HBCU Engage 2026

Join RTI and local universities, nonprofits, corporate foundations, and industries at SAS's headquarters for HBCU Engage 2026. This event brings together the brightest minds to discuss HBCUs as drivers of innovation, entrepreneurship, and regional economic growth, with a focus on how investment and strategic partnership can unlock HBCU potential. 

Key Themes of HBCU Engage 2026: 

• Strategic Philanthropy and Investment: Philanthropic support for HBCUs is increasing but often remains episodic and disconnected. This event will explore how corporate foundations, private funders, and aligned institutions can co-develop long-term investment strategies that match HBCU strengths with funder priorities. Sessions will spotlight models for sustained impact and collaborative giving, exploring how philanthropic investment aligned with institutional R&D, talent development, and programmatic priorities can strengthen HBCUs’ role in advancing national goals. 
• Innovation Ecosystem Development: HBCUs are uniquely positioned to build and lead innovation districts—tech incubators, research centers, and entrepreneurship hubs rooted in their mission and community. HBCU Engage will examine the infrastructure, research collaborations, and policy enablers needed to build thriving innovation ecosystems that drive economic transformation and generate real-world solutions—leveraging HBCUs’ strengths as engines for applied research, translational discovery, and regional competitiveness. 

RTI at HBCU Engage 2026

Session: Leadership Strategies for Cross-Sector Collaboration and Economic Growth
Time: 3:15 - 4:00 PM 
Description: This fireside conversation brings together top leaders from academia and industry to examine how multi-sector, cross-regional collaboration is shaping North Carolina’s knowledge-driven economy. Tim Gabel, President and CEO of RTI, and Karrie Dix, Chancellor of NCCU, will share firsthand perspectives on aligning research, workforce development, and innovation with regional priorities. The discussion will highlight leadership-level decisions, partnership architectures, and long-term strategies that enable collaboration at scale. Participants will take away the strategies, decision-making, and lessons learned behind transformative initiatives, and how those choices translate research capacity into broad, durable economic opportunity statewide.