Foothills Director Gets National Recognition
11/2009
By Larry Dale
The Daily Courier
RUTHERFORDTON — Tim Will, executive
director of Foothills Connect Business & Technology Center, has
been selected for a national award that includes a $100,000 prize.
He is one of the 10 winners of the 2009 Purpose Prize.
Announcement of the award winners was embargoed for Monday from San
Francisco.
The six-year, $17 million program honors entrepreneurs over
60 who are using their experience and passion to take on society’s
biggest challenges. The Purpose Prize is now in its fourth year.
The five $100,000 winners and five $50,000 winners were
chosen from more than 1,200 nominees for their creative and effective
work tackling a range of problems.
Will, one of the five $100,000 winners, has announced that
he will be giving the prize money to Foothills Connect because he feels
that it is the organization, not him, that is being honored.
“It’s humbling,” Will said. “I’ve read the biographies of
some of the other people, and it’s like a lineup of Mother Teresa. It’s
not an honor I deserve. It’s Foothills that deserves it.
“There are a lot of organizations and people that have gone
into these programs. There’s a lineup here, starting with E-Rutherford
and Realize Rutherford and Leadership Rutherford. That’s what got us
here. That’s what got us the money.
“And county government, the school board, the school board’s
IT department, R-S Central out there with Brandon Higgins, and Thomas
Jefferson Classical Grammar and their third-grade classes, and Dr.
Chris Burley and the Community Health Council, and ICC with Doris Crute
and the FACT program, the help of Kim Alexander and now Ted Hamrick at
the Small Business Center, my advisory council, the board of
directors, the county commissioners, Chivous Bradley and dozens and
dozens of farmers.
“We did this regionally, with Polk County. So to say that I
did this is ridiculous. I’ll accept this honor in the name of the
people of Rutherford and Polk counties. That’s how it got done.”
Alexandra Céspedes Kent, director of the Purpose Prize, explained why Will was selected.
“Tim Will is a former telecommunications executive who saw
an opportunity to connect his community’s agrarian past to a new
digital future. Tim Will won the Purpose Prize for his innovative
approach to solving important and timely issues: job creation in a
depressed economy, environmental sustainability and the preservation of
family farms. He is an inspiring role model for other adults who want
to use their life and work experience to improve the lives of others.
“We see The Purpose Prize as an investment in what Tim Will
is going to do next because he is already planning his next big thing.”
Will was nominated by Anna Levitsky, marketing and education coordinator at Foothills Connect.
“I received an e-mail about this award,” Levitsky said,
“and as I read through the guidelines, I realized Tim absolutely fits
the bill for this. And so it sort of inspired me to go ahead and try to
win it. And it turns out we did. So it was really kind of
serendipitous. But he’s perfect for it.”
The Foothills Connect farm program has linked area farmers to Charlotte chefs using the Internet.
“If you don’t have broadband, go get it,” Will said. “Don’t
wait. It is passing you by already. Don’t wait. Go get it. But Tim Will
couldn’t go get it. It is a big team of people And they’ve been
working on it for years.
“This effort started in 2000, so somebody has been working
at this for nine years. I’ve only been here since 2006. I came here to
be a school teacher. So it’s an honor, it’s definitely an honor.
“I would love to be able to describe the way that somehow I deserve it,
but it is the pain of a community that has struggled to dig themselves
out of a hole that they didn’t put themselves in. They got put in. It’s
not the other way around. These folks didn’t do anything wrong. It was
done to them. They fight back.
“You can only imagine my board of directors that sat there, and I told
them, you have his huge market in Charlotte, and you’ve got these
assets here, these thousands of acres of rural unused land and
unemployed people, and 6,000 or more families that own between five and
20 acres of land, and if we can organize them the only thing we are
missing is the connectivity. And they went out and got that
connectivity. Without that connectivity none of this would have
happened.”
Will emphasized that when he goes to San Francisco to accept the
award, he is only the representative of a large number of people who
made the program possible.
“Maybe I will take credit for being the ringmaster,” he said, “but I am
not the star act. I’m not one of the dogs that jumps up on the horse’s
back.
“I will, with great honor, go to Stanford University and pick up that
award in the name of the people of the foothills. And I will do
everything I can to find dot.com philanthropists in the Silicon
Valley that would be willing to support us so we can pull ourselves out
of the muck. All we need is a little push.”
“More than ever, the problems facing our communities, our country and
our world call out for creative solutions,” said Marc Freedman,
co-founder of the Purpose Prize and author of “Encore: Finding Work
That Matters in the Second Half of Life.”
“Fortunately, Americans do not run out of ideas as we age but rather
combine creativity with past experience and personal passions to make
an even greater impact. Purpose Prize winners epitomize not only the
promising spirit of innovation that can occur later in life but also
how that can spark meaningful social change.”
The Purpose Prize, according to a news release from the organization, is
part of the Encore Careers campaign that aims to engage millions of
baby boomers in encore careers – the combination of social impact,
personal meaning and continued income in the second half of life – and
to produce a windfall of human talent for the very public interest
sectors that need experience and talent.
The winners and 46 Purpose Prize Fellows of 2009 will be honored at a
Summit on Innovation Oct. 30 through Nov. 1 at Stanford University’s
Graduate School of Business’ Center on Social Innovation, one of the
leading academic centers focused on social entrepreneurship.
The 300-plus attendees of the invitation-only event will hear a keynote
address from Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Ellen Goodman.
The Encore Careers campaign is run by Civic Ventures, a national think
tank on boomers, work and social purpose. Funding for The Purpose Prize
comes from The Atlantic Philanthropies and the John Templeton
Foundation. Additional funding for the Summit comes from AARP,
Erickson Companies, the New York Life Foundation, Hewlett-Packard
Company and Legacy Works.
The other $100,000 winners, their ages and their projects are: Elizabeth
(68) and Stephen Alderman (68), Peter C. Alderman Foundation, Bedford,
N.Y.; Judith Broder (69), The Soldiers Project, Studio City, Calif.;
Don Coyhis (66), White Bison, Inc., Colorado Springs, Colo.; and Henry
Liu (73), Freight Pipeline Co., Columbia, Mo.
