A different kind of return
At ECU, the Brody family’s latest gift is measured not in dollars, but in doctors who come home
On a late winter morning, weighted with grief, 22-year-old Gage Outlaw of Faison walked onto campus and into his Brody Scholars interview carrying more than good transcripts and ambition up his sleeve. Folded neatly into his coat pocket was the speech he would give at his grandfather’s funeral that night.
L.S. Guy was a mentor, a teacher and a superintendent of Duplin County Schools. As a young man, Guy had imagined becoming a physician. He’d hitchhiked from Calypso to East Carolina University to study biology and do just that. That pathway wasn’t available to him, though, so he became first a teacher then principal of North Duplin High School, where Outlaw graduated, then administrator for the entire district. He influenced and impressed generations of young Duplin men and women – his grandson most of all.
“I told my dad I couldn’t go to the interview,” Outlaw says, because of his grandfather’s death, “and he told me, ‘Your granddaddy would kill you if you didn’t.’”
So Outlaw went – conflicted, grieving, resolved not to overperform. He did it for his granddad, and he did it for his dad. Bill Outlaw, who repaired electrical transformers for a living, was diagnosed with leukemia when his son was 9. After “catching a cold” that couldn’t be beat with rest and Tylenol, he was diagnosed with cancer on a Memorial Day and began a course of chemotherapy that lasted throughout the summer. During it, young Outlaw interacted with doctors and nurses; later, in high school, he shadowed his dad’s oncologist, “and I knew that was it – that was what I wanted to do.”
“There were a few times when my dad should’ve died by all counts, but we were blessed, and we had great doctors.”
Later that year, Bill Outlaw was told his cancer was in remission. So when his son told him he didn’t think he would go through with the interview, and the father told him that it would disappoint his late grandfather, it was implied the disappointment wouldn’t stop there. Gage Outlaw would have to dig deep.
“I decided I would just be myself,” he says. “That’s not flashy.”
Not flashy. The same might be said of the history of the Brody Scholars program itself and its namesake family, whose business roots stretch from retail to real estate development and for whom investment has always been about long-term value. At the Brody School of Medicine at ECU, that philosophy is measured not in square footage or sales, but in physicians trained to serve and strengthen eastern North Carolina as well as the rest of the state.
“Being businessmen, we can tell you the ROI on these gifts has been better than anything else we could have done,” say David and Hyman Brody.
Today, Outlaw has earned a part in a story that stretches from the fields of Duplin County to one of the most enduring philanthropic partnerships between a North Carolina family and one of its public universities.
Along with an award that covers the cost of tuition, fees and a stipend for enrichment – perhaps the most bounteous medical scholarship in the state – comes a requirement to create and lead a community-service project between medical school years one and two. Outlaw has imagined a novel medical outreach effort aimed at migrant farmworkers in his home county of Duplin.
The project required approval from the Brody Scholars Steering Committee and Brody Foundation Board – a reminder that the scholarship is not only financial support but personal stewardship. With mentors including Dr. David Eldridge, senior associate dean for academic affairs, and Dawn Robinson, a staff member with the Brody Scholars program, Outlaw designed a field-based health education initiative.
He’ll go field to field with a translator, setting up tents and providing education on dehydration, heatstroke, pesticide exposure, melanoma and basic preventive care.
Each worker will receive a cinch bag with sunscreen, electrolyte packets, and a reusable water bottle along with melanoma identification materials – supplies funded directly through Brody Scholars enrichment dollars.
“These workers are overlooked,” Outlaw says. “But they’re vital. We’re an agricultural region. This work matters.”
For Outlaw, the project feels inevitable.
“The East is the place I was made to be educated,” he says. “And the place I was meant to serve.”
The Brody family has boosted the Brody Scholars program with a $10 million gift. Pictured from left are former Brody Scholar Dr. Sunny Darji ’15, Brody Scholar Kamryn Henderson, Hyman Brody, David Brody, former Brody Scholar Dr. Luan Lawson ’94 ’98 ’13 and Brody Scholar Mohsen Zakaib. (Photo by Steven Mantilla)
A pipeline with purpose
Outlaw earned his undergraduate degree from ECU in 2024 then spent a semester at Duke University School of Medicine studying tissue damage and gene sequencing using fruit flies, the gene-editing tool CRISPR and polyploidy, a condition in which the cells of an organism have more than two paired sets of chromosomes. Still, walking into the Brody Scholars interview, he felt outmatched.
“I looked around the room and thought, ‘These people are smart. They’re from big places. I don’t stand a chance,’” he says.
Instead, he found belonging.
“I remember joining the program and thinking maybe I’d be an outcast – I don’t look like these people,” he says. “But they accepted me for who I am and encouraged me to grow in that.”
