BUNCOMBE COUNTY, N.C. — A North Carolina community is hoping to make progress toward achieving equality for all.
What You Need to Know
Rachel Edens is Buncombe County’s new chief equity and human rights officer
She’s been doing equity work for decades
Edens is a first-generation, low-income student
Her passions include socioeconomic fairness and growth, education, equity
After a national search and competitive hiring process, Buncombe County recently filled the newly created position of chief equity and human rights officer.
Rachel Edens began the inaugural role the Nov. 1, and she has hit the ground running since. She made the move from Vermont, where her husband still lives until securing a job local to Asheville.
Edens is an eastern N.C. native, who has been doing equity work for many years in places like Tennessee, Massachusetts and Vermont. She also has a decades-long resume working in areas of social justice education and restorative justice practices.
"It really is a dream job to be able to come back to my home state and do this work that I've been doing in many other states," Edens said. "I always have felt a little bit guilty honestly, about leaving and going to other places and doing this work.”
A lot of what made her leave the state is what she's going to be working on and has seen progress in in Asheville.
Edens said she grew up poor in the eastern part of the state. She prides herself on being a first-generation, low-income student.
"Until I was in about second grade or so, the road I lived on was a dirt road," Edens said. "It wasn't paved, and my neighbors actually had an outhouse and a pump in their kitchen.”
Even with financial barriers in place, her mother and grandparents pushed Edens to go to college. She calls herself lucky and fortunate to have a family who wanted that for her though it wasn't their experience.
Her grandma was like a second mom, and is the one who inspires her equity work, Edens said.
"One of the main reasons I wanted to get civically engaged was that I remember the first time that my grandma took me to vote with her when I was just a little girl," Edens said, the memory engraved in her head.
Born in 1911, her grandma saw much of the landscape change with civil rights, and she tries to take that with her along with the lessons of her family while doing this work.
Since starting last month, Edens has been busy. A lot of the county’s racial equity groundwork was laid before her arrival, but Edens has some goals she’s bringing to the table.
"I've had a lot of experiences in my professional career where I've come in, looked at the landscape and said, 'OK, well, let's try this,'" Edens said, like valuing what each person brings to the table and what each community brings.
Her passions include socioeconomic fairness and growth, and education. "K-12 and the K-16 in Buncombe County, that really matters as part of what I believe in as an equity goal," Edens said.
She wants to help create a Buncombe County everyone feels comfortable in.
"This role is not only its stewardship of, you know, just being very candid, public funds, but it's stewardship of public good and public relation and public love and community love and the creation of a beloved community," Edens said.