE.EDU

Enrollment: 2,332; contact: 828-883-2520 (Transylvania County campus), 828-694-1700 (Henderson County campus), 828-694-2700 (Hendersonville Health Sciences Center), admissions@blueridge.edu; student/faculty ratio: 12/1

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BRUNSWICK COMMUNITY COLLEGE

CLEVELAND COMMUNITY COLLEGE SHELBY, CLEVELANDCC.EDU

BOLIVIA, CAROLINA SHORES, LELAND, SOUTHPORT, BRUNSWICKCC.EDU

Enrollment: 2,536; contact: 704-669-6000, admissions@clevelandcc.edu; student/faculty ratio: 14/1

Enrollment: 1,585; contact: 910-755-7300 (Bolivia and Supply campuses), 910-555-6500 (Southport campus), 910-755-8084 (Leland campus), admissions@brunswickcc.edu; student/faculty ratio: 10/1

COASTAL CAROLINA COMMUNITY COLLEGE JACKSONVILLE, COASTALCAROLINA.EDU

CALDWELL COMMUNITY COLLEGE AND TECHNICAL INSTITUTE

Enrollment: 3,797; contact: 910-455-1221, admissions@coastalcarolina.edu; student/faculty ratio: 14/1

BOONE, HUDSON, CCCTI.EDU

Enrollment: 3,744; contact: 828-726-2200 (Caldwell campus), 828-297-3811 (Watauga campus); student/faculty ratio: 19/1

COLLEGE OF THE ALBEMARLE

BARCO, EDENTON, ELIZABETH CITY, MANTEO, ALBEMARLE.EDU

CAPE FEAR COMMUNITY COLLEGE BURGAW, CASTLE HAYNE, HAMPSTEAD, WILMINGTON, CFCC.EDU

Enrollment: 8,629; contact: 910-362-7000, admissions@cfcc.edu; student/faculty ratio: 14/1

CARTERET COMMUNITY COLLEGE MOREHEAD CITY, CARTERET.EDU

BERMUDA RUN, LEXINGTON, MOCKSVILLE, THOMASVILLE, DAVIDSONCCC.EDU

CENTRAL CAROLINA COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Enrollment: 3,734; contact: 336-249-8186 (Davidson County campus), 336-751-2885 (Davie County campus), admissions@davidsonccc.edu; student/faculty ratio: 16/1

DURHAM TECHNICAL COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Enrollment: 5,714; contact: 919-542-6495 (Chatham, Pittsboro campus), 919-814-8827 (Harnett County campus), 919-775-5401 (Lee County campus), admissions@cccc.edu; student/ faculty ratio: 14/1

DURHAM, HILLSBOROUGH, DURHAMTECH.EDU

Enrollment: 5,665; contact: 919-536-7200, admissions@durhamtech.edu; student/faculty ratio: 11/1

CENTRAL PIEDMONT COMMUNITY COLLEGE CHARLOTTE, HUNTERSVILLE, MATTHEWS, CPCC.EDU

Enrollment: 18,646; contact: 704-330-2722 (CPCC), fye@cpcc.edu; student/faculty ratio: 19/1

KERNERSVILLE, KING, WALNUT COVE, WINSTON-SALEM, FORSYTHTECH.EDU

Enrollment: 7,695; contact: 336-723-0371, admissions@forsythtech.edu; student/faculty ratio: 12/1

GASTON COLLEGE

BELMONT, DALLAS, LINCOLNTON, GASTON.EDU

COLFAX, GREENSBORO, HIGH POINT, JAMESTOWN, GTCC.EDU

Enrollment: 4,693; contact: 828-327-7000, admissions@cvcc.edu; student/faculty ratio: 13/1

DUNN, LILLINGTON, PITTSBORO, SANFORD, SILER CITY, CCCC.EDU

FORSYTH TECHNICAL COMMUNITY COLLEGE

CRAVEN COMMUNITY COLLEGE

DAVIDSON COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE

CONOVER, HICKORY, NEWTON, TAYLORSVILLE, CVCC.EDU

Enrollment: 12,021 contact: 910-678-8473, admissions@faytechcc.edu; student/faculty ratio: 20/1

Enrollment: 5,655; contact: 704-922-6200 (Dallas campus), 704-748-5200 (Lincoln campus), 794825-3737 (Kimbrell campus), admissions@gaston. edu; student/faculty ratio: 12/1

Enrollment: 2,961; contact: 252-638-7200 (New Bern campus), 252-444-6005 (Havelock campus), admissions@cravencc.edu; student/faculty ratio: 14/1

CATAWBA VALLEY COMMUNITY COLLEGE

FAYETTEVILLE, FORT BRAGG, SPRING LAKE, FAYTECHCC.EDU

Enrollment: 2,587; contact: 252-335-0821 (Elizabeth City), 252-482-7900 (Edenton-Chowan campus), 252-473-2264 (Dare County campus), 252-453-3035 (Currituck County campus), admissions@albemarle.edu; student/faculty ratio: 13/1

HAVELOCK, NEW BERN, CRAVENCC.EDU

Enrollment: 871; contact: 252-222-6000, 252-222-6154, admissions@email.carteret.edu; student/faculty ratio: 5/1

FAYETTEVILLE TECHNICAL COMMUNITY COLLEGE

EDGECOMBE COMMUNITY COLLEGE ROCKY MOUNT, TARBORO, EDGECOMBE.EDU

GUILFORD TECHNICAL COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Enrollment: 11,070; contact: 336-334-4822, admissions@gtcc.edu; student/faculty ratio: 16/1

HALIFAX COMMUNITY COLLEGE WELDON, HALIFAXCC.EDU

Enrollment: 1,087; contact: 252-536-2551, admissions@halifaxcc.edu; student/faculty ratio: 11/1

HAYWOOD COMMUNITY COLLEGE CLYDE, HAYWOOD.EDU

Enrollment: 1,632; contact: 828-627-2821, enrollment@haywood.edu; student/faculty ratio: 13/1

ISOTHERMAL COMMUNITY COLLEGE COLUMBUS, RUTHERFORDTON, SPINDALE, ISOTHERMAL.EDU

Enrollment: 2,086; contact: 828-286-3636 (Rutherford campus), 828-894-3092 (Polk Center), 828-286-2218 (Rutherford Learning Center), admissions@isothermal.edu; student/faculty ratio: 14/1

Enrollment: 1,904; contact: 252-823-5166, admissions@edgecombe.edu; student/faculty ratio: 13/1

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2021

JAMES SPRUNT COMMUNITY COLLEGE KENANSVILLE, JAMESSPRUNT.EDU

Enrollment: 1,266; contact: 910-296-2400, admissions@jamessprunt.edu; student/faculty ratio: 14/1

JOHNSTON COMMUNITY COLLEGE CLAYTON, FOUR OAKS, SMITHFIELD, JOHNSTONCC.EDU

Enrollment: 4,054; contact: 919-934-3051, jccadmissions@johnstoncc.edu; student/faculty ratio: 10/1

LENOIR COMMUNITY COLLEGE KINSTON, LA GRANGE, PINK HILL, SNOW HILL, TRENTON, LENOIRCC.EDU

Enrollment: 2,526; contact: 252-527-6223, krhill01@lenoircc.edu, dostroud89@lenoircc.edu; student/faculty ratio: 15/1

MARTIN COMMUNITY COLLEGE

MITCHELL COMMUNITY COLLEGE

WILLIAMSTON, WINDSOR, MARTINCC.EDU

MOORESVILLE, STATESVILLE, MITCHELLCC.EDU

Enrollment: 875; contact: 252-792-1521 (Martin County campus), 252-794-4861 (Bertie County campus), admissions@martincc.edu; student/ faculty ratio: 14/1

MAYLAND COMMUNITY COLLEGE BURNSVILLE, NEWLAND, SPRUCE PINE, MAYLAND.EDU

Enrollment: 399; contact: 828-765-7351 (main campus), 828-733-5883 (Avery County), 828-6827315 (Yancey County), admissions@mayland.edu; student/faculty ratio: 13/1

MCDOWELL TECHNICAL COMMUNITY COLLEGE MARION, MCDOWELLTECH.EDU

Enrollment: 1,136; contact: 828-652-6021, admissions@mcdowelltech.edu; student/faculty ratio: 8/1

Enrollment: 3,226; contact: 704-878-3200, admissions@mitchellcc.edu; student/faculty ratio: 18/1

MONTGOMERY COMMUNITY COLLEGE TROY, MONTGOMERY.EDU

Enrollment: 918; contact: 910-898-9600, 877-5726222, fryek@montgomery.edu; student/faculty ratio: 8/1

