Business North Carolina February 2026

How UNC Health CEO Cristy Page, and 24 other female corporate leaders, wield influence.

6 POINT TAKEN

A family-owned hardware store shows that relationships matter as it bets on Johnston County’s growth.

8 POWER LIST INTERVIEW

Getting fired early in his career motivated John McConnell to run his own show. The former tech exec now heads a major golf-course enterprise.

12 NC TREND

Etihad Airways connects Charlotte to the Arab world; Former military brat strives to fine-tune a key N.C. economic engine; How two N.C. towns differ on pollution control.

76 BRICK + MORTAR

Winston-Salem’s tallest building drew mixed reviews upon its completion in 1995, but remains a vital asset.

SECTIONS

20 ROUND TABLE: ECONOMIC FORECAST

Experts discuss North Carolina’s 2026 business climate and why the state may fare better than the nation.

51 N.C. PORTRAITS: CORPORATE CULTURE

Companies are as diverse as their workforces, but leadership can ensure strong performance by creating effective workplace environments.

64 COMMUNITY CLOSE UP: GREENVILLE AND PITT COUNTY

Education and workforce training are top factors for business growth in a county known for its charming small towns and its affordability.in building a 21st century powerhouse.

WOMEN IN POWER

Twenty-five influential corporate executives offer insights into their careers and their support for emerging leaders.

BY DAVID MILDENBERG AND KEVIN ELLIS

BET ON IT

A global-minded N.C. business is beating the odds as it taps into a surge in online wagering.

BY TED REED AND DAVID MILDENBERG

URBAN RENEWAL

RTP proved North Carolina could attract global companies after its launch in 1959. Now, it’s adapting to a shifting workplace.

BY MIKE MACMILLAN

UP FRONT David Mildenberg

PSTORYTELLING 101

PUBLISHER

Ben Kinney bkinney@businessnc.com

EDITOR David Mildenberg dmildenberg@businessnc.com

MANAGING EDITOR Kevin Ellis kellis@businessnc.com

erhaps the most frequent question I receive as a magazine editor is how do journalists decide what shows up in publications, broadcasts and the internet.

Since the dawn of the printing press, that’s been a common query. An old joke in the newspaper business was that news is whatever the publisher’s spouse saw on his or her morning commute. Surely, it’s a bit more complex.

It’s a more interesting issue as the news business loses influence in an increasingly cynical world. “Fake news” and “enemy of the people” are now in the journalism lexicon, which is a long way from the days of Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley.

The key goal of Business North Carolina’s magazine and daily online report is to shine a light on people and enterprises that are making a major impact on the state. Other goals are to reflect the state’s diverse industries and regions, and to explain compelling trends. It’s an impossible, enjoyable task in a state with more than 11 million residents, each with a story to tell.

My favorite stories inform readers about people and companies they don’t know or understand, but are stirring the drink in important and/or interesting ways. This month’s feature on 25 key female executives is an effort to fill that mission. Stories on bankers Hope Holding Bryant and Kristin Lesher and hospital CEO Cristy Page, among others, are examples of dynamic rainmakers.

Keep this between us, but journalism is particularly intriguing when the subjects don’t want publicity. Mostly, that’s because they are decent folks who just don’t like the limelight. A tiny minority don’t want the world to know of their success. An even tinier fraction want to get away with something. Normal folks call it prying. But journalists get paid to dig and explain.

To be sure, most of the better stories come from eager sources willing to open up. Our January article on the largest singledeath verdict in state history followed a phone call from the lawyer on the winning side. Will Owen knew it was a compelling story, and he addressed every question, including what he thinks of people who despise plaintiff's lawyers.

In short, we love getting pitches, even if deemed self-serving.

What about bias, that pesky issue that inspires constant media criticism? It strikes me as inevitable because we’re all creatures of our environment.

Big-city journalists are going to lean left politically, given they live and work in cities largely dominated by liberal-leaning residents and values. The major media groups reflect their surroundings, and protestations otherwise rarely pass the common sense test.

While a centrist approach once dominated the media, the current landscape is mostly split between organizations with distinct conservative or progressive worldviews. Maintaining a centrist balance is increasingly rare, just like in politics and churches.

Bias also shows up because many journalists view their work in social-justice terms, hoping to correct wrongs. It's a noble mission, fraught with problems. Few journalists are experts on any specific subject. Even if they are, few readers care about a reporter’s opinion. They just want to know what’s happening.

That’s my answer to how stuff shows up. Media credibility rests on understanding one’s biases and remaining open to others’ perspectives.

My goal for 2026 is that our reports avoid the know-it-alls and virtue-signalers, and spotlight those who are advancing the greater good — or folks who just want to tell a good story. ■

ASSOCIATE EDITORS Ray Gronberg rgronberg@businessnc.com

Cathy Martin cmartin@businessnc.com

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Dan Barkin, Mike MacMillan, Ted Reed, Jane Winik Sartwell, Lori D.R. Wiggins

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Cathy Swaney cswaney@businessnc.com

MARKETING COORDINATOR Jennifer Ware jware@businessnc.com

EVENT DIRECTOR Norwood Teague nteague@businessnc.com

ADVERTISING SALES

ACCOUNT DIRECTOR

Melanie Weaver Lynch, eastern N.C. 919-855-9380 mweaver@businessnc.com

ACCOUNT MANAGER Anne Brundage, western N.C. abrundage@businessnc.com

CIRCULATION: 818-286-3106

EDITORIAL: 704-523-6987

REPRINTS: circulation@businessnc.com

OWNERS

Jack Andrews, Frank Daniels III, David Woronoff, in memoriam Frank Daniels Jr.

PUBLISHED BY Old North State Magazines LLC

PRESIDENT David Woronoff BUSINESSNC.COM

POINT TAKEN Dan Barkin

FAMILY STRONG

A hardware store’s succession planning enables a bet on Johnston County’s growth.

There’s a new Hudson’s Hardware & Outdoor Equipment store opening up off N.C. 42 East, about eight miles outside of Clayton. Leigh Hudson, who decided several years ago to build the company’s third store and second in Johnston County, died last February. He wanted to see the steel delivered to the site, which he did before he passed. The family carried on his vision because Hudson trained his successor, grandson Stone Gulley. Gulley, a business grad of NC State, practically grew up in the Garner and Clayton stores, working in high school and college. He is 29.

Gulley was born on Sept. 3, 1996. Two nights later, Hurricane Fran knocked down trees all over Clayton and Garner. Power was out up and down U.S. 70, including at the Hudson’s stores and credit card readers and ATMs.

Hudson and his colleagues handed out chainsaws to customers. “That’s how much he trusted our customers. And that was really where our business kind of hit another level,” says Gulley. “Because he’d

say, ‘All right, here’s a ticket. I’m going to give you this chainsaw to do what you need to do.’”

The day before I talked to Gulley at the Garner store, I visited the new one under construction. When our family arrived in Johnston County, Clayton and its surroundings had a small-town feel, and yet it was close enough to Raleigh for an easy commute. That made Johnston County popular with newcomers to the Triangle. Since 1990, the county’s population has grown from 81,000 to 250,000. A lot of that growth is along N.C. 42 East, and it has reached the Thanksgiving Baptist Church, founded in 1899, next to the new Hudson’s. There’s a Dollar General and a big storage building under construction.

Hudson’s started with Anna and Sam, who met while working at the Methodist Orphanage in Raleigh. In 1958, they bought a store in Garner to sell groceries and, increasingly, hardware. They had two sons, Leigh and Howard. Anna was known as the Seed Lady. Before the season, she would buy vegetable seeds from Wyatt-Quarles nearby, and then put them into little bags “handwrite

on it what it was, the price, and place them in these clear bins,” says Gulley.

In 1985, Leigh and his first wife, Pug — she passed in 2022 — opened the Clayton store, 10 miles down U.S. 70 from the Garner store.

PLAY BALL

By the mid-1990s, the business was facing competition from the big boxes. “That’s when Lowe’s, Home Depot kind of started coming to town, and we had a decision to make. Are we going to lie down and let them come into town and take our business?” Hudson built a new Gamer store next to the original one.

Sam and Anna Hudson started the business in 1958.

Hudson Hardware is in its third generation of family ownership.

“We’re going to play ball. It might not be on the same scale, but still, to this day, you know, we do what we’re good at,” says Gulley. This includes selling animal feed with a staff that knows feed.

Over the last 15 years, Gulley has soaked it all up. He can explain the difference between being an Ace hardware chain, or, like Hudson’s, a Do It Best affiliate. They’re both co-ops that give small guys volume prices. Ace wanted more control during Hudson’s 20 years as a member. “Every Ace store looks very similar. You’re almost a franchise,” he says.

One of Gulley’s two older brothers, Jeffrey, manages the business’ servicing side. “We work on everything that we sell,” Gulley says. “At any given time during the spring, we have 150 to 200 pieces of equipment here to be worked on.” If you have several landscaping crews and a mower goes down, you need it fixed quickly.

“If somebody purchases a mower with us, they have a problem, they bring it right back to us and say, ‘Hey, I’m within this warranty period.’ We have the paperwork when they purchased it. We know the exact date. We know they have kept up with their service like they’re supposed to, all the records of that, so we can go to bat, and we’ve got the relationship with Toro.”

SUCCESSION PLAN

The growth in Johnston County made the third store logical. What brought it together was Leigh Hudson’s network. He was a district governor in the Rotary. Clayton declared a “Leigh Hudson Day.” He got the Order of the Long Leaf Pine. He had many friends.

A couple of his friends, developers James Lipscomb and Barry Woodard, founders of HomeTowne Realty, knew Hudson was thinking of expanding. They told Hudson they were looking at a project at the intersection of N.C. 42 and Thanksgiving Fire Road.

“Leigh wanted to expand, but maybe the timing wasn’t exactly right,” recalls Gulley, “but they came to him.” Barry Woodard, a longtime family friend, said, “‘We want something to anchor this shopping center that we’re envisioning. And we can’t think of a better business than yours.’”

Gulley was nearing graduation when Leigh Hudson told him that he wanted him as his successor. Gulley’s two older brothers had started jobs outside the business, and his father, who had been in operations, had other interests. Hudson was looking to reduce his role to be able to care for Pug.

“I’ve got a lot of buddies that work in RTP,” says Gulley. “That kind of thing, working retail and working for your family hardware business it’s not the most flashy thing in the world. But I enjoyed it. I like the people. I kind of had the personality for it and the drive. So we had that conversation. I said, ‘Yeah, absolutely.”

Leigh Hudson was able to manage succession and launch the construction of a third store while dealing with the death of his wife and his own battle with cancer, beginning in 2022. Having Gulley as operations manager helped.

The fellow putting up that storage building, Kent Alexander, is building the new Hudson’s. It will be bigger, at around 34,000 square feet, than each of the first two stores, which have some 80 employees combined.

‘THIS IS GONNA WORK’

It’s been a challenging few years for Hudson’s, with the passing of who Gulley called “the patriarch of our business.” When Hudson died, it was natural to ask questions like, “Are we early enough on in this project to where it might make sense to not do it? Can we do this? And the answer was yes.”

And the reason goes back to the relationships. “Because of the partners and because of, you know, KS Bank and our builder, Alexander, these people rallied around us. And the way that Leigh succession-planned, I had relationships with these people. I didn’t have to walk into their office and say, ‘Hey, nice to meet you. I’m Stone Gulley, you probably don’t know who I am from Adam.’ They knew me. I had relationships.”

“It was a tough, tough couple months there, just from an employee standpoint, to say, ‘Is the business even going to be able to withstand this happening?’ He’s been the sole owner for 25 years. But I could confidently go to our department heads and say, ‘We’re good. We got it. Our family is all in on this. We have the community to rally around us. And this is gonna work.’” ■

Veteran journalist Dan Barkin writes the NC Military Report newsletter for Business NC. He can be reached at dbarkin53@gmail.com.

The late Leigh Hudson at the new store site in Selma.

JOHN MCCONNELL

STRAIGHT DOWN THE MIDDLE

McConnell Golf CEO John McConnell joined High Point University President Nido Qubein in the Power List interview, a partnership for discussions with influential leaders. The interview was edited for clarity.

Most people begin their success in life because they’ve done something great. But not you, you were fired. And that was the beginning of your success story, right?

at’s correct. I was not red because I was not talented in my eld of sales. I was red because I really didn’t believe in the strategic vision our company was headed in. And I made a point of telling management that very explicitly and they decided I was no longer needed.

From that point in time, I made a personal decision that I would never put the future of my career in the hands of anyone other than myself.

So they told you, “Thank you very much. Now you can go home. Don’t come back tomorrow.” And you went home and you decided to do what?

To start my own company because I realized that the market that we had been working in, which was automation systems for physician o ces, had a future. And that I knew some talented people that I’d worked with in the past, called them up and said, “Hey, I wanna form this company. Why don’t you come to work with us and become a shareholder?” And they did.

John McConnell says the only college course he dropped while attending Virginia Tech University was computer programming. He went on to start, run and sell two medical software businesses that made him among the state’s most successful entrepreneurs. Now, he’s best known as the founder-CEO of McConnell Golf, the largest owner of private golf courses in the Southeast. Its 17 courses are in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. The N.C. courses are in Asheville, Charlotte, Durham, Greenville, Greensboro, New London, Raleigh, Wilmington and Wilson. More than 7,500 families hold memberships.

Then you founded anther software company?

We founded one and we actually acquired a second small company later in my career. Our rst company focused on selling back-o ce systems to physicians. We became the largest company in the nation doing that.

At our second company, we focused on selling electronic medical records to physicians and hospitals. at was an area that I had been very keenly interested in for many years but the timing was never appropriate for doctors to eliminate their medical charts or their paper charts.

How does one go from software to owning golf courses, starting with Raleigh Country Club in 2003?

It’s not planned. I’ve always been enamored with golf. I started playing when I was about 13 or 14 years old. e thing I liked about the sport was you had no one else to blame. You hit the ball, you get the result of your talent and there’s no one else to blame.

I really enjoy that as an independent-type person.

I was the CEO of a company, A4 Systems, and the Raleigh Country Club membership had borrowed $6 million and they did not have the ability to pay it back. I was not a member, but I’d played the course. It was Donald Ross’ last design. I truly thought it was one of the best golf courses I’d ever played.

Long story short, a developer group that purchased the note from the bank was waiting on the club to default. ey would end up with the property, and they had no interest in golf.

I came in and bought the golf course with the membership’s blessing. ree or four years later, I sold the so ware company and started focusing on golf acquisitions.

How does one manage a golf course?

You start with a lot of capital to own the brick and mortar and to make the investment. Most of the courses that I’ve acquired were not in great nancial situations. e industry in general has been in a decline for many years. ere was an oversupply of golf courses versus the number of players to support those courses.

Our courses have needed capital investment and more of a strategic vision. Our concept was we will have properties in a geographical footprint and if you join one course, then you have access and privileges at all of our properties. at’s one of our competitive advantages.

The other competitive advantage we offer versus a memberowned club is that we have no assessments. We make any capital improvements. Raleigh Country Club had about $6 million in renovations, and the members paid no additional money for that improvement. The members don’t own any stock in the country club. They gave up their equity whenever we purchased these properties.

Is it supply and demand, or is it leadership that causes golf clubs to succeed or fail?

About 5% of the clubs in this nation do extremely well and are on solid financial footing every year. Carolina Country Club in Raleigh is an example with a big waiting list, a big initiation fee to join.

I call those perfect environments, with high net-worth individuals surrounding these clubs and old established neighborhoods. Those tend to be the ones that can survive.

You bought these clubs one at a time and thought, “I can turn them around. I can make the return on investment here worthwhile.” What made you think so?

I realized when I bought Raleigh Country Club that you can never make any significant money owning just one club because of efficiency, scale, management and talent. One of the real advantages we offer when we acquire a club is we can reduce the back office cost. It’s the same thing I did in software.

The other thing I realized very quickly is the country club business was woefully backward in its automation. So we went out and bought a software company to not only automate our organization, but we also sold to other entities or other clubs. Automation has been a big key for us to reduce costs.

When you bought the first club in Raleigh, were you criticized by members, or did they see you as the savior?

I think I was viewed as a savior. However, one of my best friends gave me some great sage advice on the front end. “You know John, country clubs are the first people to know that the recession is coming. And they’re the last people to know the recession is over.”

It is a discretionary product that we offer, a membership. It’s not like software. We had them locked in for a number of years. Whereas in golf, I can drop a membership today. Our focus is making sure that they get value every day they step on the property.

How do banks look at financing the purchase of golf clubs?

Historically, they did financing because many of the members were good customers of that bank. In today’s world, banks hardly ever want to touch a golf course. Most of our competitors are private equity firms that have started to recognize the value of clubs and golf courses. They’re now providing the capital for most of these other businesses.

What is your view of risk management? How does John McConnell manage risks?

I’ve got two principles that have driven me in my career. My first sales job was with a large computer company, and the sales manager says, “You know John, people talk about security. Let me tell you what security is. Security is being a good sales guy, because you can get a job tomorrow.”

The funny thing is that when I got fired, within 48 hours, I had two job offers. He was right. I could always provide for my family.

I view risk management as, “What is the worst thing that can happen to this company?” That’s how I manage risk. Can I deal with it? How can I plan around that?

What is your long-term outlook for your company?

The advantage or disadvantage that I have is that we are a family-owned business. The other two companies that I founded and acquired had outside investors. So I felt like I had a sincere responsibility to make sure that we built those companies and maximized shareholder value,

Whereas in this company, I’ve taken a much longer-term vision. I’m really not worried as much about how much money we make, but what is the value we’re building for the future.

Hopefully this will be a second-, third-, fourth-generation business if I can do things successfully.

What are the one or two most common complaints that members at golf clubs send your way or send your management’s way?

The rough is too high because one of the things at McConnell Golf is we challenge our players. We want championship courses on a daily basis. Oftentimes, members don’t appreciate that. They want zero rough.

The other most common denominator is food quality.

The North Carolina Entrepreneurial Hall of Fame inducted you as a distinguished member. Do you remember that night?

I remember that night very vividly. When I moved to North Carolina, there was no venture capital. Our first company that we established, we went down and got a bank loan for $25,000. My partner and I, along with our wives, went down and signed over the deed of trust for our homes to guarantee that $25,000 loan.

In today’s world, a kid can come out of MBA school with a business plan, and if it looks good on paper, might get a $10 million valuation.

I was at the beginning of where entrepreneurs were recognized as being leaders in business. Because when I came out of college, you worked for a big company, that was your career path.

How does it feel to have a PGA tournament played at your Sedgefield course in Greensboro?

It’s kinda like a kid in the candy shop. You see all these big-time athletes and stars on TV and you’re rubbing elbows with them. You know a lot of personal things about them after you get to know these players. There are maybe 45 PGA events each year, and we host one. That’s a unique position to have as a golf entity.

I really sense how good we are when I go to the back of the building, and we’ve got 12 corporate chefs that come together for this event, and they’re preparing food for the players, for the hospitality events, and they’re working as teams and I’m going, “I cannot believe we do this.”

As a company, it gives all of us a sense of pride. As an owner, I feel like I’m privileged to have been part of this. Thanks to the Sedgefield members for believing in McConnell Golf and turning over this historic property to our company.

When you visit a course, do you catch yourself looking around continually to see what has to be done? How can it be improved?

As a kid, I grew up on a farm. And every Sunday morning, my dad would get in his old pickup truck and go out and drive along the farm and just look and see what we’re going to do the next week.

And every time I’m on a golf course or in a club, I see things that need to be improved. I’ve got a notebook that I carry with me and I jot down items that we should look at, fix this, send it out to the management teams. I’m the secret shopper. ■

BANKING ON NORTH CAROLINA’S BRILLIANCE IN 2026

REFLECTIONS ON A YEAR OF UNCERTAINTY AND RESILIENCE

While business leaders and commentators have widely characterized 2025 as the year of uncertainty, PNC’s Jim Hansen prefers to define the year as one of resilience.“2025 proved to the business community that economic uncertainty doesn’t inherently translate to negative business outcomes,” says Raleigh-based Hansen, who serves as PNC’s regional president for Eastern Carolinas and Southeast territory executive. “When navigating economic uncertainty, many successful organizations take the opportunity to develop solutions to address unique business challenges, implement operational improvements and really focus on the variables they can control.”

Hansen’s perspective – that challenging economic environments can ultimately lead to stronger businesses – was among the key findings of PNC’s Inside the Minds of CFOs survey, which in 2025 polled 300 U.S.-based chief financial officers (CFOs) to understand how uncertainty in the broad economic outlook was impacting their business strategy.

Approximately 70% of CFOs surveyed indicated that uncertainty surrounding tariffs and the economic outlook had positively affected their companies, as the fluctuating environment forced their operations to become nimbler and more innovative.

“Rapidly changing or highly dynamic environments can expose risks or areas for improvement that may not be as pronounced during periods of relative calm,” says Hansen. “In this way, economic uncertainty can shine a bright light on challenges that may require new solutions and strategies. These are the times when businesses lean in to adaptability and agility in ways that have the power to transform entire industries – and 2025 was filled with examples of that valuable growth mindset at work.”

THE NORTH CAROLINA ADVANTAGE

The solid economy that underpins North Carolina’s success in business remained strong in 2025, with the state continuing to attract companies, jobs, population growth and economic development opportunities. 2025 was, in fact, a record year for job announcements in N.C.

“North Carolina’s economy is regaining momentum,” says Jay Hawkins, senior economist for The PNC Financial Services Group. “Notably, payroll growth in North Carolina accelerated in 2025 and easily outpaced the nation.”

N.C. nonfarm payrolls were up 1.6% in September 2025 compared to 0.8% for the nation on a year-earlier basis, marking the eighth consecutive month in which North Carolina outperformed the U.S., with gains led by healthcare, professional services and construction.

“The comparatively faster job growth kept North Carolina’s unemployment rate below that of the U.S. for the last 14 months through September 2025,” says Hawkins. “And while the jobless rate rose from 3.4% in June 2024 to 3.7% in September 2025, that is still 40 basis points below the U.S. rate of 4.1%.”

