
Collaboration is King in Wilson
Wilson’s broadband upload and download speeds are among the fastest in the state.
Transportation gurus in London are asking questions about Wilson’s RIDE transit-on-request system.
And entrepreneurs from Greenville to Spain take part in Wilson’s RIoT Accelerator Program for startups.
As this rural Eastern North Carolina town of nearly 50,000 people reinvents itself as a regional cultural center and tech hub, others are taking notice of its increasing social and civic vibrancy. The downtown has been reinvigorated since the 2017 opening of the 2-acre Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park and more is expected once the Single-A Wilson Warbirds baseball team opens play in a new downtown stadium in 2026.
“Wilson is an incredible community, both the city and the county. It’s a place where innovation thrives, and people aren’t afraid to take risks,” says Cameron Cochran, executive director of Wilson Forward, a nonprofit that advocates for progress in the community.
As Exhibit A she points to Greenlight, the state’s first community-owned, symmetrical gigabit, fiber-to-home-network.
Wilson Forward took part in conversations among many city partners to improve public transportation a few years back. Residents couldn’t count on rides to work or medical appointments because wait times and routes varied widely. From the collaborations and experimentation, RIDE, the city’s on-demand micro-transit service, replaced traditional stop-to-stop bus service in late 2020.
“Usership skyrocketed,” Cochran says.
Seeking Wellness
Wilson’s willingness to approach challenges from multiple angles with diverse viewpoints showed up in its 2019 Wellness Collaborative, which considered health impacts beyond food and exercise.
“We needed to be looking at early education, trauma, mental health care access and a host of social deterrents of good health,” Cochran says.
More than 90 partners met regularly to identify goals. A plan to reduce evictions is just one example of a productive but unexpected outcome.
“An eviction means six months of learning loss for a child,” Cochran says. Landlords, educators and social service providers devised ways to keep families in their homes yet be fair to property owners.

Churches Collaborating
Five Wilson County churches are taking part in the Rural Center’s Connect Church initiative. The faith communities receive coaching, grant application assistance and other resources to create programs to help the area.
Wilson Forward board member Carol White is facilitating the group effort.
“In most counties there’s one church (taking part). This is the first time multiple churches are coming together to do one community project,” she says.
Each church’s $10,000 grant will be combined for a $50,000 investment in the whole community. So far, church representatives have decided they want to create one project that will address three areas of need: food insecurity, economic development and youth education. They met recently to sharpen their plans and map a way forward with the Rural Center’s Faith in Rural Communities team facilitating the discussion.
“It’s going to be kind of creative,” says Maurice Barnes, pastor of Calvary Presbyterian Church. “At the heart of it, it’s about creating relationships, putting people together in various ways.”
For example, if they establish a community garden, volunteers could include students who need literacy lessons and adults who can tutor them using gardening books or even seed packets. The produce can help feed people or be a vehicle to entrepreneurship through farmer’s markets or food vendors.
Collaboration is key, says White, who is also the education chair on Wilson County’s NAACP board. She hopes the Connect Church project could dovetail with the national NAACP’s partnership with the The Right to Read documentary and bring awareness to the U.S. literacy crisis.

High-Tech Hub
Greenlight owns Wilson’s Gig East Exchange facility, the city manages the co-working space, and RIoT, a technology nonprofit, instructs and organizes programs. RIoT kicked off its first 12-week Start Up Accelerator at Gig East in 2019. The Rural Center has championed the growth of the accelerator through letters of support for grant applications and serving on an advisory panel.
“Sometimes the founder has an idea they might not yet be selling, or they may have started selling a product or solution but it’s very early,” says RIoT Executive Director Tom Snyder,.
Participants apply for a spot in the program and are funded by grants if they make the cut. (Applications for 2025 are open through Jan. 17 at RIoT.org.)
Past clients include ShyftAuto, the brainchild of Greenville-turned-Wilson-resident Marcus Aman. He started out creating an app for area residents to get their cars picked up and returned to car dealerships for repairs or maintenance. But through research, he learned dealerships were short on labor and needed more efficient work flow. ShyftAuto now builds and sells hardware and software that tracks and manages each stage of the repair process using sensors and data collection.
Another client developed a way to predict a cow’s health by scanning its hoof with a phone, while another took her line of custom bath and hair products out of her kitchen and into a small production and retail space in downtown Wilson.
“Wilson does a great job of holding onto its creative identity,” says Cochran, a graduate of the Rural Center’s Rural Economic Development Institute. “They stand out as examples of how creativity can drive progress. They’re not just about maintaining the status quo — they’re actively shaping the future.”