Skip to content
Cohort 1

Jurisdiction: Hendersonville

University: Wake Forest

Hometown: Charlotte, NC

Drew Finley served as a fellow in the City of Hendersonville’s Water and Sewer Department, where he conducted a comprehensive survey of the state’s 20 largest municipalities and their special assessment policies and procedures. The data informed the City’s own special assessment policies for both water and sewer service. Finley also created policies for utility extensions and assessments, which are designed to provide sewer service extensions to failing septic areas. Finley also worked on the creation of the department’s strategic plan.

Finley graduated magna cum laude from Wake Forest University with a bachelor’s degree in politics and international affairs and Spanish. He is a member of the Pi Sigma Alpha and Sigma Delta Pi honor societies. At Wake Forest, Finley was president of the Euzelian Literary Society and a student representative on the College Curriculum Review Committee. His undergraduate research focused on disparate impact doctrine under the Fair Housing Act as well as historical and contemporary manifestations of housing segregation and housing discrimination in Winston-Salem.

June 18, 2025

In August 2024, Paloma Garcia-Serrano stepped into the Foothills Regional Commission for her first day of work as a Lead for North Carolina Fellow. Lead for NC is a leadership development program…

June 11, 2025

Written by: Skye Allan (Lead for North Carolina Cohort 3 Alum) In small towns held together by close ties and limited resources, projects and initiatives succeed or fail based on…

April 14, 2025

After graduating from UNC Chapel Hill and NC State University in 2024, Kristy Nguyen and Anu Mishra were selected to be part of a unique local government fellowship program based…

AmeriCorps