LOOKING AHEAD

Hawkins confirms North Carolina’s economy is expected to maintain its momentum in 2026, with payrolls expanding at a faster pace than in the region and nation. “Healthcare, finance and technology will drive near-term growth due to significant investments in data centers, hospitals and banking,” he says. “Longer term, outsize population growth and a constant flow of investment will keep the North Carolina economy a top performer.”

For Hansen, North Carolina’s lofty accolades, including its selection as CNBC’s #1 state for business for three out of the past four years, further validate his confidence in the state’s

This is the forty-first in a series of informative monthly articles for North Carolina businesses from PNC in collaboration with BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA magazine.

economy, business-friendly environment and skilled workforce. But he is just as enthused about recent efforts to help advance the economies of North Carolina’s rural counties.

“Having spent time in all 100 North Carolina counties, I recognize the opportunity to build capacity for small businesses and enhance the quality of life for North

Carolina’s rural communities, which contribute significantly to the vibrancy of this great state,” says Hansen, who points to efforts such as the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond’s November 2025 launch of the Center for Rural Economies, an initiative dedicated to advancing economic opportunity and resilience in rural communities across the Fifth District, of which the Carolinas are part.

While it is too early in the year to assign a word or theme to 2026, clarity and stability are among the descriptors Hansen can see coming to life over the next several months – and he is working alongside his PNC colleagues to help clients throughout North Carolina find their own version of these attributes through PNC’s solutions, strategies and insights.

“Regardless of the economic environment, I am confident North Carolina is well positioned for long-term success in business, innovation and quality of life,” says Hansen. “As a banker who grew up in North Carolina – and having witnessed its astounding evolution and meteoric growth – I’m committed to playing a role in our state’s continued success and growth.”

Jim Hansen Jay Hawkins

DIFFERENT STROKES, DIFFERENT FOLKS

Two N.C. cities pick contrasting strategies when pressed to reduce environmental harm.

By Jane Winik Sartwell

Burlington and Asheboro are less than 50 miles apart. But when it comes to addressing the pollution each has caused in the downstream drinking water on their respective rivers, the Haw and Deep rivers, the two cities couldn’t be more di erent.

One worked through embarrassment and denial to try to x the problem, contributing to groundbreaking science. e other is ghting tooth-and-nail in court against environmental groups.

What happens in each city and its rivers will help determine the future of drinking water quality along the Cape Fear watershed.

Asheboro, like many N.C. municipalities, has contracts with nearby land lls and industrial factories, such as the plastics manufacturer StarPet. e companies pay the city to treat the wastewater from their facilities.

e city treats the water, but some of the chemical pollutants cannot be removed with traditional treatment. One example is 1,4-dioxane, an odorless, colorless industrial solvent generated in the production of plastics, laundry detergent, antifreeze and shampoo. e chemical is likely to cause cancer in humans, according to the EPA.

Asheboro regularly dumps 1,4-dioxane into the Deep River, which ows through Randolph, Chatham and Lee counties before joining with the Haw River, where the two smaller rivers converge to form the Cape Fear River, a source of drinking water for 1.5 million North Carolinians. In November, the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality noti ed residents of a discharge of 1,4-dioxane from Asheboro at a concentration nearly 30 times what is considered safe.

Downstream water treatment plants, including the Wilmington-based Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, have no ability to remove the chemical from the rivers. Doing so would require a massive investment into new technology on the downstream ratepayers’ dime.

ere are no discharge limits on 1,4-dioxane. Asheboro can keep disposing of as much as they want. at was decided last year by former N.C. administrative law judge Donald van der Vaart, when Asheboro, Greensboro and Reidsville argued in court for their right to continue dumping the chemical. Van der Vaart struck limits from the cities’ permits.

e Southern Environmental Law Center sued the city of Asheboro under the Clean Water Act, and now, the EPA is involved. e center believes that Asheboro has a legal mandate to stop discharging chemicals into drinking water. e EPA conducted a public hearing about the city’s pollution in October.

“Asheboro’s pollution is against the law,” says Jean Zhuang, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center. “ ey are bene ting nancially from taking on this pollution. at would be ne if they were adequately using their authority to make sure that that pollution wasn’t going to be harming people downstream.”

e EPA has o ered no timeline for its decision on whether to take over the permit and put limits on Asheboro’s 1,4-dioxane discharges into the river. At the EPA public hearing in October, the Asheboro city attorney spoke in support of the city’s right to continue dumping. He was the only person at the event to do so.

“ e city of Asheboro has an active permit and is in compliance,” City Manager Donald Duncan says. “ ere are no established, legal limits on 1,4-dioxane.”

Asheboro’s defensive response isn’t the only avenue available for N.C. cities accused of putting the public health of residents in other parts of the state at risk. Burlington shows that another reality is possible.

DROPPING THE DEFENSES

Like Asheboro, Burlington makes money processing the industrial wastewater. In Burlington, it’s primarily textile mills rather than plastics manufacturing.

When state regulators began requiring sampling for PFAS in 2019, Burlington found extremely elevated levels downstream of their wastewater treatment plants. PFAS, commonly referred to as “forever chemicals,” are a group of manmade chemicals linked to adverse e ects on human health. Burlington discharges its wastewater into the Haw River.

Just a few months a er these rst tests, Burlington received a notice of intent to sue from the Southern Environmental Law Center.

“When we got the notice of intent to sue, we were defensive,” Burlington City Manager Bob Patterson says. “We weren’t doing anything wrong. We were following our permits. We weren’t intentionally discharging PFAS. It felt like we were being attacked.”

Rather than litigate like Asheboro, Burlington decided to cooperate.

The city worked with an engineering consultant and researchers at Duke University to identify the sources of the chemicals: Elevate Textiles and Shawmut, two major textile mills that use PFAS to treat their fabric, and two nearby landfills. They also discovered that a process the city was using called Zimpro, which uses heat and pressure to treat wastewater, was unwittingly converting PFAS precursors into more dangerous forms of the chemical.

Wielding the Clean Water Act, the city worked with the two textile mills on minimization plans to reduce the amount of discharged PFAS. Ultimately, each mill transitioned to PFAS-free chemistry in early 2024.

DO SOMETHING ABOUT POLLUTION

Last year, Duke University published the results of its scientific work in Burlington. The analysis could help other municipalities identify the sources of PFAS in their wastewater, especially the stealthy precursor compounds.

“What Burlington did here just shows how powerful these municipalities are and how much authority they have to control the pollution coming from their industries,” Zhuang says. “Burlington recognized the potential impact of that pollution on communities downstream, and they were willing to work with us and Duke University to identify that source and get their industry to do something about that pollution.

“Asheboro absolutely should follow suit, and require StarPet to adequately control their 1,4-dioxane pollution because they have full authority and ability to do so.”

The situation in Burlington is not perfect. The city is still discharging some PFAS from its wastewater treatment plants, meaning it ends up in the rivers. The landfills have not figured out a way to minimize or treat PFAS on site. It’s a problem plaguing landfills across the country.

Burlington also found elevated levels of 1,4-dioxane in its wastewater.

Using the methodology from the PFAS study, the city was able to identify Apollo Chemical as the culprit. The city worked with the company to create a plan to capture as much of the chemical on-site as possible, and send it elsewhere for treatment. Apollo no longer discharges the chemical to Burlington.

“Not only are other wastewater plants in other places using our PFAS study, but we ourselves are actually using it as a guideline,” Patterson says.

Burlington is going a step further to combat PFAS pollution. Cary-based Invicta Water has developed a patented technology to destroy PFAS, rather than just filtering them out. Over this winter and spring, Burlington is volunteering to be a proving ground for Invicta.

Burlington and Asheboro face similar challenges. One chose cooperation, the other chose court. For the millions of North Carolinians who drink from rivers downstream from their treated water, the difference matters. ■

Jane Winik Sartwell is a writer for Carolina Public Press, an independent, in-depth and investigative nonprofit news service for North Carolina. This story was previously published at www. carolinapublicpress.org

FOR THE DEFENSE

A former Air Force officer and military brat promotes a key N.C. economic engine.

THREE PRIORITIES

Collaboration, transition support and economic opportunity top Mallette’s priorities in a job she started in January 2025.

“Sector collaboration is rst,” she says. “It took me just a couple of weeks in this job to realize there are so many groups and organizations that are doing wonderful work to serve and support military veteran families, but they aren’t all talking to each other or sharing best practices.”

By Dan Barkin

Jocelyn Mitnaul Mallette, the secretary of the North Carolina Department of Military and Veterans

A airs, has a job that touches the lives of 95,000 active-duty war ghters stationed in North Carolina. It also includes their families and the 615,000 veterans who live in the state.

Mallette’s background is well-suited to the position. She came from a military family and attended eight di erent K-12 schools as her father’s assignments took him to new bases. A U.S. Air Force Academy graduate, she spent a decade as an intelligence o cer and lawyer in the Air Force.

She also experienced the challenge of nding a job a er leaving the military. Each year, 20,000 service members transition out of North Carolina’s bases. Even with a law degree and professional connections, Mallette describes her transition as “terrifying.”

When she le Goldsboro’s Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in 2016, a law school friend helped her get a job a er a few anxious months as a state Supreme Court clerk. at led to a career at the McGuireWoods law rm. Many separating service members have far fewer advantages.

HUB FOR MILITARY AND VETERANS

e General Assembly created the cabinet-level agency a decade ago, re ecting the defense industry’s role as the secondlargest industry sector in North Carolina, behind agriculture. It’s intended “to serve as a hub for all things military and veterans and [their] families,” says Mallette.

Military families constantly come and go because the services move members to new assignments. is means getting kids into new schools and dealing with military spouse professional licensure issues. Many veterans need help navigating healthcare and other bene ts, transitioning into careers or colleges. North Carolina wants veterans to settle here, join the workforce and attend colleges a er leaving military service.

Mallette draws upon her bumpy experience when looking at military members transitioning to civilian life. Currently, the agency’s transition support department consists of a single sta member. e department has asked the General Assembly for funding to expand, with the goal of closing what service organizations call “the deadly gap,” the year a er a service member leaves the military.

Active-duty service members have higher suicide rates than civilians, and veterans have a higher rate than active duty, she says. “We can make the deadly gap less deadly or close it altogether,” Mallette says. “But when we treat transition like a one-size- ts-all approach, it’s just not helpful or productive.” One goal is for every transitioning family to have a one-on-one appointment with a veteran service o cer.

“So that you sit down and someone can say, ‘OK, thanks for your service. What do you want to do now? Do you want to start a veteran-owned business? Does your spouse want to go back to school? Let me tell you about the GI Bill. Let me tell you about the schools you can apply to in North Carolina for free, that will give you in-state tuition.”

ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY AND WORKFORCE

e department works with Commerce and the state’s Military Business Center to ensure federal defense contracts continue to come to North Carolina, but it also wants to help veteran-owned businesses.

She wants employers to understand the transferable skills veterans bring. “You don’t hire infantrymen at Cisco, and you don’t hire aircra mechanics at SAS,” she says, “but you hire people who are punctual and professional and work well under pressure, and are good team members and are mission-oriened.”

e same applies to military spouses.

Even if employees stay only a few years, she says, companies bene t from their resilience and leadership. ■

Jocelyn Mitnaul Mallette fires a simulated Mark 19 grenade launcher during a June visit to Camp Lejenue.

NC TREND ››› Economic Development

Aside from India, Etihad’s ights to ve cities in Saudi Arabia facilitate travel for petroleum-industry executives and partners in architecture rms bene ting from the Kingdom’s massive investment in tourism infrastructure. e new Saudi hotels need professional services for their design, trucks to move construction materials and furniture to ll the rooms. at expansion provides opportunities for North Carolina furniture, lm and other industries, o cials say.

DESERT DESTINY

Charlotte lands its first direct flight to the flourishing Middle East

By Robert La Bua

Etihad Airways’ plans to launch nonstop service between Charlotte and Abu Dhabi in March mark a major expansion for the national airline of the United Arab Emirates and the world’s sixth-busiest airport.

“We’re excited to be the rst airline from our region to serve this market,” Etihad Airways CEO Antonoaldo Neves said when announcing the plan last year. ey are not the only ones.

“Etihad’s arrival is a milestone for CLT as we continue expanding our global reach,” says Haley Gentry, CEO of Charlotte Douglas International Airport. “ is new route provides our passengers with greater access to international destinations and strengthens Charlotte’s role as a key gateway for global travel.”

Abu Dhabi is the UAE’s capital city, with a population of more than 2.5 million, while the region has another 1 millionplus residents. Fewer than 100,000 people lived in the city in 1960. e UAE’s vast oil and gas reserves, which have been extracted since the 1960s, provide one of the world’s highest economic outputs per capita and a $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund. Still, an estimated 19% of citizens live in poverty.

Etihad Airways’ new route also facilitates travel to myriad destinations beyond the region. Etihad has connectivity to destinations across Asia, especially India. Etihad ies to 11 cities in the world’s most populous nation, including Bengaluru and Hyderabad, two cities that have become major hubs for information technology.

“ is is exciting news for our Indian community,” says Lal Vishin, president of the Indian Association of Charlotte. “Travel to India is o en essential for family reunions, cultural connections, and business opportunities. e new nonstop service to Abu Dhabi could make it easier for them to stay connected with their roots and explore new business prospects.”

In the current political climate, foreign businesses are eager to establish a domestic presence either directly or in partnership with local entities. A recent memorandum of understanding signed by the North Carolina Chamber and the Abu Dhabi Chamber augurs well for a future of collaboration between the Tar Heel State and the emirate, one of seven that constitute the United Arab Emirates. “Charlotte is a destination that has a very fast-growing economy, which is linked to the growth that Abu Dhabi is having at the same time,” says Adria Rabassa, Etihad’s director of network and scheduling.

Gulf countries are already investing heavily in the U.S. Etihad bought 28 Boeing aircra in 2025, a $14 billion investment in the big aircra manufacturer. e airline reported record pro t of $463 million during the rst nine months last year, with revenue of $5.9 billion driven by its eet of 115 aircra .

Etihad’s 787-9 Dreamliners will depart Charlotte Douglas four times a week. On return ights, Abu Dhabi’s Zayed International Airport is a rarity in having a U.S. Customs pre-clearance facility, enabling travelers to clear U.S. Customs before they board their ights, and walk o the plane and head for connecting ights without worrying about long lines for passport checks. American Airlines has a partner agreement with Etihad that allows passengers to earn bene ts in its frequent- yer program.

e six countries of the Arabian Gulf Cooperation Council emphasize a priority interest in commerce, not con ict. ey o en criticize European and American media for not making that distinction.

Abu Dhabi’s growing tourism economy includes the Ferrari World and SeaWorld theme parks, the luxury of Emirates Palace, and the opulent Qasr al Sarab desert resort. Disney’s rst theme park in the region is expected to open in Abu Dhabi by 2032.

On New Year’s Eve, Six Flags opened a theme park in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Six Flags Qiddiya City is owned by a company backed by the country’s public investment fund, with the Charlotte-based company providing management services. ■

NC TREND ›››

CHARLOTTE

CHARLOTTE

New York-based CannonDesign acquired Jenkins Peer Architects. The 32 architects at Jenkins Peer will remain with the firm. NC State graduates Joddy Peer and Tyke Jenkins formed their business in 1978.

Winston-Salem based Truliant Federal Credit Union bought naming rights for the Queen City’s 20,000-seat capacity outdoor music venue, succeeding PNC, which had held the moniker since 2013. Beverly Hills, California-based Live Nation Entertainment owns the venue, which will now be called Truliant Amphitheater.

Elon University plans to open a fulltime law school on the Queens University campus in the fall of 2027. Alamance County-based Elon announced it would merge with the smaller Queens last year. Elon already has a law school in Greensboro and opened a part-time law school in the Queen City in 2024. The new law school will start with about 75 students with plans to grow to about 175 students over the next few years.

The Charlotte Hornets will retire the No. 30 jersey worn by Dell Curry at a March 19 game. Curry was an original Hornet in 1988 and played with the team for 10 years.

Kelli Ferry succeeded Frank Emory as chief legal officer at Novant Health, the state’s second-largest hospital system. Emory had held the post for seven years.

CLAREMONT

Charlotte-based Coley Home, a direct-to-customer furniture company, plans to invest $9 million to create 45 jobs at its facility where it currently has about 80 employees. The expansion will add a showroom and office to showcase products.

CONCORD

Atrium Health bought the naming firms for a new athletic center opened by Hendrick Motorsports. The 35,000-square-foot Atrium Health Motorsports Athletic Center is an initial partnership between the state’s biggest healthcare system and Hendrick Motorsports, which is a dominant force on the NASCAR racing circuit and has about 500 employees.

DAVIDSON

Davidson College received a $4 million federal grant to create a Deliberative Citizenship Network aimed at promoting civil discourse on controversial topics. The four-year award, the largest competitive government grant in the college’s history, will support students and educators at 100 campuses nationwide through Davidson’s Institute for Public Good.

GASTONIA

R.O.’s Bar-B-Cue ceased operations of its restaurant and food trucks on Dec. 27. It has been a Gaston County staple since 1946. Company owners blamed “sustained economic factors.” They will sell coleslaw and pimento cheese products at area grocers.

HUNTERSVILLE

Metrolina Greenhouses, which supplies major retailers including Walmart, Home Depot and Lowe’s in 19 states, merged with Tennessee-based South Central Growers. Metrolina Greenhouses co-CEO Abe Van Wingerden will remain CEO of the combined companies, with co-CEO Art VanWingerden as chief operating officer. The much-larger Metrolina has 766 full-time employees and 1,800 seasonal workers.

ROCKINGHAM

The International Hot Rod Association purchased Rockingham Speedway, pledging facility upgrades and added entertainment. The NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series event during Easter weekend will anchor plans to revive the venue as a multi-use destination.

EAST

GREENVILLE

North Carolina updated its film grant guidelines to allow reality competition shows, clearing the way for MrBeast’s “Beast Games Season 2” to film mostly in the state. Producers spent at least $65 million, shot nine of 10 episodes in the Tar Heel State, and employed an estimated 630 workers. MrBeast has a reported valuation of $5 billion.

KINSTON

Private jet company flyExclusive signed an agreement with Starlink to install the communications service on its planes and provide sales, installation and support service on other aircraft. Starlink is part of SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk. Shares of flyExclusive more than doubled on the news, but then retreated to near previous levels. flyExclusive also leased office space in Raleigh, which officials said would help recruit talented workers.

MOREHEAD CITY

Silvi Cement will build a bulk cement import terminal to expand capacity to at least five times current volumes. The project includes two enclosed 100,000-ton storage domes with truck and rail loading, modernizing operations.

SMITHFIELD

KS Trust and Wealth Management rebranded as Kestrel Wealth Management. It’s a division of KS Bank, which is based here. The new name reflects a focus on clarity, strategy and long-term planning, officials said.

WILMINGTON

Avelo Airlines will close its operating bases at Wilmington International Airport and Raleigh Durham International, resulting in the combined loss of 160 jobs. But the airline started seasonal nonstop service to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, marking the local airport’s first international service.

WILSON

Johnson & Johnson will make a multimillion-dollar investment in a second drug manufacturing facility here that could employ as many as 500 people. The New Jersey-based healthcare company has pledged $55 billion in U.S. drug manufacturing through 2029. The new facility here expects to produce medicines for oncology and neurological diseases. Construction is underway on a $2 billion facility announced in 2024 that is expected to employ 420 workers.

TRIAD

GREENSBORO

California startup JetZero raised $175 million in financing, accelerating the development of its proposed futuristic airplane. Construction of its factory here is slated to start this summer. The initial flight of the demonstrator for the commercial, all-wing plane is scheduled for 2027.

HVAC supplier Hoffman & Hoffman’s plans to invest $40 million to create 131 jobs to expand its headquarters and bring it to one location for the first time in recent history. The company, which started here in 1947, employs about 1,300 workers across five businesses, including 739 in North Carolina.

Dr. Paul Krakovitz will become CEO of Cone Health effective March 16. He has been an executive-in-residence at Cressey & Company, a Chicago-based privateequity firm.

Jet It, once a fast-growing fractional private-jet operator, filed for Chapter 7 liquidation bankruptcy with $36.25 million in liabilities and about $1.16 million in assets. The company suspended operations in 2023 following a lawsuit with Honda Aircraft.

HIGH POINT

Lumos CEO Brian Stading will retire at the end of the first quarter. He joined the fiber broadband provider in 2022 and led a rapid expansion, overseeing nearly 700,000 home passings. He also oversaw the company’s acquisition by T-Mobile, which began a CEO search and promoted David Smith to COO and Josh Mayn to chief network officer.

KERNERSVILLE

French tiremaking giant Michelin plans to acquire specialty textile maker TexTech Industries from Arlington Capital Partners in a deal expected to close by mid2026. Founded in 1904, Tex-Tech employs about 240 workers in the Triad and serves aerospace, defense and medical markets.

WINSTON-SALEM

Tennessee-based national law firm Baker Donelson added 11 lawyers to its new office. The attorneys came from the Akerman firm, which decided this summer to pull out of the Triad and consolidate in Charlotte. Baker Donelson

NC TREND ›››

opened its first North Carolina office in Raleigh in October 2021 and added a Charlotte office in 2024.

Cook & Boardman Group acquired Spaceworks Architectural Interiors of Boston, which operates as Arch Street Glass. Terms were not disclosed. The deal extends the architectural door maker’s acquisition run since Platinum Equity took a majority stake in 2023.

TRIANGLE

CLAYTON

Nordisk will manufacture the newly approved pill form of its weight-loss drug Wegovy at its facility here, with final packaging in Research Triangle Park. The FDA-approved oral GLP-1 drug expands treatment options. Novo Nordisk has invested billions in its Johnston County operations.

DURHAM

LabConnect, a contract research organization with more than 700 employees, moved its headquarters from Johnson City, Tennessee, to Durham to take advantage of its strong life sciences industry.

Duke Health hired Dr. Bradley Marino, a nationally recognized leader in pediatric cardiology and critical care medicine, to chair its Department of Pediatrics. The move takes effect March 20. Marino now chairs Cleveland Clinic’s Children’s Institute Department of Heart, Vascular & Thoracic. The addition comes as Duke plans to build North Carolina’s Children’s, a freestanding hospital, in partnership with UNC Health.

