UNCSA Board of Trustees elects new slate of officers, welcomes new appointees and reappointments

The UNCSA Board of Trustees has elected a new slate of officers for 2025–26. Trustee Graydon Pleasants was elected chair, and trustee John Wigodsky was elected vice chair. School of Music alumna Nia Patterson (formerly Franklin) was reelected secretary. All are from Winston-Salem. The officers were elected unanimously in a regular meeting held virtually on July 16.

Pleasants succeeds Peter Juran as chair, while Wigodsky succeeds School of Drama alumna Rhoda Griffis as vice chair. Both Pleasants and Patterson were reappointed in April by the UNC Board of Governors (BOG).

The UNCSA Board of Trustees also welcomed new UNC BOG appointees Dr. John McConnell of Winston-Salem and John Michael Schert of Boise, Idaho, a UNCSA High School alumnus of the School of Dance.

Terms for trustees appointed by the UNC BOG in April are for four years beginning July 1, 2025, through June 30, 2029.

The UNCSA Board of Trustees also welcomed back Ches McDowell of Winston-Salem and Kyle Petty of Charlotte, who were reappointed by the legislature on June 26. Their new four-year terms began on July 1 and will end on June 30, 2029.

The board also welcomed new Student Body President Trey Mazza for a one-year term. Mazza is a rising fourth-year stage management student in the School of Design and Production from Jupiter, Florida.

More about the officers

Graydon Pleasants, Chair

Graydon Pleasants has led the development of Innovation Quarter since 2002, helping guide more than $850 million invested in downtown Winston-Salem over that time period. The 300+ acre Innovation Quarter is a curated knowledge community, anchored by Wake Forest School of Medicine that houses 90 companies, 3,600 workers and 1,800 degree seeking students.

His work has included the assembly and acquisition of land, site and infrastructure development and guiding the redevelopment of 2.1 million square feet of office, lab, residential and mixed-use space, a project which was named by Preservation NC as the largest historic redevelopment project in the history of the state of North Carolina. Currently, Pleasants oversees the development of Phase 2 of Innovation Quarter, which will bring an additional 2.1 million square feet of development in Winston-Salem. He is also deeply involved in the ideation and creation of a new innovation district in Charlotte.

Pleasants represents the Innovation Quarter on the Steering Committee for the Global Institute of Innovation Districts, a global-reaching research organization dedicated to the study of innovation districts around the world. Pleasants holds a degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has an extensive history of commercial real estate developments, brokerage, and consulting since 1976.

Pleasants serves in various community leadership positions and numerous economic development professional organizations in Winston-Salem.

John Wigodsky, Vice Chair

John Wigodsky was born in Washington, D.C., and was raised in San Antonio, Texas. He received an A.B. in management science from Duke University and a Master of Science in marketing from the Sloan School at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Following graduation, Wigodsky married and moved to North Carolina to work in marketing at Hanes Knitwear in Winston-Salem. In the late ’70s, he and his wife, Mary Lynn Wigodsky, became involved with UNCSA as part of the Host Family Program for high school students, and remained involved until 1986 when they moved to Kentucky. There, Wigodsky began working for Fruit of the Loom as a vice president of marketing.

In 1999, he moved back to Winston-Salem due to his work and resumed his involvement with UNCSA through the Host Family Program and the Giannini Society.

In 2012, Wigodsky and his wife became members of the Giannini Advisory Council, which they co-chaired from 2016-20. In 2015, he joined the UNCSA Foundation and served in several capacities including as treasurer before becoming the president in 2020.

Additionally, Wigodsky served on the board of the Industries for the Blind and was an adjunct professor at the Babcock School of Wake Forest University. 

The Wigodskys have been married for over four decades and have two grown daughters and three grandchildren. They currently fund two scholarships at UNCSA, one for the School of Music and one for the School of Dance. 

Nia Patterson, Secretary

Nia Patterson is a composer, actress and singer whose music has been performed by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Friction Quartet, Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and many others. As composer in residence at Festival Napa Valley in 2021, she premiered several works and was awarded the Darioush and Shahpar Khaledi Prize for Excellence and Innovation in Classical Music. 

Upon finishing her Lincoln Center fellowship in New York City, she earned the jobs of Miss New York 2018 and Miss America 2019 where she devoted her service to arts education advocacy.

In September of 2021 she released her EP, “Extended,” which featured an assortment of all-original R&B songs, and her orchestra piece, “Chrysalis Extended,” which has 3.7 million views on her TikTok profile. In July 2022, Patterson premiered her choral piece, “Polaris,” which celebrates Juneteenth having recently become a national holiday in the United States. Festival Napa Valley commissioned this piece and the Young People’s Chorus of New York City performed it live. 

Patterson holds a bachelor’s degree in music composition and theory from East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, as well as a master’s degree in music composition from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. In 2019, she founded Compose Her, an initiative whose ongoing objective is to empower women in music. She sits on the board of Opera On Tap, which is a nonprofit organization based in New York City dedicated to making opera accessible to all.

More about the new appointees

John D. McConnell, M.D.

John D. McConnell, M.D., spent his professional career in academic medicine, first as a physician-scientist in the field of urology, and later as the chief executive of the University of Texas Southwestern Health System, and more recently the CEO of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and EVP for Health Affairs for Wake Forest University. After retiring from WF Baptist leadership in 2017, he returned to full-time teaching and patient care until his full retirement in 2024 as professor emeritus.

Dr. McConnell graduated from the University of Kansas and subsequently, Loyola-Stritch School of Medicine magna cum laude. His research contributions in urology led to over 100 publications, election to the National Academy of Medicine, as well as the Barringer and Fuller awards from the preeminent urology organizations. He has served on many professional and civic boards, including the National Institute of Health Advisory Council, the N.C. Healthcare Association (chair), Salem Academy and College (vice chair) and the United Way of Forsyth County Capital Campaign (chair). He and his wife, Melinda, are active in the Winston-Salem arts community, serving in both board and philanthropic roles. They have an adult daughter, Cara, who lives in Austin, Texas.

John Michael Schert

As the founding principal of JMS & Company, John Michael Schert provides systems change consulting and leadership development for clients around the world. He is a futurist, speaking on humanity’s evolution in an uncertain, volatile world. Schert began his career as a ballet dancer with American Ballet Theatre and Alonzo King LINES Ballet after attending high school at the University of North

Carolina School of the Arts. In 2004, he co-founded Trey McIntyre Project (TMP), concurrently serving as the company’s executive director and a dancer for nine years. During this time, he gained a unique insight into the process and product of art making and realized the ability to translate the creative process across different disciplines and domains. He served as the inaugural visiting artist and social entrepreneur at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and as an associate fellow with the New York University Center for Ballet and the Arts. Through these appointments he studied, and lectured on, the utility of the creative process and how the skills and behaviors of creatives can be of relevance and value to other sectors.

Schert is a recipient of a 2019 USA Eisenhower Fellowship, traveling to Thailand and Egypt to study authoritarian systems. He holds a Master of Public Administration, with a Management, Leadership & Decision Sciences Certificate, from the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government.

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