A Brody Scholar like Outlaw is exactly what the Brodys envisioned when their family first invested in ECU’s School of Medicine more than 50 years ago. In March, couples David and Laura Brody and Hyman and Stacy Brody deepened their commitment with a new $10 million pledge to the scholarship program. The generosity prompted the ECU board of trustees to name the 195,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art teaching facility under construction the Brody Center for Medical Education.
Set to open before the 2027-2028 academic year, the seven-story building will integrate with the existing Brody Medical Sciences Building at every floor.
“We’ve seen the efficacy,” David Brody says. “We’re reinvesting because we’ve seen the difference these scholarships make.”
The program began when the medical school itself was in its infancy – a bold, merit-based effort to attract top students to a new institution with a clear mission: Train physicians for North Carolina, especially rural and underserved communities.
“This program started when the school was brand new – how are you going to get the best and the brightest to come to ECU?” he says.
Now, Brody is often a first-choice medical school for North Carolina students committed to primary care, service in underserved areas and lots of hands-on patient care. And the Brodys never viewed their giving as transactional. They’re involved – in a good way.
“We didn’t just write a check and walk away,” he says. “With the Brody gift came the Brody commitment.”
That approach mirrors a broader national trend in higher education philanthropy. Across the U.S., donors have increasingly made transformational gifts aimed at access, affordability and long-term impact. From Michael Bloomberg’s $1.8 billion gift to Johns Hopkins for need-blind admissions, to Ruth Gottesman’s $1 billion endowment ensuring free tuition at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, such philanthropy is reshaping who gets to become a physician or scholar.
Within this landscape, the Brody family’s commitment stands out for focus and longevity. In North Carolina, where recent major health-related gifts include a $50 million anonymous donation to Duke University for a proton beam therapy center, the Brody family’s contributions span generations and exceed $35 million in cumulative giving to ECU.
“Our family has always believed in betting on people,” Hyman Brody says, “and in backing institutions that can transform a region.”
Where the investment lands
The Brody Center for Medical Education will stand as a symbol of one family’s half-century of strategic giving – one that’s brick and glass on the outside and modern simulation spaces, learning studios and anatomy labs on the inside. Its purpose, like the school’s ongoing mission, is to expand the number of doctors in the state who have earned a top-tier medical education and have now been called to serve.
Hyman Brody signs the final beam for the Brody Center for Medical Education during the building’s topping-out ceremony June 11.
(Photo by Steven Mantilla).
“The Brody School of Medicine was founded to meet the healthcare needs of our state, and this gift advances that mission in profound ways,” says Dr. Mike Waldrum, dean of the medical school and CEO of ECU Health. “Brody Scholars become the kind of physicians every community needs – compassionate, skilled and committed to service. This investment ensures that more of those physicians will stay in North Carolina, where their impact is immeasurable.”
Brody Scholars frequently enter primary care and practice in North Carolina’s most underserved areas. Graduates return to speak with current scholars, recounting careers spent in rural counties – often after elite residencies elsewhere.
“The admissions process is very smart at predicting who will stay and serve,” David Brody says.
ECU Health, the health system affiliated with the medical school, recently reported that about 40 Brody Scholars continue to practice medicine in eastern North Carolina, and they are among the 90 scholars who practice across North Carolina. (There are about 150 Brody Scholars total, excepting current medical students.)
Outlaw sees these examples as inspiration and a call to duty.
“I want to be an oncologist or a family medicine doctor,” he says. “I want to do my residency here in Greenville at ECU Health. This is home.”
Every Brody Scholars meeting reinforces that expectation: valuing community, leading with humility and remembering why medicine exists.
“There’s a standard of service in this program,” Outlaw says. “The faculty want to make sure you leave here valuing the people you serve.”
Where it leads
For the Brody family, that outcome – students such as Outlaw returning to serve the places that raised them – is the measure of success.
“This is exactly what doing good looks like,” David Brody says.
“Our grandfather came over here with very little, with nothing, and through hard work and effort, we were fortunate,” Hyman Brody says. “But he instilled in all of us, treat people right and be kind. And always think about the next generation. Keep it going forward.”
Recently, Outlaw stopped by the gravesite of his own grandfather. He brought his lunch – Mexican street tacos bought from a food truck.
“I talk to him every day,” he reflects later. “Lord have mercy do I love him. I just have an extreme amount of pride in who I was raised by and where I was raised.”
Outlaw is a case study of one possible future. Standing on the edge of a medical career, guided by faith, family and a scholarship built on belief, he carries lessons learned along dirt roads and farm fields into exam rooms yet to come.
“You might visit Faison and say, ‘There’s not much here,’” he says. “But if that’s all you see, you’re missing it.”