NASH COMMUNITY COLLEGE ROCKY MOUNT, NASHCC.EDU

Enrollment: 2,666; contact: 252-443-4011, admissions@nashcc.edu; student/faculty ratio: 25/1

PAMLICO COMMUNITY COLLEGE BAYBORO, GRANTSBORO, PAMLICOCC.EDU

Enrollment: 549; contact: 252-249-1851; student/ faculty ratio: 9/1

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PIEDMONT COMMUNITY COLLEGE

SAMPSON COMMUNITY COLLEGE CLINTON, SAMPSONCC.EDU

ROXBORO, YANCEYVILLE, PIEDMONTCC.EDU

Enrollment: 1,414; contact: 336-599-1181 (Person County), 336-694-5707 (Caswell County); student/ faculty ratio: 12/1

PITT COMMUNITY COLLEGE WINTERVILLE, PITTCC.EDU

Enrollment: 8,237; contact: 252-493-7200, pittadm@email.pittcc.edu; student/faculty ratio: 20/1

RANDOLPH COMMUNITY COLLEGE ASHEBORO, RANDOLPH.EDU

Enrollment: 1,429; contact: 910-592-8081, admissions@sampsoncc.edu; student/faculty ratio: 10/1

SANDHILLS COMMUNITY COLLEGE PINEHURST (MAIN), RAEFORD, ROBBINS, CARTHAGE, SANDHILLS.EDU

Enrollment: 4,039; contact: 910-692-6185, 800-338-3944; student/faculty ratio: 13/1

SOUTHEASTERN COMMUNITY COLLEGE WHITEVILLE, SCCNC.EDU

Enrollment: 2,903; contact: 336-633-0200; student/faculty ratio: 10/1

Enrollment: 1,524; contact: 910-642-7141, admission@sccnc.edu; student/faculty ratio: 9/1

RICHMOND COMMUNITY COLLEGE

SOUTH PIEDMONT COMMUNITY COLLEGE

HAMLET, LAURINBURG, RICHMONDCC.EDU

MONROE, POLKTON, WADESBORO, SPCC.EDU

Enrollment: 2,586; contact: 910-410-1700 (main campus), 910-410-1831 (Scotland County campus); student/faculty ratio: 15/1

ROANOKE-CHOWAN COMMUNITY COLLEGE

AHOSKIE, ROANOKECHOWAN.EDU

Enrollment: 649; contact: 252-862-1200, info@ roanokechowan.edu; student/faculty ratio: 19/1

ROBESON COMMUNITY COLLEGE LUMBERTON, ROBESON.EDU

Enrollment: 1,898; contact: 910-272-3700, admissions@robeson.edu; student/faculty ratio: 16/1

Enrollment: 3,136; contact: 704-272-5300 (L.L. Polk campus), 704-272-5400 (Lockhart-Taylor Center), 704-290-5100 (Old Charlotte Highway campus), admissions@spcc.edu; student/faculty ratio: 15/1

SOUTHWESTERN COMMUNITY COLLEGE

SYLVA, SOUTHWESTERNCC.EDU

Enrollment: 2,324; contact: 828-339-4000, 800447-4091, admissions@southwesterncc.edu; student/faculty ratio: 12/1

STANLY COMMUNITY COLLEGE

ALBEMARLE, LOCUST, STANLY.EDU

TRI-COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE MARBLE, MURPHY, ROBBINSVILLE, TRICOUNTYCC.EDU

Enrollment: 1,083; contact: 828-837-6810 (main campus), 828-479-9256 (Graham County center), 828-835-9564 (Cherokee County center), admissions@tricountycc.edu; student/faculty ratio: 13/1

VANCE-GRANVILLE COMMUNITY COLLEGE CREEDMOOR, HENDERSON, LOUISBURG, WARRENTON, VGCC.EDU

Enrollment: 3,158; contact: 252-492-2061 (main campus), 919-496-1567 (Franklin County campus), 919-528-4737 (South campus), 252-257-1900 (Warren County campus), admissions@vgcc.edu, records@vgcc.edu; student/faculty ratio: 16/1

WAKE TECHNICAL COMMUNITY COLLEGE CARY, MORRISVILLE, RALEIGH, WAKE FOREST, ZEBULON, WAKETECH.EDU

Enrollment: 22,003; contact: 919-866-5000, admissions@waketech.edu; student/faculty ratio: 19/1

WAYNE COMMUNITY COLLEGE GOLDSBORO, WAYNECC.EDU

Enrollment: 2,948; contact: 919-735-5151, wcc-admissions@waynecc.edu; student/faculty ratio: 12/1

WESTERN PIEDMONT COMMUNITY COLLEGE MORGANTON, WPCC.EDU

Enrollment: 1,820; contact: 828-448-3500, applications@wpcc.edu; student/faculty ratio: 10/1

ROCKINGHAM COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Enrollment: 2,687; contact: 704-982-0121 (Albemarle campus), 704-888-8848 (Crutchfield Education Center), sccadmissions@stanly.edu; student/faculty ratio: 14/1

WILKES COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Enrollment: 2,013; contact: 336-342-4261, admissions@rockinghamcc.edu; student/faculty ratio: 18/1

SURRY COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Enrollment: 2,692; contact: 336-838-6100, ekblevins580@wilkescc.edu; student/faculty ratio: 12/1

ROWAN-CABARRUS COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Enrollment: 3,382; contact: 336-386-8121, admissions@surry.edu; student/faculty ratio: 14/1

WENTWORTH, ROCKINGHAMCC.EDU

CONCORD, KANNAPOLIS, SALISBURY, RCCC.EDU

DOBSON, ELKIN, MOUNT AIRY, PILOT MOUNTAIN, YADKINVILLE, SURRY.EDU

SPARTA, WEST JEFFERSON, WILKESBORO, WILKESCC.EDU

WILSON COMMUNITY COLLEGE WILSON, WILSONCC.EDU

Enrollment:1,854; contact: 252-291-1195, admissions@wilsoncc.edu; student/faculty ratio: 11/1

Enrollment: 6,379; contact: 704-216-7222, admissions@rccc.edu; student/faculty ratio: 16/1

Enrollment data compiled from National Center for Education Statistics, nces.ed.gov; contact info from college websites