The Looma Project raised $13 million to expand its in-store screen technology, bringing total funding to about $30 million. The company is rolling out its platform to 600 Kroger stores nationwide. It has installed more than 7,000 screens, up from 800 in 2023.

Wolfspeed’s $5 billion Siler City plant will supply silicon carbide components for Toyota Motor North America’s battery plant in Randolph County. Wolfspeed’s products will power EV charging systems. Wolfspeed expects to create more than 1,800 jobs at the site.

HOLLY SPRINGS

Genentech is more than doubling its investment, to $2 billion, at its plant under construction It now expects to employ at least 500 people to make antiobesity drugs. It is part of Switzerland’s Roche Group

MORRISVILLE

Millennium Print Group, the largest U.S. printer of Pokémon cards, signed a 1.27 million-square-foot lease at the Spark LS campus — the largest U.S. leasing deal of 2025. Developers plan expansions and a new manufacturing facility. An entity tied to New Yorkbased Fortress Investment Group purchased the Spark LS campus for $226.5 million.

RALEIGH

Virginia-based TowneBank completed its acquisition of Raleighbased Dogwood State Bank, expanding its North Carolina presence. Dogwood branches will operate as a division of TowneBank until late this year. Former Dogwood CEO Steven Jones is president of the Carolinas.

Investment executives Rob Ragsdale, Mark Paccione and Larry Moye formed EQV Advisory as a wealth management business. The trio previously helped manage nearly $5 billion for other firms, and started taking on clients in October. They have attracted about $200 million in assets under management.

WEST

ASHEVILLE

Nofar USA won the bankruptcy court bidding for Pine Gate Renewable’s almost 1-gigawatt utility-scale solar portfolio. If approved by federal agencies and the court, Nofar will pay $285 million for nine solar projects in North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama and Texas. The Israel-based company will take on Pine Gate debts of $260 million, plus another $30 million in costs.

Hallmark Channel is filming a new Christmas movie at Biltmore Estate, building on the popularity of 2023’s “A Biltmore Christmas.” The production will feature multiple estate locations and downtown sites, with a premiere planned for Hallmark’s 2026 Countdown to Christmas lineup.

BOONE

Watauga County officials approved The Retreat at Boone, a 148-unit, 625-bed student housing development on 40 acres along U.S. 421, about three miles east of Boone. Developed by Athens, Georgia-based Landmark Properties, the project includes cottages, duplexes, and townhomes.

WEAVERVILLE

Thermo Fisher Scientific will eventually close its facility that manufactured furnaces and freezers, resulting in the loss of 421 jobs. The first layoffs will not occur until Dec. 31, and could continue through Dec. 31, 2027, according to the company. ■

Small Businesses of the Year Awards luncheon

December 9, 2025

We had a great time at The Carolina Inn in Chapel Hill honoring and getting to know our 2025 N.C. Small Businesses of the Year winners. The December magazine featured stories on the three businesses.

The winners — Apple Annie’s Bake Shop in Wilmington, A-B Emblem in Weaverville and OhSnap in Apex — reflect the diversity of our state’s business community. Thanks to our partners Duke Energy, Delta Dental of North Carolina and the N.C. Small Business and Technology Development Center for their support of the program and small business.

Photos by Bert VanderVeen

APPLE ANNIE’S BAKE SHOP

TIMES ARE CHANGING

The predictions have been made, and a consensus has been reached. North Carolina’s economy will have another strong year. But that doesn’t mean economic efforts and approaches can remain status quo. Business North Carolina gathered a panel of experts, each with a different perspective of the state’s economy, right after the new year to discuss how technology, workforce, investments and larger issues will affect the state and its residents. They also offered suggestions for how the state can maintain its lofty economic position. Their conversation was moderated by Publisher Ben Kinney. The transcript was edited for brevity and clarity. Editor’s note: Adam Currie recently joined the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond Advisory Council. His thoughts do not necessarily reflect those of the Fed.

Photography by Bryan Regan

WHAT’S IN STORE FOR THE STATE’S ECONOMY?

The discussion was sponsored by:

•Lundy-Fetterman School of Business, Campbell University

•First Bank

•NC Rural Center

•State Employees Association of North Carolina

•Brooks Pierce

STECKBECK: North Carolina is poised for a strong year. The state’s gross domestic product will be 2.6% or 2.7% for 2025, and it might be slightly softer — 2.4% — in 2026.

Non-farm employment was up 1.7% through November; that’ll be adjusted. Labor is softening as of the January numbers. North Carolina, especially the Raleigh region, is above the national level.

Private investment has increased. Amazon Web Services, Novo Nordisk, Fuji and other large companies are expected

to create about 59,000 jobs in North Carolina over the next few years. Investors are coming to the state because of its low tax rates, stable regulatory environment and growing population. Those are important steps in the right direction.

Real housing prices have increased in large part because regulations have kept supply from matching demand. About 25% of a new home’s price can be attributed to regulatory stall. More housing developments need to be fast tracked.

North Carolina’s rental market has increased far more than the income rate. Rent has increased. My daughter is moving back from Washington, D.C., and her

TOP ROW:

SEN. JIM BURGIN

N.C. District 12 — Harnett, Lee and Sampson counties

ADAM CURRIE

president and CEO, First Bank

CHRIS ESTES chief program officer, NC Rural Center

BOTTOM ROW:

MARK STECKBECK

associate professor of business and Lundy chair in business philosophy, Campbell University

ARDIS WATKINS

executive director, State Employees Association of North Carolina

JESSE WILLIAMS

assistant professor, Campbell University’s Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law

monthly rent will be about $500 less. But she lived here in 2018, when it was even cheaper.

We’re likely to see the Fed make a 50-basis point reduction in interest rates this year. My concern is the politicization of the Fed. That would be bad. Fortunately, I think Federal Reserve Banks have bolstered their independent status, and that will maintain fiscal policy.

WILLIAMS: I expect the economy to continue growing, subject to the macroeconomic questions that we live in increasing uncertainty about.

Real median household income in North Carolina was on a declining trend for about six years through 2024. The 2024 number wasn’t far from its 1996 level in terms of real median household income. That doesn’t reflect the national trend, which dipped in the early 2020s but is recovering. I haven’t extended that into the most recent year.

Income inequality in North Carolina will continue rising this year. That becomes sensitive to the broader economy, because it can slow demand for various kinds of

important consumption. And when people are very poor, they create costs that are socialized onto businesses, municipalities and the state. You don’t want to diminish incentives for creating value and wealth. But we need to ensure we’re putting North Carolinians in a position to contribute economically and live with dignity.

I teach a law and economic development seminar, and I asked my students to study the economic indicators that the Secretary of Commerce must report and think about what they do and don’t capture. One student questioned the lack of a direct connection between the indicators and actual experiences in the economy. Macrometrics conceal so much heterogeneity in what it feels like to try to make ends meet or have a successful business experience. We must remember that when creating state-level policy or trajectory. A lot is lost in summarization.

BURGIN: I serve on the National Conference of State Legislatures’ Artificial Intelligence Council. We’re dealing with AI, and we’ll deal with it more in the future. My problem is its lack of conscience and morals. It does what it’s designed to do. Human beings need to be involved, but I

see more of them being pushed out of it.

I recently returned from CES, the world’s largest electronics show, in Las Vegas. AI was everywhere. Caterpillar, for example, has 1.5 million machines running autonomously worldwide, and it has been doing that for 10 years. I met Amazon’s driverless cars division president. There were probably 20 companies doing that. Chinese car companies showed me things we haven’t thought about yet. These are exciting times.

Much of rural North Carolina lacks highspeed internet. Amazon is unveiling a system later this year. It has 167 satellites in orbit, and it’s launching more. It’s supposedly bringing high-speed internet to the entire world. That’ll be a gamechanger for rural North Carolina.

Energy will be a big issue. Data centers are being built around the world. Some are looking at North Carolina right now. Each requires a gigawatt of power, the equivalent of one base-load nuclear reactor. I serve on the state Senate’s Agriculture, Energy and Environment Committee, and its members met with a group that’s doing small modular nuclear

reactors. Duke Energy is working on them, too. They’ll be a big thing. I want Duke to put another base-load nuclear reactor at Shearon Harris Reservoir.

CURRIE: I’m bullish about North Carolina, where it’s economically and where it’s going. Its growth will outpace the nation this year.

The Fed must remain independent. We’ll have a new Fed chair, and it will be a big deal for interest rates and the country’s economy.

WATKINS: Big businesses will be fine this year, but people won’t. North Carolina household income is 12% below the national average. That’s not good.

GDP or gross state product, inflation and unemployment are important economic indicators. North Carolina’s GSP has grown 12% while its number of state employees has grown by less than 1% since 2009. Our population grew 19% during that time. During that same time,

Virginia’s GSP grew 15% while it increased state employees by 32%, and Georgia’s GSP grew 22% while it increased state employees 18%. I’m no economist, but that’s nothing to sniff at. How can we serve you? Well, we can’t. We’re trying to keep up with population growth.

State employees are the main infrastructure for attracting and keeping business. They build roads, staff prisons, and educate students and workforce. North Carolina wants the best university employees, but many of them can’t afford to live near the university. We don’t pay enough, so we can’t recruit them. Businesses consider this when making relocation or expansion decisions. Eventually that becomes about every North Carolinian and our overall economy.

WHAT EFFECT WILL TARIFFS HAVE MOVING FORWARD?

STECKBECK: President Donald Trump increased tariffs before pulling back many. The average tariff rate went to 10% to

11% from about 2.5%. That has impacted imports. Many people are crowing that it hasn’t affected exports, because that sector remains strong. But tariffs usually affect those a few years later. I recently read a study that found every tariff rate hike from 1860 to 2024 has led to an immediate decrease in imports and increase in exports, and then adverse effects on the macroeconomy. I hope the Trump administration continues to backtrack on tariffs.

A tariff hike usually increases the dollar’s value. People buy fewer foreign goods, so the demand for foreign currency decreases. We’ve seen the opposite, and we’ve seen an increase in gold and silver. One valid argument is investors are not moving to the dollar like they used to, and that’s a concern. It has been a stable currency, and we want it to stay that way.

BURGIN: I think President Trump will negotiate a grand bargain with China this year. We buy so much from China, and we do so much with them. We’re going to see a lot of things change with tariffs.

HOW WILL GROWTH SHAPE THE STATE’S ECONOMY?

BURGIN: North Carolina was home to more than 11.1 million people as of January, and 339 more move here daily. U-Haul recently reported that most of its moving trucks went to Texas last year. Florida was No. 2 and North Carolina was No. 3. North Carolina is the ninthmost populous state, and is on its way to being No. 7 by 2030.

Counties that border Wake, Mecklenburg or Guilford counties will blow up this year. I live in Harnett County, which I predict will be one of the state’s fastest growing. At one point, it had about 22,000 new home permits out. Every builder known to man has been here. It has slowed some the past six months. Signs listing homes starting at $300,000 now read high $280s.

WILLIAMS: Growth is more than successful businesses and rising incomes. We all can foresee a time when you’ll

never leave suburbia while driving between Rocky Mount and WinstonSalem. I’ve seen that scenario in the Midwest. That’s not the North Carolina we envision or remember. There’s nothing wrong with suburbs, but we must consider our vision of where and how growth happens. We need to pull our policy levers to preserve what we love about North Carolina. It’s more than transformative growth numbers. They change every society that experiences them.

ESTES: North Carolina is the tale of two rurals. One is losing population and struggling with poverty. The other is welcoming people for outdoor recreation, second homes or retirement. The latter creates growth and economic opportunities, though these jobs don’t pay enough in relation to local housing costs.

We need to create different shared ownership models to keep housing affordable, because those communities’ success depends on that workforce. And

it’s not only retail. It’s healthcare and all the services that people want nearby.

People move to North Carolina for a lower cost of living. Residents are moving to rural counties from urban ones for similar reasons. While that brings some benefits, such as a larger tax base to fund needed services, it isn’t the only economic development solution for those counties. Growth can be good, but we must manage it, so we benefit more fully.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN WITH INFLATION?

STECKBECK: The Fed’s target is 2% inflation, but we’re at 3%. That’s not 1% more; that’s a 50% increase. Prices have increased 25% since 2020, and that’s far greater than typical inflation. It’s a major concern.

CURRIE: There is a massive compounding difference over the course of 10 years of the real spending power of people when

they accept 3% inflation versus 2% inflation. Inflation will prove to be stickier than anyone wants it to be. But it won’t be anything that our state and country can’t overcome.

We’re about four years into this, and it will only get worse. We’ll have to make hard decisions to reduce inflation at some point. They’ll probably hurt, but everybody, particularly those at the lower end of the economic spectrum, will feel increasing pain until we do.

WILLIAMS: Consumer expenditures are rising in ways that inflation data doesn’t capture particularly well. While real household income is down, spending is up and increasing. Healthcare and housing account for about half of that increase. You’d expect that to create price sensitivity from consumers, causing concern in sectors where there’s supposedly some level of secular domestic demand for highly discretionary expenditures.

WHAT ABOUT HEALTHCARE COSTS?

BURGIN: A recent Forbes’ report put North Carolina healthcare costs as the country’s highest. Blue Cross recently told me that the average increase is 28%. The lowest is 19% and the highest is 40% for this year. That’s across the board.

We’re working on healthcare costs, but many things drive them. Institutions are where 77% of doctors work now. A friend recently sold his practice, and the hospital immediately began adding a $100 facility fee to bills. Drug costs are through the roof. Although the president has been negotiating some changes, about 27 cents of every healthcare dollar goes to pharmaceuticals. That’s bad and good; pharmaceuticals can reduce the need for more expensive treatments or procedures.

About 3.1 million people in North Carolina are on Medicaid. Almost 700,000 have been added since its December 2023 expansion. We need a plan to get people off government programs, helping them care for themselves and their family. That makes people happier and healthier, I believe. WATKINS: Major hospital assets

doubled from 2000 to 2020, so wealthy hospitals became wealthier, and rural and underserved hospitals suffered more. There was more consolidation, and that monopolization increased prices.

We deal with healthcare as a small employer and when representing state employees. State employees and retirees make up one-tenth of the healthcare commercial market in North Carolina. We don’t know the reimbursement rate that the state health plan pays providers through its third-party administrator. Why does that matter? It’s public money. We know a range, which went up to 800% plus of Medicare reimbursement as a reference rate the last time it was reported. That’s four times what it takes to operate profitably. So, if one-tenth of the commercial market is willing to do this, what happens to everybody else?

ESTES: Expiring American Care Act subsidies will disproportionately affect rural residents. That’s a reality we must consider when helping people without healthcare access through their employer. I participated in an informal discussion about the money we’ll receive through the reconciliation bill. It’s about $200 million, which breaks down to less than $100 per person in rural North Carolina. It sounds like a lot of money, but it isn’t transformative.

While rural counties adjacent to urban ones will catch up on healthcare, the economies of scale will never work well in those farther away. I participated in a rural healthcare summit last summer. It was chaired by former U.S. Sen. Bill Frist from Tennessee. It focused on finding strategies unique to these communities. Telehealth isn’t the only answer. We must hire and train local people to provide preventive care, because there can be a lack of trust with providers from big cities hours away, who swoop in and tell people to show up for this appointment. We need to treat people with dignity and build respect. It’s complicated. It takes more than money.

HOW SHOULD THE STATE MAKE

NORTH CAROLINA’S GROWING ECONOMY HAS A STRONG FOUNDATION

When it comes to understanding North Carolina’s economy, Tony Copeland has an inside track. The senior economic development and corporate strategist at Brooks Pierce served as former Gov. Roy Cooper’s Secretary of Commerce, helping recruit more than 81,000 jobs and more than $18.4 billion of investment. He says work done in the past will continue to pay dividends in the state’s future.

Copeland says North Carolina weathered the COVID pandemic well. “We set a record each year for new jobs and capital investment,” he says. “Manufacturing and construction were not shuttered, enabling those core industries to maintain their vibrance.”

North Carolina’s strong workforce will help push North Carolina’s economy forward. “We have a workforce second to none, made possible by over 750,000 students enrolled in community colleges and universities,” he says. “At 3.7% unemployment, we are basically at full employment with a steady pipeline of new graduates ready to enter the workforce.”

Businesses regularly choose North Carolina for expansions and relocations. Copeland says taxes will continue to play a role in those decisions. “Our low taxes structure lowest of any state that has an income tax — is set to continue going down, making us an enticing business environment,” he says.

Tony Copeland senior economic development & corporate strategist

Brooks Pierce

INVESTMENTS?

WILLIAMS: North Carolina’s economic development wins are partly the result of investments at scales unheard of in government today. The state and federal investments made in rural North Carolina during the mid-20th century are staggering. We went from nearly none to almost complete rural electrification in less than 20 years. Roads followed a similar trajectory. It would be difficult to find anyplace else in the country with the same density of education as the Triangle. And the state’s university system, which has been the envy of many for a long time, has extended it well beyond.

Those investments happened because our leaders had a genuine commitment to the well-being of North Carolinians. It wasn’t driven only by their relationship to productive statistics. And we understood that the market alone doesn’t set the conditions for prosperity in regions lacking infrastructure or other elements that businesses need to succeed. You must

invest to make these things happen.

But we may be eating some of the seed corn. We’re not extending investments into the future when our ability to win on cost in a global market is rapidly vanishing. The relative cost improvement of coming to North Carolina is quite small in some instances. We’re competing at a much larger scale, so we can’t win on that in the future.

ESTES: It takes will from everybody to recognize the need for systemic investment. Our rural model for years was someone builds a factory, which would fund the tax base and pay for the schools. When that business left, we never considered investing in that community or its residents as we would in an urban community.

Rural communities need to participate in community and business development. What do they have that’s valuable to somebody else? How do we get them there and create jobs? Attraction and extraction shouldn’t be their only

development solutions. That was our historic success for much of the 1950s, 60s and 70s. That model no longer works.

We must apply the strategies that are successful elsewhere in the state’s economy. We need to grow the intellectual capital of our workforce. We need to teach them adaptability not only the skills for the next job. They need to be able to start businesses or find new opportunities when they’re created, so they can adapt and gain those jobs.

We’re in a moment. We can keep growing, allowing the market to control what happens. Or we can consider investing in places being left behind. But it takes will, because it’s going where there’s fewer people, fewer voters and less money creation. If you don’t get to that interdependent framework, then you probably won’t get enough will to do it.

Small business loan participation is a big part of our work. We lend to banks and community development financial institutions

to lower borrowers’ loan costs. We’re receiving another tranche of Treasury money to continue that work. We’re involved in venture capital, but we need a way to get it to rural communities. The market doesn’t drive that. People don’t see the value without some risk reduction.

WHAT’S AHEAD FOR THE STATE’S WORKFORCE?

BURGIN: I expect the workforce to completely transform. Many jobs will change, and new ones will be created. Young people have many opportunities. They need to be prepared to try different things.

Not everyone needs a four-year degree. Only about 50% of IBM’s advertised jobs require a degree. CES speakers talked about hiring good people and sending them to community college, technical school or their own training to learn specialized jobs.

WATKINS: Rural communities are part of

the solution. State facilities were purposely placed in them to create jobs where they were needed. That was part of the solution back in the day. Constricting state services with fewer employees has a double effect. First, we want to provide services for businesses and residents, but we can’t because there are fewer per capita than there used to be.

We still don’t have a state budget. And without one, the thousands of vacant positions are frozen under the law. So, regardless of how much they’re needed, we can’t fill them until a budget is passed. That’s frustrating, because people need help, and our schools need investment. ■

N.C. POWERFUL WOMEN 2026

at the top

Pro les of 25 key business leaders making a major impact on the state.

By Kevin Ellis and David Mildenberg

How much in uence do female leaders have in North Carolina’s major businesses? at unanswerable, hypothetical question drove our feature pro ling 25 executives who have prominent positions at thriving Tar Heel enterprises. It’s an important topic for obvious reasons:

• Women have enormous in uence in the business world.

• ere’s widespread concern whether that in uence is growing, plateauing or declining.

• Any “ iction” that inhibits the in uence of women om blossoming is counterproductive.

• Societal progress in North Carolina and globally requires contributions om all, no matter one’s race or gender.

We assembled this impressive list of top performers by asking readers for nominations and through sta reporting. We didn’t include leaders from academia or politics.

Few major N.C. companies have female CEOs, this report shows. Hence, the recent departure of A-list leaders such as Duke Energy’s Lynn Good is notable. In April, Harry Sideris succeeded Good, who had been CEO for nearly 12 years.

Readers can arrive at their own answers to our opening question. But these pro les provide key glimpses of remarkable careers and e ective leadership styles. We’re appreciative of the leaders who participated in this report.

Shelly Cayette-Weston President, business operations

Steady at the Helm

Life-shaping experiences guide Cristy Page as she takes charge at the state’s cornerstone healthcare system.

Cristy Page CEO of UNC Health, Dean UNC School of Medicine Chapel Hill

Academic credentials, operating-room experience and workplace accolades make Dr. Cristy Page well-quali ed to be CEO of UNC Health, North Carolina’s third-largest healthcare system.

But it’s her life experiences, things impossible to check o on a resume, that underpin her journey’s purpose, she says. at’s what guided her toward the corner o ce, overseeing a $7.4 billion operation.

“So, I never set out for all of this,” says Page, “but I look back, and I can see the di erent ways that my life was being formed and shaped to push me in this direction.”

Page spoke with Business North Carolina from her o ce, its large windows o ering an expansive view of the UNC Chapel Hill campus near Kenan Memorial Stadium. At times, a sudden crane movement at the adjacent nursing school under construction can make one jump. at can be disconcerting, but it also shows the campus’ vitality and growth, says Page, the system’s rst female CEO.

In November, Page succeeded Dr. Wesley Burks, who was CEO of UNC Health and dean of the UNC School of Medicine for six years before stepping down in July. Burks is focusing on NC Children’s, a 570-bed, standalone children’s hospital that UNC

Health is developing with Duke Health, the largest unit of Duke University.

While responsibility for the proposed $2 billion NC Children’s rests with Burks, Page leads a statewide network of 20 hospital campuses, 900 clinics and about 56,000 employees. UNC’s medical school graduates more than 200 new physicians each year, has more than 2,000 faculty members and generates $600 million-plus in annual research funding.

