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Talk about a hot ticket: Wake Tech’s highly anticipated IGNITE event sparks inspiration through powerful stories about the community college’s impact.
People across Raleigh love Wake Tech. However, as Wake Tech VP of Development and Strategic Partnerships Matthew Smith began noticing several years ago, many residents felt stumped when they were asked to explain why.
“I went back to my team and said, ‘We’ve got to figure out a way to tell our story because our college is really a hidden gem in Wake County,’” he recalls. “We’re not just a school—in my opinion, we really are the economic backbone of this community. We are the only educational institution that just cares about Wake County. That’s our differentiator.”
He came up with IGNITE, an event that would showcase the community college’s mission of giving every person in Wake County an opportunity to pursue higher ed and make their life better. Fast-forward to today and his brainchild is still going strong, with the seventh annual IGNITE, taking place April 15 at the Raleigh Convention Center, expected to be the most successful—and emotionally stirring—yet.
IGNITE’s “secret sauce,” as Smith calls it, lies in the real-life stories of resilience and triumph highlighted throughout the program. “At every IGNITE event, the president and I are onstage for about five minutes at the beginning and five at the end,” he explains, “and everything in the middle is people whose lives have been directly impacted by our college telling their stories.”
The heartstring-tugging tales from past IGNITE events resonate in myriad ways. Take Wake Tech graduate Carrie Fisher and Assistant Professor of Cosmetology Valerie Bishop, whose lives are forever intertwined after Fisher saved Bishop’s life by giving her a kidney. Or Jorge Goti, who came to NC from Cuba and credits Wake Tech’s English as a Second Language program for not only teaching him English but also “how to make a life in this country and this community,” he says.
Then there’s Michael Denning, who says the knowledge he gained from his time at Wake Early College of Health and Sciences “prepared and propelled” him to transfer to ECU to pursue his dream career in medicine. And, finally, Eddie Mutebi—who grew up in a Uganda orphanage—is thankful for a partnership between Wake Tech and the nonprofit Embrace Uganda for helping him enroll at WTCC when his sponsor didn’t pay his university tuition. Mutebi’s experience ultimately led him to his current role as a data scientist at IBM, while continuing to provide “critical support and resources to my family back in Uganda,” he shares.
This year, IGNITE’s sold-out crowd of more than 750 local business leaders and community influencers will gather to hear even more firsthand accounts of how Wake Tech is making a difference. That includes Khadijah Scarborough, a former foster kid who came to Wake Tech “under unbelievable circumstances,” says Smith. “And now this young woman not only graduated from Wake Tech, but with a nursing degree—and she’s working at Johns Hopkins Medical Center.”
Smith reveals IGNITE’s 2024 theme will be Heroes in the Hallway, a chance to spotlight Wake Tech faculty and staff who have quietly rallied around students to help them succeed. “The people we’re featuring this year are the ones who are doing the gritty, hands-on work,” says Smith. “The one who gets the phone call from the foster kid at 10pm saying, ‘I don’t have anywhere to sleep tonight.’ The one who’s working with the autistic student who barely communicates but knows she wants to do something with her life.”
Ultimately, Smith is proud to have created something that “hopefully will have a long-lasting effect… and, more than anything, emotionally connect with people in this community,” he says. “Everybody who goes to that program knows someone similar to what we’re presenting onstage.”
So, why do people across Raleigh—and the region—love Wake Tech? Because its story is our own—and an event that helps individuals and companies recognize we’re all in this together may be the key to real and lasting support for the community college and its life-changing programs.
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This was such an awesome piece!! I hope many, many Wake County folks get to read it.
Informative ? Yes.!! Inspiring? Yes!! Full of joy? Yes!! Encouraging? Yes!! And so much more.
We are blessed to have this community college right here, and may it continue year after year to serve Wake County and beyond!!