A Better Brand for Arkansas - Winthrop Rockefeller · Working as a strategist, meeting designer, facilitator and coach, Gregory works with a range of groups from small non-profits

A Better Brand for Arkansas

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T H A N K Y O U T O O U R S P O N S O R S

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T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S

About our partners .................................................................................................................................................4

Welcome letter .........................................................................................................................................................5

Agenda ........................................................................................................................................................................6

Speakers ......................................................................................................................................................................8

Arkansas Business honorees ...............................................................................................................................13

Northwest Arkansas Business Journal honoress .........................................................................................33

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A B O U T O U R P A R T N E R S

The Winthrop Rockefeller Institute operates as an educational institute and conference center with the support of a grant from the Winthrop Rockefeller Charitable Trust. The Institute provides an environment for collaboration, dialogue and mutual understanding by employing the Rockefeller Ethic – an approach inspired by the example of Winthrop Rockefeller and his family. To learn more about the Institute, call 501-727-5435, visit the website at www.rockefellerinstitute.org, or stay connected through Twitter and Facebook.

The first school in the nation to offer a Master of Public Service (MPS) degree, the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service gives students the knowl-edge and experience to further their careers in the areas of nonprofit, governmental, volunteer or private sector service.

A two-year graduate program with a real-world curriculum, the Clinton School is located on the grounds of the William J. Clinton Presidential Center and Park in Little Rock, Ark. The school embodies former President Clinton’s vision of building leadership in civic engagement and enhancing people’s capacity to work across disciplinary, racial, ethnic and geographical boundaries. For more information, visit www.clintonschool.uasys.edu.

Arkansas Business Publishing Group produces a wide variety of award-winning niche publications which bring together highly targeted audiences and advertisers who want to reach them. From business to culture-focused publications, our more than 20 publi-cations reach affluent individuals who are decision-makers and purchasers of business and consumer products. For more information, visit www.arkansasbusiness.com.

Since 1997, the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal has been the “go to” publication for businesses in the northwest region of the state. With relevant business content, the leaders in Northwest Arkansas have come to rely on their Northwest Arkansas Business Journal as the voice of our local business community. With an affluent read-ership of business leaders, this is the resource for business to business messaging, prospecting and critical decision making. The Northwest Arkansas Business Jour-nal combines its reporting and annual events to support and highlight outstanding achievement and keep our readers aware of vital information. To learn more, visit www.nwabusinessjournal.com.

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W E L C O M E

Greetings and welcome to the third annual Under 40 Forum! We are honored by your presence and look for-ward to seeing the results of the important discussions you will have over the next 24 hours.

Our two organizations, the Clinton School of Public Service and the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute, represent the legacies of two of our state’s greatest leaders. Bill Clinton and Winthrop Rockefeller came from different generations, different upbringings and even different political parties. But they shared a common commitment to advancing the best ideas in the service of their fellow citizens.

It is that commitment which inspired this forum. Our partner publications, the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal and Arkansas Business, have recognized each of you as among our state’s most promising young lead-ers. We look to you during this special gathering for your own best ideas in the service of Arkansas and its people — ideas that will be aggregated and shared with key decision makers in a detailed report on the pro-ceedings.

The theme for this year’s Forum is Building a Better Brand for Arkansas. We will consider how we can build a better brand reputation for Arkansas by focusing on our challenges and assets and will seek positive steps to move from our current identity toward that better vision for tomorrow. We firmly believe that your generation is poised to offer innovative solutions that will lead Arkansas toward a brighter future.

We appreciate the commitment of your time, treasure and energy, and we hope you find this to be a worthy and enjoyable experience.

All good wishes,

James L. “Skip” Rutherford IIIDeanUniversity of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service

Dr. Marta LoydExecutive DirectorWinthrop Rockefeller Institute

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A G E N D A

THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 2018

10:30 AM Registration & Knowledge Lounge – Lobby & Petit Jean I

11:30 AMWelcome & Lunch – Show Barn Hall

Marta Loyd, Ed.D, Executive Director, Winthrop Rockefeller Institute

12:00 PM

Introductions & Purpose Statement – Show Barn Hall

• Skip Rutherford, Dean, Clinton School of Public Service • Mitch Bettis, President, Arkansas Business Publishing Group• Rob Gutterridge, Executive Vice President/Publisher, Talk Business & Politics/NWA

Business Journal

12:30 PMKeynote – Show Barn Hall

Georgia Pellegrini

1:15 PM Q&A

1:30 PM Break

1:45 PMSetting the Stage & Instructions – Show Barn Hall

Greg Hodge, moderator

2:00 PM

Group Work: Envisioning a Better Brand for Arkansas – Show Barn Hall

In small group conversations led by Institute staff and Under 40 Alum, we will imagine Arkansas as a leader in economic prosperity and quality of life in order to determine how we might get from our current identity to that better vision for the future.

3:15 PM Break – Flagstone Foyer

3:30 PM

Group Work Continues – Show Barn Hall

In small group conversations led by Institute staff, we will develop an action plan with measurable outcomes to consider what the state’s brand should look like three, five, and ten years from now?

5:00 PM Dismissal

5:30 PM Reception - Studio

7:00 PM Dinner – Show Barn Hall

8:00 PM Second reception with Improv Little Rock – Show Barn Hall

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A G E N D A

FRIDAY, APRIL 6, 2018

8:00 AM Breakfast & Knowledge Lounge – River Rock Grill

9:00 AM

Panel Discussion – Show Barn Hall

• Jeff Moore, Executive VP of Marketing and Communications, AEDC• Pamela Willrodt, Demographer, AEDI• Kimberly J. Williams, Travel Writer for the Arkansas Delta and Director of Arkansas’s Great

River Road, ADPT• Paul Wilson, President, Intrust Bank

9:45 AM Q&A

10:00 AM

Group Work/Report Out: Beginning the Path Forward – Show Barn Hall

We will reconvene, hear from each group and come to consensus on the future for Arkansas’ brand and strategies for participants and policymakers to consider as it begins developing its action plan to realize a better vision for Arkansas.

11:15 AM Wrap-up & Next Steps – Show Barn Hall

11:30 AM Evaluations & Lunch – Show Barn Hall

12:00 PM Dismissal

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GEORGIA PELLEGRINI is a modern-day pioneer with “Superwoman Skills” who empowers audiences to step outside of their comfort zones and discover inner bravery and resourcefulness. Her critically acclaimed books include Food Heroes, Girl Hunter, and most recently, Modern Pioneering, a cookbook for homestead cuisine and living off the land. Called “an empowerment guru” by The New York Times, Pellegrini is a phenomenally gifted speaker, and her Adventure Getaways attract audiences from as far as South Korea.

Growing up on her family’s farm in upstate New York, Pellegrini developed a passion for simple farm-to table food and a deep connection to the outdoors. Having worked in the finance world after college, she decided to leave her cubicle and reconnect with her roots. After graduating from the French Culinary Institute, she began working in Miche-lin restaurants in New York and France, including Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Gramercy Tavern, and La Chassagnette. Soon she started leading her renowned Adventure Get-aways: excursions around the country aimed at promoting “manual literacy” and helping participants step outside of their comfort zone and experience life more viscerally.

Motivational and approachable, she is a firm believer in empowering women to be self-sufficient and encourages her audiences to identify personal strengths and pursue their life passions. Her words go “beyond-the-podium” and inspire audiences to put pioneering principles to use anywhere, from the suburbs to the heart of the city, from the hunting perch to the board room. Georgia Pellegrini has been featured on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Iron Chef America, Today, HBO’s Real Sports, ABC’s The Chew, NPR, among hundreds of other radio, TV, and newspaper outlets. She also writes regularly for The Wall Street Journal.

GREG HODGE is a social change activist and organizational development consult-ant with Khepera Consulting. Khepera helps people and organizations strategically think, connect and act in the relationships that spark transformative change.

Working as a strategist, meeting designer, facilitator and coach, Gregory works with a range of groups from small non-profits and foundations to public agencies, particularly school districts. He has served as lead consultant on the Equal Voice for America’s Fam-ilies Campaign, an initiative of the Marguerite Casey Foundation, and the 2025 Cam-paign for Black Men and Boys, two national initiatives. His clients include The California Endowment, the Association for Black Foundation Executives, Sierra Health Founda-tion, and Oakland Unified School District’s Office of African American Achievement.

As a leader in his community, Gregory served two four-year terms as a member of the Oakland Unified School District Board of Education beginning in January 2000, includ-ing a year as president of the board. He served nine years on Workforce Investment Board, City of Oakland. In addition, he serves as the Chief Network Officer for the Brotherhood of Elders Network, an intergenerational network of African descent men.