Healthcare systems face rising costs for labor, construction and other goods, with the resulting escalating medical and insurance prices squeezing many patients. Medicaid expansion in North Carolina three years ago added more than 600,000 residents to the government-backed insurance plan for lowincome residents. Now, lawmakers are deadlocked on how to pay for those rising costs.

“It is a unique time to have all of that at the same time,” says Page. “On the other hand, creative problem-solving, with other really bright people, and when it really matters, is kind of fun.”

As a state-chartered system, UNC Health has a responsibility to provide care for patients who can’t a ord to pay.

“It is a tough thing to square, guring out how to continue to take care of everybody, especially if they’re not able to access Medicaid or some forms of reimbursement,” she says. “We will. It is our mission. We will nd a way.”

Cristy Page

‘Force for good’

Growing up in Wilmington, Page says she would not have predicted her career trajectory. She was an excellent student, receiving a Morehead scholarship to attend UNC Chapel Hill. e program, now renamed Morehead-Cain, provided experiences she couldn’t have dreamed of as a child, she says.

While her family life was “wonderful,” it was marked by her father’s death from cancer when she was a teenager.

“Seeing the medical community come together and our church community being there for my family impacted the maturity of my faith, but also just the desire to be that kind of force for good for other families and people,” she says.

in 2005. Burks and his predecessor, Dr. Bill Roper, supported Page’s career as she led the family medicine residency program from 201118, chaired the department of family medicine and served as the med school’s executive dean since 2019.

Staying in Chapel Hill for her entire career proved to be the right decision, she says. (Roper and Burks were recruited to UNC a er holding key jobs in other states.)

“I didn’t want to have to move my family all around and in academia, a lot of times, you really need to go to all the top places for various reasons, and that’s how you work your way up,” says Page, who has two children. “I have roots here.”

As Page majored in psychology, she thought about becoming a missionary or a minister, or possibly a medical career. An opportunity to attend a Morehead-related project in Zimbabwe in southern Africa proved to be pivotal to understanding both missions and medicine.

During her two-anda-half months in Africa, she worked with doctors and nurses determined to help impoverished people, many of whom faced malnutrition and infectious diseases, yet retained a sense of joy and gratitude. At the time, one in 10 babies were infected with HIV.

“I learned something about humanity in all that, and I was drawn to serve in a way that I could connect with people on that level,” she says. “And it really felt like medicine was where my heart was being called.”

A gap year before starting medical school led Page to take a job at the Morehead Foundation, which administers the scholarship program. In seven months, Page visited 284 high schools in each of the state’s 100 counties.

“I enjoyed leadership, but I thought I would do teaching and leadership in a way that was helpful to get doctors in rural North Carolina,” Page says. “I feel really grateful to have work that matters, and that I feel a sense of purpose doing.”

She plans to continue seeing patients at least twice a week, either in the o ce or virtually. She wants to retain those practical connections.

“It’s important to me because of just the joy of doctoring,” says Page. “I need to know what patients are experiencing, and I need to know the struggles of documenting your charts and being a doctor. ese decisions that we make in the bigger picture impact people in real ways.”

Her job was to assess the selection process for the highly competitive scholarships, which pay for tuition, living expenses and programs. It was a sweet gig.

“When I did that, I went to a diner in every town and just went up to the counter and said, ‘Give me your best local dessert,’” she says. While she may have gained an extra pound or two, it also ignited a deeper appreciation for the Tar Heel state, even if she didn’t realize it at the time.

“I just met the most wonderful people, and I saw the beauty of our state,” she says. “I also saw the disparities that exist between rural and urban … not to mention some very delicious desserts.”

Always a Tar Heel

Page, who earned her medical and master’s in public health degrees in 2002, joined the UNC School of Medicine faculty

Over the years, she’s continued to see patients, delivering babies for 20 years while also teaching. Much of her research and UNC work has involved rural healthcare.

Westward ho

Page’s portfolio now includes many business decisions as UNC Health seeks to remain competitive in a rapidly consolidating industry. e system wants to build a 129-bed hospital in Buncombe County at a cost of $711 million.

Because of the state’s regulatory system limiting hospital construction, Page faces competition for those hospitals beds from three larger rivals. Florida-based AdventHealth has hospitals in Hendersonville and Columbus, while Tennessee-based HCA Healthcare operates the region’s biggest hospital, Mission Hospital in Asheville. Winston-Salem-based Novant Health, the state’s second-biggest system, also is making a pitch. A decision is expected by March 31.

A UNC Health hospital in Buncombe County would strengthen care in the region, including sharing services with UNC Pardee hospital in nearby Hendersonville. UNC Health manages that hospital, which is owned by Henderson County.

“We’re here to serve the patients of North Carolina. We’re lenient to our role as the state’s health system, so we won’t be growing in Chicago or somewhere else. But as far as North Carolina’s concerned, it’s a growing state. ere are a lot of needs,” Page says. Advocate Health, the state’s largest system, owns hospitals in the Chicago metro area.

Given healthcare’s pressures, Page acknowledges her job is challenging. But UNC Health is ready to meet the state’s needs.

“I feel weird, but people ask me, ‘Are you freaked out?’ I feel a great sense of calm because we have already started on this endeavor that I’m describing.

“We see the di erent cuts coming, we’ve already prepared for these scenarios. We’re already underway on a plan for how to mitigate the impact, and actually to not just mitigate the impact, but to turn it around into something positive.”■ Kevin Ellis

Page with now-retired UNC Health Rockingham CEO Steve Eblin, center, and Senate Pro Tem Phil Berger, R-Rockingham.

Charlotte

Dionne Nelson has built one of the state’s leading private development rms for workforce and a ordable housing, helping address the shortage of housing for low- and middle-income residents. Starting with two employees in 2011, Laurel Street Residential has 23 people working in its development company, plus another 110 at its three-year-old property management business.

Her company typically is the quarterback leading public-private ventures that o er a mix of housing attractive to various income groups. e deals o en involve tax credits aimed at boosting a ordable housing. In Durham, for example, Laurel Street is involved in helping create more than 900 downtown apartment units in projects a liated with the city, county and various private investors. e company has many other projects in North Carolina, Georgia and Virginia.

Before starting Laurel Street, Nelson was a senior vice president at Charlotte’s Crosland real estate rm, heading its a ordable housing development and multifamily operations. Her rst nancial services job was at Salomon Brothers and she was a McKinsey & Company consultant. She has a bachelor’s degree from Spelman College and an MBA from Harvard University.

Key attributes for success

One is purpose and really believing that there is a purpose for my life and really working over many years to gure out what I was supposed to do in the universe. at commitment to something of a higher level has kept me moving forward and has been a guiding force in my life.

N.C. POWERFUL WOMEN

Advice for others

Second is continuous learning and e ort. It’s very important for all of us in our professional careers, and it certainly has been a key to my success, to always be willing to learn, grow and be willing to make a continuous e ort to being better and evolving at every stage. ere’s not a pinnacle that you reach. It’s not about titles and it’s not about compensation. It’s really about being better and more impactful. ird, integrity. at means doing what you said you were going to do and treating people the way I would want to be treated.

I try to encourage colleagues to look for opportunities to exceed expectations. To do not only what is asked or required, but also look for opportunities to make that small extra e ort that helps them stand out from their peers.

Key initiatives

I also tell them to look beyond the title and immediate compensation, and to learn to value being in the right company environment. Everybody has their own de nition of that, but is it collaborative? Are leaders willing to invest in them? Are you given opportunities to learn and grow? Ultimately, if you’re in the right environment and you’re trying to exceed expectations, opportunities come, and professional success solves itself.

It’s not just one project. I started Laurel Street with two people, and we have built a truly capable team of delivering exceptional, a ordable and workforce housing over 14 years. I’m proud of the overall body of work that we’ve created. We manage and own 45 stabilized properties with over 4,000 units. We have a development portfolio of over 6,000 units.

It is about that continued evolution. We’ve done that through very di cult markets. We’ve experienced COVID and cost increases and interest rate increases. But we’ve partnered with communities. We’ve partnered with government entities. We’ve partnered with the private sector to execute on unique opportunities to provide housing that’s a ordable to everyone. Not just the very low income, but to people of all income levels. ■

Dionne Nelson

Growth Spurt

Kristin Lesher Chief Wholesale Banking O cer Truist Charlotte

N.C. POWERFUL WOMEN

Kristin Lesher

A new senior leader makes Truist’s ambitions crystal clear.

Truist got bigger in its landmark 2019 merger. Kristin Lesher’s job is to make it better.

She le a 25-year career with Wells Fargo and predecessor Wachovia to join Truist in February 2024 as chief wholesale banking o cer, reporting directly to CEO Bill Rogers. e title may undersell her broad responsibilities as the leader of corporate and commercial banking; investment banking and capital markets; wealth management; payments and commercial real estate. ose areas already represent nearly 60% of Truist’s loan volume and 53% of its annual revenue, while about 7,500 employees report to Lesher. But Rogers and other bank executives have emphasized their desire to signi cantly expand the company’s corporate banking businesses to complement its retail and small business banking units.

Lesher’s compensation re ects the Charlotte-based company’s high expectations. Upon taking the job, she received a $3.5 million bonus and $5.15 million in restricted stock that vests over three years. Including other stock and pension awards and her base salary, she received $14.57 million in total compensation in 2024, which exceeded Rogers’ $13.95 million.

“I was really recruited to generate growth in what was a newly formed wholesale banking business,” she says. “ e challenge was to bring the businesses together and build a growth engine that serves our clients well and drives shareholder gains.”

Not that switching jobs was an easy decision, she adds. “Anytime you are 25 years at one place, it’s a tough decision, no question. But I think it was the right decision with the right opportunity. I’m really lucky that I loved everything that I learned at the rst place, and I love the opportunity we have ahead of us here.”

Rogers, who is in his late 60s, was “absolutely instrumental” in Lesher’s move, she says. “He has a strong commitment to seeing the performance that we desire and expect come to fruition. He’s a huge developer of people and talent, and he’s highly generous with the amount of time he’ll spend with you.”

Time to Accelerate

Growth is a word that Lesher repeated constantly during a 30-minute interview. For decades under CEOs John Allison and Kelly King, BB&T ranked among the fastest-growing large U.S. banks.

at pace slowed a er its combination with Atlanta-based SunTrust in 2019. In addition to the historic challenges posed by big mergers, Truist also faced a tragic pandemic that inhibited the integration.

Six years later, the company’s senior leadership has turned over as it operates o ces in 17 states and the District of Columbia and builds a national business in corporate banking to challenge its larger rivals.

e key holdovers in the executive suites are Rogers, who became SunTrust’s CEO in 2011 and succeeded King as Truist’s chief in 2021, and Dontá Wilson, the chief consumer and small business banking o cer. He joined BB&T’s executive leadership team in 2016. Truist’s wholesale banking group hired more than 300 corporate bankers in 2025, joining what Lesher calls “an already super capable team.” ose new hires include people in treasury management; corporate, commercial and middle-market banking; new industry teams; and wealth management.

In some ways, Truist’s capital markets push mirrors Wachovia’s e orts when Lesher joined the North Carolina company in 2000, the year she earned an MBA from Northwestern University. Less than a year later, First Union CEO Ken ompson brokered the merger with Wachovia CEO Bud Baker, raising the combined company’s ambitions in competing with New York’s banking industry leaders.

“I would say the parallel is that we’ve got a big opportunity for growth that’s out there and the way we need to get at it is in delivering in a really integrated way to the clients that value that,” Lesher says. “We’re a bank that has all the capabilities, products and solutions that clients need and want, but we’re also small enough to be pretty nimble in how we serve them.”

While smaller than megabanks JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo, Truist ranks in the super-regional tier with U.S. Bancorp and PNC by o ering a similar range of products and services. Truist has 20,000 commercial clients with at least $10 million in revenue.

What are key attributes for your career success?

Now, its leaders see a fresh opportunity in what Lesher calls “the upper middle market.” at was labeled as businesses with $500 million to $2 billion in revenue in a Truist presentation at an industry conference in November.

“It’s not a place that we’ve prospected as actively previously, and now we’ve got an intentional e ort about making sure that we’re acquiring new clients that t that pro le, where they can get a lot of value out of the products and services that we deliver,” she says.

Managing wealth for well-heeled clients is also a priority. “We have a huge opportunity in front of us in that only 2% of all of our clients, both consumer and commercial clients, are also wealth management clients. We’ve got a lot of folks that already know us and trust us where we’ve got the ability to deliver wealth management to them and their families.”

I’ve been fortunate to work in a lot of di erent areas of banking over the last 25 years, so I’ve had experience in M&A and investment banking, in corporate development, as an adviser to senior management, and then working in commercial banking in a few di erent roles. I’ve had experiences across many business lines as well as learning from great leaders during a time period in the banking industry where there were all kinds of di erent crises.

What are your key messages for younger bank leaders?

Overall, Lesher’s businesses are pivotal for Truist to meet its revised target of a 15% return on common equity by 2027, which Rogers announced last year. “A big piece of that is the fee growth that we’re going to deliver, inclusive of wealth management growing at a higher rate than it has grown historically,” she says.

Truist says it is showing momentum, with investment banking and trading revenue growing 46% in 2024, compared with the prior year. Payment revenue gained 10% in the same period, according to the American Banker newspaper.

Lesher spent much of her Wells Fargo career in New York and Washington, D.C., where she and her husband plan to live until her 15-yearold son graduates from high school. But she considers herself very much a North Carolinian. Lesher is a Duke University graduate, while her two older children attend Wake Forest University, where she and her husband are on the parents’ advisory council.

“My job is in North Carolina, I spent 15 years in North Carolina, I had my (three) kids here, and my job is based here. I’m here every single week and I love being in North Carolina. For us, it absolutely feels like home.”

I focus on helping people understand that you’ve got to do a really good job in the job you’re in. You need to position yourself to work underneath leaders who have a lot to teach you and are willing to invest in you. at can include taking you with them when they pursue additional opportunities. And it also really looks like making sure that they are giving you more challenges so that you learn a lot about how to do the next job before you get in it. I’m a big believer in getting promoted when you are ready, versus when you think you are ready. I encourage people to seek out leaders that take the personal time to invest in them, and teach them to get some capabilities for the next thing. ■

David Mildenberg

Kendal Bowman President Duke Energy North Carolina Charlotte

Bowman has led Duke Energy’s N.C. operations since 2023 a er working for the company since 1999. While the company operates in seven states, more than 40% of the company’s customers are in North Carolina. Because of arti cial intelligence and increased domestic manufacturing, Duke Energy expects demand for electricity to grow eight times as fast over the next 15 years as in the past 15.

Key attributes for career success

e bottom line is I love what I do. I enjoy coming to work every day – it’s an exciting time to be in the energy sector and nding solutions that support our customers and business. I also credit career success with mentors. Whether it’s participating in mentorship programs or identifying individuals you look up to, having a mentor who can share honest counsel, be a sounding board and your cheerleader makes all the di erence as you experience the ups and downs of your career.

Key advice for emerging leaders

Being present and a student of the business are always top of the list, along with having a clear understanding of the company’s strategy. It’s important that leaders can identify how their role ts into the strategy and how the work they’re doing is advancing progress for the business and our communities. When you stop learning, it’s time to make a change — get out of your comfort zone and embrace a new challenge.

What business initiatives are you most proud of over the past two years?

N.C. POWERFUL WOMEN

Kendall Bowman Tammy DeBoer

Her previous posts have included vice president of regulatory a airs and policy for North Carolina and deputy general counsel. She also oversaw Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, legal, policy and compliance matters for Progress Energy’s Carolinas and Florida units. She has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia and a law degree from Stetson University College of Law.

We’re privileged to operate in a state that is rapidly growing and in an industry undergoing an unprecedented transformation — it’s an extraordinary time to be in the utility business. Along the way, we’ve learned a lot about community engagement — what works well and where there are opportunities for improvement. And there are always ways to improve, which is why we’re having open dialogue in the rst place. I’m proud of the progress we’ve made over the last couple of years, with the team hyper-focused on transparent communication and stakeholder input before any project starts. We know it’s not possible to please everyone, but we’re on the right path and always are committed to being a strong community partner. ■

Tammy DeBoer President Harris Teeter Matthews

e Salisbury native worked at the Food Lion in Boone while attending Appalachian State University and later spent 17 years with the company and its parent, Netherlands-based Ahold Delhaize. She then worked for ve years at Matthews-based Family Dollar, helping navigate its acquisition by Dollar Tree. She owned a consulting business for three years before joining Harris Teeter in 2020 as a senior vice president. She became president in February 2022.

Key attributes for career

Cincinnati-based Kroger acquired Harris Teeter in 2014, but kept the regional chain’s name intact and its headquarters in the Charlotte area. Harris Teeter has more than 260 stores across seven states and Washington, D.C., and 36,000 employees. DeBoer is on the boards of the Charlotte Sports Foundation and Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina. She is a member of the Charlotte Executive Leadership Council.

success

Perseverance has been a de ning attribute throughout my career. Rather than viewing obstacles as setbacks, I see them as opportunities to learn, grow and strengthen both my capabilities and my determination. Equally important has been the guidance of strong mentors. Surrounding myself with leaders who o er candid, constructive feedback – and who are willing to advocate for my potential when I’m not in the room – has been invaluable.

Lastly, I place value on building authentic relationships. Success is rarely achieved alone; it’s the collective result of collaboration and trust.

Key advice for emerging leaders

I always encourage emerging leaders to say yes to as many di erent opportunities as possible. Every new challenge teaches you something – about the business, about leadership and about yourself.

What business initiatives are you most proud of over the past two years?

I’m most proud of the cultural transformation we’ve been driving across Harris Teeter. We’ve worked hard to create a space where every associate feels empowered to share their ideas and perspectives, while staying deeply grounded in our purpose of enriching lives.

I’m also incredibly proud of the strategic growth plan we’ve built and begun to execute that will benefit our associates, customers and communities. ■

customer Mortgage

Kainth oversees customer strategy and experience and digital integration at Enact, a mortgage-insurance company that was spun o by Richmond, Virginia-based Genworth Holdings in a September 2021 IPO. She joined the company in August 2022 a er working as chief digital o cer at mortgage-related companies, Fort Washington, Pennsylvania-based Newrez, and Dallas-based Mr. Cooper. Kainth previously had senior roles at Verizon and Comcast.

Enact’s share price has doubled since the IPO and its market cap was $5.9 billion in mid-January. e company, which remains 81% owned by Genworth, works with more than 1,800 lenders nationally. About half of the company’s 424 full-time employees worked in Raleigh as of the end of 2024, with the rest based in the U.S. Its workforce was 52% female and 20% of the leadership was women, according to SEC lings.

Women have a di erent set of experiences to men, so company success requires di erent voices, she says. “Enact’s core values are excellence, improvement, and connection. To really live and realize these values, we need to have diversity in thought and approach as we look to enable the dream of homeownership,” she wrote in a blog. HousingWire Magazine recognized Kainth in 2020 as one of its “Vanguard” award winners for creating a digital solution for Mr. Cooper customers seeking mortgage payment relief during the pandemic.

Kainth holds an MBA from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science from Arizona State University.

Key attributes for career success

Execution-oriented. I have always maintained a strong bias for execution and can take ideas from concept to customer across functions and through complexity. I believe in starting initiatives sooner rather than later to avoid “analysis paralysis” and identify the reality of potential challenges. If an idea isn’t strong, I pivot or kill it quickly so the team’s energy stays focused.

Creative and strategic mindset. I zoom out to see the bigger picture, then use data and technology to architect solutions. A strong quantitative base keeps decisions sharp, while storytelling makes the strategy clear and actionable. Working across industries has honed my adaptability and agility.

Key advice for emerging leaders

Resilience. I show up, persevere, and self-re ect — adjusting course without losing pace. at habit of learning and iterating turns shortterm progress into long-term impact. In short: start, learn, and lead.

Focus on execution. Ideas are everywhere, but the ability to turn them into reality is what sets leaders apart. Start by wiring concepts to the ground — gure out the problem, design the solution, and get it done. Results open doors because organizations value people who deliver.

Contribute in any way you can. Don’t wait until you have the perfect skillset. Take notes, organize logistics, or tackle a small piece of the project. ese contributions build trust and position you as a solutionoriented team member. Over time, bigger challenges will come your way, and you’ll be ready.

Build resilience early. It’s not a personality trait — it’s a skill. Learn to persevere, re ect, and pivot when needed. e ability to show up consistently and adapt under pressure will accelerate your growth and sustain your success.

What business initiatives are you most proud of over the past two years?

I’m most proud of leading an initiative that uni ed customer data to deliver smarter, more personalized experiences for our customers. By mining our data to gain better customer insights, we were able to get a more holistic picture and gain insights to better understand customer data, touchpoints and needs. ■

N.C. POWERFUL WOMEN Neeenu Kainth

Morgan Everett Vice chair Coca-Cola Consolidated Charlotte

Everett joined her family business in 2004, a year a er graduating from Southern Methodist University. Coca-Cola Consolidated is led by her father, J. Frank Harrison III. She joined the company’s board in 2011 and became vice chair in 2020. She became an executive o cer in 2016 and executive vice president in 2019.

Coca-Cola Consolidated is the largest U.S. Coca-Cola bottler and among the state’s most successful businesses, with annual revenue growing to about $7 billion last year, from $1.6 billion in 2012. Net income topped $630 million in 2024. Everett chairs the company’s Red Classic Services and Data Ventures subsidiaries and is a director of the American Beverage Association. She received compensation of $1.99 million last year, according to the company proxy.

Key attributes for career success

First and foremost, my career has been shaped by my deep trust in God’s purpose and plan for my life. I seek wisdom from the Bible and the Holy Spirit in making decisions, whether professional or personal. Second, mentorship plays a pivotal role in my decision-making and my career. My parents, Jan and Frank Harrison, plus a circle of accomplished professional women representing various sectors, routinely share guidance, truth, and fellowship with me. I intentionally seek out intergenerational relationships with women older and younger than me to remain creative and open-minded yet rooted in truth. Lastly, maintaining a humble spirit leads me to remain exible, learn and grow.

