CityView Magazine

62 | March/April 2015 Wendy Lowery Vice Chancellor of Advancement, The University of North Carolina at Pembroke Wendy Lowery was reared in Lumberton, completed her bachelors and masters at e Uni- versity of North Carolina at Pembroke and now resides in Gray's Creek. "I am a true girl of the south. I haven't lived anywhere else but Robeson and Cumberland counties," Lowery said with a smile. "When I moved to Fayetteville, I knew in order to be successful, I needed to be engrained in the community and I love it here." Lowery loves it so much that when she began her tenure at UNCP four years ago, she didn't move back to Robeson County. Lowery has been across the higher edu- cation gamut, working in fundraising at Method- ist University, Fayetteville Technical Community College and Fayetteville State University. Perhaps Lowery has the longest commute to work (35 minutes) out of our key players and she uses that time to decompress and think about everything she has to accomplish during her work day and then later at home as a mother of two. "It prob- ably makes me a better mother, because on the way home I get to cool off from a busy day." When addressing motherhood, work and bal- ance, Lowery said simply, "It's not easy. It can be a struggle and over the past year I became a 'student' and I started reading on how mothers are successful in their careers." She continued, "I look at it now as a seesaw. Maybe one day, your family will be at the top and work will suffer and the next day it your work is at the top. I had to get rid of guilt. Once I was able to do that, I be- came successful in both." Lowery believes her children have a strong work ethic because of the example she has showed them. And with fund- raising, Lowery recognizes she has to be "on" 24/7 because her career is all about building re- lationships. On productivity, Lowery uses a cal- endar (even though most busy women use their iPhones) in order to stay on top of tasks and she encourages women to not sweat the small stuff, surround yourself with positive, good people who keep your confidence level up. And she can't for- get to-do lists either. And like Dr. Council, she didn't chose the higher education life, the higher education life chose her. When the job at Methodist came avail- able at the beginning of her fundraising career, she took it on. As a woman in higher education, Lowery's ad- vice to others is not to sit back… but to grab a seat at the table. "When I moved to Fayetteville, I knew in order to be successful, I needed to be engrained in the community and I love it here." – Wendy Lowery

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