Rebecca Wellborn Grant (’91) still remembers the late nights in Johnson Residence Hall when she just wanted some sleep. But Elaine Massey Loyack (’91), her freshman roommate, had other plans. Loyack serenaded her with campfire songs from her Girl Scout days instead.
It was a joke back then, and it still gets laughs today. When Loyack held a party to celebrate her newest role in a lifetime of Girl Scout roles — CEO of the far-reaching Girl Scouts Carolinas Peaks to Piedmont council — Grant regaled the crowd with the story of those late night singing sessions and how perfectly the job fit her longtime friend.
“I couldn’t imagine a person who would be more passionate about Girl Scouts than Elaine is,” Grant says.
Loyack has been preparing for this job her entire life. She is the daughter and granddaughter of Girl Scout troop leaders. She joined as a 7-year-old Brownie and earned the Gold Award, Girl Scouting’s highest honor, in high school. Years later, she led a troop for her own daughter — the family’s fourth-generation Girl Scout, who later became a troop leader herself.
Now, Loyack leads an entire council. Peaks to Piedmont covers 40 counties in western and central North Carolina, stretching from Cherokee in the west all the way east past Burlington. The council’s membership includes nearly 6,700 scouts, 640 troops and 4,800 adults, as of its 2024 annual report.
The challenges
Nationally, it’s a challenging time for the Girl Scouts of the USA and Scouting America, formerly Boy Scouts of America. Both organizations have seen membership decline following the COVID-19 pandemic. In North Carolina, Peaks to Piedmont membership (girls and troops) has dropped by one-third since 2019.
Then came Hurricane Helene in 2024, devastating two of the council’s beloved camps — Pisgah in Brevard and Ginger Cascades in Lenoir. They remain closed.
The challenges are real, but so is Loyack’s commitment. She remains laser-focused on building up an organization with a century-old mission to develop girls of courage, confidence and character whose promise and law remind scouts to be honest, help people at all times and make the world a better place.
“If our whole world lived by the Girl Scout Law, it truly would be a better place,” she says.
Beyond cookie sales
Loyack remembers how her own experience in Girl Scouts helped her overcome shyness. She was a member of a troop in Augusta, Georgia, for a year, where she still remembers going door to door to sell cookies. The following year, her family moved to Myrtle Beach, she joined a new troop, and her mother wound up as the leader.
While some troops focused on homemaking skills, Loyack’s was more adventurous. Her mother, Marcia Massey, took the girls whitewater rafting in the North Carolina mountains and hang gliding at the Outer Banks. They visited the local jail, radio station and newspaper. They also earned an auto mechanics badge.
“If we came out to the senior parking lot and there was a flat tire anywhere, we changed the tire,” Loyack says.
At that time, Gold Awards could be earned through doing a group project, and Loyack and her fellow troop members, all close friends, developed a drug abuse prevention program that their local school system adopted.
“Girl Scouts made me who I am, quite simply,” Loyack says. “And I loved it for the friendships, … the leadership opportunities that we had, and definitely learning all those different skills.”
The right fit
When it came time to apply to college, two teachers encouraged Loyack to consider Wake Forest: Cynthia Romano, who thought Loyack would thrive at a smaller school, and Mildred Leath Shuford (’48), a beloved English teacher who shared her Wake Forest experience.
Loyack majored in sociology, minored in French and immersed herself in student groups including InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and Student Government, first as treasurer her junior year and president her senior year.
“I liked Wake’s size because everywhere you went, you met someone new, but you didn’t know everyone,” she says. “And that is what helped me be successful in my campaigning. My voter base was very diverse.”
Friends Ginger Carpenter Espino, Rebecca Wellborn Grant and Loyack — then and now
Throughout her time on campus, Loyack drew on lessons from Girl Scouts, including public speaking skills and the confidence to navigate new experiences, she says. While campaigning for president, she went door to door in the dorms — something she’d done for years selling cookies.
“She’s got a style about her that’s contagious, that you want to get involved and you want to help out,” says Mike Smith (’89, P ’21), a former Wake Forest trustee who was also Student Government president before Loyack and watched her rise through the ranks. He calls her “a selfless leader.”
In Loyack’s term as president, she worked on issues as varied as the quality of food served in the Pit to the diversity of the student body. She especially enjoyed advising younger Student Government members, drawing on mentoring skills honed through Girl Scouts.
“What I liked was bringing people together and making sure people aren’t excluded,” she says. “It’s having a voice, which is what Girl Scouts is all about.”
A circuitous path
Most Girl Scouts hang up their sash after high school, but Loyack never did. Even as a young adult, she led troops. By the time her daughter, Olivia Loyack, was old enough to join, the grade schooler was eager to sign up.
“She told me all about her experience growing up and all the cool places they’d gone, and I was very excited,” says Olivia Loyack, now a permit biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, whose own career stems from experiences in Girl Scouts.
Meanwhile, Elaine Loyack’s professional journey was far from a straight line. When she talks to younger professionals, she often tells them not to worry about the path. “I show them my picture of my path and tell them how important networking is in developing relationships,” she says.
After graduation, she earned an MBA from Thunderbird School of Global Management and worked for the World Wildlife Fund, traveling to field offices in sub-Saharan Africa, Nepal and Bhutan.
She eventually moved to Cary, North Carolina, with her husband, John Loyack, who she met in graduate school. There, they raised their daughter and son, Charlie Loyack, now a U.S. Navy officer. Her career includes stints as a perinatal fitness instructor and business owner, consultant for the Environmental Defense Fund and preschool teacher.
Along the way, she made new friends but kept the old, as a well-known Girl Scout song says to do. As her children grew, she found opportunities through those relationships, landing at Delta Dental of North Carolina, where she became vice president of community engagement and government relations.
“My mom’s biggest superpower is her network and connections,” Olivia Loyack says.
Grant, Elaine Loyack’s freshman roommate, credits the expansiveness of Loyack’s network to her natural generosity and warmth. “She’s really good at keeping up with people,” Grant says.
‘I’m home’
Before becoming CEO, Loyack had been a board member for Girl Scouts North Carolina Coastal Pines council, which reaches from the Raleigh area to the coast. She had expressed interest in serving as CEO of a council, but those roles rarely open.
Then she learned that Peaks to Piedmont’s CEO was leaving. After interviewing for five months, she got the job. “It was a dream come true,” she says.
Loyack went to work in October. Her to-do list is long, and it includes finding new revenue sources and recruiting more girls. Property assessments are ongoing for the two shuttered camps, already in need of maintenance when the hurricane hit. Those camps will need fundraising, too.
Loyack stays focused on the reason behind her work — helping girls find a place where they can express themselves and feel like they belong.
For the once-shy girl who benefited from Girl Scouts, leading a council feels right. As she drove away from the office after her second week on the job, a clear thought popped into her head, she says: “I’m home.”
Sarah Lindenfeld Hall is a longtime North Carolina-based journalist, former staff writer for the Winston-Salem Journal and The (Raleigh) News & Observer and founding editor of WRAL-TV’s popular parenting website. Today, she’s a freelance writer, regularly diving into stories about interesting people and parenting, health, education, business and technology topics.
