Kira Blankenship

At the end of December 2024, according to the North Carolina Department of Social Services, there were over 10,000 children and nearly a 1,000 young adults in the state’s foster care system. It has been reported by numerous news outlets that there is a critical shortage of foster families to provide these youth with loving and stable homes, something that NC State University alumna Lauren Clark ’20 had become painfully aware of during her college career.


“Starting off in college, I had no ide...

It can often seem like an overstatement, the impact that college has on a person’s future. For Ged King, however, that influence was undeniable. 


King hopes to replicate the impact he found at State that shaped his career and have a multiplier effect by hiring NC State students and alumni through his company, Sales Factory. 


Harrison Mehr is one of those students.


Mehr said part of what drew him to the company was the way Sales Factory approaches their work, “At Sales Factory, Love to W...

When Heather Palmateer graduated from NC State in the Spring of ‘21 with her MSW, she could have never anticipated that, three years later, she would be on the frontlines of Appalachian devastation. Face to face with the trauma inflicted on Western North Carolina by the deadliest Atlantic hurricane since Katrina, tragically claiming over two hundred lives in a once-in-1,000-year flood.


Ms. Palmateer, along with three other crisis counselors in the Chapel Hill Police Department, was tasked wit...