Greg is a Fulbright-Hayes Fellow, recipient of the Gerbode Fellowship and alumni of the Rockwood Leadership Institute.

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S P E A K E R S

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S P E A K E R S

Hodge has also worked as an attorney in private practice handling a variety of civil liti-gation matters. His involvements include work with African American youth as a teacher and mentor; minister at the Wo’se Community; drummer with Bantaba Dance Ensemble; board chair of the Rockwood Leadership Institute, National Equity Project; board chair of The Restoration Association for Improving the Landmark 16th Street Station (RAILS), a Friend of the Esalen Institute and member of the national Annenberg School District Reform Task Force. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Northwestern University and a law degree from Golden Gate University in San Francisco. He is a proud father, active gardener and lives in Oakland, California.

ROB GUTTERRIDGE was raised in Northeast Arkansas and is a graduate of Ar-kansas State University. While there he studied speech communications and com-pleted the course in 2000. Gutterridge moved to Northwest Arkansas in the summer of 2001. He came on board with the NWA Business Journal in March of 2010 after spending nine years managing a consumer retail business. Gutterridge rose through the ranks from brand strategist to sales manager within one year, then on to associate publisher. In 2013, he was named publisher. After running the journal for three years, under the Darin Gary family-owned Gray Matters LLC, Gutterridge joined with Roby Brock and Michael Tilley in 2016 to aquire the NWA Business Journal and became a partner in Natural State Media, which is the holding company of both the journal and Little Rock-based Talk Business & Politics, as well as brand properties in Fort Smith. Gutterridge resides in Northwest Arkansas with his wife, Leigh, and two sons, Garrett and Carson.

MITCH BETTIS is the president of Arkansas Business Publishing Group and pub-lisher of Arkansas Business newspaper. He has more than 30 years of experience in management and publishing.

He manages the daily operations of a company that produces more than 30 weekly, monthly, semiannual and annual titles in addition to contract publications and web-sites. He also serves as the publisher of Arkansas Business, founded in 1984. Arkansas Business covers business news in Arkansas in a weekly print magazine and on a daily website, ArkansasBusiness.com.

Before joining Arkansas Business, Mitch oversaw GateHouse Media’s 19 print and dig-ital products in 10 communities in Arkansas and northern Louisiana. In that role, he led the publishing, editorial and sales efforts of more than 100 staff members.

A 1990 graduate of Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Bettis did his masters and doctorate work at Oklahoma State University. From 2007-2009, he was an assistant professor of mass communication at Ouachita Baptist University, teaching courses in public relations, advertising, multimedia communication, news and photojournalism.

Bettis and his wife have three children, Jackson, 14; Addy, 9; and Elli, 6.

http://www.arkansasbusiness.com/

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MARTA LOYD has served as executive director of the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute since early 2014. Under her leadership and guidance, the Institute has strengthened its connections with existing and new partners, grown its board of directors, drafted a new strategic plan, nearly doubled the number of program offerings, launched a new website, and organized and convened a statewide effort to launch the Healthy Active Arkansas 10-year plan.

Prior to joining the Institute, she spent 17 years working at the University of Arkan-sas-Fort Smith, 12 of those serving as vice chancellor for university advancement and as executive director of the UAFS Foundation Inc. During her tenure at UAFS, she oversaw the development of the UAFS Alumni Association, helped convert the We-stark Community College Foundation into a functional university foundation, led the development staff and volunteers in the effort to raise gifts and pledges totaling $57 million, and transformed the board of directors to incorporate transparency and active engagement. She also helped raise total assets of the foundation from $20 million to nearly $80 million. Prior to taking the helm of the UAFS Foundation, Loyd, a former den-tal hygienist, led the effort to start the dental hygiene school at then Westark College.

Dr. Loyd holds a Master of Education degree in educational leadership from the Univer-sity of Arkansas and a Doctor of Education degree in educational leadership and policy analysis from the University of Missouri. She and her husband, Greg, have been married for 34 years and have three adult children and two granddaughters.

SKIP RUTHERFORD is Dean of the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock, the nation’s first to offer a Master of Public Service (MPS) degree.

A graduate of the University of Arkansas, he received the Journalism Department’s first Distinguished Alumnus Award. He has an extensive private sector background in com-munications and public relations and has served as a visiting professor at the University of Arkansas; Lyon College; the University of the Ozarks and the University of Central Arkansas. In 2015, he was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters Degree from Hendrix College.

He serves on the Board of Trustees at Lyon College, the Board of Directors of the Foundation for the Mid-South and the Board of Directors of the Arkansas Children’s Hospital System where he has promoted statewide children’s health advocacy through the formation of the Natural Wonders Partnership Council.

He was named Arkansan of the Year by the Arkansas Times; Headliner of the Year by the Arkansas Press Association; Arkansan of the Year by the Arkansas Broadcasters As-sociation and was recognized as Tourism Person of the Year at the Arkansas Governor’s Conference on Tourism.

He and his wife, Billie, are the parents of three children. They are members of Pulaski Heights United Methodist Church where Rutherford teaches a young adult Sunday School class; is a past chairman of the Board of Stewards and co-chaired the church’s centennial celebration. He also co-owns and manages two family farms in Independ-ence and Jackson counties.

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JEFF MOORE is the Executive Vice President of Marketing and Communications for the Arkansas Economic Development Commission (AEDC), working at the pleasure of the Governor since 2015. In addition to overseeing the state’s advertising and brand-ing efforts to promote Arkansas as a desirable business location, Moore also works alongside various AEDC divisions and stakeholders to advance the state’s strategic goals related to entrepreneurialism and early stage business, workforce development and talent pipeline, and competitiveness through site readiness.

Moore is a seasoned multi-channel marketing strategist with more than 27 years of combined advertising agency and corporate marketing management experience. He has worked in some of the largest advertising agencies in the nation, including DDB Needham and Lintas, creating and directing work for Fortune 500 brands like Bank of America, PepsiCo, Starbucks and Time Warner.

In addition, Moore currently serves as a board member and communications commit-tee chairperson for the Arkansas Affiliate of Susan G. Komen, also having served as volunteer, thought leader and champion for a number of other NPOs and community development organizations in the greater Little Rock area.

Moore is a 1990 graduate of Harding University, now living in Sherwood with his wife, Stacey, two daughters, one Australian Shepherd and two cats. The cats were not my idea.

PAM WILLRODT is originally from Salinas, CA. Having started a family first, she studied business at California Lutheran University and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration at the age of 40 while working at a little biotech startup called Amgen. After leaving Amgen, Pam became a massage therapist and scu-ba instructor moving to the Caribbean for several years teaching Anatomy and Physiol-ogy at the Tucson, AZ massage school in the off-season. This was followed by a Peace Corps stint in Guyana, South America, as a Health Educator and work for Habitat for Humanity there, as well. Pam returned to the US to help raise her newborn grandson and begin graduate school, earning a Master’s degree in Health Advocacy from Sarah Lawrence College. She needed ‘another year to grow’ and served as a VISTA volunteer in Charleston, SC developing a health literacy program that is still used today. Her next stop was San Antonio, TX to earn a PhD in Applied Demography at UTSA. After a postdoc position at the University of Delaware, UALR reached out to her to apply for their demography position. The rest is history in the making.

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KIMBERLY J. WILLIAMS is one of three travel writers for the Arkansas Depart-ment of Parks and Tourism, covering 24 counties in eastern Arkansas known as the Arkansas Delta.

Kim holds a Bachelor of Science in Communications from Arkansas State University. She worked for the U.S. Forest Service for five years in Marianna and Mountain View. She served as Development Coordinator at the Delta Cultural Center in Helena-West Helena for 10 years. She has served as a travel writer for Arkansas Parks and Tourism since 2006.

As a travel writer, Kim has the opportunity to share her territory with others through the Arkansas Tour Guide, e-newsletters, media releases, blogs, radio shows and social media.

Born and raised in Marianna, Kim has an intense love of the Arkansas Delta. Her favorite part of her job (which she refers to as the “greatest job in the world!”) is introducing the Arkansas Delta to writers and visitors from across the globe, most of which are amazed by the history and culture of the region.

Kim is one of three vice-presidents of Arkansas Delta Byways, a tourism association that promotes the heritage of the Arkansas Delta region, a position she has held for over a decade. In October 2016, she was appointed director of Arkansas’s Great River Road.

