By Cameron Lee
March 24, 2021
On March 24, 2019, Charlotte native William McNeely got a new lease on life. He received new lungs after a years-long battle with scleroderma, an immune condition that turned into pulmonary fibrosis, a life-threatening disease that occurs when lung tissue becomes damaged and scarred. For McNeely, the transplant was not only life saving, but life altering.
“They listed me as ‘end of life.’ That’s what they called me, which, you know, you don’t want to hear that so I’m thinking ‘Okay, what do I do?’ and I literally wrote this sentence down, it says: ‘Commit to doing something greater that will keep giving when you are no longer able to give,” he said.

McNeely conceived the idea of Do Greater Charlotte in 2017– a non-profit facilitating access to creativity, technology,…