She was able to climb up and out, and now is offering that same ladder to success to girls from rural areas through NC Connected, a nonprofit she founded in 2003 that teaches web-development skills. "I'm from Pender County," she says. "I was given a lot of opportunities because I was one of the smart kids. I saw the difference those opportunities made in the direction of my life."

Tawwab majored in business in college, then began a career in software development, providing training for companies including SAS, Nortel and GlaxoSmithKline, never forgetting her roots. "I always said some day I wanted to give back to kids the way people gave back to me," she says. "One day I realized I had the skill sets and no more excuses not to give back."

Almost a decade ago, Tawwab and her husband, a computer hardware expert, crafted a business plan to launch NC Connected. During that planning process, her husband was diagnosed with and ultimately died from end-stage colon cancer.

Faced with the need to care for her then nine-year-old daughter and the desire to follow her dream of starting NC Connected, Tawwab spent about six months doing consulting work, then began working full-time on the nonprofit.

So she earned a certificate in nonprofit management from Duke University, wrote the curriculum for the NC Connected program, bought eight computers with her own money and began holding classes for middle-school girls, including her daughter, in her dining room.

The goal of the organization is to empower girls through technology training, mentoring and service. "We want to teach them they're as smart as any other kid out there," says Tawwab. "It doesn't matter that they're from a poor community or that they're a girl."

Over the past seven years, she predicts her nonprofit has touched about 300 youth ages 10 to 17, mainly girls...

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