PAUL WILSON has nearly 18 years of banking experience with INTRUST Bank. He moved to NWA to help open a new office in 2008 and has been responsible for the NWA market in his role as Community Bank President since 2011.

Paul is a founding member and advisory board member to the Northwest Arkansas Emerging Leaders, Treasurer of the 7Hills Homeless Center board, a committee mem-ber of the Mercy Health Foundation Corporate Partners Council, and actively serves at Fellowship Bible Church. Paul is a Leadership Benton County and Leadership Ar-kansas alumnus and has served in leadership roles within numerous nonprofits. He was named recipient of the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s Fast 15 in 2010 and was awarded the Greenest Initiative Award for his work with the Northwest Arkansas Emerging Leaders’ Sustainability Team, and the Champion for Youth Volunteer of the Year award from the Boys & Girls Club of Benton County.

Paul earned his bachelor’s degree in Finance from Wichita State University and com-pleted the Schools of Banking Commercial Lending program. He and his wife of 17 years have two children.

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A R K A N S A S B U S I N E S S H O N O R E E S

No one could accuse ZARA ABBASI of doing things the easy way. “Not doing things the easy way, it really makes you so flexible in life. Whatever life throws at you, you don’t get too upset at,” she said.

And life has thrown Abbasi some curves. Born in New York when her father, a dietician and nutritionist, was earning his master’s degree, her family moved to Boston when she was 6. When she was about 13, the family relocated to Paragould, and as her father moved for work, Abbasi spent high school in a different school each year, landing in Little Rock at 17. “It was a really tough adjustment.”

When she was 19, Abbasi, a student at the University of Central Arkansas, was badly injured in an auto accident. She missed a semester while relearning to walk. Graduating from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Abbasi began baking professionally while attending the Bowen School of Law. She also married and had two children while in law school.

She earned renown as the pastry chef at Little Rock’s Natchez restaurant, later creating desserts for the Yellow Rocket Concepts family of restaurants. Abbasi, expecting her third child this month, is taking private orders for her desserts while talking to investors about opening her own bakery.

Her parents are her mentors, Abbasi said, and as for a life philosophy, “I think that’s our family mantra: We just roll with the punches.”

JONATHAN ADAMS got enthusiastic about construction while growing up in Jonesboro and working summers during his high school and college years.

After joining Associated Builders & Contractors of Arkansas in 2012, his work garnered national recognition with the Mullan Award for Overall Membership Excellence for growth in 2016.

Behind this achievement was his co-founding of Construction Young Professionals groups in northwest and central Arkansas during 2015-16 to promote professional de-velopment and community involvement for up-and-comers in commercial construction.

Adams graduated in 2003 from Arkansas State University in Jonesboro with a bache-lor’s degree in communications with an emphasis in management and sales.

After college, he worked in sales at the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal, general manager of the Tulsa Business Journal and executive vice president for Herald Haven Media in Jonesboro.

Adams serves on the advisory board for the Division of Engineering & Construction Management at John Brown University in Siloam Springs and the executive board of the Quapaw Chapter of the Boy Scouts of America. He is participating in Leadership Arkansas Class XI.

AS SEEN IN VOL . 34, NO. 23 | JUNE 5-1 1 , 2017

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Growing up, ADRIENNE BAKER thought she would have a career in math or sci-ence. But as she was about to graduate in 2004 from the University of Arkansas at Fay-etteville with degrees in economics and marketing management, she shadowed some attorneys whom her parents knew and found the law interesting.

The Van Buren native then decided to go to the University of Arkansas School of Law. After her second year in law school, Baker did an internship at the Wright Lindsey Jennings law firm in Little Rock, and that turned into a job offer once she graduated, in 2007. Her main practice area is commercial litigation.

On Jan. 1, 2013, she became a partner at the firm.

“I’ve always been motivated to succeed, but not for any kind of accolades or recogni-tion, ... but as a challenge for myself,” she said. “I compete against myself to just try to do and be better.”

Away from the law firm, Baker began serving in 2012 on the board of directors of the American Red Cross’ Greater Arkansas Chapter and is now chairman of the board.

“I’ve always had a heart for service,” she said.

BRIAN BLACKMAN didn’t grow up with dreams of working for a title company. “I don’t think anyone ever does,” Blackman said.

But while in law school at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, he began working at a title company. And after earning his law degree, Blackman returned to his home-town of Brookland in Craighead County to practice law with his father. After two years in private practice, Blackman moved to Memphis to work for a title insurance underwrit-er and stayed for 10 years.

Four years ago, Blackman returned to northwest Arkansas when Waco hired him to oversee commercial operations. He was named COO two years ago.

“I really like title work,” Blackman said. “In our industry, the exciting thing is we get to play a role in what, for a lot of people, is the happiest day of their life.”

Blackman said he also loves researching the history of a property and watching as pro-posed developments grow into actual homes and buildings.

As COO, Blackman has played a significant role in Waco’s recent growth. The title com-pany increased its employee staff by 30 percent in the last year and opened three new office locations; the company is planning to move into a new headquarters in Spring-dale.

“It’s definitely a different perspective when you’re in this type of role,” Blackman said. “A lot of that for me is to help push the growth of the organization.”


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For a creative type, AMBER HATCHETT BREWER has a remarkably straightfor-ward and succinct philosophy: “Work hard and be nice to people.”

It’s stood her in good stead. “I think there are a lot of philosophies that are super prac-tical or beautiful or inspiring, but none of them really works unless you do,” she said. As for the being nice part: “Just being nice and welcoming and just listening to people, you can learn so much.”

Brewer, born and raised in Alabama, graduated from the Savannah College of Art & Design, coming to Arkansas after getting a job with CJRW in 2004. She moved on to Arkansas Business Publishing Group in 2008, working as art director, before landing at Yellow Rocket Concepts.

At Yellow Rocket, Brewer is largely responsible for the distinctive looks and atmos-pheres of the Little Rock restaurant group’s popular — and growing — restaurants Big Orange, Local Lime, Zaza and Heights Taco & Tamale and the brewery/restaurant Lost Forty Brewing.

She appreciates the opportunities she’s found in Arkansas. “When people ask me what my favorite thing is about Arkansas, I always talk about the people,” she said. “The com-munity in Arkansas — they want you to succeed.”

As for community work, Brewer has just joined the board of the Arkansas Cinema So-ciety, an effort led by Jeff Nichols and Kathryn Tucker to develop the Arkansas film community.

SAM CARRASQUILLO feels strongly that you’re doing it wrong if you practice that “business is business” philosophy. He said he treats people the way he wants to be treated because it’s the right thing to do.

That conviction goes beyond business too, as he and his 4-year-old daughter work with the homeless. The Puerto Rico native said he wants her to be aware of the struggle others go through, the same struggle he and his impoverished parents experienced years ago.

They moved to Arkansas when he was 16. Although Carrasquillo spoke very little Eng-lish then, that didn’t stop him from mowing lawns. Mowing lawns led to painting houses, and that led to tile work, and that led to Carrasquillo buying his first rental property at age 18.

Carrasquillo said he “fell in love with real estate” but adapted when the market crashed during the Great Recession. He went door to door, selling roofs. In 2012, that business added windows and siding work to its repertoire.

Carrasquillo is especially passionate about his downtown properties, and he started a third business, Canana, to renovate them. Canana is named for his grandmother. He also said he likes that business because he enjoys seeing old, obsolete structures be-come like new again.


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When SARAH SLOCUM COLLINS was at the University of Central Arkansas, she came up with a novel way to pay for law school: competing in the Miss Arkansas pageant.

“My mom kind of laughed at me because I had never done a pageant in my life,” the Stuttgart native said.

Collins competed for four years and was named Miss Arkansas in 2009. The nearly $50,000 won in scholarships helped pay her way at the University of Arkansas School of Law, where she graduated in 2012.

In January 2014, Collins joined the Rogers-Lowell Area Chamber of Commerce as its vice president of governmental affairs. “With the chamber, you lobby alongside some of your largest members,” she said.

In December 2014, Collins went to work for the Roberts Group as vice president of gov-ernment relations and an associate attorney to begin the firm’s government relations practice. Her main duties at the law firm, which has clients worldwide, involve lobbying the state and federal government for the firm’s corporate clients.

Away from the office, Collins remains involved in the Miss Arkansas Organization. In 2015, she was the founding member of the Miss America State Titleholders Association, which is the first organization to track the accomplishments of state winners.

She said she strives to do her best at whatever she takes on. “I love having a challenge and being able to work through a challenge,” Collins said.

