Sharon Decker, a member of the UNC Charlotte Board of Trustees, recently received the Women in Business Lifetime Achievement Award from the Charlotte Business Journal.
She, along with 25 other female business leaders, including alumna Jane Wu, were recognized as part of the Journal’s 23rd annual Women in Business Achievement Awards event.
Decker is chief operating officer at Tryon International Equestrian Center in Rutherfordton, North Carolina. After graduating summa cum laude from UNC Greensboro, Decker spent more than 17 years with Duke Power Company, now Duke Energy. She left the position of chief communications officer at Duke Power to become the founding president of the Lynnwood Foundation, which was created to restore the Duke Mansion in Charlotte as a conference center, and to begin the William States Lee Leadership Institute.
In 2013, Decker was appointed Secretary of Commerce by Gov. Pat McCrory and served in that capacity for two years. During that time, she led the creation of the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina, a public-private entity charged with marketing North Carolina globally.
Decker joined the UNC Charlotte Board of Trustees on July 1, 2015.
In accepting the Journal’s Women in Business Lifetime Achievement Award on Monday night, Decker said, "I'm so honored about this because when I began my career, there were no awards for women in business, because we were nowhere to be seen." Read more coverage of the event.
Wu, founder and president of Panorama Holdings, is a 2007 graduate of UNC Charlotte; she completed a Master of Science in Business (Mathematical Finance).
In her current role, Wu oversees all of Panorama Holdings’ business lines, including real estate development, investment, financing, consultation and an EB-5 immigrant investor program, according to a profile in the Charlotte Business Journal.