About The Organization

Jim Stokely grew up in Newport, Tennessee and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Yale University with exceptional distinction in American Studies.   He later received an MBA from Stanford University, and embarked upon a 25-year corporate career in Human Resources for The Hay Group, Brown-Forman Corporation, and Sylvania.  In 2011 he and his wife Anne moved back to the southern mountains and now live in Weaverville, North Carolina.  He is the author of Constant Defender: The Story of Fort Moultrie and co-author of Mountain Home: A Pictorial History of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Diane has more than 20 years of experience in accounting with an emphasis in nonprofit and residential construction accounting. Diane has a Master of Business Administration from the University of Nevada and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration & Finance from Northern Arizona University. When not crunching numbers, Diane loves hiking, gardening, and volunteering. Diane is passionate about environmental preservation and social justice causes and was drawn to WDL to support Wilma’s work. Diane and her husband, JP, share their home with three spoiled dogs.

Elaine Smyth moved to Asheville with her husband, David Smyth, in August 2014, from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where she served as Head of the Louisiana State University Libraries’ Special Collections division and interim Dean of Libraries. A graduate of the Colorado College, she earned her Master of Librarianship from the University of Washington.  While at LSU, she worked to promote social and environmental justice through the use of archival materials, including the digital project “Free People of Color in Louisiana: Revealing an Unknown Past”.  She enjoys hiking, throwing pots, and gardening, and also volunteers with the Botanical Gardens at Asheville.

A native of Western North Carolina and a graduate of Western Carolina University, Becky Anderson has worked in community and economic development as Founding Director of Buncombe County Child Development, Director of Community Development for Land of Sky Regional Council of Governments, Asheville Downtown Development Director, and Industrial Recruiter for the Asheville Chamber of Commerce.  Committed to the region's cultural heritage, she helped establish HandMade in America and served as Founding Director. She also serves on the boards of the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation, the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area, and Friends of the Western North Carolina Museum of History.

Kate Bashford Epsen lives in Asheville and has dedicated her career working to advance clean energy and climate policy. Currently she is a project manager for a statewide clean energy workforce development program at Appalachian State University. Prior to moving here, she was a policy advisor for New England’s electric grid operator, as well as the Executive Director of New Hampshire's leading renewable energy advocacy and educational non-profit. She also had a brief stint as a pig farmer. Kate has an MA in energy policy from Columbia University and a BA in environmental and economic policy from Boston University.

Ellen Carr is a high-yield portfolio manager at Barksdale Investment Management, a majority-women-owned company.  She is also an adjunct professor of finance at Columbia Business School, as well as a board member of the National Public Radio Foundation, the UNC Asheville Foundation, and the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina.  Ellen has a BA from Harvard University and an MBA from Northwestern University. She recently co-authored Undiversified: The Big Short in Investment Management, a book on women in investment management.  Ellen splits her time among Asheville, rural Tennessee, and New York.  She has one son, two cats, and a pandemic puppy.

As a high school English teacher for over a decade, Dan Clare is a passionate public educator dedicated to Wilma Dykeman's belief in the power of the written and spoken word. After earning a BA in English from James Madison University and an MEd. from George Mason University in Virginia, Dan and his family relocated from Washington, D.C. to Asheville in 2015. When not in the classroom, Dan can be found performing music at local breweries, hiking the Blue Ridge Parkway, running, reading, and consuming vast quantities of steaming coffee on the sofa with Blanche and Rose (his family's two corpulent kitties) looking on. As a champion of "the power of place," Dan enjoys integrating Appalachian voices--from Thomas Wolfe to Wilma Dykeman to Frank X. Walker--into his English curriculum in the literature courses he teaches at Asheville High School.

Sharon Fahrer is a recovered New Yorker with a background in geography and environmental planning, now reinvented as a local historian.  She co-founded History@Hand with Jan Schochet to document the history of Jewish businesses in downtown Asheville, creating The Family Store exhibit, book and walking tour. Since then, she lectures extensively and has written more than 30 interpretive history panels located throughout Asheville, as well as several books on Asheville’s Jewish history. She also leads history walking tours in downtown Asheville, Biltmore Village, Montford, and Riverside Cemetery. Sharon serves on the board of several nonprofits, including over 9 years with the Legacy.

Dr. Joseph Fox is the owner of Fox Management Consulting Enterprises, LLC.  He possesses an Ed.D. and an M.B.A. from Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC, and a B.S. degree in Business Administration from Pfeiffer University, Misenheimer, NC. Dr. Fox also possesses the Professional in Human Resources Management (PHR) National Certification, Global Achieve Leadership Training Certification, the Rural Entrepreneurship through Action Learning (REAL) Certification, and the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Workplace Certification. He is a life-long educator, mentor, and community advocate.

Jonathan McCoy is Director of Mars Hill University’s Center for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. He earned a BA in History and Political Science from Mars Hill College in 1992, an MA in History from North Carolina State University in 2000, and a Teacher Certification in Secondary Social Studies Education from East Carolina University in 2004. From 1992-2018 Jonathan worked in several high schools in the Durham County and Wake County Public Schools systems. He instructed at-risk students and coached football, wrestling and track. In 2018 he returned to his alma mater to teach history, and he continues to teach courses on World Geography/Regional Conflicts and North Carolina History & Government.

Daniel S. Pierce is the author of seven books, including Tarheel Lightnin’: How Secret Stills and Fast Cars Made North Carolina the Moonshine Capital of the World (UNC Press, 2019) and, most recently, Illustrated Guide to the Grand Circle, Utah & Arizona (Anderson Design Group, 2021). In 2020, he co-founded the Railroad Incarcerated Laborer Memorial Project which seeks to appropriately honor and memorialize the lives, and often tragic deaths, of the workers (primarily African American convicts) who constructed the railroad into Western North Carolina in the 1870s. He serves as Interdisciplinary Distinguished Professor of the Mountain South at the University of North Carolina Asheville where he teaches courses on the South, Appalachia, North Carolina, and the National Parks.

erry Roberts is a lifelong teacher and educational reformer as well as an award-winning novelist. He is a native of the mountains of Western North Carolina—born and bred. His ancestors include six generations of mountain farmers, as well as the bootleggers and preachers who appear in his novels. He was raised close by his grandmother, Belva Anderson Roberts, who was born in 1888 and passed to him the magic of the past along with the grit and humor of mountain story telling.  Terry is the Director of the National Paideia Center and lives in Asheville, North Carolina with his wife, Lynn. His fifth novel, The Sky Club, was released in July of 2022.

Becky Stone is a native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She graduated from Vassar College, majoring inDrama. Becky earned a Master’s degree in Educational Counseling from Villanova Universityand worked for seven years as an elementary and middle school counselor in the PhiladelphiaSchool system. Becky and her husband, Pat, moved to Fairview, NC in 1978 where in 1990, they startedGreenPrints, a magazine of gardening stories. They published it for 31 years. During that time,Becky taught theater at Veritas Christian Academy. She also established herself as a regionalperformer, storyteller, actor, and Chautauqua scholar.