REMOTE CONTROL: A mountain-area tech training program shows bright prospects.

• Author: Barkin, Dan
• Position: GREENSHOOTS--Revitalizing rural N.C.

In North Carolina's bigger cities, the talk among high-tech businesses is the shortage of talent. For rural counties, the talk is about the shortage of good jobs.

Trailblazers in the northwestern corner of North Carolina have come up with a way to address both problems, in what is one of the largest rural tech-training initiatives in the country. If successful, it could be replicated, raising income levels in other rural communities and helping N.C. companies fill 48,000 vacant tech jobs.

NC Tech Paths is a collaboration between Wilkes Community College and Wilkesboro-based Leonard G. Herring Family Foundation with a goal of providing technology skills for Alleghany, Ashe and Wilkes county residents to work remotely. The motto is, "Live. Train. Remain."

The effort has strong financial support, a partnership with national training collaborator Per Scholas and the benefit of good timing.

People skilled to troubleshoot networks, handle cybersecurity or staff an IT help desk can work anywhere there is broadband. Pretty much every enterprise is a tech company that needs talent.

NC Tech Paths kicked off five years ago when Jeff Cox, president of Wilkes Community College, launched a strategic planning process aimed at helping more students complete their courses to earn degrees. The broader goal is to boost wealth in the region, where the median household income is 75% of the state average. Cox attracted support from The John M. Belk Endowment of Charlotte and the Herring Foundation, formed by the late Leonard Herring, a former Lowe's Cos. CEO.

Executing the plan has helped the college boost the percentage of students graduating within three years to 45%, from 25%. But it didn't address how to provide jobs so graduates wouldn't have to leave northwest North Carolina.

So Cox hired Zach Barricklow as vice president of strategy. Barricklow is a Michigan native whose wife, Lauren, is from Sparta. They met in the Peace Corps and were living in Alleghany County.

Barricklow told then-Herring Foundation CEO Craig DeLucia in 2019 that local people could be trained and stay in the area for good-paying, remote telework jobs.

"I said, 'Zach, you're nuts,"' DeLucia recalls. "'What's going to happen in this world that's going to lead companies...