First in Future: Where Emerging Ideas Take Flight

The Institute for Emerging Issues, as part of our ReCONNECT NC series, is trying to figure out how communities can get more people at the table to help their towns solve the big problems they are facing. This week's First in Future guest, Corey Madden, executive director at Kenan Institute for the Arts, has an idea for a solution. Artists! Artists are creative, persistent, patient, and experienced at taking raw ideas and turning them into something amazing. Listen to how Corey thinks having artist in your community can help you create processes that might bring more people to the table in solving some of YOUR community’s biggest problems.

The idea that the rural and urban parts of our state seemed to be getting further and further apart, and this is on the minds of North Carolinians. This idea of disconnection to each other in job opportunities or kinds of health care options are an area that the Institute for Emerging Issues has recognized. We are conveying around the state over the next three years to ReCONNECT NC and talk about solutions. Today's First in Future guest, Senior Policy and Program Manger at the Institute for Emerging Issues, Sarah Langer Hall, has been working on a variety of these issues over the past few years and leads our ReCONNECT NC series.

What makes a small town thrive? Downtowns where people come together to see each other and do things. Their story and what makes their town special, and they’re proud to tell other people about it. Public and private sector, that work together with nonprofits and people willing to put in the time. This week's First in Future guest is Jeff Eidson with Explore Elkin and small business owner who is putting in the time to make Elkin special.

What a better way to start our next hundred episodes of First in Future, than talking with someone who is looking at our state’s future on a daily basis—Peter Hans, president of the NC Community College System. He is responsible for 700,000 students in 58 colleges dotted across the state, all within a 30 minute drive of most citizens. Besides awarding degrees, the college help underemployed workers gain new skills and certificates. They train the people who build your houses, keep you electricity running, unclog your sink, take care of you in the hospital and take care of your finances. All this gives people like Hans a terrific grasp on our state’s issues and in our conversation with him, we cover many of them, including: our state’s skills gap, rural and urban differences, underemployment, and the opportunity and threat of artificial intelligence.

For our 100th First in Future episode we chose a guest who represents IEI's history, Anita Brown-Graham, director of the Institute for 10 years. She has shown a long time commitment to making the state a better place, so it was only fitting that we catch up with her and talk about her new role at the UNC School of Government as ncIMPACT Director and Professor of Public Law and Government.

As Halloween fast approaches, did you know SCARY stories abound about Raleigh’s Capital Building? BAHAHA! Tis TRUE! You see . . . the decades of energy and history swirling through the government building have left a ghost story or two. This week’s First in Future guest, Terra Schramm, is the site administrator of the building, and knows the terrifying tales better than anyone. So sit back, and relax (if you can!) as she spins a civic macabre yarn or two.

As we get closer to our November 27 Forum called ReCONNECT to Community, we wanted to give you a preview of how citizens are participating in helping our communities solve the big challenges. This week’s First in Future guest, Seth Saeugling of the nonprofit Rural Opportunity Institute in Edgecombe County, learned about the impact of trauma on children’s ability to learn in rural North Carolina schools through his experience in Teach for America. He and others, work to see how to apply emerging research on brains in a real world setting, not with a pre-developed program, but instead listening and learning. We learn how he is working with others in Edgecombe County to figure out how to translate the research into results.

In 2015, the Institute for Emerging Issues found that young people aged 18-29 are less likely to volunteer, give money, participate in groups or trust people in their neighborhood. That’s not good and it’s not good for North Carolina. Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor once said “ . . . developing leaders of tomorrow takes patience, passion and civics education.” This week's First in Future guest is Lucy Russell of the Institute of Politics at UNC-Chapel Hill, a student founded organization with a mission to create more civically-engaged students. Russell knows that there is a strong appetite among young people to listen and learn, share their opinions and see how democracy works.

Universities often serve three main roles in society: teaching, researching and engagement (a fancy word for service.) A huge part of community engagement is listening to what people have to say. This week's First in Future guest, Sharon Paynter, associate vice chancellor for community engagement at East Carolina University, is part of the conversation with communities around and beyond the university. Right now, a big part of any eastern North Carolina conversation has to do with Hurricane Florence and the struggle of communities as they continue to clean up from the storm. ECU is helping the efforts in myriad ways. Visit florencerecovery.ecu.edu for more information.

