The University of North Carolina at Pembroke recently announced five new members of the Board of Visitors. The appointees are Trey Allen, Faline Locklear Dial, Don Hall, Dr. Kennedi Henry, and Ramón Zepeda.
The 26-member board, appointed by Chancellor Robin Gary Cummings, is comprised of alumni and non-alumni members from across the region and state, representing major stakeholders in education, legal, health services, industry and public sector.
The board assists in communicating the university’s message, increasing community and corporate engagement, assisting with philanthropic support and recruiting high-quality students.
A Robeson County native, Allen serves as the Coates Distinguished Term Associate Professor of Public Law and Government at UNC Chapel Hill’s School of Government. A graduate of UNCP and UNC School of Law, he began his legal career as a judge advocate in the United States Marine Corps. His military service included a deployment to Iraq.
After being honorably discharged, he completed a clerkship with N.C. Supreme Court Justice Paul Newby. He then practiced education law and became a partner at Tharrington Smith LLP. He is currently on leave from UNC Chapel Hill serving as general counsel for the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts.
Dial is the owner of Speech N Progress Inc. She earned a degree in speech-language pathology from UNC Chapel and a master’s degree from East Carolina University. She currently serves on the Robeson County Board of Commissioners and the Robeson Community College board of trustees. She is the first American Indian female and only the second woman ever to sit on the board.
Dial resides in the Prospect community and is active in the community, holding key leadership positions, including past president of the Pembroke Area Chamber of Commerce, a former member of the UNCP Foundation Board, former commissioner of the N.C. Commission of Indian Affairs, a previous member of the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Visitors and Kiwanis of Pembroke.
In 2017, she was presented with the Dr. Collie Coleman Spirit of Unity during UNCP’s 20th annual Business Visions Awards Banquet.
Hall of Rocky Point, North Carolina, is a lifelong native of Pender County and a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. He was elected to the Pender County Board of Education in 2016 and is currently chairman. He works in regional farming.
Hall is active in his community, previously serving as chair of the Pender ABC Board, chair of Coastal Care, Trillium Health Resource board member and vice president of the N.C. Council of Community Programs. He previously served on the Governor’s Mental Health Task Force, State of N.C. Mental Health Commission, Pender County Jury Commission and treasurer of Smart Start of Pender County.
Henry, a Richmond County native, earned a chemistry degree from UNCP and a Doctor of Dental Medicine degree from the East Carolina University School of Dental Medicine. She recently completed her residency at ECU and will be working as an associate with Dr. Marshall Brown, a general family dentist in Hamlet, NC., beginning in July.
Upon completing her residency, the Richmond County native plans to pursue an associateship at a practice in a rural community.
Zepeda is from a small farming town in Jalisco, Mexico. He participated in Student Action with Farmworkers (SAF) Levante program in high school and the Into the Fields program while studying at UNCP. He earned his sociology degree in 2008, joined the SAF staff in 2011 and directed various programs and projects.
Currently, he directs the Levante Leadership Institute and is co-director of the Hacia los Campos summer theater group. Zepeda works closely with Hispanic high school students from Johnston and Sampson counties. In addition, he has served on SAF’s Board of Directors and has participated in alumni focus groups.
