Charlotte Business Buzz UNC Charlotte

As a result of the global pandemic, international travel for students has been suspended since spring 2020. Despite physical barriers, UNC Charlotte continues to offer opportunities for students to be globally engaged – but in a virtual model – helping to prepare students for careers in the global marketplace. Victor Chen, Associate professor of International Management in the Belk College of Business, and Adriana Medina, associate professor in the Cato College of Education, discuss courses they've piloted through a new collaborative initiative called Globally Networked Learning or GNL.

A stumbling block for growth for many Black- and Hispanic-owned businesses is access to capital and leadership. Earlier this year, three Charlotte business titans – Malcomb Coley, managing partner with EY; former Bank of America CEO Hugh McColl; and Duke Energy Executive Lloyd Yates – announced the creation of Bright Hope Capital, a unique investment firm to support and elevate minority-owned businesses in the Charlotte region. 

Since January, Bright Hope has acquired two such companies to their portfolio. The firm hopes to give a leg-up to Black and Hispanic-owned businesses in the region. To discuss are: Lorie Spratley, the newly named Chief Operating Officer for Bright Hope Capital; and James Mitchell Jr., retired Charlotte City Council member and the new president of RJ Leeper Construction, which was recently acquired by Bright Hope. 

Retail businesses have been on a roller-coaster ride since last March, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced many to close their doors. A year afterward, with vaccination rates climbing, the path forward for retail businesses is coming into clearer focus.
Cindy Fox, a marketing lecturer in UNC Charlotte’s Belk College of Business and an expert in retail businesses, and Varian Shurm, Community Manager for Charlotte’s Camp North End, a 76-acre historic site transformed into a hub for innovation and creativity, join to discuss this shift in retail. 

After completing her MBA in 2019 from the Belk College of Business, Kristin Cagney dove headfirst into ambitious plans for the first spiked seltzer brewery and taproom on the east coast. The thirty-eight hundred square foot seltzer company opened in September in the Wesley Heights neighborhood, and has seen success in spite of the pandemic. 

Data remains crucial to understanding the impact and spread of COVID-19 around the globe. Jean-Claude Thill, a Knight Distinguished Professor in the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, and Rajib Paul, an associate professor in the Department of Public Health Science, discuss an effort by UNC Charlotte's interdisciplinary School of Data Science to leverage data to slow the spread of COVID-19 and future pandemics. 

Two UNC Charlotte researchers are taking a unique approach to advancing gender equality in the workplace: They're engaging male leaders. George Banks, associate professor in the Department of Management in the Belk College, and Jill Yavorsky, assistant professor in the Sociology Department in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, to discuss the issue.