2025 Belk College of Business Alumni Awards
The Belk College of Business will honor five distinguished alumni and friends for their accomplishments, service and dedication to the college during the 2025 Belk College Alumni Awards. The tenth annual Alumni Awards ceremony is sponsored by the Belk College Alumni Council. Business Niner alumni and friends are invited to join us for the annual tradition during UNC Charlotte homecoming week.
The honorees will be recognized during the awards ceremony at the luncheon hosted by Belk College of Business Dean Richard Buttimer.
2025 Belk College Alumni Awards
Friday, October 17 | 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.
UNC Charlotte Marriott Hotel & Conference Center
9041 Robert D. Snyder Road
Charlotte, North Carolina 28262
2025 Belk College Alumni Award Honorees
Distinguished Alumni Award: Eric W. Seidel ‘90 Business Administration
Eric Seidel is Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer at Honeywell. In this role, he has responsibility for driving organic growth through commercial excellence. He is also responsible for enhancing global sales capabilities to best support customers in their efforts across automation, energy transition and aviation.
Most recently, Eric was Vice President and General Manager of Lifecycle Solutions and Services within the Honeywell Process Solutions (HPS) unit. Before that, he served as Vice President and General Manager of UOP Lifecycle Solutions and Technologies. He also previously served as Chief Marketing Officer and Vice President of Strategy of HPS.
Before joining Honeywell in 2017, he held multiple roles at Ingersoll Rand in business leadership, product management and digital IIoT strategies, driving transformation from transactional to outcome-based business models. Previously, he worked in the renewable energy sector.
Eric holds an M.A. from the University of South Florida and a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration and Marketing from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He serves on the Belk College of Business Board of Advisors as well as the UNC Charlotte Board of Visitors.
Distinguished Alumni Service Award: Amy Nance Lewis ‘93 Business Administration
Amy Lewis is the Senior Director of Human Resources for Charlotte Radiology, Windsong Radiology and Connexia Imaging.
She has been an passionate advocate and supporter of UNC Charlotte and the Belk College of Business serving multiple terms on the Alumni Board of Directors, Belk College Alumni Council, as the alumni representative for the Bank of America/UNC Charlotte Excellence in Teaching Award Selection Committee, volunteering at the Jamil Niner Food Pantry and being a guest lecturer for decades for undergraduate and graduate level marketing, management and consumer behavior classes. She is most passionate about her commitment to serving on the Women in Business Associate Board. She has served in this leadership role since 2020 and has been an engaged mentor and champion for the program’s Student Ambassadors. She has enthusiastically guided them with practical advice and encouragement as they launch their business careers.
Amy started her 25 year career at Belk, Inc. when she was a sophomore at UNC Charlotte as a sales associate in better sportswear. After graduation from UNC Charlotte, she completed the Belk Executive Trainee Program and held buying roles in china, crystal, silver, housewares, small electrics and ladies’ moderate shoes. She also held positions in corporate inventory replenishment, store allocation, learning and development and was the Human Resources Manager at Belk’s SouthPark flagship location.
Prior to joining Charlotte Radiology, Amy served as the Family Dollar Corporate HR Manager. In 2019 Amy joined Charlotte Radiology and is responsible for all aspects of Human Resource Management including employee and physician relations, leadership development, end-to-end recruiting, hiring and onboarding for over 600 employees and over 180 physicians across her three practices. She is a strategic, results driven leader with a demonstrated record of accomplishments in multiple areas.
Amy earned her degree in business administration with a major in marketing in 1993 from UNC Charlotte.
Outstanding Young Alumni Award: Kate Frear ’12 M.A. Sociology, ’14 Ph.D. Organizational Science
Kate Frear is Co-Founder and CEO at Joyntly, a B2B SaaS soft skills learning platform for busy leaders headquartered in CO-LAB at UNC Charlotte Center City.
Kate’s life goal is to improve workplaces in ways that help both employees and organizations achieve their full potential. She earned her Ph.D. in Organizational Science from UNC Charlotte in 2014. She also has a master’s degree in sociology from UNC Charlotte, and undergraduate degrees in psychology and Spanish from Michigan State University.
After graduate school, Kate started her career in academia. She held assistant professor positions at USC Upstate Johnson College of Business, SMU Cox School of Business, and Wake Forest School of Business where she taught organizational behavior and human resource management.
Kate ventured out of academia to work as a research scientist at the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, where she supported commercialization, innovation, and new product development. It was in this role that she learned the commercial value of her expertise. After getting the entrepreneurial itch, she co-founded Joyntly to help managers and leaders improve their soft skills at work.
In addition to leading Joyntly, she supports other North Carolina founders by actively investing in pre-seed and seed stage startups through the Charlotte Angel Fund, Home Tech Ventures, and Primordial Ventures.
Outstanding Young Alumni Award: Samantha Paustian-Underdahl ‘10 M.A. Industrial-Organizational Psychology, ‘12 Ph.D. Organizational Science
Dr. Sam Paustian-Underdahl is an Associate Professor of Management at the University of Central Florida, researcher, consultant, and co-founder whose work is dedicated to enhancing employee and organizational well-being and effectiveness. Her research has been published in premier academic journals, including the Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, Journal of Organizational Behavior, and Personnel Psychology, and presented at leading national and international conferences. In 2020, she was honored as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar for her research on flexible HR practices in Ireland.
Paustian-Underdahl also serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Management and as an editorial board member for Leadership Quarterly and the Journal of Business and Psychology.
In addition to her academic work, Paustian-Underdahl is the co-founder of Joyntly, a science-based technology company headquartered at CO-LAB at UNC Charlotte Center City. Jointly builds data-driven solutions to help organizations improve leadership and soft skills at scale.
Paustian-Underdahl holds a B.S. in Psychology from the University of Georgia, an M.A. in Industrial-Organizational Psychology, and a Ph.D. in Organizational Science from UNC Charlotte. Her work has earned numerous honors, including Top Scholar recognition at Florida International University and the College of Business Outstanding Junior Faculty Research Award at Florida State University.
Honorary Alumni Award: Christopher L. Johnson
Christopher Johnson is a seasoned human resources executive with over two decades of experience driving strategic HR initiatives across the financial services and technology sectors. He serves as Head of Employee Relations at Equitable, where he leads the transformation of the function into a strategically vital component of the organization. In addition to this role, Chris continues to serve on the HR Leadership Team, a position he has held since joining Equitable in 2019.
During his tenure at Equitable, Chris has supported the Chief Operating Officer as the Strategic HR Leadership Partner, and his responsibilities have expanded to lead enterprise-wide employee relations.
Prior to Equitable, Chris spent over 20 years at MetLife and its spin-off, Brighthouse Financial, and he also led a strategic HR project for AllianceBernstein. Before joining Equitable, Chris was part of the HR Leadership Group at CompuCom, a division of Office Depot.
Chris holds a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration from Fairleigh Dickinson University and an Executive Master’s in Human Resource Leadership from Rutgers University. He has served on the Board of Advisors for the Belk College of Business at UNC Charlotte since 2023.