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Cohort 8

Jurisdiction: City of Asheville

University: UNC - Chapel Hill

Hometown: Lexington, NC

Alana York serves as a Lead for North Carolina Fellow with the City of Asheville’s City Manager’s Office, where she supports strategic planning, budgeting, and cross-departmental initiatives. During her fellowship, Alana will contribute to the City’s FY 2026–27 strategic planning process by researching best practices, benchmarking plans from peer cities, supporting meetings and stakeholder engagement, and helping translate community and staff input into the City’s mission, vision, values, goals, performance measures, and implementation framework. She will also assist the Budget and Finance team with research, reports, and administrative support for the FY28 budget process as the City works to engage City Council and the public earlier and more closely align resource allocation with its new strategic plan. In addition, Alana will gain broad exposure to municipal operations through cross-departmental meetings, field staff ride-alongs, conversations with department directors, and special projects within the City Manager’s Office. Through this work, she is gaining hands-on experience in strategic planning, municipal finance, policy research, community engagement, performance management, executive-level project support, and cross-departmental collaboration while developing a comprehensive understanding of how City Council priorities are translated into local government operations.

Alana York graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill with a degree in Management and Society and a minor in Health and Society. Alana will serve with the City of Asheville and is passionate about service, community well-being, and creating meaningful change through local government.

October 6, 2026

COLUMBUS— The Town of Columbus is welcoming a new team member this summer through a statewide program designed to bring fresh talent into local government. Isa Gandy, a graduate of…

September 6, 2026

 This July, the eighth cohort of Lead for North Carolina Fellows arrived at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to begin their journey into public sector careers. After…

August 24, 2026

This July four Western Carolina University graduates were chosen to serve communities across the state as Lead for North Carolina fellows. Lead for NC is a government fellowship program started…

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