Life Lessons: Charles Thomas – Charlotte Magazine

In middle school, Charles Thomas was the candy man. He’d load up on candy at the small grocery shop near his bus stop and sell it at school, handfuls of lollipops secreted away in his coat pockets. Driven from an early age to earn money and set his own path, Thomas went on to start a photography education company, spearhead The Light Factory’s education program, and serve as executive director of Queen City Hub, which brought together local entrepreneurs whose business ideas address social needs.

Since 2016, as the Knight Foundation’s Charlotte director for community and national initiatives, Thomas, 50, has helped determine how to allocate the foundation’s funding to organizations and projects that strive to make change in the community. At times during Thomas’ childhood, his single mother struggled to make ends meet. The experience instilled in Thomas self-reliance and the drive to make a profit. But it wasn’t long after he graduated college that he figured he had it backward: “I realized that it wasn’t about money. It was about service.”

Here’s Thomas in his own words, edited for length and clarity.

My mom had me when she was very young. She was a teen mom. It was just me and her, and her finding different jobs to work. I grew up a latchkey kid. Even in earlier elementary school, I was always walking to school or home. But we had a wonderful home, incredible love, and a great relationship. I so admired her, and I just wanted to do well to make it so she didn’t have to work as hard.

She was creative. One year, she told me, “We’re not going to have a Christmas this year.” I woke up not expecting any presents. This was a time when Transformers were really big. We couldn’t afford Transformers, so she bought these off-brand ones and hid them in the tree and all over the house. Maybe she bought like five, and so what I thought was going to be a really bad Christmas, she made really cool and fun. I just kept finding those presents throughout the day.

Charles Thomas’ photography of his mother, Saundra Thomas, who had Charles when she was a teenager.

I was really blessed while living with her, in both Grier Heights and across the street from East Meck, of attending really good schools. Fourth grade was pivotal. I got straight A’s, and I thought that I was smart, and from then on, I thought I could achieve in school. I never got straight A’s again.

There were a couple of times where the lights were turned off or we couldn’t afford something or we had to return something, and I realized, I’m not going to ask my mom for anything. Or as little as possible. It really turned on my passion for making money and wanting to be the master of my own fate.

In middle school, I started my first business, which was selling candy. Our bus stop had a grocery store, and I would buy his Blow Pops and sell them at school. It got to a point where I was buying so much candy, he raised his prices.

I had an incredible guidance counselor who helped me to understand the possibility of going to Duke University. She asked me, “Have you thought about Duke?” I was like, “I don’t think I’d get in, and then I don’t think I could afford it.” She really guided me toward getting in as well as figuring out the financial aid. So, along the way, even though it’s just been me and my mom, I’ve been very blessed with really good teachers that looked out for me.

One of the proudest days for me was the day I started at a consulting firm. It was my first day in a large consulting firm here in Charlotte after I’d graduated from Duke, and that first day of work for me was my mom’s first day at Winthrop University. She got her bachelor’s in social work.

When I was growing up, all I wanted to do was make lots of money. The summer before I started at Anderson Consulting, which is now Accenture, I worked at Easterseals’ summer camp in California. It was a camp for people with disabilities, and it was the best summer of my life. We would have water fights, we’d go swimming, we’d go kayaking, we would do art, we would create different game shows. I had a chance to meet camp counselors from Europe, and it opened me up to the rest of the world. That really opened my heart to think of life as being about more than money.

I almost didn’t come back from California to start the job, but I did because I had promised myself I would do this. But I realized it just didn’t feel right for me. Anderson was great, but it wasn’t the culture, the energy that I wanted to be a part of at that time in my life. The final thing that started me on this path was that I did a self-reflection, and it said, if I had six months to live, what would I do? And when I completed that exercise, part of that was to quit my job. 

What I wanted to do was, instead of waiting till I was 40 to be of service or to give back, I was just like, “Let’s do it now.” So I left Anderson, volunteered at the Urban League, took photography classes at Central Piedmont, and started at Cotswold Elementary as a teacher’s assistant. The students were the same kids from my old neighborhood, Grier Heights. Then I realized I really wanted to do photography. I wanted to teach, but I didn’t care for the path of the school system. I created my own photography programs and became a teaching artist.

I started a photography company called Sankofa Photography, and “sankofa” means to go back and fetch the story of your past to understand who you are today. It’s an African term. So during that period, I really went into understanding my culture, my history, my background. I didn’t have a lot of pictures when I was a kid. Photography has been a way for me to explore my history, my story, and what it means to be a man. I wanted to bring that to young people.

I spent so many years in the nonprofit sector. I had the experience of writing grants and getting funding or getting rejected for funding. I understood what it felt like to sit in front of someone like the role that I’m currently in. One of the lessons that I wanted to bring into this role was providing a lot of information about grantmaking, because a lot of people, a lot of communities do not know that they can qualify for grants. Those who have information have an advantage. I’ve also learned how to be a good investor, a good steward of money, so that the dollar we put out is not just charity but really drives impact.

Charlotte is an interesting city. One word that I would give to Charlotte is “opportunity.” Charlotte has been an opportunity for me: being in Grier Heights, being in a community where my mom can get a toehold, being able to access really good schools. That propelled me to where I am. At the same time, if we take a look underneath, and we look at the details and the data, we see that we are challenged as it relates to economic mobility. So I am definitely an exception, and could maybe be called lucky. 

Our problems are not overwhelming. They’re overwhelming for the people going through them, but if you compare where we are with housing and economic disparities with, like, California, we have problems that financially could be solved. I think if we were very cognizant, if we really researched other communities and what caused the challenges, I believe that we can take those learnings and then rally our public and private sectors to fund key areas of our community. We can grow as a community and recognize our history of being a segregated city. It’s very easy for parts of our community to not really know or understand what other parts are going through.

The vision and dream that I have is that we’re so conscious of each other and what our neighbors go through that we are willing to create communities that allow all types of members of our community to be there. We all deserve to be able to grow our wealth. There are ways to give as individuals, whether it’s time or money, that can help others to grab onto the ladder. That’s not only policy—it’s community.

Thomas’ portraits were included in the book Giving Back: A Tribute to African American Philanthropists, published in 2011. His traveling exhibition, The Soul of Philanthropy, will open July 15, 2025, at the Charlotte Museum of History.

Civil rights activist Jeanne Martin Brayboy taught in Charlotte public schools for 40 years, during and after segregation.

Wallace Pruitt was an esteemed member of the Seversville community, where a Mecklenburg County recreation center bears his name. He died in 2008.

Mary T. Harper became the first full-time Black faculty member in UNC Charlotte’s English department in 1971. She later co-founded the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture.