It’s good to be home
Friends since the fourth grade, president and first lady grateful to be near family, in a welcoming Campbell community
By Billy Liggett
Photos by Lissa Gotwals and Zach Berly
The Inauguration | A Week to Remember | Renewal, Growth & Recognition
William and Kimberly Downs first met in a Sunday School class as 10-year-olds in their hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina. If you’ve heard Campbell’s sixth president speak during his first year in the role, you probably know this already — he’s happy to share the story of their fourth-grade “meet cute,” as the kids call it these days.
Their heated political battle for fifth grade president at Helen Y. Stough Elementary School the following year isn’t as widely known.
“She had a gimmick speech,” William Downs says to begin the story, foreshadowing the result.
The gimmick: Kimberly Downs, on the advice of her older sister, had everybody in the class scoot to the left of their chairs, then scoot to the right. “Look at what I’ve done,” she told her classmates. “I’ve just cleaned all these chairs in the auditorium.” The kids laughed. The teachers laughed. And Kimberly Downs proved she could make things happen.
She went on to win class president in what will be forever remembered as a highly partisan election (i.e., she got the “girl vote”).
“My 24-point program for revitalizing the fifth grade wasn’t as effective,” jokes William Downs, who would take his defeat and, years later, turn it into an undergraduate, graduate and doctorate degree in political science.
Despite his crushing defeat, William and Kimberly Downs would remain friends throughout their childhood and teen years — he hung out with her twin brother, so their paths crossed often. At church. At the pool. At school. William Downs admits a crush existed, but the friendship never blossomed into more through high school.
“Let’s just be clear,” he says. “She was too cool. A cheerleader.”
He, they agree, was more of a bookworm.
“Bill was always the smartest one in the class,” Kimberly Downs says. “He was always the one who ruined the curve for the rest of us. He was always at the top of the class in everything he did, and I remember he always stayed up late at night to do his homework. He’d pull an all-nighter and come home with an A-plus the next day, while the rest of us struggled for our Bs.”
The two would share a classroom several times in high school. They took French together for all four years. Chemistry. Math. English. Their friendship grew over those four years — he even took her to Homecoming (as friends, of course) during their senior year.
They chose different colleges after high school — William Downs fulfilled his lifelong dream of attending North Carolina State University, where both of his parents taught and instilled a passion for all things Wolfpack in him from an early age; and Kimberly Downs chose the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill to study pharmacy (and so she wouldn’t have to live at home as an undergrad).
“We saw each other over breaks and remained good friends in college,” Kimberly Downs says. “And I started to appreciate him even more.”
Kimberly Downs would go home most weekends to work at the local Kerr Drugs pharmacy, which was near William Downs’ home. And when she needed a date for her dorm’s semi-formal dance, she turned to her longtime friend and one-time Homecoming partner.
“It just sort of blossomed after that,” she says.
They began dating as sophomores and three years later, on a moonlit beach in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, William Downs popped the question.
Home and Abroad
While most of his friends and classmates were spending their summers on North Carolina’s beaches and in North Carolina’s mountains, William Downs was joining his parents — professors of British history and British literature — on their academic (and family) trips to Europe. He spent his first summer “abroad” when he was 9, and that trip and his subsequent journeys across the pond had a profound impact on him and his eventual decision to study European politics in college.
“My dad studied abroad at the University of Edinburgh, and he still had friends there. So we’d go visit them,” William Downs says. “We visited France, Switzerland, Netherlands and Great Britain. We spent a lot of time traipsing over Roman ruins and castles. That sparks the imagination of a young kid. And I just got an appreciation for the richness of the world.”
As an undergrad at NC State, William Down studied abroad in the United Kingdom, and as a graduate student, he traveled to Belgium as a Fulbright dissertation researcher. His first post-doctoral positions were on the faculties of two universities in Denmark — the University of Southern Denmark and Aarhus University. Kimberly Downs joined on those trips to Belgium and Denmark, her first experiences outside of the U.S. “I had to get my first passport,” she recalls. “My parents didn’t travel … my parents were farmers, and I guess you could say they were tied to the land.”
Kimberly Downs recalls the two being “starving grad students” during that first trip to Belgium. The little money they had, they spent on train tickets for little weekend getaways when William Downs wasn’t working. She joined a Bible study fellowship for international women and made several friends there — the experience was so rewarding, she continued the program in the U.S. when they returned.
William Downs moved to Atlanta to earn a master’s degree and Ph.D. in political science at Emory University, and Kimberly Downs stayed in North Carolina to finish pharmacy school and plan their wedding. She joined him in Atlanta in August of 1989 after their wedding, and William Downs’ career would take them to Brussels; Belgium; Cambridge, Massachusetts; back to Atlanta; Greenville, North Carolina and Boiling Springs, North Carolina before he accepted the job as Campbell University’s sixth president in February of 2025.
At each stop (except overseas), Kimberly Downs was able to work as a pharmacist, which provided her an opportunity to not only do what she loved, but also get to know people in each community. She says she always loved the science of the profession, and it wasn’t until she began working that she discovered she also loved the interactions with people of all walks of life as well.
“I loved my work,” she says. “I would see my patients in places like the grocery store, and some of them are still Facebook friends today.”
When she learned that Campbell University was home to the College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences, Kimberly Downs says she was excited to reconnect with the profession. She is a member of the Dean’s Advisory Council, took part in a panel discussion hosted by the College and recently spoke to third-year PharmD students about her own career and what they can expect in the “real world.”
