Charlotte, N.C. — More than 100 people from around the country gathered in Charlotte on Oct. 7 to learn how they can improve economic mobility in their communities.
Charlotte has emerged as a national model for tackling economic mobility issues, given its success as seen through the research of Harvard University’s Raj Chetty, founder of Opportunity Insights, which compares the top 50 metro areas in the country.
Chetty’s 2014 study showed that Charlotte was 50th out of 50 in economic mobility, and metro Atlanta was 49th. Then, in September 2024, Chetty’s updated study showed that Charlotte had gone from 50th to 38th, and Atlanta had gone from 49th to 50th.
The Oct. 7 program was organized by Leading on Opportunity, the nonprofit that has been bringing the community together to work on its economic mobility challenges.
Four people from Atlanta went on the trip: Milton Little, president and CEO of United Way of Greater Atlanta; Mike Carnathan of Atlanta’s Neighborhood Nexus; Britton Edwards, COO of Atlanta Way 2.0 and yours truly as both journalist and CEO of Atlanta Way 2.0.
But it wasn’t just people from Atlanta who wanted to learn from Charlotte.
Attendees came from Philadelphia; Tampa, Fla.; Washington D.C.; New York; Omaha, Neb.; Chattanooga, Tenn.; Richmond, Va.; Nashville, Tenn.; St. Louis; Pittsburgh; San Francisco; Greenville, S.C.; Cincinnati; Kalamazoo, Mich.; Cambridge, Mass.; Hazard, Ky.; Kansas City, Mo.; Battle Creek, Mich.; and North Carolina communities including Winston-Salem, the Triangle, Wilmington, Greensboro and Asheville.
Sherri Chisholm, executive director of Leading on Opportunity (LOO), explained the title of the event: “Build a Mobility Movement: What will it take to improve economic mobility in communities across the United States.”
In short, Charlotte is sharing its experience with other communities so they can help improve the lives of all their citizens.
One of the main champions behind Charlotte’s economic mobility work has been Hugh McColl, the retired CEO of Charlotte-based Bank of America.
People in Atlanta may remember McColl as the banker who acquired C&S Bank to form NationsBank. McColl arranged for NationsBank to become a sponsor of the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, and the bank even provided the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games a $300 million credit line.
McColl turned 90 in June, but he is still hard at work trying to improve the quality of life in Charlotte. One of his current initiatives is to try to get Charlotte-Mecklenburg voters to pass a 1-cent sales tax to improve transit and transportation in the county.
“When the 2014 Raj Chetty study came out, like a lot of people in Charlotte, we thought it was a mistake,” McColl said in a lengthy telephone interview on Oct. 10. “We woke up to the fact that we had left a large part of the community behind. It was a tale of two cities. It was in that era when we were pouring money into efforts that we thought would make a difference. But it came from old white men making decisions about things they didn’t know. We needed to involve the people who were being left behind.”
McColl rightfully observed that the Chetty study measures progress over time rather than work that has been done in the past few years. The 2014 study focused on children born in the lowest 20 percent of income in 1978 and tracked what percentage of them had reached the highest 20 percent income level by the time they turned 27. Chetty then studied children born in 1992 and what percentage reached the highest rung 27 years later.
McColl understated his role in bringing Charlotte leaders together to face the economic mobility issue.
“I used to think I could solve any problem,” McColl said. “As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized it’s about giving people the opportunity to come to bat.”
McColl said Charlotte has “thrown a lot of money” on housing. But he has come to realize that a key part of the solution is having people earn more money so they can afford better housing. He is now focused on job training and job availability.
“I’m convinced job training is the answer,” said McColl, adding that if people can make more money, they can afford housing, education, childcare and transportation. “The minimum wage at Bank of America now is $25 an hour. We are pushing hard on that.”
During the conference, a recurring theme is that working on economic mobility requires attention to the wide spectrum of societal needs. The trick is to make sure everyone is “rowing” in the same direction and that they have a clear understanding of everyone’s roles to make sure there is coordination.
Tonya Jameson, LOO’s director of civic advancement, said Charlotte needed an organization that could help bring about consensus. The nonprofit community didn’t have much clout, but the business community did. Change occurred when business leaders began working closely with community leaders.
According to Jameson, there was a joint agreement with the following statement: “Regardless of where a child is born, they have the opportunity to write their own story.”
