Raleigh Chamber’s First Female CEO in 130 Years Adrienne Cole

What is the role of the Raleigh Chamber in affecting vulnerable communities in the Triangle?  What about diversity and inclusion? Economic development? Education? Transportation?   The leader of the Chamber – CEO Adrienne Cole – joins the Donald Thompson Podcast to explain its mission.

Transcript

Donald Thompson: Welcome to the Donald Thompson Podcast. Today, it gives me great pleasure to introduce to you our guest, President of the Raleigh Chamber, Adrienne Cole. Adrienne, welcome.

Adrienne Cole: Thank you so much for having me. I am super excited.

Donald Thompson: Yeah, me as well. One of the things that I enjoy doing as I talk with business leaders; tell us a little bit of your personal backstory and that way our audience will be listening, and we’ll be talking just as friends.

Adrienne Cole: Oh, that is so awesome. Thank you for the question. So I’m one of those unusual characters who was born in Raleigh, but I wasn’t raised in Raleigh. I was raised in New Bern, which is a small Eastern North Carolina community on the coast; moved there when I was three. I’m the oldest of three kids. I’ve got two younger brothers.

I think I was fortunate in that I was raised by parents who, you know, grabbed whichever one of us was nearest to help out with whatever needed to be helped out with at home. And so there wasn’t any, you know, “These are the jobs for you because you’re the girl,” I have two brothers, “And these are the jobs for the guys.”

Full Episode Transcript

The Donald Thompson Podcast is hosted by Walk West CEO, mentor, investor, and Diversity and Inclusion Consultant Donald Thompson.

Music for this episode provided by Jensen Reed from his song, “You Can’t Stop Me”.

The Donald Thompson Podcast is edited and produced by Earfluence. For more on how to engage your community or build your personal brand through podcasting, visit Earfluence.com.

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