Running for NC Senate, Kenneth Lewis

Meet Kenneth
As a business lawyer in North Carolina for more than 20 years, Kenneth has been helping to create jobs and greater economic opportunity for all of North Carolina’s citizens. Kenneth’s clients have spanned the industries which have propelled the state toward its #1 business climate ranking* for seven of the past eight years. These industries include manufacturing, domestic and international distribution, high technology, and alternative energy.

Not content to forge progress only from the confines of his office, Kenneth has volunteered for and served organizations that promoted entrepreneurship and job creation, responsible lending, low income housing and community development, reproductive health issues, expansion of health insurance, healthcare delivery, early childhood development and advocacy for children’s issues.

Forging a New Path Forward
Having worked closely with businesses, government and social entrepreneurs, Kenneth understands the goals, needs and challenges of each. Many see these groups as having competing interests and goals. But Kenneth understands that continued progress in our country and in North Carolina requires that these groups work together toward a single vision — securing real and lasting prosperity for all. Kenneth has the experience, the ideas and the energy to find the common ground that will keep North Carolina and our country moving forward. As a business lawyer, that’s what he’s done for the past 22 years --- help parties with different interests and perspectives find ways to succeed together by focusing on their common interests.

Kenneth has also been active in North Carolina politics throughout his life, at the grassroots level and in advising and supporting candidates. His decision to run for the United States Senate comes on the heels of his extensive work with the Obama presidential campaign. This work involved fundraising, grassroots voter registration and early voting drives, outreach for the national campaign with state political leaders and more.

The Family Who Serves Together, Makes Change Together
The story of Kenneth’s family echoes the story of the American dream — it’s a story of hard work, reliance on education to achieve success, and a belief in serving the broader community. Kenneth’s parents were the children of sharecroppers from North and South Carolina. Despite their meager beginnings, his parents, through hard work and sacrifice, found educational opportunities. His mother became a schoolteacher and his father a minister and college professor. Kenneth’s parents demonstrated their commitment to community through their service. During the turbulent 1960’s his father served as president of an interracial and inter-faith organization that worked on reconciliation and healing of past divisions, and was a founding board member of an anti-poverty program.

Inspired by prominent lawyers like Thurgood Marshall and Julius Chambers, who were working to create change in the 1960’s and 70’s, Kenneth decided to become a lawyer. After graduating from Duke University and Harvard Law School, he turned down offers from prominent law firms across the country, and returned to his home state of North Carolina to be part of its growth into a more dynamic and prosperous state.

During his career as a business lawyer, Kenneth has been a partner in two of North Carolina’s largest and most prominent law firms. He also co-founded and ran a small law firm. That firm’s mission was to provide high quality legal services to a broad array of clients who might otherwise be unable to afford such services, including a nationally recognized Small Business Administration lender and one of the state’s largest nonprofit developers of award-winning affordable housing.

Kenneth, 47, is married to his wife of 20 years, Holly Ewell Lewis, who is a graduate of Duke and the University of North Carolina, Kenan-Flagler Graduate School of Business, and is a former marketing executive at Sara Lee. They live in Chapel Hill with their three children, Evan (15), Marshall (14) and Maya (9). Continuing in his family’s tradition of service, Holly and their teenage children tutor at-risk students at a local elementary school, and the entire family volunteers at a food ministry at their church, Asbury Temple United Methodist Church in Durham.