The Charlotte Executive Leadership Council includes members of the business community. The Leading on Opportunity Council was formed in 2017 and included corporate and community leaders.
Andrea Smith, who has been part of the LOO Council since the beginning, said the 2014 Chetty study was “a huge wakeup call” for the entire community.
“All this consensus building happened because over time trust was built,” said Smith, who now chairs Bank of America’s Alumni Network.
It’s no secret that Charlotte has become the banking headquarters for the Southeast, with the headquarters of Bank of America and Truist, and a major presence of Wells Fargo and U.S. Bank, among others.
“We are all going to compete for customers, but we are all collaborating to move the community forward,” Smith said. “We are touching everyone. It has to be all of us.”
Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles said housing continues to be important.
“Remember, people need a place to live. We have too many people on our streets. We have to make sure people have a place to live,” she said while embracing the multipronged approach to addressing economic mobility issues. “This is an initiative that will change the way the community feels and looks like.”
Sherri Chisholm told the people in the room that Charlotte-Mecklenburg has invested $1 billion in community initiatives since 2014 including $280 million in a housing trust fund, $200 million in the Foundation’s for the Carolinas, $250 million in the Mayor’s Racial Equity Initiative, $66 million for pre-K in Mecklenburg County, $100 million in job training initiatives and investments in its United Way for mobility-focused efforts.
During the Oct. 7 workshop, LOO unveiled its new Opportunity Compass metric to help keep track of the region’s progress on its economic mobility efforts.
“We see data as a tool of imagination — as access to opportunity,” said A.J. Calhoun, LOO’s director of research, who downplayed the focus on being 50th or 38th in economic mobility.
“The Opportunity Compass doesn’t compare Charlotte to any other place, because our goal is not to improve at the expense of any other city,” Calhoun said. “Charlotte doesn’t get better because Atlanta and Detroit and Baltimore and Dallas and Nashville and Austin get worse.” Instead, the Opportunity Compass “tracks progress in Charlotte.”
LOO said the Compass tool could be applied to cities across the country to help them improve their economic mobility metrics.
I did ask several people in Charlotte about the differences between Atlanta and Charlotte, and what Atlanta can learn from Charlotte.
“Of course, we lagged when Atlanta was taking off,” Mayor Lyles said. “I don’t view it as competition at all.”
Lyles added that Atlanta has been lucky to have Arthur Blank as a major philanthropist, emphasizing that his work on Atlanta’s Westside has been “exceptional.”
There was almost universal agreement among those I spoke with in Charlotte that the “Queen City” is doing a better job on its transit and transportation issues than Atlanta. It’s not unusual for the press in Charlotte to openly state that the city does not want to become Atlanta.
“All of us are struggling on this,” Mayor Lyles said. “Our mobility referendum is our opportunity to shape things a little differently. That’s the opportunity we have, and Atlanta will continue to struggle.”
McColl agreed.
“Transit is key,” he said. “We are not as bad as you all are in terms of traffic, but it’s bad in Charlotte. Transportation has become more important, not less important.”
When asked whether the transportation referendum would pass in November, McColl didn’t hesitate in predicting it would. “We are very proactive when it comes to transit.”
When asked what advice he would give Atlanta, McColl said: “Identify the problems, figure out solutions and assign people to work on them. Figure out who can do it best and back them financially.”
McColl did talk about the Charlotte Way — an homage to the Atlanta Way.
“You have the benefit of size and a lot more big companies than we do. Power has been distributed,” McColl said.
When asked about his role as a champion and his advice to potential Atlanta champions, McColl said simply: “All you have to do is get everyone in the room, and then you can step back.”
In Charlotte, McColl said the alliance has gotten stronger as more people have learned to work together.
“It is a job that’s never done. We are not happy at all being 38th,” said McColl, adding that he believes Atlanta will rise to the challenge. “I think y’all will get it done. You just need to accept you have a problem.”
“But it came from old white men making decisions about things they didn’t know.”
Proof when you get old that they allow you to say things like they are.
Atlanta, first has to stop thinking tall sleek, shiny buildings are the measure of a great place. The majority of people (where the money is) in this metro these days never have a want or need to dip inside of 285 anymore. This is problem #1 for your future as I see it. There is civic dis-pride in this town to coin a new phrase.
Thanks for an extremely interesting & educational story. I especially enjoyed the generous, gracious remarks of Mr. McColl. Perhaps he will be willing to coach our Leaders?