Sara Nichols Helps Western North Carolina Access the World

Is internet access something you think about? Perhaps you only think about it when the power goes out or when you’re lost and can’t get online directions. In many places in North Carolina, internet access is taken for granted. But for thousands of households, especially in rural parts of the state, it’s not always easily accessible.

Broadband access is about more than just the internet. It’s also about the opportunity to connect with the wider world.

Making that opportunity available to more people in rural North Carolina is partly the job of the Rural Center’s advocacy team. They lobby in Raleigh in support of broadband deployment legislation and funding as well as programming that helps people get the devices and training they need to use the internet. Our Collaborative Broadband Initiative work funded by the Dogwood Health Trust spans 18 Western North Carolina counties and puts us in partnership with local governments, internet providers, and stakeholders throughout the state, including Sara Nichols, the energy and economic development program manager for the Land of Sky Regional Council.

We want everyone to be able to give and receive information and broadband’s the pathway for that.

-Sara Nichols

Meet Sara Nichols

Sara Nichols is a longtime rural advocate who has helped Western North Carolinians access broadband for most of the past decade. In 2023, she testified before the House Subcommittee on Communication and Technology on the future of rural broadband funding. In 2025, she was named the Tech Difference Maker of the Year by the NC Tech Association and also served as a 2025 Rural Summit broadband funding panelist.

Sara’s broadband advocacy started in 2017, when she started a new job for Madison County government and learned that around 75 percent of the county lacked internet access. Data collected from a broadband survey led to a collaboration with a local electrical cooperative that had a history of serving the community. That led to broadband funding for the county’s underserved areas.

Currently, Madison County is “probably 90 something percent connected with a plan to get the rest done,” Sara says, calling the project “the biggest success story I think we have in Western North Carolina.”

Her role’s dual focus on energy and economic development work in tandem to make this kind of progress possible. On the energy side, Sara’s work before Hurricane Helene focused on alternative fuel. While she and a staff member had hoped to do more resiliency and microgrid work pre-storm, the funding wasn’t there. Helene’s destruction ushered in that funding given the staggering loss of infrastructure.

The economic development side of her work focuses on connectivity, including regional broadband access and eliminating barriers that keep people from getting online.

Helene’s massive power outages solidified how the two sides of her work connect since there’s no communications technology without power. The storm also allowed her to work with solar since the sun continues to shine when the power’s out. The deployment of solar-powered microgrids with Starlink satellite units means that not only means are some rural areas better served, but that they’re also prepared for future adverse weather events.

Last summer, to further give Western North Carolina a collective voice on regional broadband issues, Sara helped create the Blue Ridge Broadband Alliance, a regional coalition already with 100+ members, including the Rural Center. All of this work is focused on closing the digital divide so that more western North Carolinians have the same access to the same technology and resources as many other areas of the state.

What Broadband Actually Means

For many people, broadband connection means getting internet access – connecting their device through a small cable in their home to a larger cable running down their street that eventually connects to an internet service provider hub. But broadband is more than that.

Sara calls her work technology neutral, since a number of technologies are called broadband if they provide internet access at a minimum speed.

“Broadband is actually a speed thing,” she says. “Fiber, cable, mobile, satellite, all of that can be broadband if it’s fast enough.”

Western North Carolina’s mountainous terrain means that several of those technologies may be deployed to serve a single area. Part of Sara’s work involves considering the different types of available technology together with geographical constraints.

These projects can take time, as she works to find “a technology that can evolve with those needs for the community, not just take a quick win now without thinking about the future planning.”

Investments Lead to Improved Outcomes

Underneath the more technical components of broadband access, there are thousands of people whose daily lives are improved by its expansion.

Sara says that small initial investments, as little as $200, can help someone obtain a device, which leads to a chain of positive events: They’re able to remotely earn a certification, perhaps get a better job, move into their own place, and take better care of their family.

“That is an awfully small investment for an awfully big return,” she says.

To Sara, it’s not the literal broadband details – the signals, the wires, the cable, the hardware – that’s the interesting part.

For her, it’s the benefits of broadband access that are compelling.

“What’s interesting to me is what people do with [broadband],” she says. “How does this change your life?”

When Sara started this work, progress was slow. But when COVID hit and Western North Carolina schoolchildren were doing their homework in parking lots because their homes didn’t have internet, the game changed, she says. More media coverage highlighting the importance of rural broadband access and more resources followed.

Device Access and Digital Literacy Matter, Too

Broadband access means more than just running cables. It’s also device access and digital literacy. Those three things work together to open up the internet.

“Having the infrastructure doesn’t matter if you don’t have a device. Having the infrastructure doesn’t matter if you don’t know how to use it,” says Sara.

This makes broadband access less of a linear process and more of what Sara calls a “tricksy web.” One person may have a device but need to learn how to use it. Another person may know how to use a device but not have access to one, and someone else may have a device but not be able to get online. Or maybe one household on a street has internet access via broadband cable laid down by a provider, while their neighbors need a satellite to get around the mountains. Maybe someone needs broadband, device access, and digital literacy classes.

These are just some of the issues that Sara and her department, as well as other organizations around the state, navigate daily to help North Carolinians. This work also includes obtaining federal funding via an ever-changing labyrinthine network of programs, deadlines, restrictions, and eligibility requirements while also working with service providers and communities and local government.

Sara does this work because she thinks everyone deserves information.

“To me, that’s not based off of where you live or your socioeconomic status,” she says. “We want everyone to be able to give and receive information and broadband’s the pathway for that.”