Designing woman seeks to shape Triad economy.

• Author: Richter, Chris
• Position: PEOPLE

Design may not be among the first things that come to mind when thinking of the Triad. Furniture and cigarettes, yes. Textiles, maybe. But as traditional industries leave, the region's economic boosters have designs on design. That's where Carol Strohecker comes in.

The first director of Center for Design Innovation in Winston-Salem, she hopes to make the Triad a design center by encouraging research and entrepreneurship. She promotes interdisciplinary work in existing niches as varied as industrial design and animation. Strohecker, who started Sept. 1, is an employee of the N.C. School of the Arts and a faculty member at Winston-Salem State University.

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The center is a product of a 2003 economic-development study of part of the Triad region. The UNC Board of Governors allocated $2 million for the joint project of Forsyth Technical Community College, Winston-Salem State and School of the Arts.

Growing up in Baltimore, she devoured graphic-design publications that her father, a salesman for a printer, brought home. "The way some people sit around reading comic books, I sat around reading Print Magazine." She earned a bachelor's in journalism from the University of Maryland in 1977 and worked as an editorial assistant at the National Geographic Society and director of publications at a Baltimore art museum. An interest in technology and art prompted her to enroll at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where...