Hurricane Florence really couldn’t have come at a worse time or in a worse way for farmers in southeastern North Carolina. Many farmers were still recovering from the impacts of Hurricane Matthew two years ago. And because Florence came earlier than Matthew, there were more crops still in the field. This week's First inFuture guest, Scott Marlow with the Rural Advancement Foundation International, or RAFI, has seen how this plays out before. His job is to help farmers figure out what to do next. There are plenty of folks available to help – Farm Services, Cooperative Extension, FEMA and others. RAFI looks for gaps and tries to fill them. Listen to what Scott has to say about the stages of recovery for a farmer after a disaster and looking forward. If you are a farmer looking for advice and support RAFI’s Farm Survival Hotline is 866-586-6746, or you can go to rafiusa.org.

Hurricane Florence has been felt with 1100 roads closed, grocery stores running out of food and farmers loosing their crops and many local food distributors went underwater. The Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina is working to get food from grocery stores and fresh produce from farmers via their hyper-efficient routes that its trucks take to get the food from a series of regional warehouses to a network of providers who get it out to people. This week's First in Future guest, Earline Middleton VP of Partner Services and Public Policy Food Bank of Central and Eastern NC, talks of about the immediate work that the Food Bank is doing, her to focus on the future and her observations about the value of disaster planning. Listen for what she thinks is going to be the time of greatest need when it comes to getting food to disaster victims.

This week, our guest isn’t just a community builder, he’s also a community listener. We talk with Andy Fox, a landscape architect from NC State University’s College of Design and co-founder of the Coastal Dynamics Design Lab, about how listening is critical to providing design solutions for large-scale social, environmental and economic issues. Andy goes into communities with an interdisciplinary team of architects, engineers, river specialists, and even social scientists, and does something very strange—he listens. Lately, he’s been listening to people in southeastern North Carolina from places like Fair Bluff, Princeville and Windsor, as those places try to figure out how to recover from Hurricane Matthew and now Hurricane Florence.

What does one do after leaving the job of top salesperson for an entire state? For Sharon Decker, that doesn’t mean retirement. After serving as Secretary of Commerce under Gov. Pat McCrory, Decker moved back to rural North Carolina, where she is helping build a business and rebuild a region’s hopes and dreams. As COO of the Tryon International Equestrian Center, Decker is building a dream that could someday be comparable to golf, or to NASCAR. This week, Decker discusses her career change and shares her book recommendations, and we get the first answer on this podcast to the age-old question, If you were a horse, what kind would you be?

Here is a fact, North Carolina citizens are getting older. Currently, there are about 1.6 million citizens who are over 65. Over the next 20 years, one million more citizens will be added to that demographic. However, this demographic shift presents some amazing opportunities, as many of these older citizens will want to give back to the places they live. Across our state,  community foundations are busy helping North Carolinians address big community problems. This week’s First in Future guest is Elizabeth Brazas, the president and CEO of the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina, located in a part of the state that will have an even larger number of citizens over 65 than state average in the upcoming years, thanks in part to Western North Carolina becoming a haven for retirees. During the podcast, you will get a lot of insights from Elizabeth—about strategic planning, the role of philanthropy, and respecting the differences between counties. You will also learn about a "mafia" that works for good, balancing permanence and fluidity in a fast-changing world and why not everybody in western North Carolina likes top 10 lists.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said: “Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.” This week's First in Future guest is Chris Suggs, the founder of the non-profit Kinston Teens. At the age 9 he organized a community cleanup campaign, at the age 14 started a nonprofit called Kinston Teens, then moved on to start a national organization for young black leaders, then was named to the Governor’s Crime Commission. Listen and be inspired to hear what he has to say about the influence parents can have on their children, about working on the problems that present themselves right in front of you, and how much you can get done if you don’t demand you get the credit.