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.

Today’s show starts in an unusual place. With a question: why do bad things happen to good people? The writers of the Bible were probably the first to try to answer that question on paper – in the story of Job. In 1981, Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote a best-selling book about the question. He called it, not surprisingly, “When Bad Things Happen to Good People.” Others have followed. In 2003, I wrote my own play on the subject. My conclusion was probably much the same as others. We don’t—and we can’t—know why these things happen. But an equally important question for all of us is what do we do AFTER bad things happen? What do we do NEXT? Today’s guest, Nation Hahn, faced down the worst kind of tragedy. In today’s episode, he talks about how he is getting through that pain, and finding hope for our state’s future.

Nation Hahn is the Board President and Co-Founder of the Jamie Kirk Hahn Foundation, the Chief Growth Officer for EdNC.org, and Digital Director for Blueprint for Athletes.

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.

It is the middle of August, and ridiculously hot these days. It’s the time of year Reverend Richard Joyner hated, growing up in Pitt County. For him and his 12 brothers and sisters, it meant another back-breaking day after another, in the fields with his sharecropping parents. The only thing he was sure of then was that he would never be in the fields when he grew up. Nowadays, he runs an award-winning ministry based in the fields – and loves every minute of it. As you listen to this week’s interview, I hope you’ll think of something you may have been considering doing, but avoiding. It could be just the thing you were called to do.

Rev. Joyner is the pastor at Conetone Chapel Missionary Baptist Church, and founder of Conetone Family Center.

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. Watch the UNC-TV broadcast version via online streaming here!

Tomorrow, about 34,000 students, 2,300 faculty and 6,700 staff will run into each other at North Carolina State University, the start of another year for the state’s largest university. Full disclosure – I work there, along with the staff of the Institute for Emerging Issues, and the start of every year is about as exciting as it gets. These are good times for NC State. This year’s entering freshmen have the highest ACT and SAT scores ever. Last year’s students graduated at the highest rate ever. Faculty at the university are winning more research grants than ever. And they rank #2 in the country on turning the stuff they discover into something of commercial value. Presiding over all that for the past seven years is Chancellor Randy Woodson, our guest interview this week. If you’re a leader of an enterprise, large or small, I hope you’ll appreciate his thoughts on the importance of saying “no.” We also talk about the grand challenges of the world, what he calls “cluster hires,” what universities are learning from industry, the biggest challenges our state is facing, and why North Carolina is like a Belgian beer.

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.

Why is it that anybody gives something to someone else? Today’s guest, Jennifer Tolle Whiteside, has asked herself that question more than maybe anyone else in North Carolina. As president and CEO of the North Carolina Community Foundation, she talks every day with people who are setting up funds in their communities to do something useful. Across the state, a group of community foundations takes the bureaucracy out of giving. By giving through a community foundation, someone else handles the administrative details so you get to focus on what you want your money to be used for. Join us as we talk about beekeepers and books, economic mobility and the nobility of a cafeteria worker, and about what people get from giving.

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.

Three years ago, the state of North Carolina launched a new approach to economic development. Essentially, we bet that we would have a better chance of recruiting jobs and bringing in tourists if we had a public-private corporation doing the marketing. The Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina was launched. When it survived the transition of administrations, Gov. Cooper appointed a new chair for the organization, Charlotte attorney Frank Emory. He’s our guest this week. Why would you pick an attorney to head up the board of an economic development partnership? Well, Frank’s asked himself that. But as you listen, I think you’ll hear why. Besides his having an impressive track record as a community leader, there’s some value to the sorts of questions Frank’s learned to ask as an attorney. As he puts it, he’s trained to dispassionately analyze knotty problems and figure out a way to resolve them. That’s not a bad summary of the sort of challenge we need to work on. In our conversation, we talked about purple cows, the different perspectives pigs and chickens have on breakfast, where Charlotte’s workforce comes from, why God gave us two ears and only one mouth, and what he learned growing up in a one-industry town that had to reinvent itself.

This installment is part of a special 13-segment series produced in collaboration with UNC-TV, and recorded in UNC-TV’s Legislative Studio in downtown Raleigh. We are excited to share the First in Future podcast via traditional means and via taped segments to air on the North Carolina Channel! Visit www.ncchannel.org/schedule/ for specific air dates.

Across the state, North Carolina’s community colleges pop up like beautifully spaced dots on a map, and if you put all 58 of them—plus their satellite campuses, together—every citizen wanting to connect to one can drive or get a ride to one just a few minutes. Once they get there, they can enroll in one of hundreds of two-year degree programs. They can learn to breed cattle, clone seeds, search deeds. Or they can learn to read. This week we talk with North Carolina Community College System President Jimmie Williamson about the future of higher education, why he decided to move to North Carolina, and what he has in common with legendary jazz musician, Dizzy Gillespie.

This installment is part of a special 13-segment series produced in collaboration with UNC-TV, and recorded in UNC-TV’s Legislative Studio in downtown Raleigh. We are excited to share the First in Future podcast via traditional means and via taped segments to air on the North Carolina Channel! Visit www.ncchannel.org/schedule/ for specific air dates.