“We are showcasing how you can have a great career and live in one of the most beautiful places in the world.” In his second podcast while attending IEI’s Reconnect Forum in Raleigh, Chris Mitchell interviews Dr. Jeff Cox, President, and Zach Barricklow, Vice President of Strategy, from Wilkes Community College. WCC serves the counties of Wilkes, Ashe and Allegheny which are known for their Blue Ridge mountains and meandering rivers, but slowly becoming known as an area served by fiber-to-the home broadband, thanks to Wilkes and SkyLine/SkyBest membership cooperatives and Riverstreet Networks. Jeff and Zach call this broadband network “the great leveler,” a force that is shifting the economic attraction from urban to rural work environments by letting young people and information professionals earn urban-level salaries, and work for large urban-based corporations, while living in their mountain nirvana. This podcast points out how community colleges are a critical part of this equation, and for economic mobility, as they use broadband to skill up the rural workforce and provide a relief valve for the transportation stress and hyper population growth of the state’s urban areas.
