First in Future: Where Emerging Ideas Take Flight

Maggie Woods, Behind the Forum ReCONNECT to Community by Institute for Emerging Issues

This week thousands of freshmen enter college in hopes that in four years they emerge with more knowledge and maturity and a deep substantive understanding about a major or two. This is our "Back to School" episode and this week's First in Future guest, Eric Johnson Editorial Strategy Director at The College Board, talks about his experience of working with first generation UNC students and his work getting them ready for college. We learn his thoughts on listening, learning, talking and reading, as well as what to look for in a college class and the merits of caffeine over alcohol.

The words “public policy” conjure up images in the mind of legislative or municipal hearings or cubes of bureaucrats, but this week’s guest want to find a way to put the public in public policy. Mebane Rash is the CEO and editor-in-chief of EducationNC and the N.C. Center for Public Policy Research and EdNC is looking for ways to get people who are concerned about education feeling like we have ability to participate in what happens. Mebane feels like the best ideas really do emerge from talking across lines of division in town halls and town squares, coffee shops and breweries. This week’s First in Future explores her thoughts on civil discourse and social capital, civic participation and public education, and the connective power of coffee.

In honor of our upcoming forum on civic engagement, ReCONNECT to Community, being held Sept. 17 in beautiful, scenic Asheville, we’re doing something special. This week, we have FIVE new First in Future podcasts lined up, all featuring a different western North Carolina leaders. We are at the end of the week with today’s guest Oscar Wong, Founder of Highland Brewing. Today the craft brewing industry is a phenomenon in North Carolina, but when it started for Oscar, it took eight years for Highland Brewing Company to get where it is today.

In honor of our upcoming forum on civic engagement, ReCONNECT to Community, being held Sept. 17 in beautiful, scenic Asheville, we’re doing something special. This week, we have FIVE new First in Future podcasts lined up, all featuring a different western North Carolina leaders. We are almost through the week with today’s guest Zeb Smathers, Mayor of Canton, NC. Listen for the importance of towns building off of what they have, not running from it. The flip he made from "Canton Can’t" to "Canton Can"! How small towns can’t afford to get ugly with each other, but have to solve problems. One line that will stick out is : “the divides between us are only as deep as we dig them. It’s time to start putting dirt back into them and get to work.”

In honor of our upcoming forum on civic engagement, ReCONNECT to Community, being held Sept. 17 in beautiful, scenic Asheville, we’re doing something special. This week, we have FIVE new First in Future podcasts lined up, all featuring a different western North Carolina leaders. We are half way through the week with today’s guest Darin Waters, Executive Director of Community Engagement at UNC Asheville. We’ll end the week with Oscar Wong, owner of Asheville’s Highland Brewing Company. As for the next guests . . . well, you’ll have to tune in tomorrow to find out who that is!

In honor of our upcoming forum on civic engagement, ReCONNECT to Community, being held Sept. 17 in beautiful, scenic Asheville, we’re doing something special. This week, we have FIVE new First in Future podcasts lined up, all featuring a different western North Carolina leaders. We continue the week with today’s guest Dr. Ron Paulus, president & CEO of Mission Health, which serves a million people in the state’s 18 westernmost counties. Dr. Paulus talks about online apps, robotic services, volunteers, in-home visitors, virtual observers, and a group he calls “caramedics.” And since the average citizen of western North Carolina is older than the rest of the state, what he is figuring out now, are the kinds of solutions the rest of the state will need in the future.

In honor of our upcoming forum on civic engagement, ReCONNECT to Community, being held Sept. 17 in beautiful, scenic Asheville, we’re doing something special. This week, we have FIVE new First in Future podcasts lined up, all featuring a different western North Carolina leaders. We’ll start off the week with today’s guest Kit Cramer, president & CEO of the Asheville Chamber of Commerce. We’ll end the week with Oscar Wong, owner of Asheville’s Highland Brewing Company. As for the rest of the week’s guests . . . well, you’ll have to tune in each day this week to find out who they are!

