First in Future: Where Emerging Ideas Take Flight

This week’s First in Future guest, John Chaffee has a lifetime of stories about recruiting outside companies to relocate in eastern North Carolina. That’s what any economic developer does. He is the president and CEO of the NC East Alliance, a nonprofit representing 28 counties in the central east and northeastern parts of the state and he spends a good portion of his time these days focused on some unique challenges to Eastern North Carolina. Some challenges he faces has gotten him much closer to the world of what is called “workforce development” – working with schools and colleges and companies to make sure folks have the skills and abilities they need to compete for today’s jobs. And he has to figure out a way to do it across a big swath of counties with different challenges, different assets and different histories. If the North Carolina East Alliance does its work, a whole generation of people from eastern North Carolina will rise up and lead the region into a new prosperity. And if the people are ready, the economic development side of things will take care of itself.

In 1982, a revolution began very very quietly, when somebody figured out how to connect a drink machine to the then-fledgling Internet. The drink machine was able to signal – one machine to another – that it was almost out of bottles, so that somebody could restock it. The name for this machine to machine communication was coined – “the Internet of things.” There’s no question that “the Internet of things” is making our lives more convenient – we can track our packages better, keep up with inventory in our factories more effectively. We can read messages or keep up with our exercise through our watches. And there are new applications everyday, in eldercare, transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, even home appliances. This week’s First in Future guest is Sarah Glova, who grew up in Greenville, got her undergraduate degree at UNCW, then her masters and PhD at NC State. She now serves as Director of Growth and Communications for a Raleigh-based nonprofit called RIoT “Raleigh Internet of Things”. Her job there is to try to keep up with an industry that is dealing with crazy amounts of growth, with almost daily breakthroughs in sensors, data analysis or networks, while wrestling with serious questions about privacy, as they try to determine how companies should handle all the data they are capturing.

In 1980, Juvencio Rocha Peralta became frustrated by the job opportunities in Veracruz Mexico, a town of about 500 people, so he took a big chance. At the age of 16, he moved to Duplin County, where he worked in agriculture. He wanted more, so he started studying and eventually moved into a new career. He came to love this area, set down roots, and in 1986, became a citizen. This week’s First in Future guest, Juvencio Rocha Peralta, is the Executive Director of AMEXCAN (The Association of Mexicans in North Carolina), an agency that tries to do two different things: help Mexicans and other members of the LatinX community figure out how to be fully-participating members of the towns they live in, and also to help the long-time members of their communities appreciate the importance of the new residents. On today’s show we talk with Juvencio about his AMEXCAN work, and his pathway from working in the fields to being recognized as part of the Academy of Community Engaged Scholars. We hear his thoughts on current immigration policy and some critical health care challenges the LatinX community are facing.

As part of our ReCONNECT NC series, the Institute for Emerging Issues is identifying groups of communities where something remarkable is happening. The challenge for all of the communities is working on civic participation with people who have lost a sense of working across boundaries. This week’s First in Future guest is Russ Haddad, the Director of Community and Economic Engagement at Elizabeth City State University, and he is heading up one of the communities that the Institute for Emerging Issues is working with, that is focused on getting a excited group of students called Viking Volunteer Corps working on the challenges in their community. We learn from Russ about the responsibility that a university has to be part of the community it serves, the importance of asset-based community development, and why students are so excited about their work in the community.

Today’s First in Future podcast guests Sophie Paulos, Graham County, economic development director and Noah Wilson, Project Manager, Growing Outdoors, Mountain BizWorks are all about changing the way you think when you approach a problem. For example, the traditional approach for economic developers is to look outside of the county to big companies who you can lure into your backyard. Some people call this the buffalo hunt; others the search for the great whale. Sophie Paulos, made a slightly different argument when she went to work as the Graham County economic developer. She joined The Growing Outdoor Partnership which is an alliance of counties, companies and organizations across western North Carolina that were willing to take a chance on a slightly different approach called Asset-Based Community Development. This approach assesses what each partner brings to the table and why it makes sense for them to work together rather than apart. Sophie works with our other First in Future guest, Noah Wilson, who is at the center of making The Growing Outdoors Partnership a success. Noah, Sophie and other members of the partnership are working on innovative ways to bring rural and urban areas together for their mutual benefit. Their product – the great outdoors.

Research shows that whenever a new economic development project is announced as bringing in jobs to a country, less than half of those jobs go to residents of that county and less the 2% of the jobs go to people who are unemployed in that county. The governmental and personal benefit of jobs is largely regional. This week’s First in Future guest, Dr. Mitch Renkow of NCSU talks about this research and commuting patterns connected with those jobs. If you want to learn more about those commuting patterns and what is happening in your home county. Go to emergingissues.org and check out the “NC County Snapshot” on the resources page to see what percentage of workers in your home county leave each day and what percentage of workers are coming in from other places.