MICHAEL CONSIDINE’S first day as Entergy Arkansas’ finance director was April 28, 2014, the day after a tornado devastated Mayflower and Vilonia in Faulkner County, killing 16 people. He realized “very early on that first day that my role was much more than just financial statement accuracy and budget control.”

The tornado was the single deadliest in Arkansas since 1968, and Considine saw that he was not just dealing with destroyed equipment, but also with grieving customers who desperately needed their power back. “I love my work not just for itself, but for what Entergy provides,” he said.

“We provide an essential service, and we do that reliably and safely and at a cost most people can afford. I do get passionate about that part.”

That same passion made Considine a Big Brother and a supporter of the Arkansas Foodbank and Our House, as well as the American Cancer Society.

He also spent several years as a deacon at Second Presbyterian Church in Little Rock.

Born in Indiana, he landed as a child in Magnolia, where his father ran the Firestone Tire & Rubber plant.

Later came a degree at Louisiana Tech University and advanced business training through the University of Maryland. He worked at Alltel Corp. before joining Entergy, and once managed the investor-owned utility’s regulatory accounting unit.


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NICK COPAS holds the distinction of being the youngest of five team presidents at Little Rock’s Baldwin & Shell Construction Co.

His promotion last December reflected his professional achievements and success in building the company’s Industrial & Structural Services Division. Copas co-founded the division in 2014 with his father, Scott, president and CEO of Baldwin & Shell.

“I always liked to build things,” said Nick Copas, who grew up in Cabot. “I thought it was a pure, simplistic way to make a living.”

After working as a laborer and carpenter for the company as a teenager, he joined Bald-win & Shell full time in 2003 as an ironworker while attending the University of Arkansas at Little Rock at night.

After three years, he put college aside and advanced to foreman, project coordinator, project manager and vice president.

Copas, a graduate of Leadership Greater Little Rock XXIX, has served on the Easter Seals Arkansas Guardians board and Centers for Youth & Families Foundation board of trustees.

His past volunteer work includes fundraising events to benefit the American Heart As-sociation of Central Arkansas, Arkansas Symphony Orchestra and Children’s Advocacy Centers of Arkansas.

Take this fact from Arkansas’ chief of health communications: Huge hurricanes can be hazardous to your way of life, but sometimes they change life for the better.

Hurricane Katrina landed MARISHA DICARLO in Little Rock from New Orleans. “I evacuated with my husband and his family to Arkansas, and decided to stay,” she said not long after learning she was a 40 Under 40 honoree.

More than a decade after the storm, she directs internal and external communications for the Arkansas Department of Health, emphasizes a healthy and active lifestyle and works to shepherd Arkansans to a healthier weight. “It’s busy, interesting, fun and fulfill-ing, but I didn’t start out thinking I’d be doing this.”

At Loyola University in New Orleans, she dreamed of a literary life. But her first jobs were practical and health-related. “I used my skills in writing as a Louisiana Public Health Institute HR director,” she said. Then came Katrina, and Arkansas, and going back to school at UAMS for a master’s in public health and then a Ph.D. in health promotion. “One reason I decided to stay in Arkansas was that my old life floated away. I wanted to give back to my new home, and now I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”

She has served as president of the Junior League of Little Rock and volunteered with the Arkansas Children’s Hospital Auxiliary.


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After writing a children’s book while attending Harding University, MAT FAULKNER was advised by a friend at a local press that he needed to learn Adobe software for the illustrations. Faulkner taught himself the basics of graphic design and was on a path to starting a marketing agency.

“I went to church with the inventor of the Trout Magnet, and he gave me a shot at de-signing all his packaging,” Faulkner said. “At that time, my wife, Shelley, worked at White County Medical Center, which led to more graphic design opportunities, and I found myself with my first two clients.”

The two kicked off their business from the laundry room of their Searcy home in January 2003, and Think Idea Studio has been growing ever since. Outgrowing their home, the Faulkners relocated next door to a little yellow house Shelley’s grandparents owned.

Now in its 14th year, with a team of 10, Think Idea Studio has moved into the newly ren-ovated Robbins Sanford Mercantile building, a fixture in downtown Searcy built in 1908.

“We’re a family-friendly agency founded on Christian principles,” Faulkner said, describ-ing an ethos rare in the advertising world. “If your kids have a school program, we strongly encourage that you be there for your kids and keep priorities in order,” the father of three said.

A Tampa-area native, Faulkner is president of the board of Jacob’s Place Homeless Mission and a board member of the Searcy Regional Economic Development Corp.

JERRY FENTER believes hard work and listening to the needs of eastern Arkansas’ people have led his 10-year-old business to success.

The Arkansas State University alum added: “It’s always been a No. 1 priority for us that, if we’re going to work in an area and serve people, then we need to be also on the front lines trying to make our community better from a leadership standpoint.”

That’s why Fenter has served on numerous boards and the company participates in so many local fundraisers.

The West Memphis native and his wife opened their first outpatient clinic, with just one employee, in Marion in 2007. They are now preparing to open a fifth clinic, in Helena, and will have more than 50 full-time employees by this summer, Fenter said.

He said developing a strong health care team in that underserved, rural region of the state was important too. Now there are Fenter clinics in West Memphis, Forrest City and Brinkley, plus a home health team that serves 10 counties.

Fenter said his own experience with physical therapy following a football-related ACL injury inspired him to pursue his career, as did his aunt, who was a physical therapist.


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JESTON GEORGE joked that he became an entrepreneur because he “wasn’t a good employee.”

He also said building something from the ground up was appealing and he felt he could make a bigger impact that way.

Apptegy is George’s first tech venture. Growing the startup from two employees — him-self and one developer — to more than 30 employees since 2015 is his greatest accom-plishment thus far, he said. It now has over 260 clients, including 50 school districts in Arkansas.

Keeping its employees, shareholders and clients happy is its key to success, he said.

Apptegy provides schools with a system to deliver information simultaneously in every way they have to deliver it.

George said the idea took root after he noticed that, while his nephew’s school commu-nicated negative news well, positive stories were being missed. “A lot of the time, that information doesn’t get shared, and the reason is that the people closest to the story aren’t the storytellers of the school district,” he said.

Apptegy gives those people the ability to post content through an app, pending an administrator’s approval, without going to the person running the website, the person running the email system and others.

SHASH GOYAL said he’s never really put together a resume because he’s always worked for himself. Born in India, he married and came to the United States looking to buy a business — “I’ve been an entrepreneur all my life” — and found opportunity in Stuttgart, where he bought his first hotel.

Goyal now owns 16 hotels in Arkansas, California and Tennessee and plans to open No. 17 in Bentonville and No. 18 in Fayetteville this year.

“I truly believe that hospitality comes from underneath,” he said. “It should be second nature. I love talking to people. I love interaction. That’s what attracted me to the hos-pitality business. At the same time, I also believe that we reserve the right to be better every day.”

Goyal is chairman of the Arkansas Parks, Recreation & Travel Commission and is on the boards of the Arkansas Hospitality Association and the University of Arkansas Founda-tion Fund. He also supports Our House and the Harmony Health Clinic.

Goyal’s father, a surgeon in India, is his hero. “He started from nothing and raised his family and became a very successful physician in a big community there. His family is his priority. That’s one of the things that I’m learning from him, that my family is my priority.”

Goyal loves Arkansas, calling it a “hidden jewel,” adding, “I also believe that if you keep working hard in this country, all your dreams will come true. I’m an immigrant, but my dreams are coming true.”


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It obviously doesn’t take ERIC GRANT long to make a good impression.

After graduating with an accounting degree from Henderson State University in Arka-delphia, Grant went to work for Hudson Cisne in Little Rock. Within a couple of years, Grant was a senior accountant and later became a manager.

One of his many clients was Maverick Transportation of North Little Rock. Four years ago, Maverick hired Grant to be its controller at age 29.

“I worked on a diverse group of clients in different industries, and Maverick was one of them,” Grant said. “Transportation was something I was always drawn to; it has always been interesting.”

Grant, who earned his MBA from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock while at Hudson Cisne, said he enjoyed working as an accountant for a portfolio of clients. Working as an executive now for a single company is rewarding because of his hands-on responsibility in helping Maverick succeed. “I did not realize how much enjoyment there was on the other side of the fence,” Grant said. “What’s cool for me is being able to have a direct impact.”

Grant said working on Maverick’s account at Hudson Cisne made his transition to the private company much easier. “There were so many things I knew about Maverick when I went to work here that would have taken me three or four years to get up to speed on.”

Working hard and being kind pays off, LINDSAY HENDERSON said.

She manages more than $1 million in sales, oversees the Conway Area Leadership Insti-tute and loves her job because “I enjoy helping people.”

