FIFTY SENSE: A LOW-PROFILE GROUP OF MOSTLY MALE TRIANGLE CEOS PROMOTES NETWORKING AND REGIONAL UNITY.

AuthorBarkin, Dan
PositionOPINION

The 50 Group--which has more than 50 members--is an organization made up mostly of current and past CEOs of companies in the Raleigh-Durham area. It is a high-powered group that has been around for nearly 45 years. You have probably not heard of it, and that's pretty much how they want it.

If you work for a big company in the Triangle, your CEO or top local site leader could be a member. Same if you work for a prominent law, accounting or engineering firm. The group meets five times a year to network and hear speakers.

I was interested in learning if there was more to it--some agenda--so I contacted the group's leadership for an interview. One of its longtime leaders, Robb Teer of the prominent Durham construction family, responded by email that they would have to decline.

"... [Our] group is not interested in any publicity," he said. "This is a policy we have followed the whole time I have been involved, which is almost 30 years. Our members are all invited to join and appreciate our low-key policy. I know it is hard to believe that we have no agendas, but it is true."

I thought you might want to know more.

I'll let Earl Bardin, an early member, describe it in more detail. A Raleigh banker who passed away in 2017 at age 90, he was interviewed for the Southern Oral History Program at UNC Chapel Hill about 17 years ago, and the conversation drifted to The 50 Group. The members, Bardin said, were basically up to their necks in high-pressure jobs and civic responsibilities.

"All of them were busy with their companies and many of them were busy with community projects like the hospital, like the Chamber of Commerce, the Salvation Army and God knows what else. They've got a jillion things to do. This is one thing they can belong to, and all they've got to do is give up a couple of hours, five times a year, to get some connection of other people of similar ilk and to hear someone speak on a subject of importance. That's all it does. But it does a good job with that."

If you scratch around archives and talk to some folks, you can pull together some more history.

The organization got its start in 1975, the idea of businessman Donald Grubb, a Pennsylvanian who had moved the headquarters of the company he led to the town of Wake Forest, north of Raleigh, a couple of years earlier. He thought a growing community such as the Triangle needed a movers and shakers' group to exchange ideas, network and hear from knowledgeable speakers. Membership is...

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