Key advice for emerging leaders

N.C. POWERFUL WOMEN

Morgan Everett

Melissa Anderson

Most of all, be a servant leader. is sets a powerful example, and it is contagious. A team of servant leaders is truly unstoppable. Embrace failure as a valuable part of your journey. It’s o en where the greatest learning occurs. Perseverance is essential. We were created to do hard things alongside a community.

Be a team player. Others’ success is our shared success. Change is inevitable, so exibility is key. Hold plans loosely, learn from the past, stay present, and be expectant of future growth.

What business initiative are you most proud of over the past two years?

I am most proud of how our organization is powerfully uni ed by Our Purpose — “to honor God in all we do, to serve others, to pursue excellence, and to grow pro tably.” Our leaders aspire to embody our purpose each day, and this sets the standard for how we operate.

I am also proud of our commitment to investing in communities across the 14 states and the District of Columbia where we make, sell, and deliver the greatest brands on Earth. Our HOPE Scholarship Program, which provides nancial support to teammates and their families to pursue higher education, exempli es our dedication to investing in people and their futures. Additionally, we have invested in our frontline teammates by providing a workplace where they are better supported, valued, equipped, and positioned for growth. We want our teammates to understand the power of generosity, so we aim to exemplify it in how we treat each other, our customers, and our communities. ■

Melissa Anderson Chief business transformation o cer Albemarle Corporation Charlotte

Anderson joined lithium miner Albemarle in 2021, a er almost six years as a vice president and human resources at Duke Energy. Previously, she served in senior leadership roles at Domtar, e Pantry and IBM. She oversees enterprise, research and technology at a company of about 8,300 employees. Revenue peaked at $9.6 billion in 2023, then declined 44% the following year as the price of lithium crashed Analysts predict a rebound as robots and other machines trained by arti cial intelligence demand lithium-ion batteries.

Anderson is a director of Birmingham, Alabama-based Vulcan Materials and the SHRM Foundation, the nonpro t arm of 34,000 human resource professionals. She is on the advisory board of the HR Policy Association and the Center for Executive Succession at the University of South Carolina’s Darla Moore School of Business. She has a bachelor’s degree from UNC Chapel Hill and a master’s degree in industrial and labor relations from Cornell University.

Key attributes for career success

I approach work with the belief that I do not have to have all the answers, and I can learn from people around me. at mindset was instilled early, growing up in a family of academics where intellectual curiosity was part of everyday life. roughout my career, I have looked for opportunities to nd the best practices instead of always trying to reinvent the wheel. Remaining humble and open to learning helps me make better decisions, build strong teams and create environments where people feel valued.

Key advice for emerging leaders

Do the things that scare you. Growth rarely happens inside your comfort zone. e experiences that stretched me the most, including the ones that did not go perfectly at rst, are the ones that taught me the most.

I was also fortunate to have leaders who made it clear that if something did not work, we would recover together. Surround yourself with leaders and teams who value learning, foster innovation and encourage healthy debate.

What business initiative are you most proud of over the past two years?

We operate in a world where geopolitics, regulatory environments, technological advances and supply-chain disruptions are always changing. We have restructured the organization to better align our resources with the areas of greatest opportunity, proactively advance our research and technology e orts and strengthen our new product development. ■

Vice Bancshares

Hope Holding Bryant has been vice chairman since 2011 of First Citizens Bancshares, the largest privately owned bank in the U.S. with $233 billion in assets. She is the vice chair of the combined bank and corporate sales executive. In addition to overseeing markets in 12 states outside of the Carolinas, she has oversight of wealth management, business services, strategic commercial real estate and commercial and industrial lending. A pending acquisition will add 139 branches, now owned by Canada’s Bank of Montreal, that are mostly in Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma.

Key attributes for career success

Her brother, Frank Holding Jr., has been CEO since 2008. She joined the company in 1985 and was president of the former IronStone Bank subsidiary, leading its expansion outside of the legacy Carolinas markets.

A lot of my career has been spent expanding our footprint to the western part of the country, which dates back to about 2002. is was a passion for my uncle, Snow Holding. My father, Frank Holding, really loved the small towns, and a lot of them were in our markets east of Interstate 95. My uncle’s vision was more to have a child’s portion of a larger, more urban market. ey were both right, but my uncle was a great mentor of mine, and he did have a few pearls, including that anything is possible if you have the right team.

So, I spent a lot of my time really focusing on building a strong team and clearly, that’s been a big contributor. I also believe you really need a sense of urgency. Even if you’re running as hard as you can possibly go, things are just slow in our business, which is regulated. As you’re putting up new o ces, you’ve got compliance and local regulation and planning committees. at’s on the real estate side. And on the human organization side, it just takes time. So getting up every day with a real sense of urgency has been helpful.

e other thing, and it sounds so basic, is fundamentally understanding how you make money. Ironstone Bank was the expansion part of our company back in the day. We couldn’t use our First Citizens Bank charter, and we were a thri charter when we went to Georgia and Florida. So we couldn’t tap into First Citizens’ liquidity, and a lot of the strategies that worked well for us in the Carolinas were not appropriate, and we wouldn’t have been able to make money.

is mindset of understanding what’s changed and understanding the interest rate environment fundamentally changes the strategy.

Key advice for emerging leaders

My advice is to really be curious. I’ve been doing this for almost four decades now, and what we do fundamentally is the same, but how we do it is so di erent. e operating environment changes and the technology is changing. I also tell very young people in their careers that if you’re comfortable, you should be worried, because you don’t want to be. I’m still striving to be comfortable. I worry if I get too comfortable.

What business initiative are you most proud of over the past two year?

I could go on all day about things that I’m particularly proud of in my role of running our general bank. Our wealth business has grown dramatically, and we’re seeing double-digit growth in assets under management. We’re at $56 billion now.

We’ve expanded our physical geographic footprint dramatically with the acquisition of [Silicon Valley Bancshares]. We’ve also enhanced capabilities that really align around our core clients. We have a national donor-advised fund and a business advisory service capability that are new in the last two years. We’re doing some unique things in our business services. We were recognized as the super-regional bank SBA lender of the year. We have a very strong community association banking business, picked up with the CIT acquisition. We have a cannabis division that a lot of people don’t know about. at has been a big contributor.

At an enterprise level, I’m very proud of the culture work that we’ve done. We’ve had those two very large, very di erent, weirdly synergistic acquisitions, with CIT and SVB, and we’ve been spending a lot of time focusing on our culture, and having everybody feel one bank, one team. Despite the fact that we do rather di erent things, we’re very much client-centric. I would not be telling you the truth if I told you that either of those acquisitions was strategic. ey were absolutely opportunistic. But they have become wildly strategic in that they have completely diversi ed our company. We are diversi ed geographically. Our revenue streams are completely di erent. e asset classes in our loan book are wildly diverse.

Many acquisitions fail because culture doesn’t work. We talk about our long-term perspective. And when you think about SVB being involved in the innovation economy, they’re constantly looking around the corner about what’s the new and emerging thing.[SVB had] phenomenal people. ey were best in breed in what they were doing. e problems were more balance sheet management. So we very much embraced their business model, and we are stronger together. Our aspirations for the company is that we would continue to grow the innovation bank, our commercial bank, as well as focus on opportunities in our core business. ■

Allison Farmer CEO EmergeOrtho Durham

Farmer has led one of the largest U.S. physician-owned orthopedic practices since October 2021, when she was promoted from chief nancial o cer. EmergeOrtho operates more than 65 locations and has 190-plus physicians.

When she joined OrthoWilmington in 2013, it had 40 providers and 13 locations in southeastern North Carolina. ree years later, it took part in a merger with three other N.C. orthopedic groups. Its latest dealmaking involved three physician-owned orthopedic practices in Greensboro, which were acquired in October. Farmer worked in public and private accounting for six years before founding her own accounting and consulting rm in 2004. Her experience includes leading audit and consulting engagements for four major healthcare systems, 11 hospitals, and numerous nonpro t organizations across the Southeast.

She holds bachelor’s and master degrees in accounting from UNC Chapel Hill. She is board treasurer of NourishNC and has volunteered with numerous nonpro ts, including e Children’s Museum of Wilmington, e Carousel Center, Cucalorus Film Festival, and her children’s school PTAs.

Key attributes for career success

I strive to be someone people enjoy working with and to bring a sense of fun and positivity to everyday interactions. I remind myself to follow TV character Ted Lasso by seeking information through curiosity, not judgment.

Key advice for emerging leaders

N.C. POWERFUL WOMEN

Alison Farmer

Karin de Bondt

Communicate with clarity and consistency as transparency builds alignment and instills con dence across the organization. E ective leaders actively seek input and articulate the ‘why’ behind decisions, ensuring understanding at every level.

What business initiative are you most proud of over the past two years?

We’ve reinforced EmergeOrtho’s culture of unity and charitable engagement with the EmergeOrtho Charitable Fund, especially during challenging times like Hurricane Helene. ■

Karin De Bondt Chief strategy o cer Trane Technologies

A native of Belgium, De Bondt uses her global business experience to promote growth and pro tability at Trane Technologies, which reported an 80% increase in net income between 2021 and 2024.

Her post since January 2024 has involved mergers and acquisitions, global business development and investments and partnerships. Trane is the fourth-largest public company based in North Carolina with annual revenue topping $20 billion. De Bondt joined the business in 2013 as a regional director for the United Kingdom and Ireland operations of subsidiary Ingersoll Rand. Most recently, she was president of ermo King Americas, a leader in transport refrigeration and heating. She had previously led the HVAC and transport business in Latin America and transport solutions for Europe, Russia, Middle East and Africa.

She started her career at German multinational DHL, where she held senior leadership roles, including senior vice president of global business development. De Bondt is a director at Qnity Electronics, a $4 billion (revenue), Wilmington, Delaware-based company spun o by DuPont in December. She is also on the executive committee of the Manufacturers Alliance, a trade association that provides research on industrial issues. She has a master’s degree in economics from Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, and a diploma d’administration des entreprises from Université de Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.

Key attributes for career success

I have always focused on identifying strong talent. Fostering an environment where people can thrive has made all the di erence. It’s more e ective and more rewarding. I’m also naturally curious and have a high capacity for learning, allowing me to switch industries, countries and teams, continuously adapting and seeking out new perspectives.

Key advice for emerging leaders

Finally, I have honed my ability to distill complex problems down to their essence. By simplifying complexity and ensuring the team is aligned on what needs to be solved, we can drive e ective solutions. Together, these attributes — team-building, curiosity and learning, and the ability to synthesize and clarify — have been essential throughout my career.

Seek out di erent experiences and embrace opportunities to try new things, especially if they push you beyond your comfort zone. Every new challenge teaches you something valuable: not only about the work itself, but about who you are as a leader. You discover what truly motivates you and what you’re passionate about, as well as what might not be the right t. Substantial growth o en happens when you allow yourself to take smart risks. Don’t be afraid to step into the unknown; that’s where you develop resilience and adaptability. e journey won’t always be easy, but it will equip you with the con dence to lead.

What business initiative are you most proud of over the past two years?

We have developed and executed a uni ed strategy across Trane Technologies, and we have seamlessly linked our M&A activities to that strategy. It’s impressive to see the strength of our alignment, not just at the leadership level but across the organization.

People want to be a part of this growth journey, and that’s powerful. Our teams have risen to the challenge, driving with commitment and passion. at collective engagement and ownership is what makes me most proud. It’s the reason we can drive powerful change and continue to lead the industry forward. ■

Founder,

Humacyte grew out of research from a lab at Duke University, where Niklason was a professor of anesthesia and biomedical engineering.

Backed by a $150,000 research loan in 2006 from the N.C. Biotechnology Center, it subsequently raised nearly $480 million, including an initial equity investment of $150 million from Fresenius Medical Care. Humacyte became a publicly traded company in August 2021.

Its initial goal was to create long-lasting access to veins or vein replacements for patients on dialysis. It has branched into creating implantable bioengineered tissue to treat patients with illness or severe injury.

In December 2024, the FDA gave Humacyte marketing approval for its rst product, Symvess. It is a groundbreaking bioengineered blood vessel designed to be used as a vascular conduit in the case of arterial injury to avoid imminent limb loss. A er it’s implanted, it is eventually overgrown by the body’s healing mechanism, ultimately dissolving. e military has shown particular interest in the technology, which has been used in Ukraine during its war with Russia.

“When Humacyte was rst founded, many people thought our goal of creating an o -the-shelf human-derived vessel was the stu of dreams,” Niklason says in a release. “ e 20 years of dedication that led to this point brought forth a new reality. We don’t take for granted the trust from our patients and caregivers in our platform. Every vessel and every person are an indelible part of our historic journey.”

e physician-scientist, who is now an adjunct professor at Yale University, is a global leader in regenerative medicine technologies. She has bachelor’s degrees in biophysics and physics from the University of Illinois; a doctorate in biophysics from the University of Chicago; and a medical degree from the University of Michigan.

Niklason was inducted into the National Academy of Inventors in 2014 and was elected to the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Engineering in 2015 and 2020, respectively.

A er going public at about $10, Humacyte has struggled to meet investor expectations and was trading for about $1.15 in mid-January with a market cap of about $218 million.

e company had about 220 employees at the end of 2024, but laid o 31 workers in the rst half of 2025.

A hopeful sign is that revenue from Symvess totaled $703,000 in the most recent quarter, a sevenfold increase from the previous period. e company said more hospital systems and the Department of Defense are using the technology.

Key attributes for success

My drive to pursue the science I was interested in, not what was fashionable or cutting-edge at the moment. My commitment to picking a big problem and spending 10 to 15 years trying to solve it. And my focus on simplifying life down to my family and my job.

Key advice for emerging leaders

Figure out how you work. What is the best part of how your brain works? What is the worst part of how your brain works? How do those qualities help or hinder you in terms of the tasks you’re doing, and how could you shi things around so they translate better? en, invest the same e ort in doing this exercise for members of your team.

What business initiatives are you most proud of over the past two years?

I’m most proud of the team’s work to support Humacyte’s rst FDA approval, and our e orts since then to aid our commercial launch and make sure doctors and patients are able to access our technology.

Our agship platform technology, the Acellular Tissue Engineered Vessel is a bioengineered blood vessel that regenerates with a patient’s cells a er it’s implanted. It was FDA approved under the commercial name Symvess to treat vascular trauma. Since then, we’ve been working with hospitals across the country to make sure surgeons have another option to treat vascular injury when they cannot use a patient’s own vein.

e approval is the result of over two decades of tireless e orts, but the nal sprint was especially arduous. I was blown away by the passion and dedication of the Humacyte team in getting over the nal hurdles to bring our product to market. ■

N.C. POWERFUL WOMEN

Laura Niklason

Lynn Bamford CEO Curtiss-Wright Corporation Davidson

Lynn Bamford has enjoyed resounding success since becoming CEO of CurtissWright in January 2021. Shares of the Davidson-based defense electronics contractor have had a total return of about 380% over the past ve years, better than all but two publicly traded N.C. companies.

Increasing defense spending in the U.S. and Europe is spurring Curtiss-Wright, which is a key supplier in many of the key Trump Administration initiatives, including ship building, Army modernization and the Golden Dome missile defense system, Bamford told CNBC last year. e company also expects major growth from its nuclear power division because of its products used in small modular reactors. Plans call for 10 SMRs to be under construction in the U.S. by 2030. Curtiss-Wright now gets 12% of revenue from its nuclear business.

Curtiss-Wright was formed in 1929 by the combination of the business of the Wright Brothers and Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Corp. It shi ed its focus from commercial aviation to defense work in the early 2000s, with annual revenue growing from less than $300 million in 2000 to more than $3 billion last year.

N.C. POWERFUL WOMEN

Lynn Bamford

Kristi Coleman

Bamford joined the company in 2004 when it paid $110 million to buy Ottawa, Canada-based Dy4, an embedded computing solutions company where she was an executive. She was named to lead the Defense Solutions division in 2013, then president of Defense and Power units in 2020, and CEO a year later.

A graduate of Penn State University, Bamford received total compensation of $11.6 million last year. She is among the few CEOs of publicly traded N.C. companies, along with Laura Niklason of Humacyte and Tami Newcombe of Raleigh-based Railant, which was spun o last year from Fortive.

Curtiss-Wright moved its headquarters to the Charlotte area from Roseland, New Jersey, in 2014 because Bamford’s predecessor, David Adams, lived in the region a er previously leading a company division. ■

Kristi Coleman CEO Tepper Sports and Entertainment and Carolina Panthers Charlotte

Key attributes for career success

A er joining the Carolina Panthers in 2014 as controller, Coleman became the second female president of an NFL team in 2022. ( e Bu alo Bills’ Kim Pegula was rst, in 2018.) In December 2024, owner David Tepper promoted Coleman to CEO of Tepper Sports and Entertainment.

She leads the business operations of the Panthers and Charlotte FC Major League Soccer team. at work includes overseeing fan engagement and high-pro le tasks such as negotiating stadium naming rights with Bank of America and helping convince the Charlotte City Council to provide $650 million in tax money for stadium renovations set to begin this year. Coleman began her career working for six years as an auditor with Deloitte, where she rst connected with the Panthers. e South Carolina native is a graduate of Clemson University. She is a trustee at Central Piedmont Community College and Queens University, on the executive committee of the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance and on the board of the Charlotte Sports Foundation and Charlotte Center City Partners.

roughout my career, I’ve focused on the work in front of me. If you’re focused on the job you’ve been tasked to do, success will follow. When opportunities arise, embrace them with con dence. Saying ‘yes’ to joining the Carolina Panthers led me down a less predictable road, but one that ultimately brought me to where I am today. It’s important to remember to always be kind to people.

What business initiative are you most proud of over the past two years?

Key advice for emerging leaders Leadership isn’t just about what you know, but it’s also about who you connect with and how you treat them. People remember how you make them feel, and those connections often open doors you didn’t even know existed. Treat people well, build trust, and your network will become your community.

The $800 million renovation of Bank of America Stadium will be a transformative initiative for the Carolinas until its completion in 2030. It positions Tepper Sports & Entertainment to continue delivering major events that showcase our region and attract visitors from across the globe. Our new venue with Live Nation will elevate the breadth of programming we offer, drive significant economic impact and further establish Charlotte as a premier weekend destination.

Charlotte FC is coming off a historic season, averaging about 30,000 fans. The Panthers are NFC South Champions and made the playoffs. When I think about the past two years, I’m proud of how that momentum is carrying into 2026 with several marquee events and concerts already announced, including a U.S. Men’s National Team “friendly” soccer game ahead of the FIFA World Cup; the MLS All-Star Game; college football matchups; and more. These events energize fans and support local businesses, as well as the travel and tourism industry, reinforcing Charlotte’s reputation as a top-tier sports and entertainment city. ■

Sodoma Group Charlotte

Sodoma’s automotive career started with washing cars at a Salisbury dealership owned by her father, om Dillard, and has led her to become a multi-dealer operator. She credits the time she spent washing cars and answering phones at the Chevrolet dealership with helping her become a team player.

Her business strategy now is to focus on digital retail, company culture and adherence to “managing by metrics” through the structure of an “entrepreneurial operating system.”

at refers to the concepts and tools an entrepreneur uses to ensure top performance from a business. For Sodoma, that means building positive relationships with customers and fostering a culture to make a dealership a great place to work and a trusted place to buy a car.

Her dealerships have core values that she recites: Own It, Lead with Love, Do the Right ing, Grow or Die, Team Player with a Winning Spirit.

Sodoma attended Northwood University, where she earned a dual bachelor’s degree in 2004 in automotive marketing and automotive management. As a college student, she built a business development center for Team Automotive, which provides a communication hub for customers.

N.C. POWERFUL WOMEN

She became president of Team Automotive Group in 2017 a er her father’s retirement. Sodoma added ve locations to the group, but since 2023 has sold the Chevrolet dealerships in Boone and Creedmoor.

Key attributes for career success

e dealership now operates in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and Morganton, Salisbury, Swansboro and Goldsboro. ose businesses employ 350 workers and sell Dodge, Ram, Fiat, Chevrolet, Jeep and GMC brands.

She has also launched various ventures to solve industry challenges. One is Bowtie Solutions, an outsourced service business development center provider, and Certi ed Auto Glass, a mobile auto glass repair provider.

Two attributes have shaped my career: building strong relationships and building strong teams. Success in any industry comes down to people. From early in my career, I prioritized cultivating a diverse network of peers, CEOs in other industries, and trusted professional service partners who have helped me grow, challenge my thinking, and see around corners.

Equally important has been my focus on building high-performing, values-driven teams. Surrounding myself with talented and empowered people has allowed Team Automotive Group to scale and deliver an exceptional customer experience.

Key advice for emerging leaders

A third attribute is my commitment to manage by metrics. Clear performance indicators, accountability and transparency have been foundational to our growth.

Know your numbers and key performance indicators, and manage from them. You cannot lead well if you do not understand how your decisions a ect performance. KPIs do not replace people skills, but they sharpen intuition, improve decision-making, and give teams a clear path forward.

What business initiative are you most proud of over the past two years?

Two initiatives stand out: Our mobile glass repair company and our outsourced business development center that supports dealers across the country. ese ventures were created to address gaps in service capacity, customer experience and operational e ciency. Each has grown into a meaningful extension of our mission to build relationships that matter. ey have allowed us to diversify, innovate and strengthen dealership operations for our stores and others. ■

Kristin D. Sodoma

Seemanti Godbole Chief digital o cer Lowe’s Mooresville

Godbole started at Lowe’s in November 2018, among CEO Marvin Ellison’s rst key hires a er he joined the retailing giant a few months earlier. Ellison pledged to turbocharge the company’s lagging digital commerce e orts, highlighted by the company’s website crashing during his rst Black Friday at Lowe’s.

at’s been Godbole’s focus for seven years, and Ellison appears pleased. He told an industry conference in December that Lowe’s digital app had the fourth-best rating for performance by consumers, representing a massive improvement that followed investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in adding technology and sta . A key example is the company’s $150 million, 23-story technology center that employs about 2,000 people in Charlotte’s South End neighborhood.

