Name: Jarette Sampson
City of Residence: Pembroke
County of Residence: Robeson County
Employed by: Dial Insurance
Appointed by: Speaker of the House
Appointment Date: December 2024
What are activities or leadership roles you provide for the community/state?
I am on the North Carolina Joint Underwriting Association Board, the Pembroke Rotary Club, the University of North Carolina at Pembroke Athletics Board, and the loan committee for the Electric Cooperative of the Lumbee River.
What is your connection to rural, tobacco-dependent or economically distressed areas?
I live in Robeson County, one of the largest tobacco counties in North Carolina. I was born and raised in a rural area and am the son of a tobacco farmer. I personally work to build economic development through community leadership roles and running a small business in a rural, tobacco-dependent and economically distressed area of our state.
How does your personal and/or professional life complement Golden LEAF’s mission and priorities?
I am a success story out of a poor, tobacco-dependent county. I run a small business built by farmers who diversified out of farming and into the insurance industry.
What are you most excited about happening in economic development in rural NC in the next 5-10 years?
I’m excited to see technology expand in North Carolina and through our rural areas. With the expansion of AI and data centers, the state is taking a renewed focus to grow the technology industry. I see the industry moving into our rural areas and supporting economic growth.
What do you want people to know about the Golden LEAF Foundation?
Golden LEAF is one of the most successful organizations out of the national settlement. No other state has taken the funding from the settlement and grown an organization that is responsible for helping the state diversify from a tobacco economy on the level that Golden LEAF has. With the way the Board has managed the foundation’s assets, Golden LEAF has received more than a billion dollars, funded more than a billion dollars in projects, and has a corpus worth more than a billion dollars and is still growing today.