Michelle Barber, Administrative and Marketing Coordinator at Land-of-Sky Regional Council.  Photo: Urban News

Staff reports

Michelle Barber has always been determined to succeed. After earning an undergraduate degree in Industrial Relations from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, she continued to focus on even higher goals. She set out to prove that with discipline and determination, you can succeed in what it is you want to do.

Currently working as the Clerk to the Council and Administrative and Marketing Coordinator at Land-of-Sky Regional Council, she is the first African American to be employed there. Since beginning her tenure with LOSRC, she has been instrumental in creating summer intern programs for minority students. Her energy and vision help to engage all sectors of the intergovernmental agency with the community in which it serves.

The LOSRC is a multi-county, local government planning and development organization that serves Buncombe, Henderson, Madison and Transylvania Counties. It comprises chief elected officials – mayors and county commission chairpersons and alternates – from member governments, plus one private representative of economic development interests in each county, and two at-large members. Members meet monthly to plan programs and set policies and goals to benefit the entire region.
Michelle describes the work of the Council this way. “We look twenty years into the future and try to gauge what the region is going to need, and what issues are going to arise, because a lot of times local governments are dealing with the present, looking at a very short time in the future. And we have the ability to look at the bigger picture and look at it further out.

“We make connections and fill in gaps,” she adds. “We do a lot of grant-writing, and when a small community is faced with a shortfall of staff, we can help with community outreach, with everything from respite care to scholarships for septic tank installation.”

Michelle first came to work there as a temp. In the fall of 2005 she had enrolled at Montreat College to work on her MBA, and a year later she was assigned to a two-week clerical job at the LOSRC by her temp agency. She liked the work and the atmosphere, and when the temp contract ran out, she was hired directly by the Council, working part-time for the first several months and full-time beginning in August 2007.

She earned her MBA in May 2008, and that winter she moved from her interim job to the dual positions of Clerk to the Council and Local Government Services Project Assistant. As Clerk to the Council she is the keeper of LOSRC records: she coordinates monthly meetings of the numerous government bodies that participate, arranges catering, helps draft resolutions and contracts, and, of course, keeps notes and records minutes.

She laughs that her two jobs give her two bosses. “I report to Executive Director Joe McKinney as Clerk, and to marketing and administration director Danna Harrell-Stansbury in my other job.”

As the first African American employee of this intergovernmental agency, she noted that ”I had to put myself out there. In the beginning there were, maybe, people who didn’t want to broach the subject of race.” But she needed to ask questions, to learn, in order to do her job right.  “I needed to know. When I went to high school it was mechanic or clerical, or lawyer or doctor.” There was no information about what a clerical job could lead to or what career paths there were – a future in government, in public administration.

As a single parent Michelle is determined that her daughter Xavianna will be afforded “everything I can offer her to be academically successful,” said Michelle. And she points out that the Land of the Sky Regional Council is called a COG – a Council of Governments. “We call it a cog for a reason – we may not be the wheel, but we’re the cog that turns the machinery.” And Michelle Barber recognizes that, as a cog herself, she can help make that machinery work better for the entire community.