WORK IS LOVE MADE VISIBLE

- KAHLIL GIBRAN

let's build something good, together

we build creative work, startups,

small businesses, nonprofits, and public programs

Emily Adair, MPA

Founder

Emily is an experienced ops professional, program manager, and writer with over 20 years’ experience in the public sector. She’s a former restaurant owner and small farmer and has owned Carolina Creators for over seventeen years.

She holds an MPA from UNC-Chapel Hill, where she wrote her thesis as a Public Service Leadership Fellow on Rural Economic Development, and a BA from Western Carolina University in Social Philosophy and Policy. She’s worked for startups, small businesses, local and federal governments, and dozens of nonprofits in her career, raising over $210 million in grant funding (so far!) and working with more than 300 happy clients.

You can read more of her work at emilyadair.com and find her on LinkedIn.

Emily can do anything - she is incredibly organized, clear and easy in her communications, self-motivated, forward-thinking and a pure joy to work with on a team or in a leadership role.

She knows how to drive high-level processes from start to finish, bring people together from various backgrounds, weave complex topics, and organize her work.

Emily gets more done in an hour than most do in three. Emily understands people; she speaks as comfortably with farmers as she does with top government officials, and anyone in between. She can assess issues or areas that need strengthening, match her skills to best meet organizational needs, map the process towards a solution, and execute.

I would want Emily on my team any day.

- Sarah Blacklin, Director, NC Choices, NC State University

I have had the good pleasure of knowing and working with Emily for several years on a variety of local food system projects. In 2018, we worked closely on an Agricultural Economic Development Plan for my Tribe. The process was hands-on and required extensive community outreach and engagement. She and her team demonstrated exceptional professionalism working with a native community. We were pleased with the final report and are using it to guide our future action. Emily brings a wealth of knowledge and energy to any project she works on.

- Joseph Owle, Secretary of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians

Emily is a wealth of knowledge both about using tech for good and about food systems. When I was in the early stages of ideation, she provided an empathetic ear and candid actionable feedback for developing my idea. She has a wide range of experience and perspective on all things business and she genuinely wants you to succeed. I recommend working with her, no reservations!

- Ash Glover-Ganapathiraju, Co-Founder, Ojaswe

Emily has a talent for balancing accepted evaluation protocols with practical execution. Our organization was new to formal evaluation, and Emily made the process simple and actionable without overwhelming us with too many decision points. She was skillful at guiding our team to ask the right questions to get at the most important aspects of our programming. And as a bonus, not only is Emily brilliant with data collection and analysis, she is also a wonderful communicator providing clarity and accountability throughout the process.

- Cindy Sink, former Director of Advocacy & Evaluation, Interfaith Food Shuttle

Emily is a bridge builder. She creates connections between the public and the private sectors, bringing the best of both worlds together, while always keeping the interest of the public in mind.

She understands that local agencies can only benefit from working closer with private companies, and vice versa, and she knows how to create the infrastructure to enable such synergies.

- Jeremy Devray-Benichou, civictech innovator, ex-UrbanLeap