The Asheville of today is a many-splendored thing. It’s appeared on numerous “Best of” lists and received countless titles – like “One of the Best Places to Reinvent Your Life,” “The Happiest City in America for Women,” “The Hippie Capital of the South,” “The Best City for Locavores,” “The Most Romantic Place in U.S.A. and Canada,” and, of course, “Beer City U.S.A.” – and combined with its natural physical beauty, it offers many enticing features for newcomers. This week’s guest remembers Asheville before all those awards, when it was really struggling to recover from the Great Depression. As a direct descendent of George Washington Vanderbilt, the man behind the Biltmore House, Jack Cecil and his family have been in Asheville for generations. As we talk with Jack about how Asheville recovered, changed and grew into itself, we hope you’ll listen for some of the ways he’s learned what it takes to develop communities in the future in a way that lasts. Tune in to part two!

The Asheville of today is a many-splendored thing. It’s appeared on numerous “Best of” lists and received countless titles – like “One of the Best Places to Reinvent Your Life,” “The Happiest City in America for Women,” “The Hippie Capital of the South,” “The Best City for Locavores,” “The Most Romantic Place in U.S.A. and Canada,” and, of course, “Beer City U.S.A.” – and combined with its natural physical beauty, it offers many enticing features for newcomers. This week’s guest remembers Asheville before all those awards, when it was really struggling to recover from the Great Depression. As a direct descendent of George Washington Vanderbilt, the man behind the Biltmore House, Jack Cecil and his family have been in Asheville for generations. As we talk with Jack about how Asheville recovered, changed and grew into itself, we hope you’ll listen for some of the ways he’s learned what it takes to develop communities in the future in a way that lasts. Tune in to part 1 of 2 of our conversation!

Just listen to someone else. Hear what they are saying. Recognize that other people see things from a different angle, and it changes the way we see things ourselves and gives us a different perspective. That is what our First in Future guest, Pearce Godwin, founder and CEO of the Listen First Project discovered. He was riding down a bumpy road in Uganda in 2013 and saw something about the US that many of us were only beginning to realize. What he realized changed his life and he started the nonprofit and the National Conversation Project. Listen and hear what he is saying.

Just think about the impact on southeastern North Carolina of a place like UNC Pembroke—an institution originally built to train Native Americans teachers and nurses, but eventually expanded to serve all students who needed affordable, high quality education. This week's First in Future guest is Dr. Robin Cummings, chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. He talks to Institute for Emerging Issues Director Leslie Boney about communities surrounding Pembroke and how they are solving problems by building onto or utilizing their infrastructure, and how UNC Pembroke is getting in on the act.

In the 90s, it was recommended that every resident state should have access to affordable high-speed internet. General thinking was that with broadband speeds and quick shipping pickup, a rural business could sell products all over the world, a worker could learn online to advance their skills or students could do homework with research from around the world at their fingertips. This week’s First in Future guest is Nelle Hotchkiss, senior Vice President of North Carolina’s Electric Cooperatives, and she talks about how the state’s electric membership solved a very similar problem 90 years ago of getting much needed resources to rural NC. Listen and learn a little bit more about broadband, workforce development, volunteerism and entrepreneurship.

This week's First in Future guest was a New York born, Georgia raised and Duke educated law clerk, and former school superintendent who’s now the head of North Carolina's largest general purpose foundation. Maurice "Mo" Green is the executive director of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, which has been in the news lately as they’ve finished up a two year review on their philanthropy that has narrowed their focus and fine-tuned their ideas on how they want to help others.

This week's First in Future guest, Andrea Harris, is the Senior Fellow at NC Institute of Minority Economic Development. The past 50 years she’s been standing up for the elderly, fighting for affordable housing, helping minorities in our state get businesses started. In 1986, she and two colleagues co-founded the N.C. Institute of Minority Economic Development, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting minority and women businesses. There were then fewer than 30,000 minority businesses in North Carolina; today, there are more than 132,000.