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Local Business Owner Champions ECC

Nina White, a 2014 graduate of �鶹��Ƶ���߹ۿ� and owner of M&D Accounting in Rocky Mount, says she still keeps in touch with her former ECC classmates and instructor.

When Nina White was a kid in Philadelphia, her mother bombarded her with math.

“My mother drilled numbers into me,” White says. “She’d call out multiplication tables at the dinner table, and she’d never let me count on my fingers. She always drilled math into me.”

It is no surprise that White grew up to earn an accounting degree in the early 2000s from Temple University and then open her own accounting firm in 2020 in Rocky Mount.

What might be surprising, though, is what she did in between.

She lived in Michigan, earning degrees in business and medical billing. She moved to Rocky Mount and started a family. She then earned degrees in criminal justice at �鶹��Ƶ���߹ۿ� and criminology at Barton University.

Oh, and she survived cancer three times.

Rick Basile, retired criminal justice chair at ECC, was White’s first instructor when she began classes at the community college. And now, nearly a decade later, Basile and White have turned that student-teacher connection into more of a father-daughter relationship.

“She’s the daughter I never had, and she calls me Pops,” Basile says. “She’s such a great person – a real go-getter.

“She was a great student. She really is an amazing person.”

White had already beaten cancer twice before she started her coursework at �鶹��Ƶ���߹ۿ�, but cancer returned while she was a student. She would receive her chemo treatment and then immediately head to class.

“I’d sit in the back, and I was very weak,” she says. “I had a trashcan nearby in case I got sick.”

Basile says he instructed her to leave, but White refused, telling him that she didn’t want to miss anything. “I pushed myself,” she says. “I pushed myself through everything, and I hope it inspired others.”

She received her associate degree from ECC in May 2014. She was the 2014 NC Community College Academic Excellence Award recipient from ECC. That same year, she was president of Phi Theta Kappa, the college’s student honor society. She also helped to establish and served as the first president of the college’s Criminal Justice Club.

Her most recent accolades have come from the Rocky Mount Area Chamber of Commerce. Last year her firm M&D Accounting was named People’s Choice Favorite Minority Owned Business. In January, she received the “President’s Award” from David Farris, president of the Rocky Mount Chamber. Also, she was February’s Small Business of the Month.

White calls herself an overachiever, and she has accomplished a great deal in her 43 years. And though she’s earned college degrees at five different schools, she says ECC provided the best experience and is her favorite of the five schools.

“The teachers are phenomenal, and I greatly enjoyed being there,” she says. “It was an amazing experience. The college opened a lot of doors for me.

“To this day I keep up with my former ECC classmates, and I can’t say that about any of the other schools I’ve attended.”

After graduating in 2014, Basile asked her to return to campus to speak to his class, and she says she always encourages students to get involved.

“I speak at a lot of colleges now,” White says. “I tell students that they might major in one subject and work in another area.

“They might work in many fields before they find the right fit, but every experience along the way may lead to something better. There might be a lot of detours, but I tell students to keep moving forward. Don’t get discouraged.”

White is a testament to her own advice. Recently, her daughter found White’s high school senior memory book. In it, White wrote that she wanted to be an accountant after college.

“I do not remember writing that,” White laughs. “But for me it always comes back to numbers.”