As we have done each February for the past three years, QCity Metro is celebrating Black History Month by acknowledging 28 Charlotte residents who have made our city a better place to live, work, and play.
This year’s edition of The Great 28 includes entrepreneurs, activists, business executives, philanthropists, volunteers, nonprofit leaders, government employees and one member of our faith community.
In a city brimming with so much Black Excellence, how can we narrow our list to just 28 people? That’s never an easy task.
We start by asking our readers to nominate individuals they deem worthy of recognition. From there, a team made up of QCity Metro staff, readers and volunteers makes final selections. All who made our lists in 2021 and 2022 were ineligible for further recognition.
Our process is subjective, to be sure, and we acknowledge countless others who are deserving of our recognition.
Here are some of the leaders who are being recognized this year:
- Sherri Chisholm, executive director of Leading on Opportunity Chisholm has accepted an important challenge. The organization she leads was created in 2017 to address Charlotte’s economic-mobility problem. Chisholm joined in September 2020. Under her leadership, the organization has grown its donor base from three funders to 15 and has raised $2.6 million toward a $4.5 million goal. It also launched an “Opportunity Compass,” a data-visualization tool designed to help funders make smarter investments while also helping nonprofits deliver more effective programming.
- Malcomb Coley, 2022 chair of the CLT Alliance and co-chair of the Mayor’s Racial Equity Initiative Ever wonder how the Mayor’s Racial Equity Initiative raised more than $250 million to address racial disparities in Charlotte? Malcomb Coley knows. As co-chair of that initiative, he helped spearhead the fundraising drive. Coley is the Charlotte managing partner at global consulting firm Ernst & Young U.S., responsible for 16,000 colleagues across 22 states. He serves on the boards of several organizations, including the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance, the UNC Wilmington Cameron School of Business, and United Way of Greater Charlotte.
- Marcus Jones, Charlotte City Manager Jones is shaping Charlotte. City manager since Dec. 1, 2016, he and his team are responsible for managing the city of Charlotte’s daily operations, which carries a $3.2 billion budget. Under his leadership, the city has spent millions of dollars to build affordable housing, created the Corridors of Opportunity program in low-income neighborhoods, and developed the 2040 Comprehensive Plan and the Unified Development Ordinance. His 25-year career includes stints as city manager in Norfolk, Va.; deputy chief administrative officer for the city of Richmond; and the deputy secretary of finance for two Virginia governors.
- Donna Julian, executive vice president and Spectrum Center general manager at Hornets Sports & Entertainment In 2020, the national Sports Business Journal named Julian one of its “Game Changers,” acknowledging her as a high-achieving woman in sports business. Julian said her biggest accomplishment was “navigating unprecedented challenges” while managing the Spectrum Center during the covid outbreak, when nearly everything came to a halt. Julian also serves on the executive committee of the N.C. Sports Leadership Council. In 2019, Gov. Roy Cooper appointed her to serve on the N.C. Emergency Response Commission, representing the state’s public venues sector.
- Ju-Don Marshall, chief content officer and executive vice president, WFAE Marshall is a newsroom leader. At public radio station WFAE, she has spearheaded efforts to expand coverage of communities of color through the station’s race-and-equity reporting initiative, as well as through the station’s ongoing conversations with local officials, community leaders and residents. An award-winning journalist, Marshall has led or worked in news organizations such as The Washington Post, News Corporation, Everyday Health and The Charlotte Observer. In 2022, Business North Carolina named her as one of North Carolina’s most influential leaders. A tech entrepreneur, she is developing a platform called Story Mosaic to help Charlotte-area residents share story ideas with reporters.
- Eugene Woods, president and CEO, Atrium Health Under Woods’ leadership, Advocate Health, which Atrium Health is part of, is working with Wake Forest University to bring a medical school to Charlotte. Officials hope to seat the school’s first class in 2024. The medical school will anchor a 20-acre innovation district called The Pearl, located on a site that was once part of the historically Black neighborhood of Brooklyn, which was demolished in the 1960s and ’70s during “urban renewal.” Woods has said that Advocate will use the project to drive economic mobility, creating jobs with livable wages that require specialized training but perhaps not college degrees.
The rest of The Great 28 can be found here.