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4/22/21 11:07 AM

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MBA PROGRAMS

2021

COLLEGE OR UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL

DEAN/DIRECTOR

LOCATION

WEBSITE

APPALACHIAN STATE UNIVERSITY*

Walker College of Business

Sandra Vannoy

Boone, online

business.appstate.edu

BARTON COLLEGE

School of Business

Ronald E. Eggers

Wilson

barton.edu/mba

CAMPBELL UNIVERSITY†

Lundy-Fetterman School of Business

Kevin O’Mara

Buies Creek, Raleigh, online

campbell.edu/business

DEVRY UNIVERSITY†

Keller Graduate School of Management

Charlotte, Raleigh, online

keller.edu

DUKE UNIVERSITY*

Fuqua School of Business

Bill Boulding

Durham, global locations

fuqua.duke.edu

EAST CAROLINA UNIVERSITY*

College of Business

Paul Schwager

Greenville

business.ecu.edu

ELON UNIVERSITY*

Martha & Spencer Love School of Business

Raghu Tadepalli

Elon, RTP

elon.edu/mba

FAYETTEVILLE STATE UNIVERSITY*

Broadwell College of Business and Economics

Ulysses Taylor

Fayetteville, online

uncfsu.edu/mba

GARDNER-WEBB UNIVERSITY†

Godbold School of Business

Mischia A. Taylor

Boiling Springs, Charlotte, online

gardner-webb.edu/mba

HIGH POINT UNIVERSITY

Earl N. Phillips School of Business

Jim Wehrley

High Point

highpoint.edu/graduate/mba

LENOIR-RHYNE COLLEGE

Charles M. Snipes School of Business & Economics

David Jones

Asheville, Hickory, online

lr.edu/mba

MEREDITH COLLEGE*

School of Business

Bing Yu

Raleigh

meredith.edu/mba

MONTREAT COLLEGE

School of Adult & Graduate Studies

Paul Gratton

Asheville, Charlotte, online

montreat.edu/mba

N.C. A&T STATE UNIVERSITY*

Wille A. Deese College of Business and Economics

Kevin James

Greensboro

ncat.edu

N.C. CENTRAL UNIVERSITY*

School of Business

Anthony C. Nelson

Durham

nccu.edu/business

N.C. STATE UNIVERSITY*

Jenkins Graduate School/Poole College of Management

Frank A. Buckless

Raleigh, RTP, online

mba.ncsu.edu

NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY

D’Amore-McKim School of Business

Raj Echambadi

Charlotte, online

northeastern.edu/charlotte

Dawn Lucas

Charlotte, online

pfeiffer.edu/mba

Winston-Salem, online

piedmontu.edu/mba

Rick Mathieu

Charlotte, online

queens.edu/mba

Wayne Freeman

Laurinburg, online

sa.edu/academics/mba-program

Charlotte, Greensboro, Morrisville, Raleigh

strayer.edu

†

PFEIFFER UNIVERSITY

†

PIEDMONT INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY

Patterson School of Business

QUEENS UNIVERSITY*

McColl School of Business

ST. ANDREWS UNIVERSITY †

STRAYER UNIVERSITY UNC CHAPEL HILL*

Kenan-Flagler Business School

Douglas Shackelford

Chapel Hill, online

kenan-flagler.unc.edu

UNC CHARLOTTE*

Belk College of Business

Jennifer L. Troyer

Charlotte, online

mba.uncc.edu

UNC GREENSBORO*

Joseph M. Bryan School of Business and Economics

McRae Banks

Greensboro, online

bryan.uncg.edu

UNC PEMBROKE*

School of Business

Barry O’Brien

Pembroke, online

uncp.edu/mba

UNC WILMINGTON*

Cameron School of Business

Robert Burrus

Wilmington, online

uncw.edu/mba

UNIVERSITY OF MOUNT OLIVE

Robert L. Tillman School of Business

Kathy T. Best

online

umo.edu/mba

WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY*

School of Business

Michelle Roehm

Charlotte, Winston-Salem

business.wfu.edu/mba

WESTERN CAROLINA UNIVERSITY*

College of Business

Angela “AJ” Grube

Cullowhee, Asheville, online

wcu.edu

WINGATE UNIVERSITY

Porter B. Byrum School of Business

Sergio Castello

Charlotte

wingate.edu/ballantyne

WINSTON-SALEM STATE UNIVERSITY

School of Business

Winston-Salem

wssu.edu/mba

*accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business †accredited by the Accreditation Council for Business Schools and Programs

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UNDER THE RADAR Elizabeth City State University takes flight with a passionate chancellor, dashing rumors of the historic school’s demise.

hancellor Karrie Dixon has a secret to share: Elizabeth City State University is home to the only four-year aviation science program in North Carolina, the “first in flight” state. When she came on board in 2018, she realized the institution had, to its detriment, kept its jewel hidden for far too long. “No one is doing aviation,” says Dixon, 46. “I made aviation our signature program. And the phone is ringing off the hook because people in our own state had no idea we had such a valuable program and how we are contributing to the airline industry. People didn’t know the story.” ECSU’s size and location in the state’s rural northeast make it easy to overlook. With fall 2020 enrollment of 2,002, it’s second-smallest of the 16 four-year campuses in the UNC System. But reaching 2,000 students is a success story. In the years before Dixon’s arrival, state lawmakers discussed closing the university because of declining enrollment and weakening academic performance. Enrollment slumped from about 2,900 students in 2011 to fewer than 1,400 five years later.

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PHOTOS COURTESY OF ELIZABETH CITY STATE UNIVERSITY

BY VANESSA INFANZON

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▲ N.C. lawmakers started the forerunner to Elizabeth City State University in 1891 as a training school for Black teachers.

But a combination of new programs and leadership changed the school’s course. The N.C. General Assembly provided $2.5 million in stabilization funds in 2017, including $1.6 million for the aviation science program. It was also one of three campuses designated as NC Promise schools with in-state tuition of $1,000 a year, a discount of more than 75% from most other UNC campuses. Dixon was serving as an executive for the UNC System when former system President Margaret Spellings appointed her to a task force to develop a plan for ECSU. Spellings made her interim chancellor in April 2018, then assigned her to the post permanently eight months later. When Dixon came on board, the Winston-Salem native introduced what she called an accountability, commitment and excellence mindset to the school’s culture. “I made it a commitment when I came here as chancellor for people to love where they work,” Dixon says. “I wanted our students to love where they live and learn.”

Creating a road map Last year, the university launched its five-year strategic plan, Forging Our Future. “[It’s] our road map to get ECSU where it needs to be,” Dixon says. “Everything we do, we want to tie it to our strategic plan.” An unexpected $15 million donation from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott should help achieve those plans. It was one of three historically Black institutions in North

Carolina to receive a combined $90 million from Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos. “To even get on MacKenzie Scott’s radar was just an amazing opportunity for us,” Dixon says. Scott has donated $4.2 billion in the past year to many causes — with no strings attached to the grants. When Dixon received a call from the staff of an unnamed donor, she got the impression that quality of leadership would be a high priority in determining who received money. Scott’s team asked ECSU officials questions about education performance metrics and the satisfaction of staff and faculty. They also studied relations between the university and Elizabeth City, which has about 18,000 residents and is 170 miles east of Raleigh. “What stood out to me is that people were taking notice of the strength in leadership that we have at ECSU,” Dixon says. “It also helped that we scored the highest percentage increase within the UNC System for employee satisfaction.” About $10 million is being invested to shore up the

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“We knew we needed a leader that could steer us in the right direction.” Harold Barnes, former chair, ECSU Board of Trustees

university’s finances and help improve its credit rating, Dixon says. ECSU has a Baa2 rating from Moody’s Investors Service, which is its second-lowest investment-grade rating. The Scott donation will not be mixed with the school’s two major existing endowments, a $9 million general university fund and a $6 million foundation account, she says. By comparison, endowments at the two other UNC campuses in eastern North Carolina are much larger, topping $200 million at East Carolina University in Greenville and $100 million at UNC Wilmington. The other $5 million from Scott will immediately support the university’s strategic initiatives. Dixon plans to expand academic offerings, provide more faculty and staff professional development, purchase materials for labs and offer new experiences for students in and out of the classroom.

Transformative leader ECSU was in desperate need of a strong leader, says Harold Barnes, a Suffolk, Va., leadership training consultant and 1977 alumnus who joined the school’s board of trustees in 2015. He had heard talk of closing the school, so he contacted N.C. State Sen. Bob Steinburg of Edenton to express his concerns. After a year on the board, Barnes says he noticed weakness in every area of the administration. He became chairman and in 2018 headed the search committee that led to Dixon’s hiring. He envisioned someone who would analyze each department to locate the fragile areas. “I saw what dire conditions the university was in,” Barnes says. “We knew we needed a leader that could steer us in the right direction.” Dixon’s experience at the university-system level made her a frontrunner in the search, Barnes says. After earning a bachelor’s degree in communications at N.C. State University, she worked as a journalist at Capitol Broadcasting in Raleigh. She later moved into a marketing job and then

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university work after earning a master’s in speech communications from UNC Greensboro and a doctorate in education from N.C. State. She rose through the ranks at the Raleigh research university to become assistant vice provost, then joined the UNC System as vice president for academic and student affairs in 2008. Her transition into the chancellor role wasn’t smooth, which isn’t surprising given that she was the fourth person to hold the post in less than three years. Dixon is among five female and six Black chancellors in the UNC System. “[The community was] hostile to her when she first came,” Barnes says. “People wrote letters to the press, letters to other people. She came in, not like a hatchet person, but like someone who wanted to better the university and lift it forward. She had stringent standards that you had to meet, and if you were willing to meet those standards, she was waiting to pat you on the back for having achieved something.” The percentage of ECSU students who are graduating within five years of enrollment has increased during Dixon’s tenure, though the roughly 40% rate remains among the lowest in the UNC System. In December, employee satisfaction at ECSU led the system, according to a study by Wilmington, Del.-based ModernThink. Barnes cites Dixon’s listening skills as a key to her success. “We all came through as partners with the chancellor,” Barnes says. “If you had ideas and if you had solutions to problems, she was willing to listen to those solutions. If they were better than her own, she was willing to change.”

History and growth ECSU celebrated its 130th anniversary in March. It opened in 1891 in Pasquotank County, bordering the Albemarle Sound and close to the Virginia state line. Initially intended to educate Black teachers, it went through several iterations before joining the UNC System in 1972. Today, 28 bachelor’s degrees are offered including accounting, business administration, computer science, emergency management, graphic design, homeland security and pharmaceutical sciences. The school’s unmanned aerial vehicles program, also called drone aviation, started in 2019 and remains the only such bachelor’s degree in the system. Fewer than 100 students are enrolled in the four master’s degree programs in biology, elementary education, mathematics and school administration. While ECSU has a historically Black heritage, it’s one of the state’s most diverse schools, with more than a third of the students identifying as white, Hispanic, American

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▲The system’s governing board is considering raising the cap for out-of-state students to 25% at five historically Black universities including ECSU.

