Road to Success

This line from John Lennon’s 1980 song “Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)” holds a lesson Build Carolina Executive Director Lelia King understands well from hard-won experience.

The 2008 financial collapse wrecked all her carefully laid plans for a marketing career in Atlanta. She saw her first job out of college evaporate and the future she and her husband envisioned fall into doubt.

But now, as the head of a nonprofit dedicated to giving people the skills they need to change the trajectory of their lives, King looks back on that life-changing period as pivotal to who she has become and her attitudes toward what leads to success.

Change is inevitable

In the ensuing years, King worked in a number of communications and public relations roles, both as a freelancer and for several nonprofits. She says she learned a great deal and came to understand and appreciate the transformative power of work and the impact that comes from efforts to teach people the skills needed to find that work.

King, an Alabama native born in Birmingham, landed in Greenville in 2015 when her husband took a job in ministry here. Before her role as Build Carolina’s top executive, she served as communications director for The Iron Yard, a startup accelerator and coding school that shuttered in 2017.

Iron Yard alums Peter Barth and Eric Dodd helped launch Build Carolina and its first venture, the Carolina Code School, and tapped King to take on the leadership role for the nonprofit.

“I probably wouldn’t have said ‘yes’ if 2008 hadn’t happened to me,” King says. “I was more curious than concerned [about starting a new role].”

She says her experiences of having to learn and adapt to unexpected changes have given her an appreciation for the people who come to the code school looking for the means to shape a different, brighter future.

The power of story

From her journalism background and experience at The Iron Yard, King identified with the powerful stories of people working to change the trajectory of their lives.

“I don’t know how to code, but I am very much a fan of people taking that control and changing their lives for themselves,” she says. 

From the first cohort of coding students in 2018 to the 13th cohort that finished the intensive 12-week course this November, the Carolina Code School has evolved and adapted to meet a changing tech environment.

Much of this is due to King’s leadership, according to John Moore, one of Build Carolina’s founding board members and a principal at Greenville-based consulting firm Momenteum Strategies. This success came despite the tumult COVID-19 brought to the nonprofit world, he says.

“She actually moved the ball forward versus just surviving during COVID,” Moore says. “She’s been a very effective leader and CEO during a very difficult time and actually grew through that period.”

The power of adaptability

King says being forced to adapt to changing circumstances has given her a deeper appreciation for how technology also provides a means for change and adaptation.

This aspect is at the core of Build Carolina’s mission of serving the “tech talent ecosystem” in the Upstate, she says. 

As a wife and mother of two small children, King also understands the power of flexibility that technology can afford. In a tech world where working away from the office is increasingly becoming the norm, King and her staff of five are themselves working largely remotely.

“It’s really fascinating work and I hope we can keep doing it for a long time,” she says. “I get a lot of joy out of it, and I’m learning a lot still, which is really all I can ask for in addition to flexibility.”

Build Carolina fast facts

• Founded in 2017 as a nonprofit aimed at supporting the state’s technology ecosystem through training, connection and support
• Carolina Code School was Build Carolina’s first program and launched its first cohort of students in an intensive 12-week coding class in May 2018
• Partnered with the S.C. Department of Commerce in 2018 to administer the SC Codes program statewide to offer free coding courses
• Received approval in October from the Department of Veterans Affairs for its web-development course to qualify for reimbursement through the Veteran Employment Through Technology Education Courses program
• Build Carolina is headquartered in the NEXT Innovation Center at 400 University Ridge in Greenville