“We have built an IT infrastructure that takes friction points out that we think is going to give us a lot of opportunity,” Ellison said at the conference. “We’re taking share now in a repressed market, but we think we can take share when the market grows, and I couldn’t say that to you as recently as two years ago.”

In previous media reports, Godbole has said technology is weaved into every strategic decision Lowe’s makes. As an example, she cited how the company tracks hourly sales every day, which enables forecasts of how much labor is needed so workers are deployed at the right times in the right places. e company serves about 2,200 stores in the U.S. and Canada and employs 190,000 full-time workers and about 110,000 part-timers.

N.C. POWERFUL WOMEN

Seemantini Godbole Kathie Niven

Before joining Lowe’s, Godbole was senior vice president for digital and marketing technology at Target. She previously held multiple leadership roles at Sabre and Travelocity.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical and electronics engineering from the National Institute of Technology in Nagpur, India, and a master’s degree in computer science from Texas Tech University. ■

Kathie Niven CEO Biscuitville Greensboro

Kathie Niven rose to the top of Biscuitville a er a 20-year marketing career with national chains including Burger King, Arby’s, Quiznos and Krispy Kreme. e Elon University graduate joined the regional chain in 2011 as a chief brand o cer and became president and CEO in 2021.

Niven had planned to attend law school a er earning her bachelor’s degree, but started working in restaurants and decided that was a better t. As chief brand o cer at Biscuitville, she helped rebrand the regional chain as “Fresh Southern” and helped triple annual revenue to $150 million

Niven also oversaw the introduction of new menu items, including the hugely successful spicy chicken and honey biscuit, and created the company’s rst real estate selection process.

Key attribute for career success

Biscuitville had 54 stores when Niven became president of the company in 2018, and it now has 85 stores across North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia. It employs more than 2,400 workers. Founder Maurice Jennings, who died in 2020, opened the rst Biscuitville in Virginia in 1975. e business remains owned by the Jennings family and its stores are not franchised. Biscuitville stores open at 5 a.m. and close at 2 p.m., much earlier than most restaurant chains.

I’m a process junky. Most issues stem from process problems rather than people problems. Having robust systems and infrastructure in place ensures consistency and e ciency while providing direction to employees.

Key advice for emerging leaders

I’m passionate about the experience Biscuitville provides to our communities and enjoy rallying the team around our vision of being the steward of the classic Southern breakfast. Having a clear vision, the ability to galvanize teams, and a commitment to establishing the right infrastructure have been key to my career success.

Always remain curious and focus on the bottom of the organizational chart rather than the top. e more you engage with and innovate alongside the employees who produce your product, the more successful you’ll be as a leader — and the more successful your brand will become.

What business initiative are you most proud of over the past two years?

Last year, Biscuitville, along with our teams and guests, faced signi cant challenges from Hurricane Helene, the avian u epidemic (which caused an egg shortage), and a di cult in ationary market. e entire company came together to transform potential crises into opportunities for innovation — developing a more e cient building prototype, reducing unnecessary expenses, launching online ordering and streamlining many of our business routines. ■

Founder Pharmaceuticals Raleigh

A er several years of research and two rejections from federal regulators, Eckert brought the rst drug for low libido in pre-menopausal women to market in 2015. e drug was called Addyi, and a day a er the Food and Drug Administration gave it the green-light, Eckert sold her company for $1 billion.

Valeant Pharmaceuticals, which bought Sprout, struggled to get Addyi o the ground amid many other internal problems. Valeant, which is now part of Bausch Health, eventually shelved the drug, leading to a lawsuit.

Eckert repurchased Sprout in 2018, and she has continued her mission of breaking down barriers in women’s sexual health and ghting for gender equity in healthcare.

In December, the FDA approved the so-called “little pink pill” for post-menopausal women. While o en compared with the male erectile dysfunction market popularized by P zer’s Viagra, Sprout’s drug targets neurotransmitters, not blood ow.

Before Sprout, Eckert co-founded Slate Pharmaceuticals, which dealt with testosterone treatment for men. She was the chief operating o cer for four years, and later sold the company.

N.C. POWERFUL WOMEN

Cindy Eckert

In July, EY named Eckert the Southeast award winner of Entrepreneur of the Year, out of 36 nalists from Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.

As an angel investor, Eckert founded e Pink Ceiling in 2016 to help female entrepreneurs acquire capital and mentorship. Within that organization, Eckert established the Pinkubator to provide female-led startups with direct access to resources, business development tools and guidance from experienced professionals.

As a keynote speaker, she is a member of the elite Shark Group and has presented at global events for Ad Week, Fortune’s Most Powerful Women, Inc magazine, and TEDx.

Key attributes for career success

Sprout has about 20 employees, 95% of them in Raleigh. Eckert is a graduate of Marymount University in Virginia.

A willingness to be misunderstood. Real change rarely comes with open-armed acceptance. I learned early that if you’re doing something genuinely disruptive, especially in women’s health, you will be doubted, caricatured, and o en dismissed. But narratives shi because facts refuse to move. e ability to stay grounded in that truth and purpose while others catch up is key. A combination of stamina and conviction. Believing deeply in the mission even when the odds, the headlines, or the institutions are stacked against your vision is essential. But belief alone isn’t going to carry you. You need the stamina to keep showing up over years, sometimes decades, before the real impact is visible for all.

Key advice for emerging leaders

First, don’t wait to be chosen. Make the choice for yourself. e invitation isn’t coming, so get started, show up and speak up.

Second, play the long game. Stamina, consistency and the ability to get up time and time again will matter more to your ultimate success than anything else. Overnight success stories are decades in the making.

What business initiative are you most proud of over the past two years?

Securing historic FDA approval of Addyi for postmenopausal women has been a business, scienti c and cultural win. Addyi has now proven that a decade of challenging the status quo can result in lasting change in both medicine and culture. It turns out that a little pink pill catalyzed much of the conversation we’re now having openly in women’s health and championed what has been true from the start — that women deserved better. ■

Shelly Cayette-Weston President, business operations Hornets Sports & Entertainment Charlotte

NBA team owners Rick Schnall and Gabe Plotkin hired Cayette-Weston to lead the Hornets’ business side in July 2024, following 12 years working for the Cleveland Cavaliers and ve with the New Orleans Hornets.

She’s had a busy 18 months in Charlotte, helping attract new sponsors as the city completed a $245 million renovation of Spectrum Center and is developing a $150 million adjacent practice facility. Department store group Belk bought naming rights for the arena’s main concourse, while First Horizon Bank became the sponsor of a new luxury seating area.

According to Forbes, Hornets revenue increased 6% to $328 million in 2024-25, while operating income dipped slightly to $81 million. e team is valued at $3.8 billion. Success o the court has occurred despite missing the playo s for the past nine years, the longest streak in the league. Cayette-Weston has an undergraduate degree from Tulane University, where she was a varsity basketball player and is in the Athletics Hall of Fame. She started her business career at the Caesars Entertainment/Harrah’s casino in New Orleans. Her leadership in Charlotte was honored by the United Negro College Fund’s annual Maya Angelou Women Who Lead program last year. She and her husband, Aron, have two daughters.

Key attributes for career success

One of the most critical attributes of sustained career success is the ability to build and nurture authentic relationships across corporate and business partners, the community, and most importantly, customers, who are the true driving force behind any organization. Equally important is adaptability. In an ever-evolving business environment, the ability to embrace and respond to change is essential to building and sustaining a successful business.

Key advice for emerging leaders

N.C. POWERFUL WOMEN

Shelly Cayette-Weston

Anita Bachmann

We are very fortunate to have a strong group of leaders at Hornets Sports & Entertainment. My advice to them is to consistently listen to our customers, our community and our fans. It’s critical to empower leaders to understand the vision while also trusting them to lead — to make decisions in key moments and con dently move the business forward.

What business initiatives are you most proud of over the past two years?

A fully reimagined Spectrum Center arena for Charlotte and the Carolinas that serves as a premier destination for Hornets games, concerts, graduations and world-class events. Once completed, the Novant Health Performance Center will be one of the top NBA practice facilities, designed to support elite performance, attract and retain top NBA talent. ese projects position Charlotte and the Carolinas for long-term vibrancy and continued growth as a leading sports and entertainment market. ■

Anita Bachmann CEO UnitedHealthcare Community Plans North Carolina market

Key attributes for career success

Bachmann joined Minnetonka, Minnesota-based United Healthcare in 2005 a er working at hospitals in Greenville, South Carolina. She has held her current post since 2017. e Medical University of South Carolina graduate is vice chair of the UNC Greensboro board of trustees and a past chair of the Greensboro Chamber.

Purpose-driven leadership, being clear about why we do the work, and consistently aligning decisions with values, builds trust with teams, partners and stakeholders. Trust enables a leader to lead through complexity, uncertainty and change, while keeping the team focused on outcomes that matter. Impact is deeply tied to the ability to collaborate across organizations and build authentic partnerships. Bringing together diverse perspectives, including internal teams, community organizations, government or external partners, creates better solutions, accelerates impact and leads to more sustainable outcomes.

Healthcare is constantly evolving. Staying adaptable while maintaining a disciplined focus on execution – turning strategy into action – has helped navigate uncertainty, deliver results and lead organizations through periods of transformation.

Key advice for emerging leaders

My advice is to lead with collaboration, resiliency and innovation. Build strong relationships and seek out partnerships. No one succeeds alone, and the best outcomes come from diverse perspectives working together. Stay resilient in the face of challenges and change; setbacks are inevitable, but how you respond to them de nes your leadership. Finally, embrace innovation – be willing to challenge the status quo, learn continuously, and turn new ideas into practical solutions that drive meaningful impact.

What business initiative are you most proud of over the past two years?

I am particularly proud of our comprehensive e ort to improve the health of North Carolina through strategic partnerships and targeted nancial investments. We committed more than $20 million to initiatives focused on improving maternal health outcomes, expanding access to healthcare in rural communities and addressing urgent needs across the state.

is includes partnerships with county school systems to bring healthcare directly into schools, improving access for children and families. We also partnered with a large healthcare system and physicians in eastern North Carolina to expand access to behavioral health services across more than 30 counties. We also developed programs and support to strengthen maternal healthcare.

Lastly, our team responded with urgency and compassion during the devastation of Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina, supporting communities and individuals during a time of signi cant disruption and recovery. ■

nancial Greensboro

Late last year, Bostian attended a meeting in New York of bank CEOs at the direction of her bosses, First Bank leaders Richard Moore and Adam Currie, who were unable to attend. She was among fewer than a handful of women in a room of about 150 leaders, which she notes re ects the continuing heavy male dominance in the banking industry. Bostian, who joined First Bank as senior counsel in 2012 and became CFO in 2021, praises First Bank for creating a merit-based, collaborative culture that values female leaders. e bank has assets of about $12.8 billion, 1,400 employees and 113 bank branches in North Carolina and South Carolina.

Bostian is a graduate of Davidson College and Wake Forest University’s law school. She worked as a creditor’s rights attorney at a private law rm before joining First Bank.

Key attributes for career success

When I was a student, and growing up as a child, and then through law school, I was really good at understanding what would be on the test. at has probably helped me more than anything. I am relatively e cient and kind of know how to keep the main thing, the main thing. I do not kill ants with hammers. It’s helped me a lot to focus on what is really important and what is a waste of time.

Key advice for emerging leaders

I would tell them this is a great place to feel comfortable failing. at’s the thing that’s helped me the most here, transitioning from a private practice law career where you might make a mistake and get penalized for it. Coming here as an in-house attorney and feeling a bit safer to mess up has allowed me to listen and trust my intuition and instincts a lot more. It didn’t feel so punitive if something went wrong. at has probably been the most fortuitous part of being here.

I would tell folks, especially women, not to be scared of that. If you really listen to your inner voice and trust your instincts, you’re usually going to make fewer mistakes than if you’re suddenly guessing yourself. I certainly tell people that a lot.

Another thing I tell folks coming up as leaders in our company is to nd someone you truly trust and respect to become a sounding board. I don’t mean, like, a mentor-mentee type thing. I mean a foxhole friend. If you have a place where you could start to process things with someone else who understands all the factors of play, then you really can learn. at has helped me a lot, having a safe place to bounce things o .

[CEO Adam Currie and I] were kind of anointed at the same time. I feel like that’s helped us. Now we have a whole team of people that we can collaborate with and bounce things o . Earlier in my career, I was too nervous to do that because I thought I might say something stupid, or it might not make sense. I don’t care about that so much anymore.

What business initiative are you most proud of over the past two years?

As a company, we have been really fastidious about credit risk. We have repositioned our balance sheet in a way that I’m proud of, and done so collaboratively and thoughtfully. We’ve set ourselves up for being able to absorb what may come over the coming years.

Another initiative is that we implemented a succession plan in multiple parts of the company, and we have been able to attract some really good talent, both at the management level and folks coming out of college. ere are so many universities in our footprint to hire from, and we have created a place where folks want to come work at 22 years old. I’m really proud of the type of folks we’ve been able to attract over the last couple of years.

We had these two 22-year-olds do some robotic process automation for us. ey had a meeting with Adam and our chief operating o cer, and they have already saved us tens of thousands of hours of work. And they had only been here 90 days. ey’re having fun, too, and they’re understanding how big of an impact it’s having on the company. ■

N.C. POWERFUL WOMEN

Elizabeth Bostian

Sandra van der Vaart Chief legal o cer Labcorp Raleigh

Sandra van der Vaart joined the Burlington-based drug testing company in 2001 a er working on healthcare matters at the Smith Helms Mulliss & Moore law rm and for the N.C. Medical Society. She became general counsel in 2009 and gained her current post in 2020. She chairs the NC Chamber Legal Institute, an a liate of the business-promotion group.

Labcorp won a legal victory last year when the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed a case brought on behalf of visually impaired people, who contended they weren’t able to use check-in kiosks when arriving for medical tests. Labcorp said that class members in Labcorp vs. Davis preferred to check in with a front-o ce person, so they sustained no injury and lacked standing for a class-action lawsuit.

Labcorp is a leading drug testing company with more than $13.5 billion in annual revenue and 70,000-plus employees in 100 nations. Her husband, Donald, was appointed to the N.C. Utilities Commission last year. He previously was an administrative law judge and secretary of the Department of Environmental Quality under former Gov. Pat McCrory.

She has a bachelor’s degree in nursing from UNC Chapel Hill and a law degree from the University of Virginia.

Key attributes for career success

Agility and humility have been key to my success. Much of my legal career has been focused on complex transactions in the highly regulated healthcare industry. To navigate the complexities of a transaction and the regulatory environment, active listening is critical to understand the perspectives and objectives of all sides to achieve a successful resolution. Humility leads to actively listening, and agility is necessary to cra a solution that achieves the objectives of all parties involved.

N.C. POWERFUL WOMEN

Sandra van der Vaart

Dawn-Marie Hutchinson

Key advice for emerging leaders

Emerging leaders need to build and nourish relationship, both within their organization and externally, and to learn as much as possible about their business and industry.

What business initiative are you most proud of over the past two years?

Labcorp’s strategic priority is to lead in specialty testing, particularly in oncology and women’s health. Like many, I have been impacted by losing close family and friends to cancer, and I am immensely grateful for the work that we are doing in oncology. I also recently had a family member who had preeclampsia (a type of high blood pressure) during pregnancy, before we launched our rst trimester preeclampsia screening test. Both mom and daughter are doing ne now, but they went through a very di cult time that could have been avoided with our tests. ■

Dawn-Marie Hutchinson Chief information o cer Reynolds American organization

Hutchinson gained her current role with Reynolds American on Oct. 1 a er joining parent British American Tobacco in 2021. She has worked for 25 years as a cybersecurity expert for several multinational companies, including as chief information security o cer at pharmaceutical giant GSK, and earlier at Urban Out tters. She began her career as a business analyst for Walt Disney.

Key attributes for career success

e 150-year-old Reynolds American Co. began with chewing tobacco and then cigarettes, including current brands like Newport and Camel. Reynolds has added about 800 employees in the last year, growing its workforce to more than 4,200 as it emphasizes smokeless products, such as Velo nicotine pouches, and the Vuse vaping product. Hutchinson has a political science degree from the University of New Hampshire and an MBA from Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.

I’ve always believed curiosity is the foundation of growth. When something sparks my interest, I dive deep, not just to understand it, but to master it. at pursuit of knowledge has allowed me to stay ahead in a constantly changing business landscape.

I’ve also embraced challenges with a “ gure it out” mindset. Taking bold leaps, o en without all the answers, has opened doors and accelerated my professional trajectory. It’s about having the con dence to go big and the resilience to learn fast.

e ability to translate complexity into clarity has been a game-changer. My experience at Walt Disney World taught me the power of making information digestible.

Key advice for emerging leaders

Listen more than you speak. When you truly listen, you build trust and make better decisions. I also live by the philosophy of Ubuntu: “I am because we are.” (Ubuntu is an African word meaning ‘humanity to others’). Leadership is never a solo act.

What business initiative are you most proud of over the past two years?

BAT transformed security awareness and training. We shi ed from a traditional “click-to-avoid” model that focused on catching users with phishing simulations to a role-based approach that delivers guidance tailored to the threats employees are most likely to face. My goal was to create psychological safety, encouraging people to feel con dent reaching out if they saw or did something suspicious. Cybersecurity is a shared responsibility, and I wanted our teams to feel empowered. ■

Michelle ompson CEO Cherry Bekaert Raleigh

Key attributes for career success

A er six years with Deloitte, ompson started working with Cherry Bekaert in December 1988 and became CEO in 2018. Started in Wilmington in 1947, Cherry Bekaert now has about 3,000 employees, ranking as the 20th largest U.S. accounting rm last year, according to Accounting Today. It has 416 employees in North Carolina, including 222 in Raleigh. Trade groups AICPA and CPA Practice Advisor named ompson one of the Most Power Women in Accounting in 2024, 2022, and 2019, and she was named a Forbes Top 200 CPA in 2024.

Keeping a people- rst mindset: I continue to embrace this, rst by surrounding myself with a smart team of leaders on whom I can rely, and second by mentoring others. e best measure of success is how you help others succeed, and I focus on ensuring Cherry Bekaert is a rm where careers can thrive. Asking for and accepting help: I wouldn’t be where I am without mentors who helped me. A mentor suggested I might be a good t to lead our audit practice, a role I wouldn’t have considered for myself otherwise, and I ended up nding it rewarding, and one that eventually led me to my current role as CEO.

N.C. POWERFUL WOMEN

Michelle ompson

Kris Carroll

Key advice for emerging leaders

My mission has been to modernize Cherry Bekaert. In 2022, the rm became one of the rst accounting rms to adopt an alternative practice structure through a strategic investment from private equity rm Parthenon Capital. We’ve since worked to sharpen the rm’s focus on the middle market through a strategy that includes investment in digital transformation, acquisitions and the experience of our people.

Develop your self-awareness: Understand the impact you have on the people around you and work to improve it. Treat others the way they want to be treated: We all have di erent work styles, and one of the most important aspects of leadership is guring out how others want to be treated and adapting.

Lead yourself: Prioritize your personal organization and learn something new every day.

What business initiative are you most proud of over the past two years?

In March, Cherry Bekaert achieved top 20 status on Accounting Today’s 2025 Top 100 Firms list. e recognition underscored the progress Cherry Bekaert has made in our strategy to serve the middle market while investing in technology that improves the lives of our professionals. e recognition was fueled by signi cant milestones, including the acquisition of Sage reseller Kerr Consulting in August of 2024, followed by Microso reseller ArcherPoint and solutions developer Suite Engine in October 2024. December 2024 brought the acquisitions of Boston-area rm Katz Nannis + Solomon and Washington, D.C.-area rm DeBlanc, Murphy & Murphy in December. In 2025, we announced the acquisition of Spicer Je ries in June, Jameson & Company CPAs in August, and Herbein + Company in October. ■

Kris Carroll President Grady-White Boats Greenville

Carroll started at Grady-White Boats in 1975 as a production control clerk, and rose to vice president of engineering and manufacturing in the late 1980s. In 1993, she became the rst female president in the U.S. boat manufacturing industry.

Her dedication to customer relations is credited with Grady-White being ranked consistently at the top of rankings for customer satisfaction by the National Marine Manufacturers Association and J.D. Power and Associates. Formed in 1959 by Don White and Glen Grady, the business has been owned since 1968 by Eddie Smith.

Key attributes for career success

Carroll created and continues to promote a program that pays employees to read books about personal growth and buttress company culture. She is on the board of the N.C. Chamber and the Pitt-Greenville Chamber of Commerce. She sits on the boards of several industry organizations and frequently speaks at the Teacher’s Executive Institute, Pitt Community College and East Carolina University.

Separating my feelings from the facts of any situation has been essential to e ective problem-solving, team building and collaboration. When I approach challenges with intention and strategic thinking, win-win solutions become easier to identify, helping move important initiatives forward. Having a clear vision for where I wanted the company to go has also been a critical success factor. From there, creating a practical plan to achieve that vision has proven to be an incredibly successful way to navigate tough times and foster growth.

Key advice for emerging leaders

Learn everything you can about your business, industry, community, customers and team. e more you understand, the more forward-thinking and adaptable you become. Ask for feedback and stay open, avoid defensiveness and adjust with ease. Never lose sight of your end customer: ask questions, listen deeply and focus on delivering the greatest value.

What business initiative are you most proud of over the past two years?

Strengthening and re ning Grady-White Boats’ vision has been at the heart of our progress and my time: “Together, Delivering the Ultimate Boating Experience (to our customers), While Living Our (team & business partners) Best Lives (in all 8 Domains of life).”

Planning for succession has been an important responsibility. Identifying leaders who embrace our vision and values, and genuinely care for Grady-White’s stakeholders. It is essential to prepare and develop leaders who will carry these commitments forward. ■

Corporate VIBES

By Alyssa Pressler

A company’s culture can have major impacts on its ultimate success. Company culture not only speaks to the happiness of a business’s employees, but ultimately its customers and clients as well.

One common thread emerged as we spoke to various successful companies across the state about their company culture: a focus on people. Even more important than profit, margins, or other measures of growth, the companies that report high levels of satisfaction with their culture lead with a people-first mentality. What’s unique is the different ways each company approaches that people-first mentality. For a business like Swinerton, the business draws much of its company culture from the fact that it’s employee-owned, creating a “we all win” mentality among the team.