Indian or Asian. Almost 60% are women, and 81% are from North Carolina. As is the case at UNC Pembroke and Western Carolina University, the low-tuition NC Promise program has boosted ECSU’s prominence. “NC Promise has definitely been the catalyst for ECSU’s enrollment growth,” Dixon says. “[It] also promotes access to a quality education at an affordable price to our citizens. That speaks volumes to the commitment the state has, especially because we are surrounded by 21 counties that are … some of the most economically distressed counties in the state.”

American Airlines, United Airlines and others. Most get jobs within six months of graduation. “The airlines come after them,” Dixon says. “It’s a good thing because [students] are reaching their career goals.”

Taking flight In the late 1990s, the Federal Aviation Administration chose ECSU to help finance an aviation science program in an effort to encourage the development of more Black pilots. It started offering the program as a minor, and it became a major in 2002. Student enrollment in the aviation program has grown from 68 students in 2018 to 127 students last fall. During that period, Dixon expanded the fleet from two to 14 Cessna and Beechcraft airplanes. Dixon worked with the U.S. Coast Guard Air Station in Elizabeth City to fund a $25 million renovation of an aging runway. Once completed, students will have access to two runways. “One thing that keeps me up at night is the idea of having to cap our program if we don’t have continuous investment,” Dixon says. Alumni work as air traffic controllers, avionic technicians and commercial pilots with companies such as

▲ Enrollment in ECSU’s aviation program has doubled since 2018.

In March, the FAA granted ECSU permission to offer a Restricted Airline Transport Pilot certification. This allows students to earn an airline pilot license with 1,000 flight hours rather than 1,500. “This is a game changer,” Dixon says. “It moves our students faster and closer to becoming an airline pilot.” ■

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NASCAR’S LEADERS SAY EMBRACING INCLUSION IS A KEY STRATEGY — AND THE RIGHT THING TO DO.

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▲ Nick Sanchez, Rajah Caruth, Dalanda Ouendeno, Brandon Thompson, Lavar Scott

BY MICHAEL J. SOLENDER PHOTOS BY PETER TAYLOR arely six months after announcing formation of the 23XI Racing team, co-owner Michael Jordan mingled with the NASCAR elite gathered for February’s Daytona 500. The team’s car, driven by William Darrell “Bubba” Wallace Jr., the lone full-time Black driver on the NASCAR Cup series, was making its debut at the sport’s best-known track. Unique among major-league professional sports, NASCAR begins its season with its showcase event.

The owner of the NBA’s Charlotte Hornets is also the first Black principal owner of a full-time Cup Series team in a half-century. Storms delayed the race for several hours, but Jordan hung around the Florida track because of his enthusiasm for the historic moment and passion for the sport. It’s something he picked up from his late father, James, who often planned family trips from their Wilmington home to races in Charlotte, Rockingham, Darlington, S.C., and Daytona Beach, Fla. “We would spend the whole day, and from that point on, I’ve been hooked,” Jordan said in a Fox television interview.

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▲ Bubba Wallace, 27, has raced in three NASCAR national series since 2012.

together with [fellow team owner and NASCAR driver] Denny Hamlin and Michael Jordan in putting together this team, everyone realized there is a strong platform for 23XI Racing to move into the future.” NASCAR needs a rebirth after experiencing a dramatic decline in popularity over the past decade. From a peak in 2005, the sport’s TV ratings have declined more than 50%. Fewer than 5 million people viewed this year’s Daytona race, down from more than 10 million a decade ago and 15 million in the glory days, according to rating services. The declining ratings stabilized in recent years, but NASCAR executives concluded that a rebound was coming from mostly white, older fans instead of younger, more diverse ones. Whether the new teams will propel the sport deeper into new markets or just reflect the benefits of diversity initiatives undertaken by NASCAR over the last two decades is unclear. But they are unarguably having an impact on the sport’s advertisers, sponsors and fan base. “Under [NASCAR President] Phelps, NASCAR has approached diversifying its audience head on,” says Joe

PHOTOS COURTESY OF GETTY VIA NASCAR

Jordan’s entry into NASCAR comes amid a cultural shift in which the sport is accelerating its diversity and inclusion efforts and looking for a new generation of fans. “I can’t underestimate how big it is: [His involvement] represents a sea-change moment for NASCAR,” says Peter Jung, the company’s senior vice president for brand, media and consumer insights. “Michael sees opportunities, and I believe he feels the right people and the right investments can make a difference in the way people perceive NASCAR.” The Daytona race also marked the debut of another high-profile team with diverse ownership. Trackhouse Racing owns the No. 99 car, piloted by Mexican-born Daniel Suárez. He’s an alumni of NASCAR’s Drive for Diversity Program, which kicked off in 2004 to assist ethnically diverse and female drivers. Trackhouse is co-owned by former driver Justin Marks and singer-songwriter Armando Pérez, a Cuban American better known as Pitbull. Trackhouse is creating excitement with younger, Hispanic fans. But Wallace cemented his role as the star player in NASCAR’s diversity push last year when he denounced racial inequities and successfully urged NASCAR to ban the Confederate flag from its tracks. When a noose was found in the stall of Wallace’s garage at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama last June, NASCAR immediately supported the driver and reaffirmed its commitment to diversity and equity. The incident sparked international attention and an accusation from former President Donald Trump that the noose was a hoax. While NASCAR’s investigation of 1,684 garage-door pulls at 29 tracks found no similar ties, the FBI concluded Wallace was not the victim of a hate crime. “What NASCAR did to speak about ways to make the sport more inclusive sent a clear message to people, including those who might not be current fans of the sport,” says Steve Lauletta, a former head of Chip Ganassi’s NASCAR team who signed on as 23XI’s team president last year. Indeed, NASCAR President Steve Phelps told The Wall Street Journal in March that Jordan probably wouldn’t be a team owner if it hadn’t been for the noose incident. Corporate America has clearly embraced Jordan’s NASCAR entry. 23XI sponsors include Columbia Sportswear, Dr Pepper, McDonald’s, Toyota and first-time entrants DoorDash and Root Insurance. Such support is needed to pay the estimated $20 million to $30 million annual expense of the most competitive teams. “[They] all want to leverage the power of what Bubba is doing on and off the track,” Lauletta says. “When they got

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▲ Left: Brandon Thompson, NASCAR’s vice president for diversity and inclusion. Top: About 10 women and 150 men are racing in NASCAR’s various series this year, the New York Post reports.

PHOTO COURTESY OF NASCAR

Favorito, a former New York Knicks executive who is a sports-media consultant. “This is a sport where they need to build heroes that look like their audience. Teams like 23XI and Trackhouse over time will bring more people to the sport who are curious and [will] be more engaged.” NASCAR’s success is important for North Carolina, where the sport has an economic impact of more than $6 billion annually with more than 30,000 employed, including in many less-publicized support areas, says Craig Depken, an economics professor at UNC Charlotte’s Belk College of Business. “Its economic impact is felt far beyond the track,” he says, citing wind tunnels used by engineers and teams in aerodynamic car design, machine and parts fabricators, and coating and paint manufacturers. Moving beyond the track is a key part of NASCAR’s strategic shift. Depken’s research found that 18 NASCAR venues cut spectator capacity by a combined 500,000 seats between 2006 and 2020. “In-person consumption of their product is not where they’re finding growth,” he says. “Other platforms, particularly digital, look to be where the sport is headed in growing their fan base.”

