Charlotte Business Buzz

After completing her MBA in 2019 from the Belk College of Business, Kristin Cagney dove headfirst into ambitious plans for the first spiked seltzer brewery and taproom on the east coast. The thirty-eight hundred square foot seltzer company opened in September in the Wesley Heights neighborhood, and has seen success in spite of the pandemic. 

Data remains crucial to understanding the impact and spread of COVID-19 around the globe. Jean-Claude Thill, a Knight Distinguished Professor in the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, and Rajib Paul, an associate professor in the Department of Public Health Science, discuss an effort by UNC Charlotte's interdisciplinary School of Data Science to leverage data to slow the spread of COVID-19 and future pandemics. 

Two UNC Charlotte researchers are taking a unique approach to advancing gender equality in the workplace: They're engaging male leaders. George Banks, associate professor in the Department of Management in the Belk College, and Jill Yavorsky, assistant professor in the Sociology Department in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, to discuss the issue.

The nation’s economic downturn from COVID-19 has been all-encompassing, impacting all sectors of the economy at a pace not yet seen in American history. 

To make sense of this proverbial roller coaster of economic change is John Connaughton, Director of the Barings/UNC Charlotte Economic Forecast, and the Barings Professor of Financial Economics at UNC Charlotte.

There is a maturing market for entrepreneurial ventures in the Queen City. But can small business survive the COVID-19 pandemic? And what can Charlotte do to support entrepreneurs? For some perspective, we talk with Belk College alumnus and UNC Charlotte Foundation board member Bryan Delaney '03. 

We talk with Dr. Patrick Madsen, Executive Director of the University Career Center at UNC Charlotte, to understand strategies for job seekers during a difficult economy, job interviews in the artificial intelligence age, and how the University is meeting students where they are during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

In our pilot episode, we talk with Dr. Janaki Gooty, associate professor in the Department of Management at the Belk College of Business and in the interdisciplinary organizational science Ph.D. program at UNC Charlotte. She has extensive research in how leaders and followers develop high-quality relationships, managing emotions in the workplace, and stress and well-being at work.