When exactly do people become effective leaders?
For Trillium Health Resources’ Head of Community Health Kay Freeman, it’s “when you realize that leadership is about passing the baton.”
Kay has grown to see herself as a leader. It’s a realization that’s come from welcoming the growth of others, and in herself as well. This change in thought helped her build a foundation ready for leadership.
“I don’t intend to hold anyone back on in my role. My goal is to try to advance people to their highest potential,” she says.
Things began to shift during a stalled point in her career where she was unable to see herself as someone with leadership potential. Starting to say yes to collaboration and opportunity again and again helped things change gradually… and then transform in rapid fashion.
“I came to Robeson County and I found that this was the most intriguing place simply because I had never seen so many Native Americans in leadership, working in regular jobs like at the grocery store … I just had never seen so many Native Americans in one place. So it was very intriguing, very enlightening for me to experience that.”
Kay Freeman
Finding Intrigue and Enlightenment in Robeson County
Although she goes by Kay, her full professional name is Veronica Kay Burlington Freeman. Through her father, she’s an enrolled member of the Coharie Tribe and through her mother, she has ties to the Waccamaw Siouan Tribe.
Born in Sampson County, she attended UNC-Pembroke — then known as Pembroke State — the only school she applied to. Having served as Miss Waccamaw Siouan as a Tribal ambassador, Kay says she wanted to learn more about Native people.
“I came to Robeson County and I found that this was the most intriguing place simply because I had never seen so many Native Americans in leadership, working in regular jobs like at the grocery store … I just had never seen so many Native Americans in one place. So it was very intriguing, very enlightening for me to experience that.”
In Robeson County, Kay met her husband, where they’ve raised their daughters.
From Feeling Stuck to Starting the Ignition
Eventually, Kay went back to UNC-P for a master’s degree in counseling and enrolled in a leadership program run by UNC-Chapel Hill’s American Indian Center, the NC Native Leadership Institute (NLI).
“That kind of got me thinking about, you know, working as a leader. I never saw myself as a leader. I don’t think that anybody kind of starts out thinking of themselves as such,” she says.
She was feeling stuck in middle management roles and unable to find a position that was both a good fit and led to advancement.
Through people she met at NLI, Kay was recommended for a consultant role at Whole Community Connection, a UNC-Chapel Hill program that helps leaders advance health equity in rural North Carolina. She held that position for three years.
“[REDI] was like the key that really kind of started the ignition. I had some ideas on what I wanted, but it was like something happened when I did REDI and it’s just like something just started up. It’s like all of a sudden it was like a breath of fresh air. You know, it really was things started moving that had never moved before.”
Kay Freeman
Wanting more leadership education, she discovered the Rural Center’s Rural Economic Development Institute (REDI) and loved the idea of learning and networking with like-minded people. Kay applied for and was accepted to REDI in 2024.
“[REDI] was like the key that really kind of started the ignition. I had some ideas on what I wanted, but it was like something happened when I did REDI and it’s just like something just started up. It’s like all of a sudden it was like a breath of fresh air. You know, it really was things started moving that had never moved before,” she says.
Deciding to Share Her Own Knowledge and Brand
While at Whole Community Connection, she learned about branding and LinkedIn.
She says that deciding to share her work and words on LinkedIn was yet another turning point, as “people began to notice. And through that, it really made a difference in my transformation into leadership.”
LinkedIn was a helpful tool that allowed her to share what she had been learning with her peers and community.
By this point, she had also retooled what leadership could mean, seeing it as more than the next job title and instead about “passing that baton, preparing a next generation of folks to take our place. And when you do that, you have reached a certain level where you feel confident you can reach back and pull somebody else along. And it’s that capacity to pull others up with us that makes us, you know, truly, I mean, impactful. … I wouldn’t be where I am today if someone hadn’t done that for me.”
Choosing Collaboration and Community
The NLI helped Kay meet the “fantastic, phenomenal ladies” who pulled her up: Dr. Amy Hertel, Dr. Gisette Corby, and Dr. Melissa Green. She was able to build a connected network that allowed her to gain more ideas and suggestions on how to move forward. This collaborative piece allowed her to see how much Tribal communities can work as a team and pull themselves forward, which she calls a game changer.
When Kay showed up for REDI, she saw Pam Jacobs, another Native American who was also Waccamaw Siouan. The two have known each other since childhood but didn’t know they had applied to the same REDI class.
“That was right there, a kind of a confirmation that, you know, we’re all working in this together,” she says, continuing, “it was also just empowering to have another Native American woman, you know, working alongside me.”
Kay continues to pull others up with her through LinkedIn, collaborating with others, and connecting people to new opportunities where they too can say yes. Two years after her own REDI gradation, she referred a colleague to the program, Katori Campbell, who is currently in the 2026 REDI cohort.
Kay says REDI also helped her gain appreciation of other people’s success, “there were a lot more people doing much broader, greater things than I had capacity of at the time. … And I think it’s because associating with those people gave me the opportunity to see myself in a bigger light.”
Seeing Herself and Her Work In a Bigger Light
She says her biggest REDI takeaway is that we’re on this journey together vs. being in competition with one another.
Kay says REDI also helped her gain appreciation of other people’s success, “there were a lot more people doing much broader, greater things than I had capacity of at the time. … And I think it’s because associating with those people gave me the opportunity to see myself in a bigger light.”
Kay says this viewpoint changed her own view of herself, “You can get conditioned to seeing yourself in a certain, you know, minimal way. And then other people start to see bigger aspects of you.”
A particular “aha moment” was a REDI discussion about subject matter experts, a term she’d never heard before. Subject matter experts’ expertise comes from their own life experience, which can then be shared with others, she shares, “and I never really even considered growing up in a Native American community as something that, you know, could be valued by the mass majority. And that was very enlightening.”
Last year, Kay stepped into a subject matter role at Trillium as head of community health. Since June of this year, she’s been the Interim Director of Community and Tribal Engagement. “Providers reach out to me for any kind of expertise or any kind of insight that I can offer them about connecting with Native American tribes. And, you know, and I’m always happy to make that connection and collaborate,” she says.
And what once felt like a sticking point, her career, began to shift… fast. She says if people knew just how fast things could change for them, maybe they’d pick up the pace a little quicker.
All of the steps Kay chose to take for herself, helped her see how her education and life experience could work with her new realization that she had much to offer others. “REDI helped me to see my vision of purpose, where before I was just kind of meandering. You know, I knew that I had value, I hadn’t all put the pieces all together. I knew there was something there, but REDI just helped me pull it all together into a very scoped and well thought out plan. And then it happened just that quick.”
The Rural Center’s 2026 REDI cohort graduates in December. The REDI program will be paused for 2027 as the center redesigns the curriculum. If you’d like to keep up to date with Rural Center leadership programs, you can sign up for our newsletter and follow on us on on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.