First in Future: Where Emerging Ideas Take Flight

What should we be learning or telling our kids to learn to get them ready for the future? Should we be preparing students with specific skills that may be extinct in the future or general skills that will enable them to adjust to a changing market? Count Jennifer Kuzma among the people who would advise you to keep an open mind about what your career is going to look like. This week’s guest, Jennifer Kuzma, is the Co-Director of the GES Center. As we listen, we have the chance to think about mosquitoes, killer genes, the ethics of Ancestry.com, new uses of the tobacco leaf, do it yourself biology, and how grateful North Carolina should be to have so many people from out of state moving here.

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 why he does the job, how he does it, the Foundation’s role in hurricane recovery, and the value of civic groups. We also talked about the importance of internships, Kinston’s mayor and…Notre Dame football. This installment of First in Future is part of a special TV series produced in collaboration with UNC-TV, and recorded in UNC-TV’s Legislative Studio in downtown Raleigh. Taped segments will air on the North Carolina Channel. Visit www.ncchannel.org/schedule/ for specific air dates.

What sector of North Carolina’s economy is comprised of 380,000 people, pays $16 billion in wages each year, and generates another $200 million in tax revenue? This week’s guest is Center for Creative Economy’s Founding Executive Director Margaret Collins, who spearheaded an effort to examine our state’s “creative economy” (yes, that’s the answer to the above question in case you’re wondering). She set out to identify the number of creative industries working in North Carolina and to determine their overall impact to our state’s economy – and it’s no small contribution. Listen this week as we talk about the importance of creative thinking in business, North Carolina’s film industry, and what type of instrument our state would be in an orchestra. This installment of First in Future is part of a special TV series produced in collaboration with UNC-TV, and recorded in UNC-TV’s Legislative Studio in downtown Raleigh. Taped segments will air on the North Carolina Channel. Visit www.ncchannel.org/schedule/ for specific air dates.

Steve Troxler, Commissioner, North Carolina Department of Agriculture by Institute for Emerging Issues

Brian Etheridge, the president of Leadership North Carolina, each year finds a new crop of 50-some individuals from business, nonprofits, education and government and feeds them a firehouse of information on North Carolina history, government, education, economic development, health and human services and the environment. They learn together, work on projects together and then figure out what to do next with all that information. This week we talked with Brian about growing up in rural North Carolina, the importance of listening, the hardest job he ever had, how leaders translate information into action and how food might be the solution to some of the state’s trickiest political disagreements. This installment of First in Future is part of a special TV series produced in collaboration with UNC-TV, and recorded in UNC-TV’s Legislative Studio in downtown Raleigh. Taped segments will air on the North Carolina Channel. Visit www.ncchannel.org/schedule/ for specific air dates.

Next week marks the start of Global Entrepreneurship Week – seven days celebrated around the world, with events designed to recognize and encourage more people to think more seriously about starting companies and organizations. Across the state, universities will be holding a series of events – 12 of the 16 public universities in North Carolina have entrepreneurship centers that will be participating. At NC State, the Entrepreneurship Initiative will be holding a “shark tank”-like event. And they’ll be holding a special event called “Ladies Who Launch” to celebrate women entrepreneurs. Women are still a minority when it comes to starting companies, so acknowledging the problem and celebrating success matters a lot. This week, we talk with Emily Neville, an undergraduate political science major at NC State, AND co-founder of an enterprise called Reborn Clothing Co. She is so passionate about her company she talked to us in the middle of a cold, so be patient about her cough. Then listen for some really good insights on the kind of thinking you need to do to launch a new idea, or to do entrepreneurship in rural places. You’ll also learn about textile waste and slow fashion. And if you stick with it till the end, you may get an idea for the perfect holiday gift.

A couple of weeks ago I went to the Southeast Raleigh Innovation Challenge, a pitch competition designed to get more people thinking about a business they could start, and getting the folks with the best ideas some of the money and support they need to get those businesses going. If today’s guest could give them one piece of advice about making their businesses successful, it might be “take other business leaders out to lunch.” That’s the approach Sepi Saidi used as she built one of the Southeast’s fastest growing engineering firms, SEPI Engineering. During the interview, you’ll hear more about what she’s learned on making a business successful, some thoughts on how to get more women working in STEM fields, and how we might grow more young entrepreneurs. We’ll also talk about how cowboys and the Six Million Dollar Man influenced her growing up in Iran – and you’ll learn at least one word of Farsi. This installment of First in Future is part of a special TV series produced in collaboration with UNC-TV, and recorded in UNC-TV’s Legislative Studio in downtown Raleigh. Taped segments will air on the North Carolina Channel. Visit www.ncchannel.org/schedule/ for specific airdates.

