Douglas Therrell North Carolina
Entrepreneur, Professor, Musician, Businessman
Music Career
Douglas Therell North Carolina is a well-established artiste, musical director, and businessman. His love of music runs in the family—his mother and aunts were musically inclined—and at age five, when his aunts introduced him to big band swing artists such as the Glenn Miller Band, Doug was hooked.
By age eight, Therrell was taking private voice and piano lessons. You might say Doug was a natural because in the span of one year he went from student to performer, singing solos in local musical reviews and was the lead singer in several operettas. By age 13, he was performing live television appearances at WBTV in Charlotte, North Carolina. In that same year he also began playing the trumpet with adult dance bands at conventions and various engagements. At 16 Doug established his own dance band, playing gigs at college and high school proms, country club balls, and galas at the Camp Lejeune Marine Base Officers Club.
His musical accomplishments in high school are equally impressive. Douglas Therrell was a student conductor at Myers Park High School, the president and drum major of the band during his junior and senior years, and the male lead in the senior musical comedy, Brigadoon. Allthewhile, his television and other live vocal performances were prolific and his dance band remained active with numerous bookings, featuring him on the trumpet and in vocals.
Teaching Career
Beyond high school, Therrell received his MA degree at 23 and two months later became a music faculty member at Mars Hill College, becoming the youngest faculty member in the College’s history. He was responsible for teaching voice to voice majors, for producing and directing operas and musicals, and for conducting the orchestra and brass choir. With barely seven months of teaching experience under his belt, Therrell was promoted and granted tenure status, becoming youngest faculty member ever granted tenure at Mars Hill College.
Business Career
Yet, Therrell is as brilliant in business as he is in music.
Therrell started a career in the insurance industry after resigning his position at Mars Hill College in the early 1970s, becoming not only the youngest professor at the College to receive tenure but also the youngest to resign tenure. He joined the Travelers Insurance Company to work on its new national program, becoming one of the national leaders out of the Charlotte, North Carolina office of the Hartford, Connecticut based company. He later founded and independent insurance agency based in Charlotte NC, acquiring national accounts and clients in more than 40 states, and with client home offices in New York, Chicago, Dallas, California, and Delaware.
In subsequent decades, Therrell applied his teaching and business skills to co-found the Self Effectiveness Learning Laboratory Inc. (S.E.L.L.), to become successful in the banking industry, and to the establishment in 2012 of a company which engages in purchasing and up fitting and reselling or renting foreclosed single-family homes.
Today, Douglas Therrell is as talented and creative in the business arena as he was on stage and in the classroom.