On Jan. 7, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper announced a sweeping new executive order that aims to achieve net-zero emissions within 30 years while protecting and empowering North Carolina’s underserved communities. Urban Investment Strategies Center Director Jim Johnson, who serves as chairman of the N.C. Department of Environmental Justice and Equity Board and as a member of the task force on social, economic and environmental equity, accompanied Cooper at a press conference in support of the order at N.C. A&T State University. Read Johnson's statements here.
While the COVID-19 pandemic was devastating for many, research shows its impact was not felt equally. Black Americans experienced disproportionate health and economic ramifications, which compounded the financial, social and psychological strain many felt pre-pandemic, and have contributed to growing inter-generational wealth disparities. In today’s Kenan Insight, our experts explore whether the multi-trillion dollar “Build Back Better” plan proposed by the Biden administration holds the potential to begin closing pervasive gaps in American society.
The nursing profession in the United States was experiencing a labor shortage and facing diversity and inclusion challenges prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Magnifying these problems was a shift in the nation’s population, both geographically and demographically. The result was changes in both where nurses are needed in the healthcare system and the nursing skill set required to address healthcare needs of a far more diverse clientele of patients—in terms of race, ethnicity, sex, gender identity, age, living arrangements, socioeconomic status and primary language.
In a recent Triangle Business Journal article, Urban Investment Strategies Center Director Jim Johnson and UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School Professor Jeanne Milliken Bonds discuss why Americans are increasingly turning to companies with purpose and ethics, and provide a corporate reputational equity checklist to help organizations move toward greater diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices.
For African Americans and individuals from other historically underrepresented groups, work cultures can be difficult to navigate. In a new white paper, The Seven "What Matters" In a System Not Designed for Us, Urban Investment Strategies Center Director Jim Johnson draws upon his 40 years of experience in academia to offer strategies for individuals in these groups to thrive within work cultures that do not fully embrace and may even be antagonistic to diversity and inclusion.
One of the long-standing damages of institutional racism in the United States has been a bleak economic outlook for African Americans. In this Kenan Insight, we ask whether today’s activism might prove to be a defining moment in turning the tide for Black economic futures, and if so, who will play the key roles in creating lasting change.
North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper has named Dr. James H. Johnson Jr., William R. Kenan Distinguished Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship and director of the Kenan Institute-affiliated Urban Investment Strategies Center, to the newly created Andrea Harris Social, Economic, Environmental, and Health Equity Task Force.
The coronavirus pandemic has been especially traumatic on our country’s African American working poor. From being disproportionately concentrated in low-wage hospitality and service sector jobs to struggling with caregiving and food insecurity issues due to shuttered daycare facilities and food banks, working-poor African Americans are facing an inequitable share of financial, social and psychological challenges. What can be done to ease the burdens of working-poor African Americans, both during the pandemic and moving forward? In this Kenan Insight, Urban Investment Strategies Center Director and William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship Jim Johnson invokes a little-known federal program, the Southeast Crescent Regional Commission (SCRC), as part of a strategic response to providing a coherent, place-based development plan.
On October 14, 2016, the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise at the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School hosted a conference titled What’s Next, America. Convened fewer than four weeks prior to the presidential election, the objective of the forum was to allow influential business leaders, academics and policy makers to examine issues critical to the U.S. economy now and in the future. The conference offered actionable solutions to the most important economic issues facing the next administration.
This study examines the economic impact of continuing care retirement communities on North Carolina and the potential they have for creating jobs and expanding the state's tax base. The report suggests that with North Carolina’s older adult population set to explode by nearly 70% in the next twenty years (an additional one million seniors), the impact of CCRCs on our state’s economic health will be staggering.
North Carolina was one of the nation’s most rapidly growing states during the first decade of the new millennium. Most of the growth came from migration—movers from other states and abroad. Combined with a more general aging in place of the resident population, newcomers are dramatically changing the state’s demography. But undergirding this demographic dynamism are major geographical, socio-economic, and racial/ethnic disparities in the human condition in our state, which require immediate attention if we are to thrive and prosper in the years ahead.