BOLD IDEAS FOR A MORE PROSPEROUS FUTURE

Learn More About Our 2023 Conference

The Pathway to Prosperity Conference is the only event in North Carolina to address the entire range of events that can affect an individual’s or family’s financial well-being. The Conference offers sessions about consumer finance issues, access to banking, student loan debt, and strategies to close the racial wealth divide and more. 

Register for the Conference

Conference Agenda

8:30AM  |  Breakfast and Registration

9:00AM  |  The City of Raleigh's Summer Youth Bank On Initiative

Sponsored by Coastal Credit Union

Summer Jobs Connect is an initiative operating in 25 cities across the country intended to support the financial wellbeing of young people participating in youth employment programs by helping them to access and use safe, affordable checking accounts. By getting banked early, youth can avoid the pitfalls of being unbanked (like paying fees to check cashers) and start their financial lives off on the right foot. The City of Raleigh is bringing this exciting initiative to youth involved in their Summer Youth Employment program. This panel will share details of the initiative and steps that other nonprofits, local governments, or financial institutions can take to provide their youth with access to safe and affordable bank accounts.

Presented by: Rebekah Dixon and Victor Galloway

10:00AM  |  Life Mapping – An Innovative Way to Empower Clients to Build Financial Stability

Sponsored by PNC Bank

The thought of building wealth when you are homeless, unemployed, or hungry is overwhelming and seems insurmountable. Cabarrus County leveraged an innovative tool to empower clients to move from crisis to breakthrough by breaking complicated situations down into more manageable pieces yielding impressive results. This session will explore this journey and their plans to use the same tool to help Cabarrus County social workers to do the same in their own personal lives.

Presented by: Beth Lowder and Karen Calhoun

11:00AM  |  Where are the Workers?

Since the onset of COVID-19, the labor market has experienced rapid changes. Initially, job losses shot up and businesses were forced to scale back or shut down completely. However, the recovery for many sectors happened relatively quickly and now many businesses find they have more job openings than workers to fill them. This session will share insights from a series of focus groups conducted around the state with employers, workforce support providers, and young adults beginning their careers or looking for work. Hear lessons learned from these different perspectives, proposed recommendations to improve opportunities for employers and workers, and offer your ideas, concerns, and insights to expand the conversation.

Presented by: Jess Dorrance

12:30PM  | Support for the Supporter Lunch & Learn

Sponsored by JPMorgan Chase & Co

The conference will host an interactive working lunch with connection, reflection, and inspiration, on how to integrate care into our busy lives, rather than making it one more thing that does not fit. Space for self-evaluation, conversation, and skill-building will be structured around the needs and interests of the attendees. Participants will explore the context and importance of care, with an emphasis on practical and tangible tools that are rooted in self and community care. Attendees will leave with skills and insights that can be activated immediately.

Presented by: Elizabeth Watkins Price

2:00PM  | Financial Empowerment and Physical Health

Sponsored by First Citizens bank

This session will highlight solution-based approaches to address the whole person (mental, physical, social and psychosocial). Social drivers of health are often linked to poverty and low education status. Screening for social risk factors that impacts physical health is a key step in providing whole person care. The highlight of this session is the role of the community health worker and their role in supporting the whole person.

Presented by: Allice Schenall, Tamika Williams, and Philip Cooper

3:00PM  |  Financial Equity Barriers with Financial Edutainment

Everyone is using online banking or apps. But how do they work and what happens “behind the scenes”? What are the pros, cons, and questions about these relationships from a consumer protection perspective? This session will cover the basic terminology of fintech-bank partnerships, some of the major players on both the fintech and bank sides of these partnerships, recent developments specific to North Carolina, and the importance of NC’s lending laws in this fast-growing market.

Presented by: Rochelle Sparko, Monica Burks, and Lynne Weaver

4:00PM  |  Understanding North Carolina’s Benefit Cliff with a Focus in Forsyth County

This is an interactive simulation that will explore the impact of the Benefits Cliff, a condition in which a small pay increase results in an overall loss of combined income and benefits, has on low-income families building asset wealth in North Carolina. Many people in our community are adversely impacted and as they forfeit benefits; they suddenly have less money in their monthly budget to meet their household’s essential needs like food, rent, healthcare, child care, and transportation. Attendees will receive actionable steps that employers, beneficiaries, and changemakers (elected officials, organizational and institutional leaders, nonprofits and foundations, grassroots organizers, and others) can do to help mitigate the child care benefits cliff in North Carolina.

Presented by: Vivian Pérez Chandler and Arleatha Patterson

JOIN US!

Panelists

Karen

Karen Calhoun

Karen Calhoun is the Director of Human Services for Cabarrus County. Karen has served 29 years in human services having worked as a Division Director and Assistant Director with social services departments, and with the N.C. Division of Social Services as a regional program consultant. She has a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Western Carolina University and Masters in Public Administration from Appalachian State University. 
 
rochelle

Rochelle Sparko

Rochelle Sparko serves as the Director of North Carolina Policy for the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL). CRL works at the state and federal levels to ensure a fair, inclusive financial marketplace that creates opportunities for all credit-worthy borrowers regardless of their income, because too many hard-working people are deceived by dishonest and harmful practices. Rochelle focuses on state-level policy in North Carolina.
 
