A message from the President
As we reflect on 2025, one theme rises above all others: translation — the deliberate movement of research into real-world solutions. This year, the NC Chamber Foundation’s work did more than research challenges; it drove action. Across our state, business leaders, policymakers, and community partners relied on our insights to shape strategies that strengthen North Carolina’s competitive future. As the research and analysis arm of the NC Chamber, the NC Chamber Foundation continues to serve as a trusted, business-led thought leader focused on aligning policy, practice, and long-term strategy. Our work is grounded in data, but it is propelled by collaboration — with employers, educators, state agencies, and local leaders who share our commitment to building a strong and thriving North Carolina. This year, that commitment translated into measurable impact:
- Child Care: Our multi-year research on child-care availability and affordability helped lay the foundation for a landmark regulatory reform bill signed into law in 2025. This long-sought change represents real progress in removing child care as a barrier to work and strengthening our workforce participation rate.
- Energy Vision: Through North Carolina’s Business-Driven Energy Vision, the Foundation helped catalyze a new statewide framework to ensure reliable, affordable, and diverse power generation. This ongoing work is now informing policy discussions critical to the state's long-term economic competitiveness.
- Health Talent Alliance: In partnership with employers and education institutions, our Health Talent Alliance produced measurable workforce gains — expanding training pathways, supporting stronger regional partnerships, and helping meet the workforce needs of North Carolina’s health care sector.
- Housing and Competitiveness: Our research elevated housing as not just a community issue but a core driver of workforce growth and statewide competitiveness. In 2025, lawmakers acted on this data, advancing policies that recognize housing supply and attainability as essential to North Carolina’s economic strategy.
Throughout 2025, one thing remains clear: When research is paired with bold action, North Carolina wins. The NC Chamber Foundation remains steadfast in its mission to provide the insight, clarity, and business-focused solutions needed to position our state for long-term success. Thank you to our investors, partners, and stakeholders who fuel this work. Together, we are building a North Carolina where opportunity expands, communities thrive, and the workforce of tomorrow is prepared for every challenge ahead.
Driving Workforce Solutions for North Carolina
Employers Leading the Way to Build the Talent North Carolina Needs.
A business-led, data-driven approach is reshaping how North Carolina connects education, workforce, and community needs. Through the Foundation’s research and collaborative partnerships, innovative solutions are taking hold — strengthening talent pipelines and informing the policy frameworks that support long-term economic competitiveness.
NC Health Talent Alliance: New Workforce Tools Developed & Deployed In its second year, the NC Health Talent Alliance (HTA) delivered clear evidence of statewide progress in strengthening North Carolina’s health care workforce. These gains reflect rising education output across RN, LPN, and CNA programs, as well as a more stable demand outlook as projected openings begin to normalize.
With data collected from 110 health care employers, all UNC nursing programs, and 49 community colleges, the HTA now provides one of the most comprehensive workforce pictures in the state. This insight is no longer just informing decisions—it is actively shaping them. The HTA is strategically building a more coordinated, resilient, and future-ready health care talent pipeline for North Carolina. The initiative launched a number of tools to accelerate the work, including: The Health Talent Alliance is strategically building a more coordinated, resilient, and future-ready health care talent pipeline for North Carolina. The initiative launched a number of tools to accelerate the work, including:
- The RN Refresher Activation Toolkit enables employers and AHEC partners to re-engage nurses with inactive or lapsed licenses, coordinate clinical placements, and set regional re-entry targets.
- The Structured Student–Employer Engagement Toolkit helps health care employers build consistent, high-value engagement with students—improving job readiness, pre-graduation hiring, and regional retention.
- In a multi-campus pilot with Davidson-Davie Community College, Beaufort Community College, and College of The Albemarle, our new health-program data and capacity-planning tool showed strong proof of value. The results demonstrated that the tool can be applied effectively in other regions and industries, and we now have commitments for expanded testing.
