On Dec. 31, 2021, NC State’s five-year Think and Do the Extraordinary Campaign came to an incredibly successful close. Alumni, friends, employees, and more helped propel the university well past its goal of $1.6 billion for a grand total of $2,103,932,120. These new funds will help drive NC State’s land-grant mission of creating economic, societal, and intellectual prosperity for all, by both reaffirming its commitment to broad educational opportunity and powering its cutting-edge, hands-on innovation as North Carolina’s leading science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) university.
Lindsay Wrege ’21 is one of the many Pack members who have benefited from this historic fundraising effort. Wrege is helping adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities gain meaningful employment through 321 Coffee, a company that she co-founded. With support from the university’s Think and Do the Extraordinary Campaign and NC State Entrepreneurship, the Park Scholar was able to create this inclusive business in 2017 — while she was earning her undergraduate degree.
The Think and Do the Extraordinary Campaign has not only helped Wrege fulfill her post-graduate dreams but also enabled dozens of adults to create a better tomorrow for themselves as part of her company.
“Just thinking about scale and thinking big and then going and doing it and hitting those milestones, the risk was so much lower because we didn’t have a pile of student debt to address on day one,” Wrege said. “That really enabled us to have the confidence and the ability to go test out our dreams and give it a shot.”
To read more stories of campaign success, visit our Think and Do the Extraordinary page.
This article was originally published in NC State campaign news.