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A Day of Dialogue, Partnership, and Momentum Across Duke and Durham

By Michelle Benham // April 21, 2026

From early morning conversations to a campus-wide town hall, Duke Community Affairs marked a pivotal day focused on connection, collaboration, and community impact.

The day began with the first Open Doors Forum, part of Duke’s HomeGrown initiative, featuring Duke's Vice President for Facilities, Tom Morrison. The forum kicked off a new series designed to foster open dialogue about how Duke can strengthen local economic pathways by keeping investment, talent, and opportunity rooted in Durham. The conversation reflected HomeGrown’s focus on local partnerships and long-term community benefit.

A person taking a selfie with the Duke Blue Devil mascot at a table during an indoor event, while another attendee sits nearby. Event signage and name tags are visible.
Photo credit: Jared Lazarus

Across town, campus and community partners gathered for the Carnegie Community Breakfast Celebration to recognize Duke’s recent reclassification as a community-engaged institution. The breakfast brought together faculty, staff, students, and local leaders in a shared moment of recognition of years of sustained partnership-building across Durham and the region. The event emphasized reflection, collaboration, and what it means to align scholarship and service with community priorities.

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Open Doors to HomeGrown

At the first Open Doors Forum, Tom Morrison, Duke's vice president of facilities, provided an overview of upcoming construction projects to a roomful of construction-related firms interested in working with Duke. This is one of the core commitments of Duke's new $203 million HomeGrown initiative, an institution-wide effort to help people in our community get ahead through better jobs, more opportunities for local businesses, and easier ways for families to stay in the community they call home.

Check Out HomeGrown
Later in the day, Duke Community Affairs hosted its inaugural live virtual town hall, Community Conversations: A Live Town Hall Featuring Duke’s Housing and Education Partnerships. The conversations highlighted how collaboration across sectors is advancing affordable housing and access to homeownership, college and post-secondary planning, and how to get engaged.

The town hall featured three panel discussions:

  • Keeping Capital Local, which explored how Duke’s investments support affordable housing and small business growth
  • When Systems Work Together, focused on cross-sector approaches to housing stability
  • Navigating What’s Next, highlighting student pathways to college and career
Duke undergraduate and Lars Lyon recipient Abby Winslow
Duke undergraduate and recipient of the Lars Lyon prize, Abby Winslow

The program also included the presentation to Duke undergraduate Abby Winslow of the Lars Lyon Award, recognizing leadership and service in community-engaged work, followed by a live Q&A with participants from campus and the community.

Together, the day’s events underscored a shared message: meaningful community engagement happens through listening, partnership, and sustained action.

Get involved. Learn more about Duke’s community partnerships by subscribing to the Duke Community Affairs newsletter and exploring volunteer and engagement opportunities on the Duke Partnership Platform—a digital hub designed to connect people, projects, and purpose across Durham and the region.

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Written by

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Michelle Benham

Michelle Benham is the senior director for communications at Duke Community Affairs. She is an accomplished leader, award-winning multimedia producer, and communications expert with over two decades of storytelling experience in the public and private sectors, including government, higher ed, and nonprofits. She is adept at amplifying diverse voices and co-creating partnership opportunities to advance community collaboration.

Prior to joining DCA, Michelle led the marketing and communications team at Durham-based national nonprofit Forward Cities. She also served as marketing director at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, an internationally renowned program of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. Previously, she created award-winning content and campaigns at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Discovery Learning Alliance, and Discovery Communications.

Michelle is a Goodmon Fellow through Leadership Triangle and participated in the 2023 Regional cohort. She is an alumna of the esteemed Emerging Wildlife Conservation Leaders program and was a founding board member of the Conservation Leadership in the Caribbean fellowship, a capacity-building, networking, and leadership development program for emerging climate science and wildlife conservation leaders in the wider Caribbean region.

Michelle holds an M.F.A. in Film & Media from the School of Communication at American University and a B.S. in Ecology from the University of Georgia. She and her family are proud residents of Durham, NC, and have a deep affection for the Eno River.

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