Telinda Forney (Lin) is the Executive Director at the Pigeon Community Multicultural Development Center (PCMDC), Waynesville, NC, where she has been employed since 2009. Previous to her employment, she served as Co-Chair for the board of Directors for PCMDC where she also volunteered in many capacities.

Becoming the first paid staff for the nonprofit organization, she has helped develop and coordinate programs such as the food pantry, an after-school tutoring program and the Summer Enrichment Program. In 2012 she spearheaded the Lift Every Voice Oral History Project, working with a volunteer committee to interview local African Americans to collect family histories. These histories include life stories before, during and after the Civil Rights era and movement. Telinda continues to encourage local folks to gather monthly for the Changemakers for Racial Understanding. This group dialogs to help foster relationships across racial lines to gain a better understanding of challenges, struggles, daily impacts of internalized racial oppression and white superiority within her local community.

Telinda graduated from Tuscola High School. Her employment career includes First Union Bank, Gibbs Paint & Body, Lakeview Gardens Nursery and Landscaping and T&E Enterprises. Before becoming engaged in her community work, she was a telecommunication dispatcher for the E911 system in Haywood County. She has served on the Board of Directors of the Center for Participatory Change for six years as well as on Healthy Haywood’s steering committee.

Telinda is a native of Haywood County and resides in Waynesville with her husband Alvin of 49 years and their son Shaughn. She has two daughters, Tausha, who works alongside her at PCMDC, and Abbra, who works as a massage therapist at the Omni Grove Park, Asheville, NC. Telinda enjoys reading, scrapbooking, gardening and spending time with family and friends. Jones Temple AME Zion Church in Waynesville is her home church, fondly referred to by Pastor William E. Staley as the “little church on the holy hill.”