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 now, he’s written a book on the importance of the word “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 eighteenth century ministers, Eagle Scouts, Hurricane Matthew, Frank Sinatra, the most famous Michael Jordan quote ever, and a guy named Demetrius who may just transform our state. This installment of First in Future is part of a special TV series produced in collaboration with UNC-TV, and recorded in UNC-TV’s Legislative Studio in downtown Raleigh. Taped segments will air on the North Carolina Channel. Visit www.ncchannel.org/schedule/ for specific air dates.

When solving big problems, local folks are the canaries in the coalmine – they are likely to notice a problem before anyone else, and more likely to be able to get to work on it quickly. This week’s podcast is evidence of that. I’m talking with Ben Brown, host of the podcast for NC League of Municipalities. Every couple of weeks on his podcast he identifies a big issue that is facing cities and towns across North Carolina, and goes in-depth. If you work for a city government, if you care about city government, or even if you hate your city government, I’d urge you to try the podcast. It’s called Municipal Equation. This week, we talk about the top five issues that cities should be worried about, the latest on smart cities, the value of broadband, autonomous vehicles, revenue flexibility, and modern storytelling. We also talk about some cool things folks are trying in Benson, Raleigh and Wilson; and if you don’t know what Fuquay-Varina’s catchphrase is, we’ve got you covered.

In the late 1990’s, I worked on a project called the North Carolina Rural Prosperity Task Force. The idea was to develop a series of recommendations that could make a meaningful difference for rural North Carolina. At the time, the state had just passed a threshold where more than 50% of the state lived in just 15 of our 100 counties. The fear was that rural areas, and rural people, would get left behind. The recommendations of the Task Force made some difference, most notably in getting high-speed internet to more places and making more people aware of the challenge – but the trends have continued. In the past six years, 41% of North Carolina municipalities – almost all in rural North Carolina – have lost population. And people have noticed. As the Institute for Emerging Issues has been asking people about the big issues they are concerned about, and as I have talked to people for the podcast, I’ve been hammered over the head at how many people say their number one concern is for rural North Carolina. There’s nobody in the state who thinks more about that than Patrick Woodie, President of the N.C. Rural Center. I think you’ll find him optimistic. We talked about rural North Carolina’s struggles in recovering from Hurricane Matthew, the new generation of rural leaders, the importance of entrepreneurship, and why he thinks calling what’s going on a rural-urban divide is just plain dumb. This installment of First in Future is part of a special TV series produced in collaboration with UNC-TV, and recorded in UNC-TV’s Legislative Studio in downtown Raleigh. Taped segments will air on the North Carolina Channel. Visit www.ncchannel.org/schedule/ for specific air dates.

From the beginning, it was a romantic idea. In 1954, a building contractor named Romeo got together with North Carolina’s state treasurer and a bank president to hatch a ridiculous idea – what if the biggest companies in the world decided to show up and move their operations to a big plot of land covered with pine trees in the middle of North Carolina? If you’ve never thought of it, it’s worth noting that the biggest selling point of what became the Research Triangle Park was that there was a bunch of research going on at three points of a triangle – at Duke in Durham, at UNC in Chapel Hill and at NC State in Raleigh. And the idea was that companies would want to be close to the really smart people who were doing that research and graduating from those places. As part of the park package, businesses and the three universities kicked in $500,000 to start a nonprofit called the Research Triangle Institute, where people would “improve the human condition by turning knowledge into practice.” Sixty years later, RTI International is not just a support to the Park, it’s a huge employer too. How did it get so big? What’s it working on? And what can RTI tell us about addressing some of North Carolina’s biggest challenges? I talked to RTI International President and CEO Wayne Holden about RTI’s research on the opioid crisis, how they help in communities, and what it takes to come up with truly innovative ideas. This installment of First in Future is part of a special TV series produced in collaboration with UNC-TV, and recorded in UNC-TV’s Legislative Studio in downtown Raleigh. Taped segments will air on the North Carolina Channel. Visit www.ncchannel.org/schedule/ for specific air dates.

