North Carolina Central University (NCCU) Board of Trustees have added three new members to serve four-year terms following appointments by the University of North Carolina (UNC) Board of Governors and the North Carolina General Assembly.
Appointed by the UNC Board of Governors were James Mitchell Jr., former member of the Charlotte City Council, and Cornell Slade, a risk management specialist and former business executive. Emily M. Dickens, chief of staff and head of government affairs for the Society of Human Resource Management, was appointed by the North Carolina General Assembly.
Current board members reappointed to a second four-year term by the Board of Governors were Kevin M. Holloway and John Herrera. James S. Walker was reappointed for a second four-year term by the North Carolina General Assembly.
Derrick C. Stanfield, 2021-2022 president of the NCCU Student Government Association, joins the Board of Trustees for a one-year term.
All the appointments began July 1, 2021.
Mitchell, president of R.J. Leeper Construction in Charlotte, N.C., and an NCCU alumnus, was a longtime member of the Charlotte City Council. He was an advocate for neighborhoods and minority businesses and also founded Next Level Leadership, a program for African American youth in the Charlotte community. Mitchell previously worked for JE Dunn construction and Barton Malow, the primary contractor on the Charlotte Knights minor league baseball stadium. He has served as president of the North Carolina Black Elected Municipal Officials organization and the National Black Caucus of Local Elected Officials, among other organizations.
Slade is a risk management specialist with 5B Capital Group LLC and former owner of The Best Egg Co. He and his wife, Bessie, both NCCU graduates, have established endowments at the university to assist incoming students from Edgecombe, N.C., where they both grew up. Slade served on the NCCU School of Business Board of Visitors, the NCCU Foundation Inc. Board of Directors and the Eagle Club. He serves on the board of directors of the AK Foundation, a scholarship fund for the Alpha Kappa Chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity Inc., and was president of the Cape Fear Chapter of the NCCU Alumni Association.
Dickens is an attorney and chief of staff and head of government affairs for the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). A triple Eagle, Dickens earned her undergraduate degree in 1995, graduate degree in 1999 and law degree in 2002 from NCCU. She formerly served as assistant vice president for federal relations for the University of North Carolina System and as senior vice president at the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. Dickens also serves on a number of boards, including the U.S. Council for International Business, the National Foundation for Women Legislators, and is chairman of the International HBCU Task Force for Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc. She is a resident of Arlington, Va., and Durham, N.C.
Holloway, current chairman of the NCCU Board of Trustees, first joined the board in 2017 and was reappointed for an additional term. An alumnus of NCCU, he is president of Holloway Executive Consulting, where he develops and implements business strategy and human resources plans and provides personal executive coaching. Holloway spent 30-plus years in marketing and management positions with international agricultural companies, including industry leaders Monsanto and Dow Chemical corporations, before relocating to Raleigh, N.C. A longtime supporter of Eagle Athletics, he was inducted into the Athletics Hall of Fame in 2006 for meritorious service. He and his wife, Lauretta, have endowed scholarships named in their honor at NCCU.
Herrera was first appointed to the board by the UNC Board of Governors in 2017 and was reappointed to serve a second term. He is the senior vice president for Latino/Hispanic affairs at Self-Help Credit Union in Durham, N.C. He previously worked for the World Wildlife Fund in Washington, D.C., and the Center for World Environment and Sustainable Development in Raleigh, N.C., as well as Duke University’s Center of International Studies. Herrera also co-founded several non-profits, among them the Latino Community Credit Union, the National Association for Latino Community Asset Builders and El Pueblo Inc. In 2017, President Barack Obama nominated Herrera to the National Credit Union Administration. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Delaware and a master’s from North Carolina State University.
Walker was first appointed by the North Carolina General Assembly in 2017 to serve on the board. A summa cum laude graduate of the NCCU School of Law, he was a practicing attorney until 2000, when he became certified by the N.C. Dispute Resolution Commission as a Superior Court mediator. He dedicates his practice to serving as a full-time mediator assisting litigants in resolving their disputes through mandatory and voluntary mediations. A Charlotte, N.C. native, Walker grew up in Gastonia, N.C. Currently, he serves on the N.C. Turnpike Authority Board of Directors and is a delegate to the Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization. He is a graduate of North Carolina State University.
Stanfied is a senior, double major in history and political science at NCCU from Clayton, N.C. In 2020, he was a selected as a Marian Drane Graham Scholars by the University of North Carolina System and worked at the N.C. Department of Military and Veterans Affairs conducting research on social class disparities in higher education and its impact on student academic and financial success. Stanfield serves as the NCCU campus liaison for the University of North Carolina Association of Student Governments.
