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“Home is a place to really feel settled. It’s a place to feel safe and protected and comfortable and happy to be in. It’s a place to welcome friends and family. It’s a place where I feel like my values are aligned with my community.”

For the past 21 years, Joan Rose has called Chapel Hill home – and has called the same house home all those years. She came to the area to be close to her parents, who had relocated here, and to take on the role of General Manager at WUNC. Since then, she has had various roles with different organizations in the area, and she now serves as the Executive Director of the Research Triangle Park Chapter of the National Association of Corporate Directors.

Joan also has volunteered much of her time over the years to serving as a board member with various nonprofits. Most recently, Joan served for six years on the board of Triangle Family Services in Raleigh. The organization focuses on being a safety net for people in crisis, and as part of her work with that organization, Joan says, she “really saw how much of people’s ability to stabilize their living situation depended on having stable housing.” That experience led her to want to focus her future board work on supporting affordable housing and housing diversity. She felt Community Home Trust was playing a key role in providing opportunities for community members and was an important part of the larger solution to affordable housing challenges in the region as it grows. “Chapel Hill and this organization are unusual in having this opportunity to shape the future of the housing market in such a positive way,” shares Joan, and that is a big part of why she has chosen to volunteer her time with the CHT Board of Directors.

As a long-time resident of Chapel Hill, Joan understands the value of that work on a very personal level. She says that one of the things that makes the town special and a reason she chose to move to Chapel Hill in the first place is its “diversity of people and opinions and backgrounds. It has a real sense of place, and it’s welcoming, and it has room for people from all sorts of socioeconomic backgrounds. And we’re in danger of losing that unless we take an active stance to make some units available to people who otherwise probably would get priced out of the market. We would lose so much if we didn’t have new people coming all the time and new people becoming homeowners and also feeling a sense of investment in the community.”

Joan is excited to help CHT become better known in the community in the coming years, especially as it continues to build and grow. She says that the organization has a great story to tell, and she’s looking forward to the opportunity to help share that story. She’s also excited to learn more about the organization and the community as she dives into her work as a board member. She’s impressed by the rate of growth in the CHT community, and she’d like to see that growth continue to accelerate. And she’s also interested in working to ensure CHT homeowners are fully involved and invested in the community they call home.

When she’s not working or volunteering as a board member, Joan enjoys walking with friends and taking advantage of the many recreational opportunities Chapel Hill has to offer. She also really appreciates the local restaurant scene. She says that the community has grown so much in her 21 years here, and she loves watching those changes and the growth all around her. Joan lives with her husband, who is a retired teacher, and she has two adult sons, one who lives in Durham and one in Brooklyn, both of whom were launched from the very house Joan and her husband still call home.

Please help us welcome Joan to our Board of Directors in 2023!