Rex Healthcare and UNC Health Care System are making some changes in their senior leadership.

David Strong, president of Rex, has been promoted to chief operating officer of system affiliations at UNC Health Care. He will keep his position at Rex in addition to leading hospital and regional care sites outside of Chapel Hill for UNC Health Care. His responsibilities include partnering with other major health systems and physicians as well as developing and executing care site strategy.

Steve Burriss was promoted to chief operating officer at Rex and will be responsible for all ambulatory care and suburban operations, clinical and support service lines. He has previously worked as vice president of human resources and senior vice president of operations and ambulatory care.

Other changes include:

-Jayne Byrd  promoted to VP of surgical services

-Bob Ricker  promoted to VP of physician services

-Tom Williams promoted to VP of ambulatory services

Seems that Coach K's leadership wisdom remains a draw, despite the down economy.

As of Monday afternoon, the sponsors of the eighth annual Fuqua School of Business and Coach K Leadership conference at Duke University had matched last year's total of 256 registered attendees.

The conference kicks off this afternoon with a timely theme: "Leading in Times of Uncertainty." The conference will bring together a wide range of executives to discuss how they manage, motivate and more.

Scheduled speakers include Abigail P. Johnson vice chairman at Fidelity Investments; James F. McCaffrey, chief strategy officer at Turner Broadcasting System; and Shannon Wallis, global director of leadership development at Microsoft.

Local executives include Michael Capps, president of Cary-based Epic Games, and Jim Whitehurst, CEO of Raleigh-based Red Hat. Get a full list of speakers and other information here.

Tonight's keynote address is "How to Lead in Tough Times" by Bob Seelert, chairman of advertising firm Saatchi & Saatchi.

The conference runs through Wednesday. As is tradition, a conference highlight will be watching Duke men's basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski leading a practice.

A Raleigh fourth-grader puts what he has learned about leadership into action. Read his speech to his classmates.

Seventeen teenagers performed drills, chants and poems as part of their graduation from the Pastor D.L. Forbes Youth Foundation's Summer Leadership Academy Thursday night at N.C. Central University.

Started by Durham police Lt. Winslow Forbes in 2002, the foundation uses Christian teachings and military rank and structure to turn around at-risk youth, but even those who aren't in trouble may enroll.

The cadets spend the first two weeks at Camp Butner learning military drills while waking up at 4:30 a.m. The next four weeks are spent living at NCCU, where the focus centers around academics, Bible study and more drills.

Thursday's graduation was the organization's sixth. The foundation is working on building its own facility in Henderson, where they can have more than one academy a year and take in kids from across the country.