None of us exists as islands and as individuals we depend on friends and family, but also on a range of people we don’t know. The same goes for the units we live in, our neighborhoods and counties exist in regions, and our success or failure depends on their success or failure. Figuring out how to balance our individual autonomy with our collective responsibility requires one of the ongoing pieces of work we need to do as part of this state and this country. This week’s First in Future guest has come to that conclusion after a few decades, crossing two countries and four states, working in local government, nonprofit think tanks and universities. Brian Dabson with the University of North Carolina School of Government, has headed up two national nonprofits, The Corporation for Enterprise Development (now called Prosperity Now) is the nation’s leading organization on helping Americans save and accumulate wealth more effectively and The Rural Policy Research Institute, the nation’s leading think tank on rural policy. In this Podcast we hear his thoughts about the interdependencies of rural and urban, relocating state government services out of Raleigh, and the new social contract. Brian will be one of the speakers at the Institute for Emerging Issues February 11 Forum called Reconnect Rural and Urban, and to learn more, please visit emergingissues.org

“When an urban area wins, it ends up being a victory for the entire state, when a rural area struggles, it is a concern for the whole state”. That is what this week’s guest has observed. Lee Worsley is the Executive Director of the Triangle J Council of Governments, which covers 7 counties across central North Carolina. So how does the Triangle J Council of Governments influence 43 other units of government? They quietly encourage local units of government to get beyond city and county bounds and work on regional projects that make sense. That is what we will be talking about at the Institute for Emerging Issues upcoming forum on reconnecting Rural and Urban on the 11th of February in Raleigh. Want to learn more and register, go to EmergingIssues.org.

he ReCONNECT to Community Impact Report provides a synopsis of the ReCONNECT to Community Forum and provides key statements, findings, readings and further steps for reconnection of civic engagement in NC. We invite you to listen to what we’ve heard and learned, test out our “six recommendations” in your community. We also hope you will share what you’re discovering with ReCONNECT to Community program lead Maggie Woods. This week's First in Future guest is Maggie Woods, Policy and Program Manager for the Institute for Emerging Issues. We also get the opportunity to listen to some excerpts of David Brooks from our ReCONNECT to Community Forum from Asheville this past November. We also invite to also read our ReCONNECT to Community Impact Report.

Agriculture is an $84B industry in North Carolina that supports more than 600,000 jobs. North Carolina has set a goal of growing that industry by 20% in the next few years. Part of that goal will have to be buying more local food and right now less than 1% of our food dollars stays in North Carolina. So buying more local gets those dollars circulating around in our economy and that helps everyone. This week’s First In Future Guest is Erin White, is the principal founder of the Community Food Lab (communityfoodlab.org), which is an ambitious effort to build a Triangle-wide food system working with and for farmers and foodies to bring together rural and urban people into a dialogue about their shared interests. Listen as we learn the fascinating life story of Erin moving from being a farm manager at a camp to a construction work to an architect to a chef and now head of the Community Food Lab. Community Food Lab one of the five efforts that the Institute for Emerging Issues will be featuring at our Forum on Connecting Rural and Urban. If you want to learn more, please attend our Forum on Connecting Rural and Urban and go to our website emergingissues.org to sign up. We promise you an exciting day, with conversations about transportation connections, affordable housing, workforce development, economic development, opioids and behavioral health, culture and recreation and Erin will be there talking about the critical role of food systems.

Think about these five guiding leadership principles: family first, health impact, people and culture, learning, and joy in work, that is what this week's First in Future guest, Dr. Patrick Conway, President and CEO of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina strives towards. He recently had a conversation with a 75 year old woman, who appreciated BCBS for being with her through the high and low points of her entire life. It reminded him that health care has a lasting effect on the lives of all North Carolinians. In the conversation we had with him, we talked about opioid addiction prevention, affordable housing, food insecurity and why some health care companies are building trails and investing in free gym memberships. Dr. Conway is also launching a plan to prevent and cure diabetes. If he gets it right, it could make a difference in the lives of more than 10,000 people.

If you were looking to identify a poster child for citizenship, you could do a lot worse than Kel Landis, co-founder and partner at Plexus Capital. As you’ll hear today, he’s done a little bit of everything -- through a distinguished career as a North Carolina businessman and civic volunteer, and he has written a book “The Little Book of Do”. It’s all about us, our excuses, and how to get started making a difference. I think you’ll find what Kel has to say pretty inspiring. As a bonus, along the way we’ll talk about his interesting thinking about connections between rural and urban parts of our state, Eagle Scouts, Hurricane Matthew, Frank Sinatra, the most famous Michael Jordan quote ever, and a guy named Demetrius who may just transform our state.

Growing up in the streets of Detroit, you could become a victim or become a victor. Reginald Bean chose to become a victor. He is now vice president of culture, engagement & stewardship for Coca-Cola Consolidated. At Coca Cola, thousands of people look to him for advice on their careers and choices. Listen as he provides advice about changing your mindset, getting a positive group of people around you and not letting other people’s perceptions of you change how you think about yourself. These are just a few things he talks about in his book “A Year and Some Change”.

In the late 1990’s, North Carolina leaders did something remarkable. As part of the national settlement agreement with tobacco companies, North Carolina was projected to receive an estimated $4.6 billion in payments, a couple of hundred million each year. Lawmakers mandated that a portion of the money go to establishing a foundation to help increase economic opportunity for rural and tobacco-dependent communities, a foundation known as Golden LEAF. This week’s guest, Dan Gerlach, is the president of the Golden LEAF Foundation. We talked about his thoughts on the rural and urban parts of the state and how we might reconnect and benefit from working together. We also learned about the Foundation’s role in hurricane recovery, especially with Matthew and now Florence.

How do you keep people's attention in a discarded world? There is the "addiction" model of telling people what they want to know, watch or listen, and then offer them a series of escalating rewards. A different approach is to ask people what they really care about and believe in or are curious about and then provide a variety of ways to share it with them. That is what our First in Future guest this week, Travis Mitchell, Chief Content Officer with UNC-TV and Public Media North Carolina, thinks. Listen as he shares what makes our state special in the past is the willingness to come together to work out really tough issues.