Honorees

Laurie Braxton cultivated a 20-year career with pharmaceutical giant GSK, serving in roles encompassing external supply, business development, supply chain integration, and site management. The catalyst?

A cool pair of pants.

“The recruiter was wearing leather pants, and I was like, “North Carolina … pharmaceuticals … It looks like they have a pretty cool team. Yeah, I’m in,” Laurie recalls.

Her career took her to GSK facilities in RTP, Zebulon, Maryland, and the United Kingdom.

In 2021 FUJIFILM Biotechnologies announced a $2 billion investment in Holly Springs to build the company’s largest CDMO in North America. Company leadership approached Laurie with a value-centric proposition. “I joined a year ago, and I have never been happier in my entire career,” she says.

In the grand tapestry of nature, few creatures embody the spirit of resilience and joy quite like the hummingbird. And when you meet Wendy Coulter, it makes immediate sense why the tiny iridescent bird has played such a significant role in her life.

After earning a degree in industrial design at NC State, Wendy signed her first three clients at a Cary Chamber of Commerce expo, and her new career took flight.

When it came to the agency she was about to start, “Just like the bird,” Wendy knew, “I wanted to help my clients navigate their branding in all directions — give them everything.” Thanks to the new clients that helped catapult the agency, and an inspired namesake, Hummingbird left the nest. In the 30 years that followed, it would spread its wings and ultimately soar as a powerful agency with a mission to empower clients through innovative branding strategies.

Shirnetta Harrell was named for the two most important people in her life: her grandmother Shirley and her mother Bonnetta. Her name represents the legacy of a deep and abiding love. It’s a nod to her past and hope for her future.

“I was raised by a single mom, and I watched her struggle,” Shirnetta says. “She is a veteran who served in Desert Storm, and seeing how she has always kept going despite adversity has laid a strong foundation for me and has instilled in me the belief that anything is possible.”

Shirnetta spends every day living in that belief and pays it forward through The No Woman, No Girl Initiative, a Triangle nonprofit dedicated to providing essential personal care and hygiene products to women and girls in need. The organization has distributed thousands of hygiene kits since she launched it in 2021. She has gone on to inspire others to donate products, money, and time to the cause.

After graduating from college with her newly minted English degree, Hiller Spires couldn’t wait to tell her favorite high school teacher that she had chosen a teaching career too.

“The way she taught literature made me come alive, and I’m so glad I was able to tell her about how she influenced me and that she was the reason I became an English teacher,” Hiller says.

She joined the faculty in the College of Education at North Carolina State University in 1987 and embarked on a 35-year career there before retiring as a professor and associate dean of the College of Education in 2022. She was also the founding director of the university’s William & Ida Friday Institute for Educational Innovation. Today, she holds the title of executive director and professor emerita at NCSU.

Rather than resting on her laurels in retirement, Hiller immediately founded Margie’s Books, a donor advised fund in the Triangle Community Foundation that provides books for educators and children in under-resourced educational communities.

When Justine Tiu and her husband, Adrian Zhang, launched The Woobles out of a basement five years ago, they had no way of knowing that the simple act of teaching beginning crafters how to crochet tiny animals would become a multimillion-dollar business almost overnight.

“Our Wooble kits help people achieve something they once thought was impossible, and that in turn makes people feel super excited, grateful, and accomplished,” Justine says.

Around 2016, when she was still early in her career as a user experience designer at Google, she found herself navigating burnout after moving into a management role that didn’t align with her interests or strengths. She felt creatively stagnant and stuck in a career that no longer resonated with her.

“Picking up crochet reminded me of what it felt like to be capable of doing something new again,” she says.

The couple launched The Woobles out of Justine’s parents’ basement in 2020, investing $200 in materials. By 2023 they had expanded into a warehouse in Cary and had 20 employees. Today, the $5 million business has 50 employees.