One of NASCAR’s most visible efforts in reaching a new audience is found in its Drive for Diversity Program. Wallace, Suárez and Kyle Larson, a driver whose mother is Japanese American, are among the higher profile alumni. More than 400 have participated in the program since its

inception, and many have gone on to hold significant positions in both racing and other sports organizations such as the NBA and USA Track & Field. Leading those efforts is Brandon Thompson, a Drive for Diversity alumnus who was appointed NASCAR’s vice president of diversity and inclusion last June. He oversees strategy and programming and works with teams, sponsors and industry partners to expand NASCAR’s diversity work. A graduate of Clark Atlanta University, Thompson joined the Nashville Superspeedway as an intern in 2003. He has worked in several jobs including as operations manager for Rev Racing. “The core of our program and the one with the most focus is the driver development piece,” he says. “When the program started, it was built with all the right intentions. We were on the beginning steps of a targeted journey in terms of diversifying the sport.” Initially, the program allocated money among existing teams that showed varying levels of commitment. Success with driver placement and team acceptance was hit or miss. When NASCAR formed the Rev Racing Team as a competitive group in 2009 and hired Phil Horton as director of athletic performance, it helped pick up the pace. Horton was a proven pit row leader who had credibility with crew members throughout the sport, Thompson says. “An early program critique was there’s no one making it to the top levels of the sport,” he says. “That changed almost immediately when Sergio Peña was able to go out, compete at a high level and finish second in a short track

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race in California. Bubba Wallace followed.” He notched six wins in NASCAR’s Truck Series before moving to the Xfinity and Cup stock-car series in 2017. He had driven for Welcome-based Richard Petty Motorsports for four years before joining 23XI. Peña, 28, is a first-generation Colombian American who began his professional career in 2010. He’s no longer a fulltime NASCAR racer. NASCAR has been able to place all of the participants in crew training into jobs with teams competing at the national Truck, Xfinity or Cup level, Thompson says. Another promising member of the diversity program is Rajah Caruth, 18, who grew up near Washington, D.C., and attends Winston-Salem State University, a historically Black institution. Now living in Concord, he’s the program’s first driver with an extensive background in simulated digital racing, or “sim racing.” “NASCAR’s investment in iRacing and NASCAR Heat [video game] shows a commitment to reaching a younger and more diverse audience,” Caruth says. His first experience in a race car came four years ago, but he’d had lots of experience using a home setup to compete in online races. “My involvement in the program has exposed me to NASCAR’s outreach [in communities of color] where there isn’t a lot of visibility to the sport. For example, their partnering with the Urban Youth Racing School [Foundation] and Kyle Larson is a great way they’re getting kids interested in sim racing and our sport.” The foundation is a Philadelphia-based math- and science-oriented education nonprofit that has received NASCAR support to help inner-city kids learn about racing technology.

In a tumultuous year that included a national discussion around the Black Lives Matter movement, the police-involved death of George Floyd in Minnesota, and an unusually divisive presidential election, NASCAR’s reconciliation with an ugly part of its past marks a watershed. In particular, the sport’s history with the Confederate flag is a complicated one, given NASCAR’s roots in Florida, Alabama and the Carolinas. “Published studies show NASCAR’s ties to the flag were intentional, meant to ensure its long-term success. In its early years, the company used the flag and what it represented to sell tickets, and it helped cement the adoption of NASCAR stock-car racing by Southern working-class fans,” according to Denise-Marie Ordway, a veteran journalist who works for the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. She made the comment in a Harvard publication called The Journalist’s Resource. The debate over NASCAR’s ties to the Confederate flag has raged for years, Favorito says. The sport once ran a promotion enabling fans to swap Confederate flags for American ones, “but the public stance was never fully

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changed until now.” NASCAR’s outreach is pressuring other leagues, teams and athletes to speak out on racial issues, he says. “Make no mistake. Inclusive outreach is not welcomed in some areas. The indignance by some fringe drivers was expected. Opposition should be part of an open discussion and education as opinions and passion remain strong. Any major business, not just a sport like NASCAR, answers to many constituents, not the least of which are the fans.” NASCAR has an employee diversity council that meets with senior executives to discuss issues and allow for unfiltered input. “We’re not looking to be a social-justice organization, but we are looking to make sure that those things that are important in and around society are important to us,” Thompson says. “What’s most important about any diversity, equity and inclusion effort is that it’s authentic. It’s got to have depth, it’s got to have substance, and that’s what we’re looking to do. We’re not just doing it for the headlines.”

NASCAR and other pro sports are dealing with fewer fans committed to watching hours of live TV action. For stock-car racing, the biggest growth prospects are fans who engage with the sport on mobile devices rather than show up at tracks for three or four days of camping and races, Favorito says. “Whether you’re NASCAR, the NFL, NBA or MLB, you must deliver your product on whatever device, in whatever time period your fan wants to engage in with a pristine experience,” he says. “For NASCAR, this means a deeper dive into iRacing, shorter-form racing, new brand partnerships and affiliations that bring new audiences and more engagement in the gambling space, all while not alienating your core, loyal fan.” Making that shift presents a great opportunity for NASCAR and its brands. “[They] can have a conversation with thousands of people within a select demographic that wouldn’t have been possible only a few years ago.” NASCAR’s pivot at the beginning of the pandemic to an audience interested in iRacing positions the sport to attract gaming-first, mobile-savvy consumers who grow into fans who follow drivers and brands — and may eventually show up at the tracks. The new platforms including iRacing, the multiplayer online eRacing series and NASCAR Heat “are lines of business with significant revenue tied to them,” Jung says. NASCAR is also putting more resources into YouTube programming, while Jung describes sports betting as an “explosive growth opportunity as people betting on sports tend to be younger and more diverse. Our product portfolio has gotten more complex, more targeted. There’s more variety because just having a choice of going to a race or watching it on television, that doesn’t fulfill the needs or expectations of a younger and more

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PHOTOS COURTESY OF NASCAR

▲ Rajah Caruth is NASCAR Drive for Diversity’s first driver with an extensive background in simulated digital racing, or “sim racing.”

▲ NASCAR’s iRacing, founded in 2004, is a digital racing simulation platform that is sparking new interest in the sport.

diverse consumer profile.” About half of the newest NASCAR fans are nonwhite, including 23% Hispanic, 17% Black and 10% Asian, according to a study by Cincinnati-based Directions Research. NASCAR has been making inroads into Hispanic markets for more than a decade. A big part of the appeal has been through Suárez and other Hispanic drivers, but also a large California presence at tracks such as Auto Club Speedway in San Bernardino County, where Hispanics make up about half of the population. NASCAR Mexico is a joint venture with OCESA, a Mexican entertainment company, that has sparked more interest in the sport through various racing series and televised events. “We want to be inclusive, relevant and welcoming to younger and diverse audiences,” Jung says. “We’ve seen new fans coming into the sport are far more likely to be diverse fans, multicultural and younger.” Toyota, which has been part of NASCAR’s top-level series since 2007, is impressed by its research showing that the average age of fans has declined over the past 18 months, says Paul Doleshal, general manager of motorsports and assets for the automaker’s North American division. “The fan is getting younger, more diverse, more educated and a greater percentage female. These elements trend very well in what we want to see in a diverse and inclusive sport where we want a partnership.” For NASCAR, fans and partners, the faces of their future look to reflect a younger, multicultural America. ■

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BENEFITS, EMPLOYEE WELLNESS & WORK-LIFE BALANCE Great benefits, attention to employee wellness and a healthy work-life balance are all important pieces in recruiting and retaining a talented workforce. In the following pages, you'll read about best practices and proven methods from Catapult and NC Chamber to build a better workplace for employees. M A Y

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DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION Sharing the Journey of One Small Business By Gary J. Salamido The mission of the NC Chamber is to research, develop, advocate, and communicate for solutions and polices that produce a nationally, and increasingly globally, competitive business climate in North Carolina. To that end, carefully analyzing, understanding, and addressing the complex issues around diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, are critical to fulfilling that mission. Many businesses have been working to make diversity, equity, and inclusion a priority; the NC Chamber is no exception. We have been taking steps to ensure our team and workplace environment better represent our diverse membership. In my personal DEI journey I have learned there is not a one-size-fits-all solution. It is an unending passage, and progress is not always immediate. That said, I am proud of the steps we are taking for our staff and for our own small business at the NC Chamber. Among the important changes we have made, several years ago we implemented a short-term disability plan,

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then recognizing it was only a first step. We have since added multiple weeks of paid leave for the birth of an employee's child; placement of a child for adoption or foster care; care for an employee's household members (i.e., spouse, domestic partner, child, or parent) with a serious health condition; a serious health condition that makes an employee unable to perform the functions of their position; any qualifying exigency due to an employee's household member being on covered active military duty; or to care for a household member in the armed services or next of kin. We also updated the language on our medical policies to cover domestic partners and reviewed and amended our schedule of paid holidays to include, among others, Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Veteran’s Day. These types of changes not only provide benefits to a larger, more diverse group of employees, but they also bring to the forefront that we care deeply about DEI issues. Notably, they were all important and equitable for our small team. They helped attract and retain top talent which is the key priority

