Linda Lockman-Brooks has been elected to chair the Central Piedmont Community College Board of Trustees by her fellow board members. Lockman-Brooks, a college trustee since 2016, is the first female and the first Black person to chair the board in Central Piedmont’s 58-year history.

Lockman-Brooks is a Charlotte business executive with extensive leadership experience at large public companies, as well as expertise as a small business owner and entrepreneur. She is founder and president of Lockman-Brooks Marketing Services, which provides strategic marketing and communications services and executive talent development resources to a diverse book of clients, including AT&T, Bank of America, Novant Health, The Dallas Mavericks, Luquire Agency, and The Nature Conservancy.

Appointed and reappointed a Central Piedmont trustee by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Board of Education, Lockman-Brooks served on the board’s Finance and Facilities Committee from 2016-2018, and Executive Committee since 2018. She has chaired the Student Success and Strategic Initiatives Committee since 2018. She also is a co-chair of the Central Piedmont Foundation’s ongoing “Powering a Stronger Future Campaign,” the most ambitious fundraising effort in the foundation’s history. The campaign, with a $40-million goal and extraordinary success with a year to go, is aimed at supporting students, programs and faculty development and providing even greater access to underrepresented persons.

“Central Piedmont has been fortunate to have Linda Lockman-Brooks as a highly engaged and thoughtful Trustee since 2016. Now, we are even more fortunate to have her chair the board,” said Dr. Kandi Deitemeyer, college president. “Linda assumes leadership of the board at a crucial time, as Mecklenburg County emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, and the college readies itself to help a growing number of Mecklenburg County residents restart their careers or begin their higher education journey to greater economic mobility.

“The college will look to its trustees for sound counsel and guidance as it works to extend education and job-training opportunities to all who seek them,” Deitemeyer added.

Lockman-Brooks is past chair and serves on the board of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Library Foundation and on the board of visitors for Johnson C. Smith University. A sustaining member of the Junior League of Charlotte, she has also chaired the boards of the Arts and Science Council, Children’s Theatre of Charlotte and the YWCA of the Central Carolinas. She is a Senior Fellow of the Charlotte Chapter of the American Leadership Forum and was the Executive in Residence in 2020 for the Wake Forest University MBA program in Charlotte.

Lockman-Brooks succeeds Edwin Dalrymple, who has chaired the Central Piedmont board since 2014. Dalrymple will remain a college trustee through June 2023.