“I believe the chamber is a catalyst for growing our economy and community,” Hender-son said. “We have the ability to impact the quality of life for those living in Conway and the visitors we welcome daily. Knowing that I’m a small part of a bigger vision is encouraging.”

Her first gig was as director of new student programs for her alma mater, the University of Central Arkansas. Over the past seven years, though, she has served in several roles at the chamber.

Henderson said her greatest achievement so far has been earning her Institute for Or-ganizational Management certification in 2014.

She also believes in supporting her community and has served on the Conway Regional Health System Women’s Council and the boards of the Arkansas Community Founda-tion of Faulkner County and Conway Symphony Orchestra. Henderson was recently appointed to Conway Corp.’s board.

She graduated from the Faulkner County Leadership Institute and is enrolled in the Leadership Arkansas program.


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‘‘What I like most about my job is that I’m a part of something bigger than myself,” ERIN HOGUE said.

When she graduated from Ouachita Baptist University, Hogue went to a place where big things happen — Washington, D.C.

She earned her master’s degree in public affairs next and served U.S. Rep. Mike Ross as his finance director, scheduler and executive assistant before moving back to Arkansas so that her husband could attend law school here.

Hogue then went to work for the University of Arkansas. She was promoted while there and left as director of development in the Division of Student Affairs.

She was later named vice president of development for the Walton Arts Center, before landing at the Walmart Foundation, which had assets of $28.6 million as of January 2016. There she helps connect northwest Arkansas donors to causes that need their support.

Hogue said the toughest part of her current job is saying “no” because there is only so much the foundation can do and there are a lot of organizations doing great work.

She is most energized, she said, when she is constantly learning things and using her strengths and her skills to help others.

DREW HOLBERT started his collegiate career as a pre-med student, but a couple of sales and marketing classes inspired him to change course.

“No matter what you do, everyone is in sales,” said Holbert, who grew up in Little Rock. “At the minimum, you have to sell yourself.”

The combination of sales and real estate captured his imagination, and he graduated in 2006 from Harding University in Searcy with a bachelor’s degree in professional sales.

An internship at the Little Rock office of Colliers International turned into a full-time job as Holbert worked three years as a junior broker, advanced to broker and became a shareholder in 2013 and a principal, voting shareholder in 2015.

He helped found Create Little Rock to retain, attract and develop young professional talent. The organization was established in 2010 as an initiative of the Little Rock Re-gional Chamber of Commerce.

Holbert also is a board member and past president of the Downtown Little Rock Ki-wanis Club, a member of the activities board of the Joseph Pfeifer Kiwanis Camp and president of the Arkansas Chapter of the Certified Commercial Investment Member Institute, which recognizes expertise in commercial and investment real estate.


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DR. KASEY HOLDER’S father was a doctor, but she wasn’t encouraged to go into medicine. It was while attending Arkansas State University in Jonesboro that Holder, who grew up in Paragould, decided to go to medical school.

After graduating from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and completing her residency in family medicine, she worked at a private practice clinic in Paragould.

Holder eventually joined St. Bernards Medical Center in Jonesboro in 2012 to help start the adult and pediatric hospitalist program. She later was promoted to director of the hospitalist program and split her time between seeing patients and administrative duties.

In October 2015, she was named vice president of medical affairs at the 438-bed hospi-tal. Holder continues to see a few patients a day. “It keeps me involved with direct pa-tient care,” she said. “That’s really what I love about medicine, is taking care of patients.”

In January, Holder became the hospital’s director of medical education, overseeing all the medical education at the hospital, which has 300 doctors.

What drives her is making sure St. Bernards “provides the best possible care,” she said.

Away from the hospital, Holder is involved in her church, Southwest Church of Christ in Jonesboro.

Maybe it’s a knack from his basketball days, but CHRIS HUGHES knows when to take the shot. At 20, he didn’t hesitate in marrying his sweetheart, a cheerleader at Southwestern Assemblies of God University in Waxahachie, Texas, where Hughes played shooting guard for the Lions.

Two years later, “not knowing a soul,” the San Antonio native was in Arkansas, offering financial advice. “I was just 22 and I looked about 12, and I was asking people to give me their life’s savings to invest. But I worked hard and it paid off.”

A college teammate who graduated a couple of years ahead of Hughes had gone to work for Edward Jones and opened the door for him. “I didn’t think about finances growing up, but this was an opportunity I felt passionate about,” Hughes said. “I was raised by a single mother and knew about the struggles, the financial anxieties.”

Now he’s a financial veteran with 15 years of experience, operating out of an office on Main Street in North Little Rock. A father of three and a graduate of Leadership Arkan-sas, Hughes is on the board of Southwest Christian Academy and a supporter of the Alzheimer’s Association.


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Notice to opposing litigants: JAMIE JONES can read your mind.

Well, maybe not. But she did help run a cognitive psychology lab as a psychology undergrad at the University of Arkansas before earning her law degree from the Uni-versity of Kansas in 2003. She’s been a partner at Arkansas’ largest law firm since 2010.

While most civil lawsuits are settled, Jones said she still loves the courtroom that she first experienced as part of a teen diversionary court while a student at Rogers High School. “My first argument in front of a jury was when I was 16 years old, and I’ve never really gotten over it,” she said.

Now most of her work involves railroads, automobiles and questions of constitutional law, but this much hasn’t changed: “It’s still about having a problem — although that’s more complex now — and how to break that down for the jury.”

She has served two terms on the board of the Junior League of Little Rock and is a sus-taining member. She serves on the Arkansas Arts Center board and has been involved with the Arkansas chapter of the American Heart Association.

A mentor she credits for helping her find her place in the law is Friday partner Fred Usury, “the consummate professional.”

ROSS KORKMAS joked that he found a career in health care through “blind, dumb luck.”

The Midland, Texas, native had been working in the department of public safety for the city of Southlake, Texas, when, in 2008, he saw an ad for a job at a hospital in Lewisville, Texas. He applied, even though he thought he wouldn’t get an interview. He ended up getting the job and falling in love with health care.

While working at the hospital, he earned his master’s in health care administration from the University of Texas at Arlington. In March 2013, Korkmas became the chief operat-ing officer of the 166-bed Medical Center of South Arkansas, where he manages the day-to-day operations of the El Dorado hospital, which has more than 500 employees.

Korkmas said he follows a saying that he learned from the CEO at his first hospital: “If you do what is right for the patient, you can never be wrong.”

Korkmas is a member of the American College of Healthcare Executives and the El Dorado Rotary Club. He also is a coach with and a member of the board of KidsNGolf Arkansas, which teaches golf and life principles to children.

Korkmas said he finds the most rewarding aspect of his job is “being able to help peo-ple without actually being a doctor or a nurse.”


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At 35, SHELLY LOFTIN has already worked in the banking industry for 20 years — since she took a job as a proof operator at Union Bank in Benton.

When she was old enough to be bonded, she moved from keying in the amounts on checks to the teller window. Then she moved to Bank of the Ozarks while finishing a degree in marketing and IT at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Her three years at Bank of the Ozarks under CEO George Gleason and EVP Susan Blair “was the best learning ground I could have had” for a future job with a publicly traded company. She joined First Federal Bank of Harrison in 2011, about the time of a major recapitalization, and worked on updating its branding and corporate culture.

A bigger job came in 2014, when First Federal merged with banks in Hot Springs and Jonesboro to create Bear State. The bank’s unique logo was Loftin’s doing.

Loftin oversees both marketing and retail banking, which is an atypical combination that she thinks should be standard. “I think it seems only natural that banks need to focus more on what the whole experience of what their brand looks like,” she said.

Loftin also oversees human resources, mortgage origination and investments and has been a speaker and panelist for multiple national banking organizations.

Even as a youngster entranced by sports, ANTOINE LUCAS dreamed of designing sleek machines. He never got to build cars, but his job at Southwest Power Pool in Little Rock provides him the perfect playground. “The power grid is the biggest machine on earth.”

Lucas’ job “is essentially maintaining the power system’s transmission infrastructure,” and his 34-member team is responsible for planning to meet future energy demands for SPP. Based in Little Rock, the company oversees the grid and wholesale power markets for utilities and transmission companies in 14 states. “It can be challenging, but we have a great team here,” he said.

After childhood in Lake Providence, Louisiana, along the Mississippi just south of the Arkansas line, Lucas earned an engineering degree at Louisiana Tech in Ruston. A sum-mer internship with Entergy changed his path, and he worked for six years with Entergy in Pine Bluff before shifting to SPP.

