Blue Ridge Country - July/August 2013 - 59

Talia Freeman

Ed Walker

Beech Mountain Resort, North Carolina
Beech Mountain runs in the family Talia Freeman’s mother, an artist, worked
at the resort in the 1970s, and Freeman has
just completed her fifth year at Beech,
where she is director of marketing and sales.
An athlete herself (she went to Lees-McRae
College on a softball scholarship), she has
been instrumental in building Beech’s
mountain biking offerings to the point that
the resort hosted USA Cycling’s Mountain
Bike Gravity Nationals in 2012 (she readily
admits she’s a beginner biker herself ).
“Western North Carolina offers an
incredibly diverse terrain, combined with

some of the most beautiful, scenic trails in
the country.” She credits Lees-McRae
College, the town of Beech Mountain, and
the resort’s trail developer, Christopher
Herndon, with being part of landing the
Gravity Nationals.
Sports and wellness are passions for
Freeman, who coaches for the nonprofit
Girls on the Run. Her goals: to make outdoor sports in North Carolina affordable
and accessible to youth, to promote the
state’s outdoor assets, keep producing fourseason events at Beech Mountain, and run
a marathon.

Brett Winter Lemon

Social entrepreneur, developer, lawyer, founder of CityWorks;Virginia
“A sense of place and the opportunity for received a Loeb fellowship to study placepositive impact is important to everyone, and making at Harvard’s Graduate School of
we all have the opportunity to either Design, and when we caught up with him he
strengthen or weaken where we live.”
was in between flights to Boston, New York,
Ed Walker has strengthened where he Quito, Ecuador and Richmond, Va. The New
lives – Roanoke, Va. – revitalizing downtown York Times profiled him in July 2012.
by buying and renovating old buildings to be
“Roanoke, like most places, has talented
re-visioned as residences and businesses, people – from commerce, education, arts and
including Kirk Avenue Music Hall and culture, technology, government and many
micro-cinema, pocket parks, shops and res- other fields – that can create extraordinary
taurants; apartments from a cotton mill, a achievement in unexpected places and unexdepartment store and a historic hotel. He’s pected ways,” Walker says.

Warner PhotograPhy

Leah Wong Ashburn
Highland Brewing Company; North Carolina
Leah Wong Ashburn has joined a family
business – her father, Oscar Wong (whose
first career was in engineering) started the
Highland Brewing Company in the 1990s,
moving from Charlotte to Asheville.
“I was 24 when the brewery opened and I
recall him working lots of hours, putting in
time on the road, and feeling frustration from
dumping three batches of beer when they
were planning on releasing it. From the start,
quality and consistency has been
non-negotiable.”
She wanted to work for him then: “I asked
Dad for a job as a beer rep. He didn’t hire me!
He told me to find my way first. I did – and
had a great career.” She worked for a yearbook
publishing company, combining her interests

in writing, photography, design and “details.”
She came back to the company 15 years later.
“Remember when we all thought coffee
was coffee and it was 50 cents a cup? Starbucks
showed us a much richer and more flavorful
version, and now local roasters are doing their
thing. Same with ice cream – everything
changed when Haagen Dasz and Ben &
Jerry’s showed what fuller flavor – with a good
dose of creativity – tastes like...
“Simply put, the craft beer movement
echoes the local food movement.”
Highland works to be green and sustainable, giving spent grain to a local farmer, helping in environmental efforts. Their awards
aren’t just for beer, but for environmental
excellence, leadership and hospitality.
JULY/AUGUST 2013 | 59

Blue Ridge Country - July/August 2013

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