Other businesses, like Grady-White Boats, build connections into their everyday practices through things like Friday Focus meetups or team book clubs. Others, like Drucker + Falk, give employees as much autonomy and trust as possible to cultivate a culture of independence and pride in one’s work.

Company culture can also involve fostering a culture that prioritizes giving back to the community, creating a culture built on generosity and teamwork.

In the following pages, we learn more about these unique approaches to company culture and the success it drives for each North Carolina business.

PEOPLE-FOCUSED COMPANY CULTURE: PUTTING PEOPLE FIRST AT DRUCKER + FALK

At Drucker + Falk, people are at the heart of everything they do. As a property management company specializing in multifamily and commercial properties, their mission goes beyond bricks and mortar—it’s about ensuring that everyone who lives, works, or interacts with their properties feels happy, safe, and valued.

But this people-first approach doesn’t stop with clients. Dexter Tillett, Business Analyst at Drucker + Falk, emphasizes that since the company’s founding in 1938, employees have been treated like family.

“We care about our people a lot,” Tillett says. “In a world where AI and automation are increasingly taking over, we are committed to maintaining a human-centered approach.”

Operating in nine states and continuing to expand, Drucker + Falk has made this commitment work on a large

scale. With over 1,100 employees and 87 years of history, the company has built a culture that balances growth with genuine care for people.

One of the keys to their employeefocused culture is autonomy. Tillett explains that by trusting employees to make smart decisions and work diligently, Drucker + Falk fosters an environment where individuals feel valued, empowered, and integral to the company’s success.

This philosophy pays off—not just in employee satisfaction but also in loyalty. Many team members have been with the company for 20 years or more, a testament to the organization’s commitment to its people. Long-term retention extends to clients as well, with properties consistently managed to high standards— essential in an industry where quality and reliability are critical to maintaining contracts.

“I’m most proud of our employee retention and the way our maintenance and operations teams keep everything running smoothly, making our clients happy,” Tillett says. “We’re a third-party management company, so it can be a tough business. But our focus on resultsdriven success is rooted in how we treat our people.”

Drucker + Falk currently manages more than 43,000 apartments and over 3 million square feet of commercial space—spanning 200+ properties across 9 states. Yet, even amid growth, the company’s people-first culture remains a non-negotiable priority. Looking ahead, Tillett says the company plans to expand further while staying true to the values that have defined Drucker + Falk for nearly nine decades—putting people first, including employees, clients, and residents.

COMPANY CULTURE DRIVEN BY EMPLOYEE OWNERSHIP

When it comes to company culture, employees are a major driver. And when employees also own the company, they can shape the long-term success of an organization.

At Swinerton, each team member is an employee-owner, which builds unique pride and an unmistakable drive. Their collaborative network of offices and project teams ensures successful project delivery and peace of mind, every time.

Swinerton’s leadership team has decades of homegrown experience and a long tradition of stability. Their dedication to the livelihoods of employees and clients fosters an approachable, open-door style of management. Core values of ownership and integrity that have guided Swinerton for decades continue to accelerate their Carolinas division into the future of innovative building.

Since the business’s earliest beginnings as a brick masonry and contracting business in 1888, Swinerton has remained a forwardthinking builder focused on delivering exceptional experiences to its clients and partners. Today, they have an expansive and innovative portfolio of expertise and capabilities for construction and project

delivery. No matter the size, scope or complexity of a project, the pride of employee ownership gives them an extra edge, according to Kevin Smith, Vice President and Division Manager.

“Though our impact has expanded over the last century, our mission remains as focused as ever: to be the preferred builder and trusted partner in every market we serve, proudly leading with ownership, integrity, passion and excellence,” he says.

Swinerton employees are passionate about giving back to and improving the communities in which they live, work, and belong - another key aspect to their strong company culture. The company’s community impact work is guided by four major focus areas: equitable education, sustainable workforce, resilient communities, and local impact.

They’ve been known to partner with organizations like Roc Solid Foundation, Build for a Better World, Adopt-A-Street, OneBlood Bus, 24 Foundation, Promising Pages, and Independence High School’s Skills USA Program.

At the heart of the company’s strategy is a commitment to and investment in employees

through the Talent First program. Swinerton’s strategic approach to talent focuses on empowering employees through ongoing development, delivering exceptional experience and attracting top talent; all of which permeates a strong workplace culture. A dedicated Talent First team provides the scaffolding and resources that enable their employees to deliver outstanding projects and services.

This practice yields high-performing, reliable, and consistent teams that clients can depend on to deliver safe, high-quality projects that are on time and within budget.

The company also provides long-term training to craftspeople, foremen, and superintendents on a broad range of topics such as labor productivity skills, technology, processes, and management, which are fundamental to ensuring effective field operations. Core training is uniform across all Swinerton operations groups to guarantee the consistent and high-quality performance standard that our clients expect.

“At Swinerton, we believe leadership is the cornerstone of excellence,” Smith says. “As employee-owners, we are empowered to trust our shared values, foster open communication, and inspire the next generation of builders.”

GRADY-WHITE BOATS: A COMPANY BUILT FOR EXCELLENCE, COMMUNITY

AND LIVING YOUR BEST LIFE

Founded in 1959 in Greenville, North Carolina, Grady-White Boats has grown from a builder of rugged, seaworthy boats into a company known for developing people, strengthening communities, and leading its industry with purpose. Guided by the vision “Together, delivering the ultimate boating experience while living our best lives,” GradyWhite brings this commitment to life every day— on the factory floor, with suppliers and dealers, across the marine industry, through community partnerships, and in conservation efforts that protect our natural resources.

Under the leadership of President Kris Carroll, a 50-year company veteran, Grady-White is deeply committed to helping every stakeholder thrive. One of the most powerful examples of this is the weekly Friday Focus—a 15-minute pause in production where the entire team gathers to reflect, learn, and grow together. Led most often by Executive Vice President Jonathon Burns, these sessions highlight the company’s core life principles, centered on the “8 Domains of Life,” encouraging every person to set meaningful goals and pursue excellence, or as the team calls it, “Stretching for 10.”

These teachings connect to Grady-White’s Lifelong Learning program; a custom book series offered to all employees. Every new hire begins with Stephen Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, and most continue reading through optional selections. The response is extraordinary—more than 90% of the team recently read “Atomic Habits” by James Clear, sparking rich discussions and powerful personal development. The impact flows beyond the workplace, helping team members grow in all areas of their lives.

Grady-White’s spirit of generosity extends far beyond its walls. The company and its people have long been recognized throughout Greenville, Pitt County, and North Carolina as devoted community partners. For decades, they have invested time, talent, and financial support in organizations such as the United Way, Boys and Girls Clubs, local public schools, East Carolina University, Pitt Community College, ECU Health, and UNC Health Care. One especially meaningful initiative is the Roc Solid Foundation, which supports children facing cancer. Grady-White team members have built nine playsets for families and hosted

a Backpack Packing Party at the factory— powerful reminders of the joy and hope that come from giving back.

Conservation is another cornerstone of Grady-White’s identity, rooted in the vision of owner Eddie Smith, who purchased the company in 1968. Smith believes we all share a responsibility to protect waterways and fisheries for future generations. The company actively supports major initiatives such as the Coastal Conservation Association, the Billfish Foundation, oyster restoration projects in North Carolina and Virginia, the Tag A Giant tuna program, the Blue Serengeti Initiative, and the Dolphinfish Research Program.

At its heart, Grady-White is committed to building the highest-quality boats that help customers create unforgettable experiences on the water. Every year, people visit the plant to meet the craftspeople behind their boats— discovering firsthand that Grady-White is not just a manufacturer but a community united by values, purpose, and a passion for excellence.

Grady-White Boats is more than a company. It’s a culture—one that inspires people to live their best lives, on and off the water.

Over Under

Rapid, pro table growth in a sexy business hasn’t paid o lately for Gambling.com investors.

By Ted Reed and David Mildenberg

Charles Gillespie, CEO and co-founder of Gambling.com, is a graduate of UNC Chapel Hill who grew up in Charlotte, where it has its largest concentration of sta

at’s pretty much it when it comes to conventionality for what is ostensibly a North Carolina company.

Gillespie lives in Monaco, while Gambling.com is domiciled in Jersey, an island in the English Channel that o ers tax advantages and di erent regulatory oversight than U.S.-domiciled companies. Its other key o ce is in Dublin, Ireland.

Gillespie and Kevin McCrystle founded the company a er both attended Providence Day School in Charlotte and UNC Chapel Hill. ey started the company in 2006 to provide sports content to East Asian soccer fans, but it posted limited revenue in its rst decade.

Since 2016, however, it has reported rapid and pro table growth. It is bene ting from surging interest in sports betting and online casinos. It is also serving the nascent prediction markets, which involve trading on the outcomes of future events.

Still, four-and-a-half years a er its initial public o ering in July 2021 at $8.50, shares are trading at record lows.

e mid-January price was about $5, slightly above its $4.60 low point in November. Previously, shares had mostly topped the IPO price, and exceeded $14 brie y in 2021, 2023 and early last year.

e company declined requests for comment. Executives had “limited availability,” a spokesman said.

But Gillespie periodically uses the X social media service to share his thoughts. On Nov. 25, he said his family o ce had acquired an additional 1% of the company’s shares, which he said gives him an 11% stake, valued at more than $18 million. e company doesn’t report executive compensation, which isn’t required under Jersey law.

“I believe the current valuation is completely disconnected from reality and I am delighted to pick up shares at these levels,” he wrote on X. Other company senior managers were buying shares, he said, adding that he’d provide an update. at hasn’t happened as of mid-January.

Despite its name, Gambling.com isn’t an online casino or betting service such as Dra Kings, BetMGM and the other businesses that are riding the explosion of gaming in the U.S.

Rather, Gambling.com operates more than 50 websites that provide marketing, promotion and referrals for other businesses that o er various gambling services. “It’s a digital publisher running several gaming information websites,” nancial analyst Bashar Issa wrote in a Seeking Alpha review of the company in December.

e bulk of revenue, including 63% in the rst three quarters of 2025, came from revenue sharing, in which referrals from website users provide a fee to the company. Its sta of dozens of writers analyzes and recommends online betting sites. When a new customer uses its portal to sign up for a site, Gambling.com gets paid, either with a at payment for the referral or a portion of the revenue produced by the a liation.

In 2025, about a quarter of Gambling. com revenue derived from selling subscriptions to sports data, such as fantasy sports statistics. at was triple the percentage of the previous year. More than 50 million people in the U.S. play fantasy sports, with NFL the dominant attraction, according to the Fantasy Sports & Gaming Association.

SEARCH SCUFFLE

Mounting global interest in betting and several acquisitions has helped Gambling.com sizzle. Revenue was minimal in 2016, but grew to $18.6 million in 2018, $76.5 million in 2022 and $127 million in 2024. While results from the nal quarter haven’t been reported, revenue is on track to top $150 million over the past year.

e company also makes money. Cash ow grew signi cantly, from $4.4 million in 2018 to an average of $24 million between 2022-24, according to Joseph Parrish, another Seeking Alpha analyst. e company reported a cumulative $63 million in net pro t between 2021-24.

e balance of the company’s revenue, about 12%, came from website advertising.

Gambling.com Timeline

2011 - Bought gambling.com domain for $2.5 million

2010 - Switched focus from sports betting in Asia to an online casino in Europe

2006 - Founded by UNC Chapel Hill graduate Charles Gillespie as World Sports Network

It helped that the U.S. Supreme Court in 2017 reduced federal oversight of betting, enabling states to permit wagers as a means of raising tax revenue. North Carolina entered the fray in 2024, and more than $7 billion was bet last year, according to state regulators.

Over the past year, however, Gambling. com has lost nearly two-thirds of its stock market value. A key factor is that a changing online search market is making it harder for the company to attract customers. Google, the king of search, periodically changes its algorithms and more consumers are relying on arti cial intelligence commentary, rather than looking at traditional websites. Gambling.com is among many businesses reliant on Google that are facing similar challenges.

2016 - Rebrands as Gambling.com, issues 15 million Euro debentures.

2024 - Secured $50 million credit facility from Wells Fargo

Source: Gambling.com

2018 - Added license in New Jersey, issued 16 million Euro bonds

2019 - Opened Charlotte office; raised $15.5 million from Edison Partners

2021 - IPO on Nasdaq Global Market

Founders Kevin McCrystle, left, and Charles Gillespie took their company public in 2021.

Stake builder

Gambling.com

Revenue

2025: $119.2 million (first three quarters)

2024: $127.2 million

2023: $108.7 million

2022: $76.5 million

2021: $42.3 million

Net income

2025: $6 million (first three quarters)

2024: $30.7 million

2023: $18.3 million

2022: $2.4 million

2021: $12.4 million

Speaking to analysts in November, Gillispie said, “As has been the case since July, Google search algorithms continue to generously favor low-quality spam content in the gaming space, in particular outside the US.” He expects Google to make a change, he said, noting, “I’m not responsible for clearing the spam out of the search results. at’s, obviously, the search engines’ job.”

Bank of America analyst Shaun Kelley cited search issues as among three factors that are likely to cause volatility in gamblingrelated company shares during 2026. e other two were the industry’s moves in the fast-growing prediction markets and changes in state tax policy for online betting.

DEALS AND CASINOS

Gambling.com has made some acquisitions, aided by backing from Princeton, New Jersey-based Edison Partners, which invested $15.5 million in 2019. Other institutional backers include New York-based AWM Investment and Millennium Management, which owned 4.3% and 3.5% stakes, respectively, as of Sept. 30.

In 2022, Gambling.com paid $27.5 million to acquire Madison, Wisconsin-based Roto Wire. It has provided news and information for fantasy sports fans since 1997, “when the Internet was just taking ight,” Roto Wire says on its website. “We’ve stayed ahead of imitators,” noting it has developed partnerships with high-pro le partners such as ESPN, Yahoo! Sports, Fox Sports, CBS Sports, Dra Kings and NBA.com.

e company made its biggest acquisition in December 2024 by buying New York-based Odds Holdings, which provides odds data to sportsbooks and bettors. e deal called for an upfront payment of $80 million, plus an additional $80 million contingent on the company’s performance. e deal boosted revenue by about 30%.

In a Dec. 30 X post, Gillespie says Gambling.com “bet on a winning horse with OddsJam and OpticOdds [websites.] e businesses are ying and continue to exceed expectations.” He called it “virtually certain” that Odds Holdings will create enough value so that the $160 million payout will occur. Meanwhile, the deal raised Gambling.com’s debt to $75 million on Sept. 30, versus $9 million at the start of the year.

Operating margin

2025: 33% (third quarter)

2024: 29.7%

2023: 42

2022: 80.8

2021: 51.3

2020: 45.2

Source: Gambling.com

Another potential winning play for Gambling.com is the increasing number of states sanctioning U.S. online casinos, which enable one to join a blackjack table from home rather than dropping by a gaming site. Only seven states permitted online casinos as of December, and North Carolina isn’t one of them, according to CBS Sports.com.

But online casino revenue gained 27% in the U.S. last year, nearly quadrupling expectations of Truist analyst Barry Jonas. He and other experts expect that growth to continue as cashstrapped states look for new revenue sources.

Online casinos are “much more lucrative from both a commercial perspective and a state tax revenue perspective,” Gillespie told the Charlotte Business Journal in 2022.

In December, Macquarie analyst Chad Beyon gave Gambling.com stock an outperform rating partly because of “the fast-growing US online gaming market, which is poised for continued legalization.”

Other analysts expect Gambling.com to overcome turmoil in search optimization.

e company “is seeing continued momentum in its sports data services, which management sees as the new core of its business, boosted by prediction markets,” Jonas wrote in a report last year.

ose markets are an emerging eld in which Gambling. com makes money by selling data to serve an industry now led by Polymarket and Kalshi, both New York-based companies. Nearly a dozen states have taken action against prediction market platforms over the past year, contending the contracts — “Will Trump acquire Greenland by 2027,” for example — qualify as gambling and are subject to state regulation. e platforms say that they have federal protection from state enforcement.

“We expect the prediction market ecosystem to become signi cantly larger given the national addressable market and some advantages over state-regulated sports betting,” Gillespie told analysts in November. Best of all, it isn’t a substitute for sports betting, he noted. ■

Licensed operators

(Sports books pay an 18% tax on gross wagering revenue, after paying out winnings.)

FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK

BETMGM

DRAFTKINGS

FANATICS SPORTSBOOK

BET365

THESCOREBET (FORMERLY ESPNBET)

CAESARS SPORTSBOOK

Monthly results

N.C. sports betting in 2025 ESTIMATED PAID WAGERING REVENUE TAX PROCEEDS

December - $651.1 million $14.7 million

November - $791.7 million $16.7 million

October - $784.3 million $14.1 million

September - $654.1 million $12 million

August - $463.8 million $9.7 million

July - $361.3 million $4.1 million

June - $420.7 million $10.5 million

May - $547.8 million $11.7 million

April - $560.7 million $8.4 million

March - $667.1 million $6.9 million

February - $526 million $10 million

January – $623.3 million $13.4 million

Beginners’ luck

North Carolinians love sports betting. That’s clear as the state nears the second anniversary of legalization in March.

Bettors put up more than $7 billion in the legal online sportsbooks last year. Since inception, the total bets have topped $12 billion. Paid wagers topped $650 million in each of the last four months of the year, according to the N.C. State Lottery Commission.

The state collected $132 million in tax revenue from operators in the 2025

calendar year, based on an 18% tax on gross wagering. That’s the money bet minus paid winnings and before expenses, fees and taxes.

The tax revenue is directed to several sources: gambling addiction programs run by state health officials; an events fund that helps recruit sports, music and other tourism events; youth sports programs; and UNC System athletic departments, excluding NC State and UNC Chapel Hill. If there’s money left over, half of it is sent to the state’s general fund.

North Carolina has seven licensed betting operators after Underdog Sports stopped accepting new wagers in December. Officials don’t disclose who has the most customers or volume.

The lottery commission is led by a ninemember board chaired by Raleigh lawyer Ripley Rand, a former U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina. The group’s CEO is Mark Michalko, a former executive at International Game Technology. ■

Source: N.C. State Lottery Comission

Urban Renewal

RTP leaders reshape the famous park to get with the times.

By Mike MacMillan

It’s a rainy December day, and a few delivery trucks are making their way through the mostly empty streets of Hub RTP, a new 100-acre development just o Davis Drive in Research Triangle Park. At the east end of the Hub, there’s a cluster of newly built structures, including the Horseshoe, a 160,000-square-foot retail and o ce building; MAA Nixie, a 406-apartment complex; and a small amphitheater staring across a creek and a patch of overgrown, yet-to-be-developed land. ere are plans for much more — a hotel, wet labs and additional apartments.

It’s part of what its promoters call RTP 3.0, a recognition that in today’s “live, work, play” world, the old RTP 1.0 big company vision was increasingly out of step. RTP 2.0 included a nod to the value of newer, smaller companies, but was still big o ce-focused. What once held great appeal — an isolated research campus situated among the pines — is no longer enough to attract a younger generation of researchers and entrepreneurs.

“In the older suburban model, o ce buildings were surrounded by parking, separated from housing and amenities, and the area essentially shut down a er hours.” says Richard Florida, a futurist whose books include “ e Rise of the Creative Class."

“ at worked when work was more routine and people were willing to commute long distances. It doesn’t match how ideas form or how people work now. Innovation depends on interaction planned and unplanned — and that happens more naturally in places with everyday life around them.”

RTP has been transformative to the region and the state, and to the potential of research parks globally. At its launch in 1959, it was a high-stakes bet that North Carolina could attract a global constellation of companies at the epicenter of research universities Duke, NCState and UNC Chapel Hill. e wager paid o more than organizers ever dreamed, starting with the establishment of the Research Triangle Institute and Chemstrand, which invented Astroturf at the park, and with the entry of IBM in 1965.

But no feast lasts forever. “ e idea that people want to get in their cars with 50,000 other people and drive into a research park is outdated,” says Ryan Combs, executive director of the Research Triangle Regional Partnership, which promotes economic development. (Actually, 55,000 now work for park employers.)

“When RTP was opened, companies wanted to be by themselves. Now everyone wants to be right on top of one another.”

In 2017, leaders hired Scott Levitan to head the Research Triangle Foundation, which oversees the park and its 385 tenants. He had more than 30 years of experience in mixed-use economic development and a stint as development director for the Science + Technology Park at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. “ e companies and [Durham and Wake] counties felt strongly that we were a very tired model, that interest was slowing down,” he says.

RTP responded with a 50-year plan, an e ort to reinvent the park for today’s workforce with Hub RTP as the centerpiece. Investment in the Hub tops $100 million, with $20 million from Durham County, $10 million from the owners and tenants, and $75 million from the foundation. “When we make investments like the Hub, it’s because the private market isn’t ready to do it. We want to prime the pump,” says Levitan.

One believer is White Point Partners, a real estate investment rm based in Charlotte that has been active in the Queen City’s Mill District and South End areas. It is a co-investor alongside the foundation in the “Horseshoe,” a 160,000-square-foot mixed-use development with o ces and retail space, a rst for RTP.

“We were impressed with the vision the Foundation laid out about the future of RTP,” says Erik Johnson, a founding partner at White Point. “Some of what’s there is a little dated. People want something more engaging, restaurants that work with the broader area, a common space where they want to go and spend time.”

White Point is joined at HUB RTP by Germantown, Tennessee-based apartment developer MAA. Its 408-unit complex opened last fall, marking the rst apartments inside RTP. Monthly rents range from $1,438 to $3,723, depending on the unit size. About 20% of the units remain vacant in early January, according to the company’s website, which isn’t unusual for a lease-up stage. Apartment vacancies in Raleigh-Durham are generally 7.5% to 8%.

Eventually, the park expects to have 1,200 apartments at the Hub, about 1 million square feet of o ce and lab space, 250 hotel rooms and 50,000 square feet of restaurants and retail.

Accomplishing all this required a change to the park’s bylaws to accommodate new kinds of development, and approval by both Durham and Wake counties. It was a four-year process to amend covenants, says Levitan.