Regions across North Carolina are using HTA findings to set workforce priorities, refine education targets, and align employer engagement strategies. One of the strongest examples comes from the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce and South East Area Health Education Center (SEAHEC) region, where employers and educators are putting HTA tools to work with common discipline and speed. Their regional model demonstrates what coordinated, employer-led action looks like in practice and stands out as a blueprint for other communities. Learn more in this video >
Talent Pipeline Management® Expansion Building on the lessons learned in health care, the NC Chamber Foundation is expanding Talent Pipeline Management® (TPM) through new local pilots designed to strengthen workforce alignment in additional sectors . Early work with community college health science programs has already demonstrated how structured employer–educator tools can drive clearer, output-based planning for critical occupations — improving speed, coordination, and responsiveness across the talent pipeline. These pilots are informing a next-generation TPM approach that helps regions set shared goals, unify data, and better connect education pathways with employer demand. With interest growing across manufacturing, agriculture, and other high-need industries, the Foundation is outlining a more consistent and employer-led framework for meeting North Carolina’s long-term workforce needs. The NC Chamber Foundation has now engaged and trained more than 60 leaders statewide to implement employer-led workforce solutions as credentialed talent pipeline managers.
Child Care as Workforce Infrastructure The Foundation’s multi-year child care research series helped reframe child care as essential workforce infrastructure — a critical factor in labor force participation. In February, the Foundation released Addressing North Carolina’s Child Care Crisis: Eleven Strategies to Expand Supply & Supporting Working Families offering concrete, employer-focused solutions to expand affordable, high-quality child care. This work directly informed House Bill 412, a major reform package that streamlines outdated regulations, modernizes training requirements, and reduces liability barriers that limit provider capacity across the state. The report’s recommendations for child care academies was also taken up and funded by the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services and its Division of Child Development and Early Education By grounding policy discussions in rigorous, business-led research, the Foundation demonstrated how data-driven action can remove barriers to work and support a stronger, more resilient workforce for North Carolina.
Housing: A Foundation for Workforce Stability The Foundation’s North Carolina Housing Supply Gap Analysis and Economic Impact Report, developed with NC REALTORS® and the NC Home Builders Association, delivered a clear picture of North Carolina’s housing challenge: a shortage of more than 760,000 units across all 100 counties and a $489 billion economic opportunity if the gap is addressed. By connecting housing affordability to workforce growth, our research helped shift the statewide conversation from a social issue to a business imperative. The findings are now informing action at every level. Local chambers received county-level toolkits to guide community-specific strategies, and state leaders drew on the analysis to advance 2025 legislation aimed at expanding housing supply and modernizing regulatory barriers. As a result, housing is now recognized—alongside child care and workforce alignment—as a critical component of North Carolina’s long-term talent strategy. Employers are leading a new era of workforce alignment — powered by data, strengthened by partnerships, and focused on measurable outcomes.
Strengthening North Carolina's Infrastructure
Building a Reliable, Affordable, and Resilient Platform for Growth.
The Foundation’s research continues to guide North Carolina’s infrastructure and energy planning, helping ensure the state’s growth is managed effectively. By providing clear data and business-led insights, the Foundation is shaping strategies that support long-term economic competitiveness — from modernizing the systems that power our communities to strengthening the networks that connect people, goods, and opportunities across the state.
Business-Driven Energy Vision This year, the Foundation completed an extensive statewide engagement effort to develop North Carolina’s Business-Driven Energy Vision, gathering input through surveys, focus groups, and interviews with leaders across agriculture, manufacturing, life sciences, technology, retail, construction, healthcare, and small business. We produced a shared planning framework that helps policymakers, utilities, and business leaders align around the state’s long-term energy needs. The resulting vision aligns reliability, affordability, and sustainability—the core priorities employers identified as essential to site readiness, economic growth, and North Carolina’s overall competitiveness. By grounding energy planning in real-world business needs, the Foundation is helping ensure the state’s energy strategy supports both today’s demands and the opportunities of the future. Strategic Pillars for Action:
- Build Strong, Secure, and Resilient Infrastructure Capacity.
- Treat Reliability as Table Stakes.
