UNLIMITED UPSIDE: Kirk Bradley is the first participant in Business North Carolina's Power List Interview feature in which High Point University President Nido Qubein talks with some of the state's most influential leaders.

• Author: Qubein, Nido

Kirk Bradley is CEO of Lee-Moore Capital, a Sanford-based real-estate development company with projects including Governors Club and Triangle Innovation Point. He has a bachelor's degree from the University of Georgia and a Duke University MBA. The Chapel Hill resident was appointed to the UNC Board of Governors in 2021.

During the interview, Qubein told Bradley, "Any organization or city or community or state, to be truly ready for the future, must have leaders like you who care deeply about it and who invest themselves in every way."

This story includes excerpts from Bradley's interview and was lightly edited for clarity.

What are you focused on at your company?

The biggest thing we are working on is Mosaic, which is a gateway to Chatham Park, the 8,500-acre project being built around Pittsboro. We're doing a 750,000-square-foot mixed-use urban development with buildings that will be one to six stories. It's going to be the heart of the projects around Chatham Park.

What's your view of North Carolina's future?

I'm very excited for the next 20 years with what's happening with our business climate.

Our university and community college system, the military and our expertise in the life sciences. We can be the Silicon Valley of ag tech, power electronics and many other things.

You see that in a microcosm with the plants we've gotten, VinFast and Wolfspeed (planned for Chatham County) and the Toyota battery plant (in Randolph County). All of these are terrific future industries for our country and the world. Surprisingly, Sanford is now the global center of excellence for gene therapy manufacturing, which is the future of life sciences. You take all of that and the upside for North Carolina is unlimited.

What must happen for North Carolina to remain prosperous?

I'd say it's workforce, workforce, workforce. We've got to have people educating themselves, whether it's the 18-to-24 age group, which is the university system's target market, or those people who need to change careers. We've got to have systems in the community colleges and flexibility in our universities with certificate programs and other educational attainment services.

It's a challenge and not going to be easy. But if we can master that, we'll have a competitive advantage not only in the rest of the United States but the rest of the world.

What else do we need to do to create more jobs and a stronger workforce?

I think certain infrastructure is missing. Funding is an issue. But...