“It’s been fun getting involved, and I hope to do more with pharmacy students in the future,” she says.
Williams Downs grew up loving history, and he always viewed politics as “current history.” He says he did two things in college that assured him that he chose his major wisely — he studied abroad in the United Kingdom and he worked for North Carolina’s lieutenant governor writing speeches.
“It was such a fun, immersive experience,” he says. “I even considered a career [in politics], but when the lieutenant governor I worked for ran for another office and didn’t win, I learned how fleeting a life in politics can be.”
Instead, he chose a career in higher education, teaching and passing his passion on to others.
“I love to study it. I love to interact with [elected officials]. I love to write about it. I’ve met a bunch of presidents who came through the schools I worked at and got excited about it,” William Downs says. “But politics can be a dirty business, and I guess I cherished integrity. I chose to stay in the family business. I chose academia.”
It’s Always Been Home
Kimberly Downs grew up in a large family — three older sisters and a twin brother. Her childhood was spent outdoors, playing with her brother and the neighborhood kids. No cell phones and no tablets. She stayed out until her mother called her in for lunch or dinner. Then she headed outside again.
“We loved growing up [in Raleigh],” she says. “And my family is still here — two of my sisters live in the area. It’s always been home.”
William Downs practically grew up on NC State’s campus. He was a huge Wolfpack basketball fan, there for those national championships in 1974 and 1983 (his mother taught many from that miracle ’83 team in her English class).
Raleigh means a lot to William and Kimberly Downs, and they’re thankful for the opportunity to be closer to home in Buies Creek. Their daughter Rachel and her husband Sam live along the North Carolina coast, so coming here allowed them to be closer for the birth of their second grandchild in April (their first grandchild from their son Bradley and his wife Gabriella in Oklahoma arrived in December).
“It’s just been so nice to be closer and to be a part of their lives,” Kimberly Downs says. “And for them to be a part of our lives, too. And I don’t want to say we’ve ‘reconnected’ with our siblings, because we were never really ‘disconnected,’ but we’re able to do a lot more things with them now.”
A ‘Wow’ Job
It had been over 30 years since William and Kimberly Downs left their hometown when the job for Campbell University’s sixth president came open. Buies Creek is a 28-mile drive from the state capital, and the opportunity to come to Campbell also meant an opportunity to return home for the Downs.
More than that, Campbell offered everything William Downs wanted in a presidency.
“At my previous school, we were scrapping, clawing and fighting to launch an engineering program. Campbell had engineering,” he says. “It had a med school, a law school and all those jewels in the crown. And boy, Campbell is sellable. You can come to a place like this and convince people to enroll and invest here. That was wildly attractive to me. The stellar quality of the academic programs here just made it a ‘wow’ job.”
For Kimberly Downs, excitement came in the form of a prayer book she received from Christian Life during her husband’s interview process. The book stated Campbell’s mission, which in part states: “The University embraces the conviction that there is no conflict between the life of faith and the life of inquiry.”
“I loved that,” she says. “That combination doesn’t exist at some schools.”
“The fact that Campbell sees no fundamental opposition between faith and inquiry is pretty special,” William Downs adds.
From their first public visit to campus in February after William Downs was unanimously picked by the Board of Trustees, he and Kimberly Downs were impressed by the passion the students, faculty, staff, alumni and community have for Campbell University.
“People here have strong feelings about Campbell,” William Downs says. “And that impressed us. It made us want to be part of this community.”
Those strong feelings weren’t all positive, they admit. Excitement accompanied “angst” from several who want to see increased enrollment, pay raises and better overall stability.
“There’s been a sense of, ‘My goodness, we have to make these things happen,’” William Downs says. “We can’t let these people down. I’ve said that to myself and to my team over and over again for the last nine months. We can’t let these people down.”
Inauguration Week in March came approximately nine months after the president’s first official day on July 1, 2025. The time in between lived up to his early promise of “controlled urgency” — to have a plan on Day 1 and to execute that plan with a “determined but careful approach.” Countless meetings. A six-city speaking tour. Determining and addressing infrastructure needs on campus. The introduction of a comprehensive five-year Strategic Plan.
William Downs says those first nine months were fun, but busy. Kimberly Downs says she’s seen her husband put everything he has into the job.
“He’s been working this hard his entire life. He’s always been this way,” she says. “He’s eager to get things done … just highly motivated. What has helped has been the community here. They’re kind and optimistic. Even in the face of everything that Campbell is facing, people are eager and excited about the future. So that makes us optimistic, too.”
Inauguration Week, which began with a prayer service and ended with an energetic Investiture Ceremony, was nothing short of “euphoric,” William Downs says.
“It was a busy first nine months, and this really re-energized me. It was a jolt of new energy,” he says.
His biggest worry was the Friday Investiture Ceremony, not because he feared something would go wrong, but rather he wondered if students would take time on a Friday — a beautiful spring day with afternoon classes called off — to attend. He worried for nothing. Hundreds of students were in the seats during the ceremony and hundreds more gathered outside to form an enthusiastic receiving line for William and Kimberly Downs’ trek from the convocation center to the student union.
“Thinking about it even now, it can bring me to tears,” William Downs says. “They showed up. They were engaged, and they were supportive. They’re the reason we get up every morning, and they got up for me that day. And I loved that.”