Executive Director
Choanoke Area Development Association of NC (CADA)

Sallie P. Surface is the Executive Director of Choanoke Area Development Association, of NC, Inc., (CADA), a non-profit corporation that has served Northeastern North Carolina – Bertie, Halifax, Hertford, Martin, and Northampton Counties – for fifty-five years. As the Executive Director of CADA since 1991, Mrs. Surface directs an agency that partners with the community to seek resources and programs that foster the agency’s mission of assisting families and communities to build assets and a better quality of life.

Programs offered by CADA include Homeownership Counseling, Single Family Rehab, Urgent Repair, Weatherization and HARRP, Housing Choice Voucher and Tenant-Based Rental Assistance, Head Start, Early Head Start, Workforce Investment Opportunity Act (Youth and Adult and Dislocated Worker), Individual Development Accounts, Self-Sufficiency, and Emergency Food and Shelter Programs.

Under Mrs. Surface’s leadership, CADA has expanded its economic development role to include single- and multi-family housing developments and disaster recovery. CADA is the non-profit developer of award-winning senior tax credit properties and affordable housing subdivisions. CADA has worked with local municipalities such as the City of Roanoke Rapids to develop a national award-winning redevelopment project for an economic distressed mill town area of the city.

Mrs. Surface is a graduate of Wake Forest College – now University – and has had additional training in economics and community development. She is a graduate of the Rural Economic Development Institute and the Center for Creative Leadership, has served on the Board of Directors for the North Carolina Low-Income Housing Coalition, and is a past board member of CRANC (now known as Reinvestment Partners).

Currently, Mrs. Surface is a Senate appointee to the North Carolina Housing Partnership Board that provides oversight of the North Carolina Housing Trust Fund, is a member of the NC Weatherization Assistance Program Advisory Council, and a member of the PNC Eastern North Carolina Advisory Board. She has been a presenter/facilitator for local, state, and national conferences such as the National Rebuild America Conference and the National Affordable Energy Conference.

In 2006, Ms. Surface received the Outstanding Rural Leadership Award presented by the NC Rural Economic Development Center and the Rural Economic Development Organization. In April 2015, Governor Pat McCrory conferred the Order of the Long Leaf Pine to Mrs. Surface for over 30 years of service to the citizens of North Carolina.