Management, he said, “is a whole different ballgame requiring a different skill set.” He loves life with his wife and daughter in Little Rock, which strikes him as a “big city” after his small-town upbringing. The family welcomed a son last month.

His business philosophy? “How we do what we do determines the sustainability of our success.”


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If you aren’t reading this profile on the day it was published, JEREMY MCALISTER is 37. His birthday is June 6.

But he is presumably still supervising some $250 million in loan assets as Bank of the Ozarks’ Little Rock market president, which doesn’t make him as nervous as one might assume. “We’re really careful about what we do, and I have some phenomenal people working for me, so that takes some of the stress out of it,” he said.

McAlister grew up in Little Rock and started his banking career with U.S. Bank after earning a degree in business finance from the University of Arkansas, first as a personal banker then as a commercial credit analyst. His next stop was Regions Bank, again as a credit analyst until he moved into lending — primarily construction loans.

After six years with Regions, McAlister was lured to Bank of the Ozarks in 2012. “It turned out to be the best career move I’ve ever made,” McAlister said. “I’ve experi-enced a lot of things that I wouldn’t have been able to at other places.”

Promotions have come quickly. Hired as a vice president of commercial and real estate lending, he was named manager of the Little Rock commercial real estate group in 2015 and Little Rock market president last November.

JAKE NABHOLZ , a member of the third generation of Conway’s famed Nabholz Construction family, fondly remembers going to job sites as a 5-year-old with his dad.

As a teenager, he started working for the company as a field laborer and later as a car-penter. “I absolutely loved it,” Nabholz said. “I was hooked on it from Day One.”

He graduated in 2002 from the University of Louisiana at Monroe with a bachelor’s degree in construction management. Nabholz returned to the company to work in the Tulsa office for eight years as a project manager and in business development before returning to central Arkansas.

As executive vice president, he oversees operations in the company’s northeast Arkan-sas office in Jonesboro and business development in central Arkansas.

Nabholz serves on the board of trustees of Philander Smith College in Little Rock, the board of visitors at the University of Arkansas Community College at Morrilton and the board of the Arkansas Children’s Hospital Foundation.

He also is a member of the Construction Advisory Board for the Little Rock School District’s new Excel program, which provides students with real and relevant learning experiences for future careers.


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Architecture was a natural career choice for JONATHAN OPITZ . “I’ve always loved putting things together. I was always a bit of a Lego freak.”

Opitz, whose parents are from central Arkansas, grew up in a military family and has lived in Georgia, New Jersey, California and Berlin, among other places. The family returned to Arkansas when he was about 15, “but I’ve always been an Arkansan, even when I didn’t live here.”

Opitz is chairman of the sustainability committee for the Arkansas chapter of the American Institute of Architects and interim director of the Architecture & Design Network, a nonprofit that sponsors lectures on architecture. He’s also a member of the board of StudioMAIN, a nonprofit promoting good design and community development in Little Rock.

Opitz won the AIA National Young Architect Award in 2017 and the AIA Arkansas Emerging Professional Award in 2014.

For him, architecture — and life — is about connections. At AMR, “it’s about connecting people with the city that they live in, and that’s what we strive to do in all of our buildings.”

Opitz cited his luck in working with four “special gentlemen”: Marlon Blackwell, the renowned architect and professor at the University of Arkansas Fay Jones School of Architecture & Design; James Williams and Gary Dean of Williams & Dean Architecture & Interior Design, where Opitz spent five years; and Frank Barksdale, AMR president.

Two years ago, when DAVE PINSON was named president of Trinity MultiFamily, a property management company, he had big plans. He wanted to increase the compa-ny’s management portfolio to 10,000 units, which Trinity accomplished.

Trinity now manages approximately 13,000 units in seven states. When Pinson joined Trinity as regional director six years ago, Trinity managed approximately 2,500 units in two states, most of which were properties owned by the founders of Trinity.

“I’m not tooting my own horn, because, obviously, there is a lot that goes into that,” Pinson said. “Growth was one of my big factors. We’re a fairly young company, about 15 years old, and I’ve been there for a little less than half of that. My first vision plan when I was promoted was to be at 10,000 units by 2017. I updated our vision plan to get to 25,000 by 2025.”

Pinson earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Arkansas Tech in Russellville and went to work for the university’s student housing program. He started the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith’s residential housing program and met John Baxter and Cliff Cabaness, the founders of Trinity MultiFamily.

Cabaness said a job was waiting for him whenever he wanted one.

“I wouldn’t call it hesitation, but I was nervous because I was giving up state retirement and guaranteed paid holidays and all that stuff,” Pinson said. “After the first few weeks at Trinity, I knew that is where I wanted to be.”


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MARIA QUIÑONES started working for AT&T 18 years ago, while attending school full time, and said she altered course to stay because it was an up-and-coming company that had a lot to offer its employees.

Since then, she said, she’s traveled to numerous locales and grown — both personally and professionally.

Now Quiñones is passionate about today’s young people being given that same oppor-tunity. She said her greatest professional accomplishment was being involved in a pro-gram that developed future AT&T retail leaders. Quiñones works with Junior Achieve-ment and supports job shadowing initiatives too.

“People never know how long they’re going to have, so supporting the next generation is crucial,” she said.

Exposure to diverse backgrounds also is important, Quiñones said, pointing to her own experience and the inspiration her parents provided. They were impoverished when they immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic and then achieved business success here.

Quiñones said, “When you’re young, you need exposure and you need to gain expe-rience, and that happens when you’re introduced to different people from different backgrounds — diversity.”

ASHLEY RIDDLE said she wanted a college degree that was “general enough but also specific enough to have multiple opportunities following graduation.”

So the Little Rock native got a degree in business administration from Arkansas State University at Jonesboro. Within a month of graduating in December 2005, Riddle start-ed at Delta Dental of Arkansas, the nonprofit dental insurance carrier. She began in its sales and account management department and has worked her way up.

As director of account management, she oversaw that department’s staff and handled some of Delta Dental’s largest clients, totaling $95 million in annual premium.

In 2015, she became a vice president for sales and account management. Last year, Riddle sold an account with more than 10,000 employees.

“I truly enjoy the aspect of customer service,” she said. “It’s such a gratifying experi-ence.”

Riddle is a member of the Rotary Club of Little Rock and through it she recently volun-teered to teach grade school students in the Little Rock School District about financial literacy.


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When DAVID ROBERTS joined Advanced Cabling Systems in 1999, he knew four of the six employees that comprised the two-year-old firm’s roster.

“I grew up with them and thought it would be fun to work with friends until I sorted out what I wanted to do after high school,” Roberts said. “I’ve just never left. It turned into my career path.”

Today, the Advanced Cabling workforce numbers more than 170 in its three-state foot-print, and Roberts oversees operations where annual revenue tops $27 million.

After working four years as a field technician, Roberts spent two years as a project es-timator and moved to Springdale as general manager of the northwest Arkansas office. He returned to central Arkansas as vice president of operations and was promoted to senior vice president in 2010.

“My parents instilled the value of hard work, that I’m not entitled to anything,” he said. “That has proven invaluable to me.”

He is a member of Leadership Greater Little Rock Class XXVI and the Downtown Little Rock Partnership and is an Arkansas Scholars program volunteer for Reaching Our Children & Neighborhoods.

Roberts is a past board member of the Little Rock Technology Expo and ITT Technical Institute Electronics Advisory Committee.

KEVIN ROSE started his career as “the head of shred — that was my official title, a department of one” — at his hometown Bank of Pocahontas (now Integrity Bank). He worked part time shredding papers and other chores while working on a degree in finance at Arkansas State University.

As a junior he was given a loan portfolio to manage. “I was loaning money and going to college in a suit,” Rose said.

G.L. Leiblong, hired to run the Bank of Pocahontas after a painful regulatory interven-tion in 2003, became a mentor. “He really entered my career at a great time. The com-bination of who he is, what he had to offer and the timing was just perfect.”

Rose next oversaw four counties for IberiaBank from Pocahontas. Then he moved to Batesville to become market president for Liberty Bank and stayed on after it was ac-quired by Centennial Bank in 2013. In addition to Independence County, Rose handles a regional book of business.

In 2016, he received a Chairman’s Award from the legendary Johnny Allison. He serves on the boards of the University of Arkansas Community College at Batesville Founda-tion, White River Health Systems and the Vitalink ambulance service.

He credits his parents for this advice: “Plan your work and work your plan. Nothing just happens.”