RESEARCH TRIANGLE FOUNDATION FAST FACTS

(Fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2024)

TOTAL REVENUE: $16.72 million

LEASING INCOME: $11.55 million

TOTAL EXPENSES: $23.54 million

NET LOSS: $6.82 million

TOTAL ASSETS: $216.64 million

TOTAL LIABILITIES: $97.83 million

NET ASSETS: $118.81 million

SOURCE: Research Triangle Foundation

Hub RTP is envisioned as a 1 million-square-foot development with office and lab space, a hotel, apartments and restaurant/retail offerings.

A clear impetus to the foundation’s plans was the development of other Triangle urban real estate districts that have attracted many tech-oriented businesses. Downtown Durham, Chapel Hill and Raleigh’s North Hills area developed by Kane Realty are each luring companies seeking the benefits of “innovation districts.”

Sheryl Waddell, the senior leader of UNC Chapel Hill’s Innovate Carolina innovation district, believes it’s possible for everyone to coexist. “One would think it would be competitive, but I don’t think it’s competitive at all. I think a rising tide lifts all boats,” she says.

PRO CHOICE

A quick conversion to a live, work, play environment at RTP isn’t simple. At 7,000 acres, 10 miles long, and 3-1/2 miles wide, it’s too big.

“We’ll never have the kind of density of Kendall Square. But we have enough dirt to be all things to everybody,” Levitan says. He’s referring to the Cambridge, Massachusetts, area near Harvard and MIT that is home to the largest concentration of U.S. life sciences companies. San Francisco is second, followed by RTP.

Under the new zoning, the park’s historic model can be augmented with three new approaches. The park has long offered 100-acre spaces for companies looking to establish a major research facility. In the past, those companies were limited to covering 15% of their land with structures. That has been raised to 60%, allowing for increased density and more amenities.

The second model is walkable residential communities, with multifamily housing and restaurants and retail shops. Residents would walk or bike to work along current or new trails. The third is essentially the Hub, which Levitan calls the “downtown of RTP.”

“The idea that this is a dense downtown environment, that’s not our goal,” he says. “By definition (we continue) to look at 100-acre campuses with major industrial activities. That’s our lifeblood. Full walkability across the whole 7,000 acres is probably not where we want to go.”

Richard Florida suggests that full walkability isn’t necessary for RTP. “The opportunity is straightforward,” he says. “Add real residential density, build greenways and bikeable connections, create clusters of restaurants, cafés, and third places, add parks and public spaces, stitch together smaller blocks and walkable streets, and create a setting that feels alive outside of work hours.

There’s no need to turn RTP into a downtown, he adds. “It means giving it the pieces that allow people to mix, meet, and move naturally through the day. Founders and technical teams want to step outside their door and immediately be in a neighborhood with food, amenities, culture and other people. Venture capital wants to be near these clusters because proximity speeds everything up. None of this is cosmetic. It’s part of the operating system of innovation.”

Levitan’s vision is for sprinkling micro-communities around the park, or “nodes,” with Hub RTP acting as the prototype. Residents would have a choice of lifestyle and amenities, and companies could choose their preferred work environment.

The park’s plan should be supported by broader demographic trends reshaping the Triangle. North Carolina was the ninth fastest-growing state in the U.S. between 2003 and 2023, led by the Raleigh-Durham area’s explosive gains. The nine-county region is expected to have 1 million new residents by 2045, joining a current population of about 2.3 million.

Construction through the region lags substantially behind projected demand, however. Levitan cites research showing that about 9,800 new housing units are coming online every year, about half of the numbers needed to meet demand. Development in the park can help respond to the housing shortage in the region, he says, particularly with more than 173 acres still available for development.

One selling point likely never envisioned by the park’s founders is reverse commuting. MAA highlights the proximity of its apartments to the Duke University campus, about 13 miles away. Raleigh and Chapel Hill are similarly accessible.

Hub RTP reflects a different type of development for Research Triangle Park, offering apartments, retail and restaurants, in addiition to offices and lab space. Developers hope the atmosphere attracts visitors from the wider area as well as the thousands who work at RTP.

As a result, residential development could be similar to satellite towns such as Morrisville, Holly Springs and Cary, says the Research Triangle Partnership’s Combs.

WORK IN PROGRESS

A gleaming white 3-D model in the Hub’s marketing o ce shows multiple new o ce and research buildings, apartments and a landscaped stream owing alongside the amphitheater. It calls to mind the downtown districts of Cary or Greenville, South Carolina.

On the ground, however, it’s a work in progress. A positive sign is that retail spaces are starting to ll up in the Horseshoe. Among the new restaurants locating there are the Dri café; Nanny Goat, a boutique bodega started by James Beard Award nominated Preeti Waas; and Prime Barbecue. ey are local establishments selected for their uniqueness and potential to appeal to people living outside the park.

Says White Point’s Johnson, “People are looking for experiences. People are looking for quality. We wanted restaurants that work with the broader area, a common space where people want to come and spend time.” (Counter, a Michelin-starred restaurant run by chef-owner Sam Hart, is a White Point tenant in Charlotte.)

RTP has a worldwide reputation. “ e Research Triangle is a globally recognized brand,” says Combs. “People have heard about it all over the world. A lot of times they don’t even know it’s in North Carolina, but they’ve heard of RTP.”

Looking to the next 50 years, Levitan hopes to build on that reputation. “For the past 65 years, the only thing you could have in the park was an industrial research campus,” he says. “(Now), we have posited a big audacious idea in a community that has embraced big audacious ideas, and that has a history and a culture of allowing these things to happen. I don’t think there are many markets in the US that would have allowed this.” ■

RESEARCH TRIANGLE FOUNDATION BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Barbara Mulkey (Chair): Founder, Mulkey Engineers & Consultants

J. Bradley Wilson (Vice Chair): CEO emeritus, Blue Cross Blue Shield of NC

Anita Brown-Graham (Secretary): Professor, UNC Chapel Hill

Farad Ali: Co-Founder, Ali | Heijmen

Hugh Allen: CRE South Division Head, TD Bank

Jud Bowman: CEO, Sift Media

John Cecil: President, Biltmore Farms

Carrie Dixon, Chancellor, N.C. Central University

Daniel Ennis: Executive vice president, Duke University

Charles Francis: Attorney, The Francis Law Firm

Tim Gabel: CEO, RTI International

Peter Hans: President, UNC System

Kevin Howell: Chancellor, NC State

Greg Luberecki: President, O&T; Director, NetApp

Ward Nye: CEO, Martin Marietta

Vincent Price: President, Duke University

Lee Roberts: Chancellor, UNC Chapel Hill

A group of business leaders from the German state of Bavaria visited RTP last summer to learn about the park's strategies and to discuss business opportunities.

A rendering of a prospective expansion at RTP as envisioned by park leadership.

GREENVILLE + PITT COUNTY

For nearly 125 years, Pitt County, eastern North Carolina and East Carolina University have been intrinsically linked through shared commitment to excellence and innovation. Together we serve students and communities, honor the legacy of the pioneers who charted paths of discovery and practice, and drive toward a future of greater achievement.

From our founding as a teachers’ training school to the historic announcement last spring of our R1 status, ECU’s legacy is built on resilience and innovation, and we will continue that tradition together, in partnership with the people, businesses and agencies that form the backbone of our region. Our successes rely on shared values and partnerships with people, businesses and agencies united to realize the vision of a vibrant place marked by high quality of life and enduring economic resilience, starting right here in the East.

ECU endeavors to lead the nation in building a national model of excellence in rural health education and clinical practice. And already we are delivering on those promises. More than 85% of the nurses graduating from ECU work in North Carolina, with almost 50% choosing to work in eastern NC. The partnership between ECU and ECU Health is also breaking important ground. The clinical integration of the Brody School of Medicine and ECU Health, which began in 2022, now provides more effective training for future physicians, enhances research opportunities for faculty and students, and yields better coordination of health care delivery to the people across eastern North Carolina. Across nine hospitals and nearly 200 clinics, ECU Health delivers cutting edge care for the more than 1.4 million people living in eastern North Carolina each year.

Many residents in Pitt County and eastern North Carolina are employed in advanced manufacturing jobs within the Biopharma Crescent, a five-county region that is home for global pharmaceutical leaders. Companies like Thermo

Fisher Scientific, Johnson & Johnson, Catalent, Nipro, and others bring jobs and innovation that demand a highly trained workforce. To respond to the needs of this important industry sector, ECU created the Eastern Region Pharma Center, housed in ECU’s state-of-the-art Life Sciences and Biotechnology Building. This collision space offers opportunities for students to learn in classes and labs, for industry to come for training and work force recruitment, and for research to fuel new technologies that become products, jobs and economic vitality for our state.

Local businesses and communities also rely on faculty and students at ECU and other higher education institutions to conduct significant environmental and coastal research on issues like flooding, saltwater intrusion, and energy resilience to drive community and business success in Pitt County and the region around us.

These deliberate and future-focused commitments are why Greenville is one of the top overall markets for work force and economic growth, according to Area Development magazine, and why global companies like Hyster-Yale Group, Boviet Solar and others are committing to growing their operations in Pitt County.

Eastern North Carolina is our home, and we continue to be invested in its future. Every partnership and innovation is focused on improving the communities and lives of the people who live here and across our state. Our mission is steadfast: to be a national model for student success, public service and regional transformation. Together, we are not just imagining progress; we are making it happen.

Sharon Paynter, Ph.D.

Chief Innovation and Engagement Officer

Interim Chief Research Officer East Carolina University

PITT CREW

Economic developers, educators and community leaders each play a role in driving Greenville and Pitt County’s successes. Residents are also winners.

Boviet Solar CEO and General Manager Zhaochun “Jimmy” Xie and his team visited 60 sites across nine states, searching for the perfect place for their solar-panel factory. They found it in Greenville, spending $294 million for an existing building and 34 acres. Their commitment kicked off a busy 2024 for Pitt County.

Japan-based healthcare and medical device manufacturer Nipro Medical’s July announcement detailed its first North American factory, a $397.8 million investment. Its 550,000-square-foot plant, which is being built on a 130-acre site in Greenville, should open this year and employ 232 people. They include engineers, production workers, and administrative and management

personnel; their average annual wage will be $56,147.

A $100,000 building reuse grant from the N.C. Rural Infrastructure Authority helped Atlantic Emergency Solutions, a provider of metal fabrication and maintenance for emergency vehicles, expand in Falkland. Detergent manufacturer UNX-Christeyns added 21 jobs with an average annual wage of $59,857, which is more than the county’s 2025 average of $56,187, according to N.C. Department of Commerce, and made a $10.5 million capital investment in Greenville. That also is where Attindas Hygiene Partners announced an expansion that will create 25 jobs with an average annual wage of $56,746 and more than $25 million in capital investment

during the next five years.

Landing large investments from manufacturers requires a group effort. Pitt County economic developers, educators and community leaders work together, and their successes are seen and felt by residents. “It has been exciting to work with our newly announced companies as they build and ramp up operations,” says Pitt County Economic Development Director Kelly Andrews. “In 2026, we are reimagining our business retention and expansion efforts. Our existing industries, the new and the long-standing, the small and the large, have varied and complex needs. It is critical that we develop programming and mechanisms to support their continued growth.”

The Little League Softball World Series was in full swing in Greenville at Stallings Stadium.

DELIVERING WORKFORCE

Josh Lewis is president and CEO of economic booster Greenville Eastern North Carolina Alliance. “Pitt County and Greenville punch well above their weight, meaning population, in foundational and philanthropic support from our passionate and supportive citizens,” he says. “When deciding to invest hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions, in a community, a company’s diligence process is extensive and thorough. On the surface, site selection seems easy to discuss, yet these decisions are quite complex, nuanced and analytical. Most counties have community colleges and training programs, but what makes Pitt Community College different is the local investments, design and outputs.”

Boviet’s Xie listed a major reason for the Vietnam-based company selecting Pitt County was the availability of workforce development through Pitt Community College in Winterville and East Carolina University in Greenville. Customized training through PCC already is helping Boviet reach its goal of hiring more than 900 people in Greenville; more than 200 employees were on

board as of December. It’s just one effort by PCC to develop a workforce that supports recent investments by companies.

Customized workforce development requires dedication. “I always encourage folks to drive through PCC’s campus to see the quality of the facilities the community has invested in, but the real differentiator is the programs delivered inside the buildings,” Lewis says. “Customized training initiatives require long-term partnerships and investments, and our educational partners develop programs that equip these companies with the skills they need. If you ask any of the new or existing industries we have assisted, they will tell you that the comfort level they reached regarding confidence in institutions was critical to their decision-making process.”

Todd Edwards chairs the board of directors for NC East Alliance. It represents Pitt and 28 other counties in economic development matters.

He says workforce development is at the heart of the group’s work. “We are working to ensure that our local industries and businesses are all growing well and not hindered by lack of skilled workforce or any other foundational resources that they may need,” he says. “I think we have all the pieces and partners in place that do just that.”

Those pieces include a pathway for high school students to earn a degree. PCC’s Bulldog Promise Scholarship program enables them to continue at PCC after graduation. They can earn an associate degree without spending a penny on tuition if they meet dual enrollment eligibility qualifications such as curriculum credits and GPA. The program served 218 students last year. That was the most since the 51 who enrolled in its first year, 2021.

Josh Lewis

Bovient Solar celebrates with its mascot at the grand opening of their Greenville facility.

STRENGTHENING EDUCATION

Lewis serves on Pitt County Educational Foundation’s board and chairs its development committee, which enhances services provided to county schools by the community. The Foundation’s annual holiday

event in November, for example, generated about $150,000 for student scholarships and educational activities. But the group’s work isn’t seasonal. While it may not be as conspicuous as other similar endeavors, he says it also follows a mandate of achieving “a healthy equilibrium between high-

quality education and the investment needed to achieve it in our public education system.”

The Foundation’s Teacher Executive Institute helps teachers learn management techniques and leadership skills through interactions with Pitt County businesses. “For students to achieve successful outcomes, we need to ensure quality teachers and professionals, provide adequate experiences and exposure, increase parent engagement and inspire high standards,” Lewis says. “The Foundation focuses on supplementing and supporting its public schools with philanthropic resources that direct funding to classroom grants for students and teachers that support educational

PHOTO

CLIFF HOLLIS

Left to right, students Vaughn Logan, Sandy Jalal, Jesus Lucena and Cass Palombaro put the finishing touches on a solar charging station they created for an industrial engineering technology class at East Carolina University.

projects. Additionally, we manage and award scholarships, organize engagement between teachers and industry to improve educators’ knowledge base and help increase engagement between parents and teachers by revitalizing PTOs/ PTAs and encouraging parents to get involved. While society should have high expectations for our public education systems, successful outcomes do not happen in a vacuum; we must support all of these focus areas while also addressing each student’s basic needs.”

East Carolina University counts almost 27,000 students, making it one of the state university system’s largest schools. Its Brody School of Medicine is among the top 10% nationally in graduating physicians who enter primary care, practice in

rural communities or serve those with a health professional shortage. It’s expanding, too. Its 195,000 square foot Center for Medical Education Building, financed with $265 million from the state, is expected to open next year. State-of-the-art classrooms, labs and technology will fill its seven floors and train more doctors.

ECU was awarded Research 1 status in February 2025, placing it among 5% of institutions nationwide that do the most research. “[The designation] is the result of years of growth in external funding, groundbreaking discoveries, preparing doctoral students for careers in higher education and industry, and interdisciplinary collaborations that address critical challenges in healthcare, technology, education and beyond,” according to

a university news release.

ECU’s research community includes more than 420 funded faculty members and 546 graduate students, all engaged in a range of research, according to the news release. The Coastal Studies program, for example, recently secured more than $1 million in grants for work that’s intended to help strengthen coastal ecosystem resilience.

ECU provided $8.9 million in funding to graduate students for research in 2024. It supports faculty projects, too. Carlyle Rogers directs its Office of Licensing and Commercialization and is behind its Innovation Academy, which helps faculty take innovative prototypes to market. A lack of planning, customer understanding or commercialization strategy often derailed that process. “By blending mentorship, customerdiscovery exercises and funding strategy support, the Innovation Academy helps turn academic or early-stage research into viable products and services that can strengthen the economic fabric of eastern North Carolina,” he says.

Innovation Academy participants engage in interactive workshops and mentoring gatherings during five sessions. It has supported 12 participants, resulting in patent, trademark and copyright filings, the launch of three new businesses and the development of five prototypes currently being beta-tested by customers. “While these outcomes are significant, the most meaningful impact has been the growing awareness among faculty of how research-based solutions can drive real change across our region and beyond,” Rogers says.

East Carolina University is now an R1 research institution, a designation given to the top research universities in the U.S. by the American Council on Education (ACE) and Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

BUILDING

COMMUNITIES

Greenville’s Uptown District is filled with restaurants, stores and performing arts venues. It regularly hosts festivals. Nature preserves and recreational opportunities along the Tar River underscore its nickname, Emerald City. But unlike the fictional Land of Oz capital, its reality is rooted in Pitt County’s growing economy, family friendly small towns and a cost of living that’s more than 10% below the national average. “Pitt County has so much to offer as a community,” Andrews says. “That reaches beyond Greenville to our other nine municipalities. We have amazing places with unique downtowns, cool events and thriving businesses. Together, we are Pitt County — the hub of the east for healthcare, education, retail, recreation and cultural experiences.”

Each Pitt County municipality is unique. Ayden’s authentic barbecue and annual Collard Festival earned it the nickname Crossroads of Barbecue & Collards. Farmville, which is home to colorful murals, art galleries, antiques and glassblowing shows at ECU GlasStation, oozes Southern charm. Grifton’s love of nature is on full display at North Carolina Museum

of Natural Sciences and annual Shad Festival. Grimesland’s 1790-era Grimesland Plantation is on the National Register of Historic Places. In Fountain, the general store on Main Street hosts musicians and poets. And Bethel has a Carolina Country Fresh Farm & Market. While they may be different, these communities share a common goal. “Pitt County and its 10 municipalities work collaboratively and cooperatively and have built a synergy that is advancing our communities exponentially,” says Pitt County Manager Janis Gallagher. “Whether that be partnerships on projects to promote affordable housing, grants for downtown revitalization, collaboration on transportation initiatives or the development of Pitt Stop in Bethel — a multispecialty public health clinic in Bethel’s renovated police

station — Pitt County’s municipalities are thriving.”

Gallagher says Pitt County is a special place. “[It’s] defined by its people and sense of community and driven by innovation and opportunity,” she says. “We value tradition and rural agriculture while leveraging technology and embracing economic growth in industry sectors, including biopharma, clean energy and advanced manufacturing. We boast our tech creatives, serving as home to MrBeast, while nurturing opportunities to decompress in the outdoors at our many parks and trails or on the water.” Jimmy Donaldson, whose nickname is MrBeast, operates a video production business in Pitt County that creates some of the internet’s most popular programming.

ECU student Jack Costello, right, poses for a selfie with Jimmy Donaldson, aka MrBeast, after the content creator and philantropist gave him $20,000 to help him pay for college.

MAINTAINING MOMENTUM

Gallagher is bullish on Pitt County’s future. “Over the next five years,” she says, “I envision transformational growth in infrastructure and economic development with the pursuit of Pitt County’s megasite in the northern part of the county; continued partnerships between the county, Pitt County Schools, Pitt Community College and East Carolina University to strengthen educational opportunities and meet the needs for workforce development; while at the same time focusing on arts, recreation and cultural opportunities to elevate the quality of life and warm vibe here in the east.”

Greenville ENC Alliance shares that vision. “I would say community marketing and promotion work handin-glove with our industry recruitment, so the marketing aspect of what we do is likely the most significant part of our scope of work, because it also drives our talent marketing and recruitment initiatives and supports our partners and municipalities,” Lewis says. “Marketing and promotion are also critical to our efforts to improve our position in the multitude of community rankings that influence the decisions of both industry and individuals. our organization strives to be a primary catalyst for progress in our economic development focus areas. We want to continue to be a trusted partner where these initiatives are launched and supported by our community and investors. We want to continue to be recognized among the best economic development organizations in the country for how we help our community achieve its goals and aspirations in the decades to come.” ■ Kathy Blake is a freelance writer from eastern North Carolina.

Greenville’s Uptown District

WELLS FARGO CENTER - WINSTON-SALEM

Afew years before César Pelli became the global “starchitect” behind Petronas Towers, the iconic twin skyscrapers that symbolize modern Malaysia, he envisioned a rosebud blooming against the Piedmont Triad sky.

The result was Winston-Salem’s Wachovia Center, a 29-story postmodern office tower with a Moravian arch in its 59-foot dome and Moravian star patterns in the lobby’s mosaics. Those motifs reflected the city’s founding history and cultural heritage. Completed in 1995, the building is the only high-rise in the world topped by a granite dome. It was followed three years later by the 60-story NationsBank Corporate Center in Charlotte, also designed by Pelli.

Like many prominent new skyscrapers, the Twin City’s didn’t impress everyone. Some locals didn’t see a rosebud spiraling skyward. Rather, they dubbed the building the “Winston Weiner” or “Phallus Palace.”

The building came amid great optimism at Wachovia Bank, a pillar of the state’s business community for generations that was then expanding into Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and

Virginia. It became the bank’s headquarters, replacing an older building now renamed Winston Tower. But growth plans in Forsyth County were cut short by Wachovia’s 2001 merger with First Union, which surrendered its name but demanded that the combined headquarters shift to uptown Charlotte.

Bank ownership of the Winston-Salem building ended in 2004. After several transitions, the structure is now called Wells Fargo Center. It has been owned since 2018 by Robinson Park, an Oklahoma City-based real estate investment company.

The building remains Winston-Salem’s tallest building and is a pillar of the city’s central business district. Commercial listings show more than 200,000 square feet available for lease in the building, which totals about 546,000 square feet. It retains a solid tenant mix,including Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, Aon Risk and HDR.

“It’s an iconic, great building,” says Mark McKernan, Robinson Park’s building manager. ■

Lori D. R. Wiggins

INSIGHTFUL AND BALANCED

Get sharp analysis of state legislative issues from policy experts, journalists and elected offi cials every week.

FRIDAYS AT 8:30 PM

Host Kelly McCullen