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for businesses in our state – including the NC Chamber. In short, fostering an inclusive environment is a vital component of being an attractive place to work. I am proud to keep building on policies in our small business that further that effort. The NC Chamber’s core values were refocused in 2020. This effort surfaced that our commitment to DEI must be captured unequivocally as part of our value statement. Accordingly, the principle “Diversity, equity, and inclusion are imperative to progress” was included as one of our five core values. Of moment, we are putting our principles into action. More specifically, I am going through the process of becoming a Certified Diversity Executive (CDE) and our NC Chamber team has the opportunity to engage in formal DEI training to further advance the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion in our workplace. As part of our internal process, each NC Chamber participant must complete a personal project; I am developing a diversity training framework that can be tailored to the needs of smaller organizations and our NC Chamber staff is piloting this program. As president of a state chamber of commerce, I have access to tremendous leaders from diverse experiences and backgrounds. This rich resource provides me with the opportunity to engage and utilize these relationships to serve as a convener, foster real dialogue, and advance meaningful action. Over the last year, we have worked to more intentionally communicate our commitment to these DEI principles, even recording some of these candid conversations as part of a podcast series. Our advocacy team has also worked to support policies that advance DEI, including second chance hiring practices, which enhance our talent pipeline by enabling broader pathways to education and employment. We were pleased

to collaborate with Raleigh-based Smith Anderson to host two webinars educating employers on these opportunities. Finally, in 2021, we are excited to continue the evolution of our Workplace Diversity and Inclusion Conference, an event we launched in 2017 and now host twice a year, covering topics that provide organizations of all sizes with the tools necessary to create or foster a culture of belonging and maximize employee satisfaction. Our state’s motto, Esse Quam Videri (To Be Rather Than to Seem) says a lot in a few words. To me, its essence is that substance matters. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are about substance. And in that dimension North Carolina can excel. In doing so, our communities and citizens will be best positioned to enjoy lives of fulfillment, productivity, joy, and all that comes with those treasured, yet all too elusive, qualities. Additionally, DEI will help our economy rebound stronger than ever. The NC Chamber and I are only at the beginning of our diversity, equity, and inclusion journey. I invite you to join us. Gary J. Salamido is president and CEO of the NC Chamber. With decades of experience and a proven track record representing North Carolina business interests at the N.C. General Assembly, Gary led the Chamber’s lobbying, advocacy, and political efforts before being named its chief operating officer and acting president in 2018, then president and CEO in 2019. Gary’s leadership in advancing policy at the NC Chamber has helped propel the state to the top of several significant best-in-business rankings. M A Y

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Welcome, and thanks for your interest in Lee County, North Carolina! Lee County and its two municipalities, Sanford and Broadway, are currently at the epicenter of unprecedented business and residential growth. Central Carolina Enterprise Park, with its certified industrial sites and Class A shell building program, is less than 20 minutes from I-540 and the globally renowned Research Triangle, while the world class golf resorts and cultural amenities of Pinehurst are a similar short drive to our south. Sanford’s “Well-Centered” motto certainly reflects our strategic location for both businesses and residents, but it also sums up Lee County’s character as a community. When Lee County was established in 1907, it was a regional transportation and commercial center, but quickly gained a reputation as a community of makers, inventors, and innovators, adept at using our heads as well as our hands in our diverse and ever-expanding manufacturing operations. Global industry leaders like Pfizer and Caterpillar have operated highly successful advanced manufacturing facilities in Lee County for decades, and both have recently invested in significant expansions. Bharat Forge Aluminum USA, Audentes Therapeutics (now Astellas) and Abzena are investing hundreds of millions and creating hundreds of new jobs. The strong work ethic and willingness of our community to embrace new challenges has sustained our manufacturing heritage for multiple generations, and investments like these ensure that the tradition will continue for generations to come. The pace of change in our world has never been greater, but in Lee County, we’ve harnessed that dynamism to our advantage. County and municipal leaders have collaborated on a shared vision for our future, and we have made strategic investments in ourselves, shaping our future in ways that few other communities like ours have managed to do. A new terminal at the thriving Raleigh Executive Jetport, W.B. Wicker STEAM elementary school, Central Carolina Community College facility expansions, the Buggy Company “one stop shop” for growth and development, Depot Park and the Historic Downtown streetscape, a new multi-purpose sports complex, and the list goes on… The residents of Lee County, Sanford and Broadway understand the value of investing in our future, and it shows. On behalf of the Sanford Area Growth Alliance and all our public and private sector partners and investors, we’re excited to share our story with you in this special section. We invite you to connect with us directly to discover how you and your business can become a part of the next chapter of Lee County’s amazing success story.

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GROWING SEASON With an economic past rooted in agriculture, Lee County is sowing seeds in high-tech industries and modern amenities.

Where the Sandhills’ white-gray soil surrenders to Piedmont clay, Lee County has pulled much of its history from the ground. The process of forming earth into bricks has endured more than 60 years in its county seat, Sanford, which is also known as Brick Capital of the USA. Fields of tobacco and cotton once stretched to the horizon. While it holds tight to those traditions, it’s growing in new directions. At almost 255 square miles — 89th-largest of North Carolina’s 100

counties — Lee County is smack in the middle of the state, near Harnett, Moore and Chatham counties. Like its neighbors, it’s busy tending a high-tech economy of advanced manufacturing, food processing, aerospace, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals. It’s possible in large part because of workforce training orchestrated and tailored by the local community college, a chamber of commerce dedicated to educating and encouraging entrepreneurs, and expanding health care options.

Bob Joyce is Sanford Area Growth Alliance’s senior director for business retention and expansion. As a lifelong Sanford resident, he has witnessed the county’s economic transformation firsthand. “The biggest change that I’ve seen in my years is connectivity,” he says. “Growing up, we were a small community in the rural part of the state. I think the big leap forward was when U.S. 1 [became] four lanes in the mid-1990s to Raleigh. That shortened the distance

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Central Carolina Promise, an educational enrichment program, offers all eligible Chatham, Harnett and Lee County public high school, private school or homeschool graduates as much as two years of free, in-state tuition and required fees at Central Carolina Community College. ▲

to [Research Triangle Park] and the state capital. We have marketed Sanford as ‘The Southern Base of the RTP,’ but we were maybe fudging, just a little.” While it’s a 40-minute drive to RTP from Sanford, the two are much closer when it comes to finding creative solutions. Jimmy Randolph, the growth alliance’s CEO, points to Lee County’s long manufacturing history as an example. “We landed Caterpillar and Pfizer, and we may have out-punched our weight card,” he says. “We invested in infrastructure in a significant way and were able to offer water and sewer to large manufacturing in a way that other counties were unable to do. We landed [faucet and fixtures manufacturer] Moen and others when our counterparts were still committed to textiles and furniture. We still have the brick industry, but the story continues of our adapting to the new economy and new trends in manufacturing. It says a lot about our people and their work ethic.”

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MANUFACTURING SUCCESS Joyce and others at the alliance group point to Central Carolina Enterprise Park as the perfect home for manufacturers. The almost 250-acre Certified Site offers easy access to U.S. 1. With utilities and a new $6 million road, it’s primed for the next relocating or expanding company. But the economic booster’s latest episode of adaptability comes from a different playbook. India-based Bharat Forge didn’t choose Lee County for its $170 million aluminum forging and machining operation, which opened in March, because of a business park, shell building, site-ready infrastructure or mega plot of leveled land. Rather, landing the manufacturer of electric-vehicle components was the result of

listening to specific needs and investing in human kindness. “There’s a story here about a community that is nimble, flexible and able to adapt,” Randolph says. “It’s a real testament, how welcoming this community has been.” Two years ago, Bharat Forge went looking for a U.S. site well connected to workforce development that was near a major urban center and airport. Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina’s Melissa Smith, who is the vice president of business recruitment and development, and Colin Kiser, international business development manager, took up the search. Joining them was Rahul Padmanabha, EDPNC’s first foreign direct investment representative based in India. Padmanabha and Kiser visited Bharat Forge headquarters, and company

representatives visited Sanford. Lee County made Bharat Forge’s short list for sites, says Joyce, who was named North Carolina Economic Development Association’s 2020 Economic Developer of the Year. “We had the industrial park ready to go,” he says. “[Baba] Kalyani was with the group, and you know when the co-owner is on the visit because everyone defers to him. We get to the conference room, and we have some boards, maps, the PowerPoint ready, but they were in hurry-up mode. Every community’s presentation says they’re the prettiest place in America, so they wanted to cut through that and wanted us to show them the map.” Bharat Forge officials had requirements. They practice Vastu shastra, a belief in giving buildings an energy produced by positivity and balance. Lighting is key,

