Dear Members of the N.C. General Assembly:

I know that our state faces some important decisions in the near term. The purpose of this letter is to ask
for your continued fmancial support of one of North Carolina’s greatest treasures, its world-class
university system. The campuses that make up the UNC system provide invaluable, affordable and
priceless experiences for our constituents – and they ultimately produce graduates who deliver economic
and employment benefits back to North Carolina. I would like to share my personal story below, in the
hope that it might serve as an example of the importance of the UNC system.

I was born in Raleigh, raised in Charlotte and attended Charlotte-Mecklenburg public schools through the
10th grade. At the encouragement of my mother, I applied to and ultimately enrolled at the N.C. School of
Science and Mathematics (”NCSSM”) in Durham for my final two years of high school (1983 and 1984).
NCSSM was a life-changing experience for me – as you might know, it was and still is one of the premier
high schools in the nation. It provided me as rich of an educational and residential experience as I could
have received at any school anywhere – I have often told people that my two years at NCSSM were the
ones that most shaped me as a person. It is a fabulous institution in every respect.

In my senior year at NCSSM, I considered attending a number of universities across the country, but
ultimately decided to attend UNC-CH on a Morehead scholarship. It is difficult to put into words how
impactful my UNC-CH and Morehead experiences were to me. Not only did I benefit from the academic
opportunities and the Morehead programs, but I also enjoyed my experiences on the wonderfully diverse
and dynamic UNC-CH campus. I became involved in numerous student-led organizations, and ultimately
served as UNC-CH Student Body President in my senior year. While my diploma states that I learned
about mathematics and economics during my college years, the reality is that I also learned important
lessons about leadership, relationships and life.

In the twelve years following my UNC-CH graduation, I had several unique and enriching experiences
and lived/worked in some of the most well-known geographic sections of our country – working as a
Wall Street analyst in New York, earning a MBA at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in Silicon
Valley and working with Erskine Bowles at the White House in Washington, DC. But despite all of these
stops along the way, there was never a doubt in my mind that North Carolina was my home and my final
destination – and that I wanted to live in and give back to my home state. I believe that the primary
reason for my attachment to this state is the valuable experiences that I had at NCSSM and UNC-CH
during my most developmental years – if I had attended a preparatory high school in another state and/or
an Ivy League college, I do not believe that I would have felt the same connection to North Carolina.

I moved back to North Carolina in 2000 to serve as Managing Partner of Carousel Capital, a Charlotte-based
private equity investment firm. At Carousel, we invested hundreds of millions of dollars in
Southeastern-based companies, including many in North Carolina. Last year, I founded a new firm
named Carmichael Partners and my partner/co-founder is Kevin Martin (also a North Carolinian who
attended UNC-CH, served as Student Body President, and more recently served as Chairman of the FCC
in Washington). Kevin and I are passionate about investing in growth-oriented companies in the
technology, communications and media sectors that are creating revenues, profits and jobs. Just last
month, we completed our first investment in a Cary-based company named Bandwidth.com, Inc. which
employs 200 people, expects revenues of more than $100 million this year and is growing very rapidly.
We hope to invest in other NC-based, high-growth companies in the future and believe that Carmichael’s
North Carolina location will ultimately result in the creation of jobs, profits and tax revenues in the state.

The central point of my letter is that Carmichael Partners could be headquartered almost anywhere in the
country – New York, Washington, Silicon Valley, etc. But from my perspective, the reason it is here in
North Carolina is because I want to give back to the state that educated me (as evidence of that tie, some
of you might recognize that “Carmichael” is a name with rich history on UNC-CH’s campus). In
summary, I am a North Carolinian because I was born and raised here – but I want to give back to North
Carolina because the state gave me so much at both NCSSM and at UNC-CH.

As stated earlier, I recognize that you have important and difficult decisions to make in the days and
weeks ahead. I appreciate your service to our great state and respect the fact that you have many worthy
programs and institutions to consider. I only hope that my story helps to illustrate that this great treasure
of a university system is especially vital to the development and retention of our state’s greatest resource
for the future, its children. And by ensuring that institutions such as NCSSM and UNC-CH remain both
well-funded and affordable for all students, the state will continue to produce graduates who are
connected to North Carolina and will ultimately contribute to the economy and employment of the state in
so many ways. Again, if I had not attended (or had not been able to afford) NCSSM and UNC-CH, I
doubt that I would feel the same connection to North Carolina and I doubt that I would feel the same
obligation to give back to the state that played such an important role in my education and personal
development.

Thank you very much for your consideration of the importance of continued strong funding for the UNC
system in general, and for NCSSM and UNC-CH in particular. I know that you will need to make
diffIcult budget reductions in the days ahead – I just ask that you please not require these schools to suffer
disproportionately – because our children and grandchildren need them. Thank you.

Brian Bailey