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JEREMY SPARKS is a 2013 member of the Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo Hall of Fame, a major in the Air National Guard and the author of a just-released autobiogra-phy titled “Go West: 10 Principles that Guided My Cowboy Journey.”

At Tyson Foods, Sparks, who turned 40 after he was chosen as a 40 Under 40 honoree, helps employees learn new systems the company installs. It’s not bullfighting or having one’s finger on a nuclear trigger — both of which Sparks can put on his resume — but he helps people handle work changes, which can be stressful when longtime employees are suddenly required to learn a new way of doing things.

Sparks joined Tyson in 2013 after a life worthy of a book, which he released in February. A graduate of the University of Arkansas-Monticello, Sparks joined the Air Force after 9/11 and was assigned to a base in Wyoming, where he was responsible for ICBMs dur-ing the Iraq War. “I provided the deterrent insurance for the operators on the ground,” Sparks said. “I was the big stick behind them.”

All the while, Sparks was a bullfighter on the rodeo circuit; a bullfighter is the person who distracts the bull after it has thrown a cowboy. Sparks retired from rodeo in 2010 and hopes to soon earn a promotion to lieutenant colonel with the Air National Guard’s 153rd Airlift Wing.

TERRANCE CLARK and WILL STALEY share a vision for the Thrive Center. “Our mission is to design opportunity,” said Clark. “Our goal is to design a healthy community,” said Staley.

Clark, a native of Illinois, and Staley, an Arkansas native, have known each other for 15 years, and both have bachelor’s and master’s degrees in design. The pair sought to live their values through their work in the field of “social impact design,” and founded the Thrive Center, a nonprofit design firm that also implements and designs programs to improve the quality of life in the region.

In bringing their skills in graphic design and strategic planning to the Delta, “we knew from the start that that was going to be something that made us unique, and we’ve been trying to tie in design to most of our programs as well,” Staley said.

That emphasis on design informs the Cherry Street Fair, a monthly marketplace in down-town Helena for local merchants, artisans and musicians; the Helena Start-up Program, which encourages budding entrepreneurs; and Thrive Arts, which includes an artist in residence program in which artists work with area schools and youth organizations.

“We wouldn’t be anywhere if it weren’t for people here in Helena,” Clark stressed, add-ing that he and Staley aren’t only running a nonprofit; they’re citizens of the community.

Ultimately, Clark said: “You live and enjoy your life better when you’re good to others.”


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After graduating from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville with a degree in ac-counting, ZACH STEADMAN knew that having a law degree would also be helpful. So he earned a law degree from the UA School of Law in 2007.

Right out of law school, the Little Rock native started working for the Mitchell Williams Selig Gates & Woodyard PLLC law firm and hasn’t left.

Steadman works in the firm’s insurance regulatory practice group, which handles mat-ters such as licensing and market conduct compliance. “There aren’t many practices in the country that are like that,” he said. “It’s been a really great opportunity.”

Steadman became a member of the firm in 2015.

Outside of work, Steadman is on the board of directors of Camp Aldersgate of Little Rock, which serves children with medical, physical and developmental needs.

Over the years, Steadman has had a number of mentors who have helped him both personally and professionally. “I want to use those tools that those mentors have given me to do something positive,” he said. “We’ve all got a responsibility to give back when we’ve been given so much.”

In the middle of a bidding war with an auto dealership magnate, ALI KING SUGG had to keep calling her banker for clearance to go higher. He kept saying yes, and Sugg ended up with airwave rights to start a 25,000-watt radio station in Heber Springs.

For $309,000, she got a piece of paper and an FM frequency. In May 2016, KSUG went on the air. “So far it’s been a good investment,” Sugg said.

She is owner and general manager of Red River Radio, and she’s also a morning per-sonality on her own classic-hits station, which has filled a radio void in a town of 8,000. “Heber Springs has been supportive.”

The venture made Sugg a 40 Under 40 honoree, but radio has been in her blood since birth. Her father, Sid King, owns KHPQ-FM and KGFL-AM in Clinton, and sister Ash-ley King broadcasts for iHeart Media and KSSN. “I grew up entertaining people,” said Sugg, who has three employees at the station. “But the best part is having fun on the air, talking about local events, shouting out a kid’s birthday and making a mom’s day.” She is also glad to give small merchants in town an advertising voice.

An Arkansas State University graduate who enjoys Greers Ferry Lake with her family, Sugg inherited her business philosophy from her dad and mom, a dance teacher. “It comes down to this: Work hard.”


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WES WALKER’S career started out conventionally for someone who graduated from a major university, in this case the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, with a degree in marketing.

His first job out of the gate was for MARS Advertising in Bentonville, a shopper mar-keting firm. After five years there, Walker moved to Kraft Heinz, where he now handles its snack nuts and powdered drinks accounts with Wal-Mart Stores Inc. of Bentonville.

“It’s heavy on analytics,” Walker said. “I’m working with a lot of data, whether it is Wal-Mart’s point-of-sale data or market data like Nielsen or some other resource. I work with the data to create stories internally or to sell to Wal-Mart. I’m working with the Wal-Mart merchants more in a collaborative capacity rather than just a traditional sup-plier-retailer role.”

Walker said his traditional marketing education helps, as does his client service experi-ence with MARS, but he has had to learn a lot about data in his new role.

“It’s not necessarily what I trained for,” Walker said. “Should we have corn nuts in Texas? Should we have them all year long? It’s a ‘what-when-where’ type of deal.

“Everything is data driven. If you don’t have data to support it, it’s not going to get much attention.”

WESLEY WELCH always thought his future would be in cars, not planes.

A chance internship while studying mechanical engineering at the University of Arkan-sas at Fayetteville changed that focus. He had been coming to the realization that work in the auto industry meant a move to Detroit or some other non-Arkansas locale when he learned about an internship at Dassault Falcon Jet in Little Rock.

“I had a friend who was doing an internship at Dassault Falcon Jet, and I thought, ‘Hey that might be interesting,’” Welch said. “Lo and behold, it was. I ended up staying local and that ended up even better.”

Welch served internships during his junior and senior years and then was hired full time when he graduated in 2001.

He started in engineering design, but soon his talents put him on a management path. In 2005, he became an engineering manager, and in 2008 Dassault sent Welch to Paris as program manager of new aircraft developments.

In his current position, Welch directly supervises 16 engineers and oversees a depart-ment of approximately 200. He doesn’t miss hands-on engineering.

“It’s mostly management now, working with schedule, budget, technical risks,” Welch said. “I enjoy it now because of the broad aspect of it. It’s not just one-detail design. I get to see the big picture from start to finish, literally from conception to the delivery of the aircraft.”


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CHRIS WHITE wanted to be a pilot like the ones he saw growing up in Lonoke County, where his mother’s family owns a farm. But his father was in the insurance busi-ness — Mark White recently retired as CEO of Arkansas Blue Cross & Blue Shield — and “didn’t really want me to be a cropduster.”

After a year of flight school at Henderson State University, White earned a degree in agribusiness at the University of Arkansas. His first job after college, in pharmaceutical sales, was not the career he wanted.

For guidance, he turned to friends of his father: Tommy May, then CEO of Simmons First National Corp., and Rob Brothers, then an Arvest Bank executive. “They opened my eyes to other opportunities,” White said. He took a pay cut to join Simmons.

After management training, he started his lending career in northwest Arkansas. From there he became credit officer for Simmons in Hot Springs, then transferred to Little Rock in late 2013 to help integrate the purchases of Metropolitan National Bank and Delta Trust & Bank.

Now he oversees retail, lending and related services in the central Arkansas market.

He serves on several nonprofit boards, including the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, Little Rock Downtown Partnership and the American Heart Association.

Military brat ALISON WILLIAMS landed in Arkansas at 16 and graduated from Cabot High School and the University of Arkansas. “I was a first-generation college student, and ... I looked around and asked, ‘My goodness, what does anyone do with a political science degree?’”

She spent the next 17 years in Washington. An early job was in then-Rep. Asa Hutchin-son’s office. For eight years she moved with him to the Drug Enforcement Administra-tion, the Department of Homeland Security, even the private sector before their paths diverged.

When he was elected governor, “I made sure he knew I was interested in coming back to work for him. And the rest is history, as they say.”

Williams loves policy development, but wonks don’t seem as valuable in D.C. as they used to be. “It’s a really good time to be at the state level with a thoughtful leader who cares about the people of Arkansas,” she said.

Williams’ days are never the same, but her mission is constant: making sure the gover-nor’s calendar is meeting his strategic goals.

Since returning to the state, she has joined the boards of the Women’s Foundation of Arkansas and the new Arkansas Cinema Society. She is also a Rotarian.