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with main doors facing north or northeast. Other rooms have directional and furnishing specifics to create energy ratios. Joyce knew a place, across U.S. 1 from the enterprise park, that offered all the particulars. The untouched 100 acres was about to go on the market. So they took a drive. “They got out of their big black Suburbans, and we toured the property in [off-road vehicles],” he says. “This was pre-COVID, so we had about 20 people. Having a strong local team was essential. When companies want permission to build a factory, they don’t mean in two or three years. We went from greenfield site to factory in 12 months.” Lee County and Sanford were a big part of accommodating Bharat Forge’s short timeline. “The county acted as an intermediary and purchased the land from the family,” Randolph says. “Then the county and city stepped up and got it pad ready.” Joyce says that included cutting an en-

trance road from the northeast, demolishing an empty house, and extending water and sewer lines. “We secured a [$1.5 million] Golden LEAF [Foundation] grant, and I cannot tell you how great they were to work with,” he says. “We have one municipality, Sanford, whereas Wake County has 12 or 13 municipalities. We had to pull together.” The city of Sanford received a $1.3 million Community Development Block Grant for infrastructure needs. And because Bharat Forge’s project is estimated to add about $787 million to the state’s economy over the next 12 years, a Job Development Investment Grant was approved that would reimburse the company for as much as $3.5 million over that time, based on meeting job creation and investment targets. In the next five years, Bharat Forge is expected to create about 460 jobs in Lee County. Their average annual salary is about $47,000. It already has mentioned expanding its 200,000-square-

foot complex. “That’s a real testament to the community and how welcome we’ve been to them,” Randolph says. Bharat Forge wasn’t the only company to invest or expand in Lee County between August 2019 and May 2020. Audentes Therapeutics invested $109 million and created 209 jobs. Pfizer invested $500 million and created 300 jobs. And clothes and fabric manufacturer Through6 invested $2 million and created 160 jobs. Interest isn’t waning. Last winter, four public hearings were held on proposed industrial projects, identified only as life sciences-related and expected to bring a total of 1,475 jobs. And Audentes’ 135,000-square-foot gene-therapy manufacturing site has two future expansion phases and should be operational later this year or early 2022. “We’ve always managed to attract new industry and build on the traditions we have,” Randolph says. “The resurgence of the life-sciences side shows our resilience as a community.”

Tobacco Road Golf Course in Sanford

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LEE COUNTY RISE AND SHINE In 2019, Sanford Area Growth Alliance Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Meg Moss, along with representatives from Sanford’s Central Carolina Community College’s Small Business Center and Downtown Sanford Inc., daytripped to Marion in McDowell County to study its entrepreneurship program. “They walked us through the whole program, showed us businesses that had been started,” she says. “And we invited their director to come to Sanford and do a presentation for our community leaders.” The result is Real Investment in Sanford Entrepreneurs — RISE — a series of eight-week courses. Each class can have many as 12 students and concludes with business presentations. A committee of local business owners selects one

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student to pursue opening a business in downtown Sanford and awards $5,000 toward rent and utilities. The first RISE class spawned a yoga studio as well as two women’s boutiques and a screen-printing and embroidery shop. The second group produced a catering/family meals takeout restaurant that also uses its renovated downtown space for wedding events and baby showers. Another group purchased an old movie theater in Jonesboro, turning the space into a coffee shop, comic book store and artists venue. The third RISE session, which began in early March, took on a private investor — J&R Homes of Sanford. Moss says it’s underwriting the $5,000 award. “The classes are free, and we have three organizations that provide staff time,” she says. “Because it’s an educa-

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tional setting, we can have more than 10 people [under COVID-19 regulations], so we’re meeting at the [Dennis A. Wicker] Civic Center in a huge room. ... The Civic Center is letting us do it for free.” Moss says all RISE students take away valuable lessons. “Honestly, one thing that can come out of this is people can say, ‘Oh, maybe I wasn’t meant to be in business,’ and they save thousands by not opening. That can be a positive for them, a different kind of success story. The RISE program has made such a big impact on our students and created really good relationships in our partnering with the community college and Small Business Center. I’ve been the chamber director for five years, and I think, honestly, this has been the most rewarding project I’ve worked on.”

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RISE concludes with students presenting their business plans and concepts to a team of professionals. Participants who plan to open a brick-and-mortar location in the downtown Sanford 17-block municipal service district area are considered for one $5,000 small business grant assistance package.

CREATING SOLUTIONS THROUGH PARTNERSHIPS SINCE 1990

PRODUCTS

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SUPPLIERS

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3913 Hawkins Avenue, Sanford, NC 27330 | 919-774-7827 | merteknc.com M A Y

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LEE COUNTY EXPANDING HEALTH CARE Lee County’s population was 61,141 in 2019, according to the N.C. Office of State Budget and Management. That’s a gain of more than 33% from 1995, when Central Carolina Hospital opened in Sanford. Part of Duke LifePoint Healthcare, its Chest Pain Center was recognized with an accreditation from the American College of Cardiology in December. That month, the hospital also opened its Central Carolina Urology, returning this specialized care to the county. Pinehurst-based FirstHealth of the Carolinas, also founded in 1995, has four hospitals in North Carolina. In 2018, it expanded into Lee County, where its campus provides a multispecialty medical office and the region’s only medically based fitness center. Through a partnership with Pinehurst Surgical Clinic,

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FirstHealth is expanding local access to orthopaedics, urology, vascular and vein, obstetrics and gynecology, and ear, nose and throat care. “For more than 75 years, Pinehurst Surgical Clinic has provided high-quality care to the residents of our area,” says clinic President David Grantham. “We are excited to partner with FirstHealth and Lee County to increase health care access to those residents.” Vascular and vein care and orthopaedics are available at FirstHealth’s Sanford location, which also offers primary care, cardiac rehabilitation and other services. The remaining expansions will be added in the next few months. “As a Lee County native, I’m especially excited to see these expanded services in my hometown,” says FirstHealth CEO Mickey Foster. “I’m also thrilled that we can continue to grow our relationship with Pinehurst Surgical Clinic. Our

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organizations are both committed to providing exceptional care, and we look forward to seeing new options come to Lee County.” Joyce says Lee will continue cultivating ways to welcome new industries and services. “We’re like a town of shopkeepers,” he says. “We rolled up our sleeves and learned to make stuff. We have 100 years of making stuff. The community college took us to the next level and trained people in fields like computer-assisted manufacturing. Then we got about two dozen machine shops; then robotics came in. Look at us 100 years ago and look at us today. Bharat Forge, for instance, came at the right time. We’re all connected to the global economy, and you never know when the global economy is going to make a change.” ■ — Kathy Blake is a writer from eastern North Carolina.

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The FirstHealth Lee Campus includes a 25,000-square-foot fitness center with a pool, cardio/pulmonary and physical therapy areas, an indoor walking track, free-weights and cardio areas, Les Mills group exercise classes and a child care facility.

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BIOMANUFACTURER SELECTS SANFORD FOR $213 MILLION INVESTMENT San Diego-based Abzena, a life-sciences contract-development and manufacturing company, is investing $213 million in Sanford, where it will open a 117,000-square-foot factory at Central Carolina Enterprise Park, creating 325 jobs. The jobs will have an average annual salary of $63,308, higher than Lee County’s average of $42,516. The state-of-the-art factory will be built in phases. Its first four modular production suites will each be capable of housing two large bioreactors. It will complement Abzena’s United Kingdom and Pennsylvania sites, expanding its early discovery to midphase pharmaceutical production for companies and academic groups worldwide. In mid-April, the state’s Economic Investment Committee approved a Job Development Investment Grant for the project, which is expected to add $1.5 billion to the state’s economy over the next 12 years. If the project meets job creation and investment targets, it would be eligible for as much as $6.9 million over that time, when its jobs are expected to generate more than $45 million in state tax revenue.

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COMMUNITY CLOSE-UP

LEE COUNTY

LEE COUNTY: PERFECTLY POSITIONED IN NORTH CAROLINA • • • • • • •

Anchored by the city of Sanford, with the town of Broadway to the east Located less than 40 minutes from the Research Triangle, Duke University, UNC Chapel Hill and N.C. State University Located 2-1/2 hours from the beach (Wilmington) Located 2-1/2 hours from the mountains (Boone) Easily accesible to major highways - US-1 Expressway, Interstate 40 and I-95 Home to the Raleigh Executive Jetport and active railroads 40 minutes from the Raleigh-Durham International Airport

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Waynesville

SMOKY MOUNTAIN HIGH

+ TALKING POINTS

Set amid farms and rugged terrain, Waynesville’s small-town charm makes it a western N.C. visitor favorite.

WAYN E SV I LLE

10,300

POPULATION

THE BATTLE OF WAYNESVILLE

CONFEDERATE GEN. JAMES GREEN MARTIN SURRENDERED HIS ARMY ON MAY 7, 1865.