- Ensure Affordable, Predictable Power Diversify the Energy Mix (All-of-the-Above)
- Streamline Regulations and Permitting
- Leverage Sustainability as a Competitive Advantage
Water Infrastructure Competitiveness The Foundation advanced a comprehensive statewide analysis of North Carolina’s water infrastructure, combining data from engineering partners with input from utilities, local governments, industry leaders, and community stakeholders across both urban and rural regions. Released in November, the research identified clear priorities for investment, resilience, and system capacity—critical factors as population growth and economic expansion place increasing demands on water systems. This work elevated water infrastructure as a core competitiveness issue, guided in part by the Foundation’s cross-industry Water Task Force and its insights into statewide gaps in coordination, data, and long-term planning, as well as delays in the permitting and regulatory processes. The final report provides actionable, data-driven recommendations that will shape policy and funding discussions in 2026. Recommendations:
- Strengthen Data Collection and Water Availability Studies
- Incentivize and Fund Regionalization Studies
- Expand the Existing Readiness Programs
- Create a State Water Competitiveness Plan
- Fund Infrastructure Investments and Promote Public–Private Partnerships
Infrastructure Financing The Foundation advanced new thinking on how North Carolina funds its long-term infrastructure needs through a white paper exploring the benefits of creating a State Infrastructure Bank. By analyzing successful models from across the country, the research highlighted how a sustainable, business-aligned financing tool could accelerate critical projects by leveraging private and federal capital. Supported by the NC Chamber, legislation was introduced in the General Assembly to establish a State Infrastructure Bank Board, marking an important step toward modernizing the state’s financing toolkit. The Foundation’s leadership helped elevate statewide dialogue around innovative infrastructure funding, positioning the State Infrastructure Bank as a promising resource for meeting North Carolina’s future growth and mobility demands. Business-informed planning is aligning North Carolina’s investments in energy, water, and housing with the needs of a competitive, future-ready economy.
Securing the Future of North Carolina’s Leading Industry
From Plan to Action for North Carolina’s $111B Agriculture Sector.
With our release of the NC Ag Leads Strategic Plan, developed in partnership with the Golden LEAF Foundation and supported by NC Farm Bureau and Google, North Carolina’s agriculture sector has moved from long-term strategy to measurable action. Built on thousands of hours of research and statewide engagement, the plan unified farmers, agribusiness leaders, educators, and policymakers around a shared vision for strengthening the state’s $111 billion agriculture industry. Now in Phase Three, NC Ag Leads is shifting decisively into implementation. Early initiatives include modernizing Extension services, advancing a farmer-engaged ag tech accelerator, launching Talent Pipeline Management® pilots, and expanding research on agribusiness program capacity and farmland loss. These efforts reflect collaborative leadership across the agricultural community and demonstrate how industry-led planning can translate into real progress on the ground. As pilots launch and partnerships deepen, NC Ag Leads is becoming a model for how North Carolina can turn long-term research into action.
Influence, Partnership, and Recognition
Expanding Reach and Elevating North Carolina’s Voice.
The Foundation’s leadership is shaping competitiveness conversations across North Carolina and beyond—expanding the reach of our research and elevating the business community’s voice in state and national decision-making. Our research is informing action at the highest levels, cited in executive orders, legislation, statewide strategic plans, and major reports. Members of our team now serve on several gubernatorial-appointed task forces focused on energy, workforce development, and child care, ensuring that the business perspective continues to shape solutions for North Carolina’s future. Foundation leaders delivered presentations at high-profile events such as the U.S. Chamber Foundation’s Talent Forward conference, and our infrastructure team participated in an international industrial symbiosis study tour in Denmark—bringing global insights back to North Carolina’s energy, water, and sustainability strategies. Together, these efforts reinforce the central role of employers in shaping long-term solutions and ensure North Carolina’s business perspective is influencing the policies and investments that drive competitiveness.
Acknowledgements
The achievements highlighted throughout this report reflect a shared commitment to building a stronger North Carolina. We are grateful to the leaders, investors, and partners whose expertise and collaboration power the NC Chamber Foundation’s mission. Thank you for your engagement.