Fran Wilson, Charlie Wilson ’89, Mandy Turvey Ravin ’89 and David Ravin ’89 smile for the camera after the awards presentation. Photo by Kathy McPherson
Distinguished Alumni Award: Charlie Wilson ’89 and David Ravin ’89 Charlie Wilson holds a Bachelor of Science in civil engineering from N.C. State University and a Master of Science in civil engineering from the University of Texas, Austin. He leads C.T. Wilson Construction Company, which at 66 years old is the largest family-owned construction company in North Carolina. In recent years, the company has built and renovated a variety of structures in central and eastern North Carolina; projects in Durham include Golden Belt, Venable Center, Durham Co-op Market and the N.C. Museum of Life and Science’s Magic Wings Butterfly House. David Ravin holds a Bachelor of Architecture from UNC-Charlotte, a Master of Architecture from the University of Michigan and a Master of Science in real estate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Recently named one of Charlotte’s “Most Admired CEOs” by the Charlotte Business Journal, Ravin serves as the head of Northwood Ravin, a real estate development firm that has grown from 43 employees in 2011 to more than 250 employees today. The company is the fourth-largest commercial developer in Charlotte and the second largest in the Raleigh-Durham area.
Among Northwood Ravin’s 19 projects in the Triangle is Carolina Square, a mixed-use development on Chapel Hill’s Franklin Street that is anchored by the first urban Target in the state, and Van Alen, a $158-million mixed-use development adjacent to the Durham Bulls Athletic Park. Prior to the evening reception — in which Wilson and Ravin presented one another with the Distinguished Alumni Award — the two spoke at an Upper School assembly. “I realize now how lucky I was,” Wilson said. “I was born into a family that had enough money to send me to Durham Academy and owned a construction company. I never had to want anything, need anything. I was lucky. I know plenty of people in this world who may be judged as less successful than I am and they’re a whole lot smarter, and maybe a whole lot better person than I am, but I was born lucky.” With such good fortune comes a responsibility to help others and to respect people who weren’t born so lucky, Wilson said. For example, he has made it a priority to narrow the pay gap between the highest-paid and lowest-paid employees, and C.T. Wilson recently became one of just a few
construction companies to be certified by the Durham Living Wage Project. Wilson said the teachers at Durham Academy were the best he ever had and the people he met at DA were the best. “What this school has done for me, and now is doing for my children, is an amazing thing,” he said at the evening reception. Wilson and Ravin have remained close with one another and with many of their classmates in the nearly three decades since they graduated from DA, and they encouraged students to make the most of their high school years by getting to know as many of their classmates as possible. “I don’t think you know what you have here until it’s over. I know you’re in different social circles, I know you have different interests … but you’ve grown up with these 100 or so kids,” Ravin said during the student assembly. “You’ve gone from being children to adults, and then your world is really going to explode when you get out of here and everyone gets pulled in their own way. But take a minute to appreciate who you have, take a minute to say goodbye before it’s all over because you’ll always have that bond of being together here, and then it’s over.”
da.org
69