Beth Lowder headshot sq

Beth Lowder

Beth Lowder is Innovation Program Manager at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of
Social Work and manager of the Community Aspirations Hub. Her work focuses on developing and
leading collaborative partnerships between the UNC School of Social Work and public, private, and
nonprofit organizations to improve community health and well-being.
 
headshot3

Jess Dorrance

Jess Dorrance has over 20 years of experience in research, evaluation, and program support with expertise in the areas of financial capability, financial inclusion, debt, workforce development, and collaboration building. In her most recent position as research director at the ncIMPACT Initiative at the UNC School of Government, Jess helped launch a University-wide initiative called Carolina Across 100 aimed at supporting all 100 North Carolina counties as they address challenges exacerbated by COVID-19. 
 
alice

Alice Schenall

Alice Schenall is the director of cross-sector leadership and facilitation at ASTHO.  In this role, Alice provides leadership training, coaching, and collaboration for capacity-building and technical assistance to internal teams at ASTHO and programmatic subject matter expertise to state governmental public health agencies.  Alice is currently leading ASTHO’s Boundary Spanning Leadership portfolio, also serving as a master trainer.
 
headshot23

Rebekah Dixon

Rebekah Dixon, a native of Greenville, NC, has been an educational and youth
development program specialist in Raleigh for over 18 years. She currently oversees and manages the Raleigh Summer Youth Employment
Program with the City of Raleigh. Rebekah also serves as a part time advisor to the
GED program at Wake Technical Community College in Raleigh, NC.
 
VivianPerezChandler_Headshot

Vivian Pérez Chandler

A former undocumented and DACAmented Guatemalan native, Vivian has called Winston-Salem home for 21 years. Her passion for equity within the Latinx & Immigrant communities has led her to advocate for access to healthcare, job opportunities, and education. She served on the Governor’s Advisory Council for four years and is currently a Commissioner for the Housing Authority of Winston-Salem. Vivian has received multiple awards for her role in the community. She is pursuing a Master’s in Public Administration from UNCG.
 
Arleatha Patterson

Arleatha Patterson

Native of Winston Salem and a passionate community engagement specialist. She has worked with communities and institutions across Forsyth County to bridge the gap between services and people. She worked for Neighbors for Better Neighborhoods spearheading the Timebanking initiative and training residents and others in Asset Based Community Development. She coordinated The Age Friendly initiative through Forsyth Futures recruiting and mobilizing residents throughout the county to work with service providers and stakeholders to create projects for seniors.
 
lynne

Lynne Weaver

Lynne Weaver is a Special Deputy Attorney General with the North Carolina Department of Justice, in its Consumer Protection Division, where she focuses on consumer credit issues. The Consumer Protection Division enforces North Carolina’s consumer protection laws; and Lynne’s work has primarily focused on enforcement in areas such as consumer debt relief schemes, payday lending, and banking services, among others.
 
Screenshot 2023-09-28 at 9.24.27 AM

Monica Burks

Monica Burks serves as policy counsel on CRL’s state policy team. Based in the Durham office, she works with local organizations and lawmakers to end abusive lending practices in their states. She graduated from NC State with a degree in creative writing. Monica attended Carolina Law, focusing her legal scholarship on banking law and housing rights. Prior to entering academia, Monica worked as a credit union loan officer and administrator for four years. After graduating from law school in 2018, she worked as a law clerk for the North Carolina Supreme Court. Prior to joining CRL, Monica was a commercial real estate attorney.
 
tamika

Tamika Williams

Tamika Williams is a Certified Community Health Worker at Atrium Health covering Mecklenburg, Union, Anson, Stanley, and surrounding counties. Tamika is the Region 3 CHW Ambassador for the North Carolina Community Health Worker Associations and a board member of the Queen City CHW initiative coalition. Tamika has her master’s in public administration, and she is also a certified financial education instructor. As a leader in her community, Tamika is passionate about economic mobility and promoting health equity and self-sufficiency for underserved individuals. In addition to her work as a CHW, Tamika is the President of the Monroe Rotary Club (2022-2023) where she continues to model the “Service Above Self” way.
 
phillip headshot

Philip Cooper

Philip Cooper is a Western North Carolina Native and an accomplished reentry expert, criminal justice reform advocate, and regional change agent. He is the Executive Director of Operation Gateway Inc., the Practitioner in Residence at NC State University’s Institute for Emerging Issues, and a Community Health Worker Capacity Builder with the National Association of Community Health Workers. He is the founder of Voices of Affrilachia, which is a state funded initiative that is addressing the mental health stigma in the Black Communities of Western North Carolina. 
 
Headshot

Elizabeth Watkins Price

Elizabeth is a consultant, lawyer, coach, and mindfulness teacher with a special interest in supporting leaders through transitions, particularly new leadership roles and the shift towards retirement. After years as a public-school teacher, Elizabeth obtained a J.D. from Carolina Law and then worked as a civil rights attorney in New York before shifting to higher education. In early 2022, she left the UNC School of Government, where she had worked as a judicial educator and had taught mindfulness as a tool for decision-making to judicial officials, to focus on her consulting business. Elizabeth started EWP Consulting, where she coaches people through life and career transitions and teaches mindfulness meditation as a tool for personal transformation and professional development. 
 
vic

Victor Galloway

Victor Galloway serves as the Community Affairs Specialist for North Carolina and South Carolina for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). In his current role he assist financial institution in developing strategies that are responsive to the credit, service and investment needs of their communities by: fostering initiatives that create positive banking relationships between consumers and financial institutions and move unbanked and underserved consumers into mainstream banking relationship; promoting community development partnerships and access to affordable credit and capital in historically underserved markets. Mr. Galloway is a graduate of North Carolina State University. 
 

Sponsors

Presenting Sponsor

Gold Premier Sponsor

Silver Premier Sponsor

Premier Partner Sponsor

Quick Links

Follow With Us

Facebook-f Instagram Twitter

Contact Us

Copyright © 2020-2021 THE COLLABORATIVE. Designed by WJJ Brands, LLC. All rights reserved.