Valerie Combs: Basketball Pioneer, Community Pillar

As she rose to the challenge of being one of the first women to receive a full-ride scholarship to U of L, she would become the first female athlete to score 1,000 points for U of L. A hall of famer, an entrepreneur, and now the Director of Development for Diversity and Engagement at her alma mater, Valerie Combs continues to be a pioneer for underserved athletes both on and off the court.

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CEDAR Prepares Eastern Kentucky Student-Leaders for a Future Beyond Coal

Because so much of CEDAR’s programming had to do with how coal as an industry needed to be supported, its gradual but now overpowering absence necessitated a shift in focus and in practice. So with a pretty substantial name change and a totally new concentration, CEDAR would begin to support students and educators in ways that would impact their communities directly.

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LEAVES OF CHANGE: CANOPY KENTUCKY REWRITES THE BOOK ON BUSINESS FOR THE COMMONWEALTH

Canopy Founder Scott Koloms closed the program with a big declaration. Their mission was to make Kentucky rank first on a brand new kind of list instead of continuing to rank towards the bottom of those old lists. Canopy was created to make Kentucky the leader of the nationally growing Better Business Movement.

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LIFE OR DEATH IN APPALACHIA: SOAR’s Urgency of Connecting Rural Kentucky to the World Wide Web

Centrally, SOAR aims to promote entrepreneurs, small businesses, educators, and, above all, residents of Eastern Kentucky as the region recovers from the decline of the coal industry. Their primary goal is to introduce a new high-speed internet infrastructure across the region, one that will provide substantial economic, educational, and health benefits.

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