Laura Belcher- President & CEO, Habitat for Humanity of the Charlotte Region

Habitat Charlotte Region tackles the challenges of affordable homeownership, critical home repair, and fair housing policies head on, leading partners and supporters to build communities with equitable access to housing for all. Since 1983, we have empowered over 5,000 families across the Charlotte region, including Mecklenburg, Iredell, and Gaston counties, by building affordable communities, improving financial literacy, and promoting intergenerational wealth.

Laura Belcher joined Habitat for Humanity of the Charlotte Region in 2014 as President & CEO. During her leadership, the organization has seen nearly a 400% increase in families served through new homeownership, critical home repairs and financial education programming. Laura has led the organization through 2 strategic mergers in the past 5 years, expanding programming into Iredell and Gaston Counties. 2023 provided a career highlight as Habitat Charlotte Region hosted the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project building 27 homes in a week with 3800 volunteers.
Laura spent the first 20 years of her career in corporate roles with Arthur Andersen, Wachovia Securities and Transamerica. Laura was a CPA, graduated from the College of William and Mary, and spent 9 years in nonprofit work as CFO/COO of the Arts & Science Council prior to joining Habitat.
Laura is on the Catapult Employers Association Board of Directors and chairs the Governance Committee. Laura is a member of Women Executives and International Women’s Forum. Her recent recognitions include 2024 Charlotte Woman of the Year and Business NC 2024 Power List as one of the most influential leaders in non-profits and philanthropies.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
iHeartMedia's CEOs you should know today talking with Laura Belcher
Habitat for Humanity the Charlotte region and talking about a
big milestone five thousand families served.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
And when we say we serve five thousand families, we
really do that in four primary ways, right. So the
first is what most people think of is building homes.
We stand up walls, we engage volunteers, and we build homes.
The second is we do repairs, and that's with homes
that are owner occupied. It's usually seniors and we're going
in and we're helping repair their homes so that they
can age in place and have a decent place to live.
The third thing that we do is financial education, understand

(00:32):
what does it take to be home by or ready.
And then the fourth piece of our programming is our advocacy,
really working to understand how can we use our voice
to make sure people understand the needs of affordable housing
that we're moving of barriers to home ownership.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
And the reason that Habitat for Humanity is volunteer and
donation driven is these homes aren't free.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yeah, really important and one of the sometimes misnomers or
misunderstandings of the Habitat business model is that we give
homes away and we do not. We build the homes
and we sell them to families. We just right size
the mortgage for what the family can afford. So we
need donations to be able to do our work, to
be able to buy the materials, build the homes, repair
the homes. All of that comes from the support of

(01:12):
the community and we're thrilled that the community has embraced
the habitat model, but we need more.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
Donations well, whether it's donating, volunteering, or even shopping at
the Habitat for Humanity Restore. You can find it all
at Habitatcltregion dot org. Laura Belcher from the Habitat for
Humanity Charlotte Region on iHeartMedia CEOs you should know