Faculty Member Anita Brown-Graham Launches Television Show Highlighting North Carolina Communities

Starting January 2019, UNC School of Government faculty member Anita Brown-Graham is hosting a new television show that highlights community solutions across North Carolina. The new show, ncIMPACT, with sponsorship provided by Civic Federal Credit Union, will premiere 10 p.m., Thursday, January 17 and air again 8 p.m., Thursday, February 7, starting a weekly series on UNC-TV Public Media North Carolina.

 “ncIMPACT is going to help local communities focus on challenges that are most important to them,” said Brown-Graham. “It's going to provide them with two important resources to respond to those challenges. The first is data—good, solid, unbiased information that they can use to help them define the problem and figure out which levers to pull to fix it. We’re also going to inspire them with promising practices that will come from other places in North Carolina, across the country and across the globe. This television program will allow communities all across the state to learn from each other. To both recognize that their challenges are common challenges that other places are facing, but more importantly, perhaps, to be inspired by the stories of places that are tackling those problems successfully.”

The ncIMPACT series launches in Pittsboro as Brown-Graham follows Chatham County’s efforts to encourage and recruit women to enter the fast-growing and important construction industry, where jobs are plentiful and critical but women are underrepresented. Subsequent episodes look at how the City of Kinston is devising unique ways to revitalize its downtown to attract not just visitors but new residents; how ordinary people in Winston-Salem are doing extraordinary things to increase pre-kindergarten access to improve workforce outcomes; and how McDowell County is working to improve health access, with strategies such as paramedics making house calls to help people avoid costly trips to hospital emergency departments.

In 2016, Brown-Graham launched the ncIMPACT initiative at the UNC School of Government to expand the School’s capacity to work with public officials on complex policy issues. Brown-Graham and her colleagues have developed programs to support communities working on challenges surrounding poverty and economic mobility, early childhood education, workforce development, and opioid misuse.

Brown-Graham was previously director of the Institute for Emerging Issues (IEI) at North Carolina State University, leading IEI’s efforts to increase the state’s capacity for economic development and prosperity. She also served on the UNC School of Government faculty from 1994 to 2006, where she specialized in governmental liability and community economic development aimed at revitalizing communities. Brown-Graham began her career as a law clerk in the Eastern District of California. She is a William C. Friday Fellow, American Marshall Fellow, and Eisenhower Fellow. In 2013, the White House named her a Champion of Change for her work at IEI, and the Triangle Business Journal named her a 2014 Woman in Business for her policy leadership in the state and CEO of the Year in 2017. She earned an undergraduate degree from Louisiana State University and a law degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Find individual episodes and web extras at unctv.org/ncimpact and find your local public television channel at the UNC-TV Public Media website.  

TV Schedule: 

January 17, 10 p.m.       Premiere: Women in Construction (Pittsboro)

February 7, 8 p.m.         Women in Construction (Pittsboro)

February 14, 8 p.m.       Downtown Revitalization (Kinston)

February 21,^, 8 p.m.       Pre-K Expansion (Winston-Salem)

February 28, 8 p.m.       Healthcare in Rural Areas (McDowell County)