Exchange Magazine, Fall 2003 - Duke University's Fuqua School of ...

26 FUQUA EXCHANGE
The Fuqua School of Business
ALUMNI PROFILES
TERESA
HELMLINGER
EXTENSION TO
THE RESCUE
BY JOHN MANUEL
North Carolina’s manufacturing sector is in serious trouble.
Since 1993, the state has lost more than 200,000 manufacturing
jobs. Unemployment is 6.6 percent, above the national average.
Talk is that the state will eventually lose all of its textile jobs and
that there is nothing on the horizon to replace them. Teresa
Helmlinger ’85 is out to see that this doesn’t happen.
Helmlinger is executive director of North Carolina State
University’s Industrial Extension Service (IES) and assistant
vice chancellor of Extension and Engagement. Created in 1955,
IES provides education, training and technical assistance to
business and industry across the state. It is the oldest service of
its kind in the nation.
For many years, IES provided the bulk of its services to large
industries. Since taking the reigns in 1999, Helmlinger has
championed a major shift in focus to small and medium-sized
businesses.
“When I arrived here, we were serving less than 5 percent of
that population,” Helmlinger says. “Now, it’s up to 12 percent.
We’ve increased the number of field offices from five to 26 so
that we can be closer to our clients.”
Helmlinger is particularly concerned with helping small
manufacturing concerns that are threatened by overseas competition.
“We’ve saved at least a dozen of these industries in
North Carolina,” she says. “We have helped them with things
such as getting ISO [International Standard] certification to
ship goods overseas. We match businesses up with faculty
members who can help them stay in their markets. It’s mostly
a question of finding the right niche.”
Helmlinger is also behind the move to make North Carolina a
leader in biotechnology. Recently, the Golden LEAF Foundation
launched a $64 million initiative to train workers for biotechnology,
$36 million of which will go to build a training plant at
North Carolina State University.“I am very encouraged by where
the state is heading in biotechnology,” she says.
Helmlinger started her career with Carolina Power & Light
Co. (now Progress Energy), then the second largest power
company in North Carolina. With a bachelor’s degree in engineering
and no real work experience, she was thrust into the
industry at a time of major expansion. Construction was
underway on three large power plants. All the company’s
hydroelectric plants were being renovated.
“It was an exciting time for a young engineer,” she says.“I did
preliminary cost estimates for a lot of this construction. I
found out in a hurry there’s a big difference between engineering
theory and how the real world works.”
Helmlinger set up some of the company’s conservation and
load management programs. She zigzagged between marketing
and operations. Eventually, she was named division engineering
manager for the Eastern Division—everything east of
Interstate 95. “I was in charge of all support systems for this
sector, including designing and building substations and training
of personnel,” she says. “I was also the coordinator in the
event of natural disasters, but fortunately missed Hurricanes
Fran and Floyd.”
By the mid-1980s, CP&L had tapped Helmlinger as an upand-comer
and sponsored her enrollment in Fuqua’s Evening