Inspiring Entrepreneurship in Wilkes: The Masthead

The Masthead: Inspiring Entrepreneurship in Wilkes County

On any given day, you can walk into The Masthead and see people hard at work at their laptops, congregating around a table sharing ideas, or talking about the latest community news around the espresso machine (like tea? They’ve got that, too!). The atmosphere feels somewhat like a cool new office space, but this isn’t a traditional business. Instead, The Masthead is Wilkes County’s first Rural Tech Outpost.

Located in the former Wilkes Journal Patriot building on Main Street in downtown North Wilkesboro, The Masthead is a coworking space created and operated by Flywheel Coworking. The newly renovated space is fully equipped to provide professional work, meeting and community-building spaces for companies both large and small, and is an ideal place for freelancers, contract workers and entrepreneurs to gather. It provides a place for people to interact with others and share ideas that might before have existed only in a vacuum. Now opportunities exist for shared concepts and interaction. And as remote work becomes more popular with many companies, The Masthead provides an “office” space away from the distractions of home.

An Attractive Idea

The entrepreneurial spirit embodied at The Masthead is part of what drew Doren Tripp, community manager for the coworking facility, to Wilkes County. Tripp was born in Austin, Texas, and shortly after his parents began working as missionaries. He lived for most of his childhood in Saltillo, Mexico, went to college in southern France, traveled through England and Holland, and eventually ended up in Oklahoma. About a year ago, he and his wife were looking to move their family, which includes three daughters, closer to his parents who now work for Samaritan’s Purse.

Tripp had thought they’d move to somewhere like Raleigh or Winston-Salem, but on a visit to his parents he met up with Zach Barricklow, and their conversation changed his trajectory. “I learned about NC Tech Paths from Zach, and the vision he had for this community. I’d met a few other people around town and I was pretty enamored with the spirit of entrepreneurship that I saw here,” Tripp says.

Founding Executive Director Barricklow offered Tripp a job with NC Tech Paths, and he’s enjoyed getting a chance to be a part of the great things happening in Wilkes. Tripp oversees the facilities at The Masthead, making connections to help people find what they need to work, from creating podcasts to hosting networking events, and helping people get the training they need to do good work in the community. He truly embodies his title as the director of community engagement.

“There’s a great sense of innovation in Wilkesboro and the surrounding area,” Tripp says. “I see it here in this coworking space, but also in the greater community. Hearing stories about Lowes, Window World, and things that started here locally, it always started with ‘how can we help Wilkes,’ a mindset of how to help people and make our community better.”

NC Tech Paths – Bringing a New Type of Innovation to Wilkes

In the spirit of the entrepreneurs who helped build Wilkesboro and North Wilkesboro, NC Tech Paths is paving the way for a new type of job creation in Wilkes. The nonprofit serves as a matchmaker of sorts, helping people get training in technology related fields and then assisting them in finding jobs at partner businesses. “In the last year we were able to place 45 people in jobs, with companies including Lowes, Inmar and InfusionPoints,” Tripp says. Most of the programs are of no cost to qualified candidates, and NC Tech Paths stays with people even after training to provide support as they start in a new career. “So many jobs in the tech industry are remote or hybrid, which makes this a great opportunity for people to live here in Wilkes County and enjoy an exciting career in cybersecurity, network management, IT support, or a variety of other tech-related jobs,” Tripp says.

NC Tech Paths and its coworking space, The Masthead, are just a couple of examples of the many exciting things happening in the Great State of Wilkes. Join us for a free community day at The Masthead on the fourth Wednesday of each month!