The old joke about economic developers is that they like to be buffalo hunters; they are always looking for a giant beast of a company that they can drag back and use to feed the entire community. But these days the buffaloes are rare. There are a lot more economic developers out there than gigantic companies looking to move, and more and more people are shifting their focus to looking for entrepreneurs, people who have a history of imagining new ways of doing things. You might call them unicorns – rare and inspiring. This week we talk to one of them. Jud Bowman started his first successful company while he was still a student at the NC School of Science and Math. In the 18 years since, he’s started two more. He’s a self-proclaim serial entrepreneur, and Sift founder and CEO. Our conversation started out rocky, with what is probably the worst joke in First in Future history. But then we settled in to a good talk, where he imagined how Uber might help rural North Carolina, talked about why phone apps work, how Montessori unleashes the mind, the difference between STEM and STEAM. Oh…and violas. This installment of First in Future is part of a special TV series produced in collaboration with UNC-TV, and recorded in UNC-TV’s Legislative Studio in downtown Raleigh. Taped segments will air on the North Carolina Channel. Visit www.ncchannel.org/schedule/ for specific air dates.

If you are a nonprofit wondering how to raise money more effectively, this episode is for you. If you are a business trying to figure out how to get your employees more engaged in the community, this episode is for you. We’re talking with Isa Watson, a Chapel Hill native who left the state to go to school, work for a chemical company and a corporation, and then came back. Now she heads up a company called Envested, a company based in Durham that aims to help people and companies connect to nonprofits in a meaningful way. We had a rich conversation about boomers and millennials, the intergenerational transfer of wealth, and which classical composer would be most likely to be successful as a tech entrepreneur. This installment of First in Future is part of a special TV series produced in collaboration with UNC-TV, and recorded in UNC-TV’s Legislative Studio in downtown Raleigh. Taped segments will air on the North Carolina Channel. Visit www.ncchannel.org/schedule/ for specific air dates.

The hardest job I’ve had in my life was my first job out of college. I worked regular 80-90 hour weeks – 106 was my record. The customers had widely varying backgrounds and expectations. My bosses required regular reports, but didn’t provide me much support at all. It required every ounce of my brain. Every day was survival. And I loved it. I taught high school. In many ways, I became the poster child for teacher burnout. I went in ready to change the world. Instead, I washed out at the same point so many teachers do – after three years. People across the nation, and across the state, have been working for at least the past 20 years to figure out what it takes to get more teachers to stay in the classroom longer. Today, as the next school year cranks up, we talk with the dean of NC State’s College of Education, Dr. Mary Ann Danowitz, about the newest ideas schools of education have to raise up new teachers, find people from other professions who want to teach, and get teachers to stay longer in the profession. As you listen, try to think to yourself. Are there really many jobs in the world more complicated – or more important – than being a kindergarten teacher? This installment of First in Future is part of a special TV series produced in collaboration with UNC-TV, and recorded in UNC-TV’s Legislative Studio in downtown Raleigh. Taped segments will air on the North Carolina Channel. Visit www.ncchannel.org/schedule/ for specific air dates.

A couple of years ago, the Institute for Emerging Issues took on a challenging topic: what will all of us be doing for work in twenty years? We called the Forum “FutureWork.” The real answer is, of course, nobody knows. About the only thing we know is that things are changing really fast. But what happens next is NOT A QUESTION WE CAN IGNORE. To help us answer the question, we turned to NC State Professor Mike Walden, who may just be the state’s best known economist – I call him the economic “explainer-in-chief." Join us as we talk robots, bricklaying machines, writing economic thrillers, the future of taxation, where education funding should go in the future, the best predictors of job success, and a new, possibly hopeful, future for liberal arts majors. This installment of First in Future is part of a special TV series produced in collaboration with UNC-TV, and recorded in UNC-TV’s Legislative Studio in downtown Raleigh. Taped segments will air on the North Carolina Channel. Visit www.ncchannel.org/schedule/ for specific air dates.