Stephanie Brown honored as 2024 NC Main Street Champion

Tuesday, March 18, 2025 - 2:19pm

Stephanie Brown was recognized as a 2024 NC Main Street Champion during the 2025 NC Main Street Awards Conference on March 13 in Mooresville, NC.

Brown was one of 47 individuals and organizations from across the state to receive the honor in recognition of their commitment to downtown revitalization. This year’s group of Main Street Champions brings the total number to 962 since 2000. Other recent Wake Forest Main Street Champions include ARTS Wake Forest, Lisa Hayes, the Wake Forest Garden Club, Doug Pearce, Carter Harrell, and James Warren. 

“Honoring Main Street Champions is a storied tradition for our annual conference,” said Liz Parham, Director of the NC Main Street & Rural Planning Center. “A champion is an exemplary definition of a leader, that plays a key role in creating livable, lovable communities, which epitomizes the theme of this year’s conference.”

A branch manager at Fidelity Bank, Brown has been a member of the Wake Forest Downtown (WFD) Inc. Board of Directors since 2018 serving one year as treasurer and three years as Board Chair.  She was recently voted onto the Board for an additional year of service as Past Chair due to her organizational knowledge and leadership strength. 

In its narrative nominating Brown as a Main Street Champion, WFD, Inc. emphasized the many ways she supports downtown Wake Forest and promotes it as a destination location.

“Stephanie has been a tireless advocate and supporter of downtown for many years. Whether she is shopping local, promoting our businesses on social media, or supporting the efforts of our board, she always has the best interest of downtown at heart.

She has also advocated for the greater good of downtown personally and professionally, resulting in Fidelity Bank supporting many of our events and opening the use of their private parking lot for public events, as well as outside events. Stephanie truly cares about our downtown and is willing to jump in and help wherever needed to ensure that Wake Forest is a destination for all.”

For more information, contact Downtown Development Director Jennifer Herbert at 919-435-9427 or jherbert@wakeforestnc.gov.