2,752 FEET

ELEVATION ABOVE SEA LEVEL ▲Waynesville’s historic downtown is home to several restaurants,

SCENES FOR THE 2016 MOVIE WERE FILMED HERE

LARGEST

N.C. TOWN WEST OF ASHEVILLE

FOLKMOOT

ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL FOLK FESTIVAL FOUNDED IN 1984

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BY BRYAN MIMS

he Great Smoky Mountains have vanished, buried beneath billows of clouds that send water cascading off the storefront awnings of Waynesville. To watch the early-spring deluge wash over the mountain town, an old lovesick tune by Ronnie Milsap, who grew up an hour west in Robbinsville, might earworm its way in. “Smoky Mountain rain keeps on falling …” But the rain fails to dampen the welcoming air of Waynesville, a town of about 10,300 people that serves as the seat of Haywood County. Its open signs on Main Street glow like sunbursts. The Blue Ridge Parkway is a 10-minute drive down the Great Smoky Mountains Expressway, while Great Smoky Mountains National Park is a half-hour’s drive away. America’s most visited national park drew more than 12 million visitors last year, the second-highest total since it opened in 1934. The park, parkway and Pisgah National Forest are the wellsprings from which a robust tourism industry spouts, even in a pandemic. “We were very fortunate in that this was a place that people felt safe coming to,” says Lynn Collins, executive director of the Haywood County Tourism Development Authority. Looking at tax collections from hotels and other lodging, the period from July 2020 through January 2021 was “our seven best months of tourism ever,” she says. “It was mandatory for us to close down, which we did, and then when we opened back up, people just started showing up,” she says. “They came from different markets than we had ever seen before,” such as Texas, Colorado and California. “I think they were just looking for some place to go [where] they could feel safe and be outdoors.”

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MASTERMINDS

boutiques, shops, bars and breweries.

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▲More than 8,000 international performers from 200 countries have participated in Waynesville’s annual Folkmoot fesitval since it was founded in 1984.

THE FLORIDA-TO-CAROLINA PIPELINE

COURTESY OF VISITNCSMOKIES.COM, STATION ON MAIN

The Great Smoky Mountains have long attracted former Sunshine State residents. There’s plenty of evidence on Waynesville’s Main Street. At Green Orchid Soap Co., owner Babs Szczepanski and her husband, Steve, left Florida seven years ago, eventually settling in Waynesville. “The last day I was in Florida, that was it. I never went back,” she says. “If you were to ask me 20 years ago if I would be living on top of a mountain, I would have said you’re crazy.” A few doors down sits vintage sign store Station on Main. Owners Ken and Kelli Todtenhagen moved with their five children from Orlando in 2017 after vacationing in the mountains for years. “Four years ago, I looked at my wife and said, ‘Why don’t we just stay; why don’t we not go back?’” he says. “It’s just nice to get out of the rat race.” Across the street is Birchwood Hall, an upscale restaurant with eclectic dishes such as venison stew and pan-seared trout, where an ex-Floridian will greet you at the bar. Ben Randall, 24, moved from Tampa last year. “I was just following my gut, basically,” he says. “I took a road trip all the way across the country, and I landed in Asheville, and in order to get a cheaper apartment, I settled in Waynesville.” The native mountaineers largely welcome this Florida influx. For decades, Floridians and other folks from flatter lands have

▲Station on Main

vacationed, built second homes, retired and spent money here. “You know, it’s all been a good thing,” says 66-year-old Gail Guy, a lifelong Haywood County resident who works at J. Gabriel Home and Gifts on Main Street. “They’ve invested in our towns from other cities and made it better. They’ve invested in our buildings and upgraded things.” But the ethos shared by natives is to protect the small-town identity — or, more bluntly, to keep Waynesville from becoming too much like Asheville. Let that city 30 miles east have its pizzazz, but let Waynesville burnish its own brand of cool: less cosmopolitan, more down home. “We’ve got our own culture and our own kind of aesthetic here in Waynesville,” says Jesse Fowler, the 28-year-old assistant town manager. “Whenever there’s a new ordinance passed, people start saying we don’t want to wind up turning into Asheville. Waynesville is its own town.”

TACKLING THE REGION’S HIGH HOUSING COSTS

Despite the migration of Floridians to the area, the county hasn’t seen a mountainous rise in population, perhaps because of limited land available for new housing. Haywood County has about 63,000 residents, up by about 4,000 over the past decade, including a few hundred in Waynesville. By comparison, neighboring Buncombe County has added more than 25,000 people in that period and totals about 265,000. The gangbusters real estate market of western North Carolina has also boosted average sales prices in the county. Haywood County’s home values increased 32% over the past three years to about $237,000, according to the Zillow real estate firm. By comparison, Buncombe’s average is nearly $340,000. In 2019, local officials created an incentive policy to encourage the construction of homes for people struggling to afford rents and mortgages, offering property tax breaks for developers. In March, the town’s planning board approved an 84-unit apartment complex

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Waynesville

▲ Frog Level Brewing, left, offers 21 taps, indoor and outdoor dining spaces and live music. Orchard Coffee, top, sells craft coffee beverages and scratch-made baked goods.

A NORTH CAROLINA PIONEER TOWN

Appalachia was wild and remote when Col. Robert Love, a Revolutionary War soldier, founded the village of Mount Prospect in 1809; it later became the seat of the newly formed Haywood County. Love served under Gen. “Mad” Anthony Wayne and, in 1810, renamed the town in his honor. The settlement had only a couple of hundred residents until the railroad arrived in 1884, spurring a population boom. The railroad and depot were built in a part of town known as Frog Level, a name inspired by the low-lying terrain along Richland Creek. These days, Frog Level is a treasured nook of Waynesville. On a brick wall at the corner of Depot and Commerce streets, a mural features a cartoonish frog and the words “Welcome To Historic Frog Level.” Waynesville’s first craft brewery, Frog Level Brewing, opened in 2011, inviting customers to sit out back to watch Richland Creek ripple over the rocks. From spring through fall, bands perform live music on the deck. Local group CCB Beverages purchased the brewery in March 2020, just as the state forced businesses to shut down because of COVID-19. Once restrictions eased, the people poured back in, and local bands followed. “It’s been fantastic,” says Morgan Owle-Crisp, 40, a member of the Cherokee Nation and one of the new owners. She founded

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7 Clans Brewing in 2018, serving her hops alongside Frog Level’s signature suds. “We’ve got a nice little stage back there,” she says. “It’s so crazy. My inbox is filled all the time with people wanting to come play. They just love the chill vibe that we have.” Frog Level is one of four breweries in Waynesville. Boojum Brewing opened on Main Street in 2015. On a rainy weeknight, the taproom and downstairs lounge are bustling. “Waynesville is a great town,” says Braden Dickerson, the 26-year-old manager who moved from Asheville last year. “It’s that kind of town where everybody knows each other.”

TIES TO FARMING AND MANUFACTURING

Complementing the small-town environs of Waynesville, agriculture has a large presence in an area with apple, dairy, wheat, livestock and Christmas tree farms. More than 700 farms in the county reap $22 million in revenue every year, according to the Haywood County Economic Development Council. The county has a significant manufacturing presence that includes the headquarters of Giles Chemical, the largest supplier of Epsom salt in North America, with a plant in the Frog Level area. Sonoco Plastics, a packaging manufacturer based in Hartsville, S.C., has a plant that employs about 100. Ten miles east in Canton, the Evergreen Packaging paper mill employs about 1,000 workers who make coffee cups for Starbucks and others. It’s the county’s largest industrial employer. But the economic life force of Waynesville is found in its mountain vistas and Main Street vigor. The Great Smokies, the mountain drives, the bright reds of fall, the deep greens of summer – they keep the journeyers winding up in Waynesville. They come for the local mountain trout at Sweet Onion Restaurant, the catfish tacos at Firefly, the pheasant breast at Frogs Leap Public House, a latte at Panacea Coffee, and the toffee and T-shirts at Mast General Store. Even when the Smoky Mountain rain keeps falling, Waynesville keeps its warm glow. The clouds always lift, and the Smokies reappear in all their grandeur, always extending a cool embrace, no matter where you’re from. ■

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

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that will include one-bedroom rental rates ranging from $388 to $721 a month. The cost of doing business also often proves more appetizing in Waynesville. Nicolas Peek, the 33-year-old chef and owner of Birchwood Hall, grew up outside Asheville. Former business partners suggested that instead of opening his own restaurant in the city, he should look farther west. “From a business model standpoint, you can get a better building for a lot less money,” he says. He opened Birchwood Hall four years ago, and the menu features sweet-tea-brined fried chicken, apple-cider-brined pork chops, and meatloaf slathered with smoked bourbon barbecue sauce. Nearly all of his ingredients come from farms in the region. “What we’re doing is a little new in Waynesville, doing farm-totable,” he says. “So it’s kind of fun to come and do something early and get in with the farmers.” Peek has a zeal for traditional Southern Appalachian fare. “It’s something old with new techniques — old Appalachian ideas with a little bit of education.”

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