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N O R T H W E S T A R K A N S A S B U S I N E S S J O U R N A L H O N O R E E S

ALEX BALDWIN opened up his own insurance office, or “scratch” agency, in Fayet-teville in October 2010. At 27 years old, he was the youngest State Farm agent/owner in Arkansas.

In the seven years since, he’s grown the business from two employees to 12, and premi-um revenue this year is on track to hit $950,000, an increase of 31% from 2016.

The success hasn’t gone unnoticed. The Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce named the agency the city’s Best Small Business in 2013. Earlier this summer, at an annual State Farm event in California, the company recognized Baldwin’s agency as sixth-best in the U.S., out of more than 18,000 agents.

“My team has been the biggest reason for our success,” Baldwin said. “Our culture is identifying what we have to do to be successful today. You have to win the day. That’s when you turn the corner.”

Baldwin is from Piggott in northeast Arkansas. He graduated from the University of Arkansas in December 2005 with a finance degree, and went to work in Rogers for veteran State Farm agent Roger Clark, whom Baldwin considers a mentor.

After two years, Baldwin transferred to central Arkansas for a couple of years before the opportunity came to return to Northwest Arkansas in 2010.

Baldwin says he’s proud of the agency’s agent aspirant program, giving prospective agents the chance to gain hands-on training in advance of applying to become a li-censed agent.

As for Baldwin’s aspirations, a long-term goal is to one day become the largest State Farm agency in Arkansas.

Married with two children, Baldwin loves reading and cooking and is a Leadership Fay-etteville graduate. He’s previously served on a number of boards, including the Fayet-teville Chamber, Fayetteville Future Fund and UA Young Alumni.

He’s a current board member of Central United Methodist Church, where he teaches Sunday school.

Growing up in Oklahoma, CHARLEY BOYCE says he knew two things — the heat-ing, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) industry and baseball. In Northwest Arkan-sas, he has excelled at both.

At the University of Arkansas, he set pitching records that still stand. He helped the Razorbacks reach the College World Series in 2004 and was voted team MVP in 2005.

He earned a business administration-marketing degree in December 2005, played his senior season the following spring, then went to work for Airco Service Inc., his family’s HVAC business in Tulsa dating back to the 1960s.

AS SEEN IN VOL . 21 , NO. 12 | AUGUST 21 , 2017

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He returned to Northwest Arkansas after a few months to manage an HVAC distribu-tion center. In 2010, he joined Paschal as a salesman, with the understanding he would eventually purchase the company from Harold Kimrey upon his retirement.

That time arrived in December 2012, and under Boyce’s leadership, the company has grown from 20 to 85 employees, and revenues have increased by more than 300%. A 45,000-square-foot headquarters in Tontitown is under construction and will be com-pleted this fall.

Boyce said the company’s motto is simple — take care of customers and charge a fair price.

“We want to take care of customers for as long as they live in Northwest Arkansas,” he said. “It’s not a get-rich quick scheme. If we do that, our business will keep growing.”

Boyce envisions additional Paschal offices in other Arkansas markets, and in southwest Missouri. He said the company’s service lines may also grow to include electrical and plumbing.

Married with two children, Boyce said work and family are priorities at this point in his career.

“Playing golf and hunting and fishing, all that’ll be nice one day, but that’s down the road,” he said.

BECCA BRISIEL has always been interested in fashion.

“I always loved shopping with my mom and also dressing up in her clothes,” Brisiel said. “It’s something that can be looked at as materialistic, but for me it’s always been a fun art form, an opportunity for creative expression.”

Brisiel said she is always doing something creative, and her first job 13 years ago was as a mockup photographer for Saatchi & Saatchi X in Springdale. Before that she lived in Fort Smith since high school, though she was born in Santa Ana, Texas.

Starting a business was something Brisiel always wanted to do, and 10 years ago she decided the time was right.

After selling her home, she took the money she was going to spend on a new one and instead used it to start her company, Maude Boutique. “I thought, ‘It’s now or never.’ I was single, I had no kids.”

It was also at the beginning of the Great Recession. “People told me I was crazy, but it was the best decision I’ve ever made. I never looked back,” she said.

In fact, the business outgrew its first location — a spot down the street from its present College Avenue store in Fayetteville — within a few months.

Maude Boutique would offer more affordable clothing and fill a gap Brisiel saw in the area’s apparel stores.

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Pace Industries’ culture led JOHN SCOTT BULL to join the die casting company as director of marketing and sales manager in 2008. He went on to become national ac-count manager for three years before being promoted to vice president of marketing. In 2013, he was promoted to vice president of sales.

The Fayetteville native works at the highest level in marketing and reports to the exec-utive vice president of sales. Bull oversees 14 people, leading sales for the company’s four northern divisions. In the past four years, these divisions have landed more than $200 million in new business. The company has 12 divisions in the United States and Mexico.

“We shifted our focus and got aggressive with sales,” Bull said. “Harley-Davidson is our No.1 customer.” Other customers include automobile and all-terrain vehicle manufactur-ers, such as General Motors and Polaris, and virtual reality headset companies.

In 2016, Bull co-founded Colby Valve, a valve stem manufacturer for off-road vehicles. So far, the company has $200,000 in sales, and shipments didn’t start until March or April. For 2017, his sales goal is $1 million. In 2009, Bull co-founded Field Agent, a crowd-sourced retail information system. In 2007, when he worked at Rockfish Interactive, he helped to develop an internal website for Wal-Mart, allowing employees to share best practices.

In 2001, he started working for Northstar Partnering Group, and there, the highlight of his career was leading the team that planned and put on the first and largest single-day flu shot event at more than 8,000 Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club, Target and Rite-Aid stores. In 1998, he established startup eUpgrade.com, a comparison shopping website.

Within the next five years, he hopes to see Pace at $800 million in sales.

In 2001, he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in marketing from the University of Oklahoma. He’s a volunteer for JDRF and the Children’s Safety Center. He enjoys home brewing beer, saltwater aquariums, scuba diving and oceans.


“At the time, nobody was carrying that price point with the styles we were carrying,” she said. The business took off quickly and has continued to grow. Brisiel opened a Rogers location in 2015. Now, the focus is on growing Maude’s e-commerce business.

Brisiel has a business degree from University of Arkansas at Fort Smith.

Within the community, she works with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, the NWA Chil-dren’s Shelter, the NWA Women’s Shelter and ReStore Humanity.

She and her husband have two children, ages 4 and 6.

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KELLY CARLSON has worn a variety of hats working for nearly a decade at Arvest Bank.

He joined the Walton-owned banking concern in 2008 as a commercial loan assistant. He earned a promotion to credit analyst two years later, became a commercial lender two years after that and was appointed vice president in 2014.

Earlier this summer, he was promoted again to the commercial banking team lead for downtown Bentonville. He and his team oversee a loan portfolio of about $225 million.

Carlson, who moved to Bentonville from Phoenix as a teenager in 1996, claims the area as his hometown and is passionate about its growth.

“It’s fun to work with small to mid-sized businesses as they expand and hire more peo-ple and deploy more assets to the area,” he said.

Carlson earned a marketing degree (2004) and an MBA (2012) both from Harding Uni-versity. He went to work for an executive recruiter in Dallas in 2004, married his high school sweetheart in 2006 and moved back to Northwest Arkansas the following year.

He lists Chad Evans, Joe Thompson and Bob Boehmler as mentors. In his new role, Carlson said he hopes to give his team the same opportunities that he was afforded the past few years.

“My success in life has come from others,” he said. “I’ve just provided the effort.”

Married with two children, Carlson belongs to two boards: Scott Family Amazeum (he is the group’s treasurer) and Downtown Bentonville Inc. He also leverages his business relationships to help raise money for Arkansas Children’s Northwest in Springdale.

“We have a great community that loves to give, and the hospital is going to be a tremen-dous value for Northwest Arkansas,” he said.

When MIKE CASTAGNA was a project manager for Baldwin & Shell, he would often visit job sites when the concrete pour was taking place.

Castagna, who also worked in the concrete division for Nabholz, helped Baldwin & Shell on concrete work. He’s been interested in the construction industry since he was in high school and spent summers working to frame houses.

“I’m fascinated with the way things are built and put together,” he said.

And with that background, he and business partner Justin Winberry decided to start Wincast Concrete Services. In less than two years, the company has grown into a $4 million business with more than 30 employees.

The company does commercial concrete work including foundations and slabs, dec-orative concrete, parking lots, sidewalks and curb and gutter. Recently, the company completed work for Uptown Fayetteville, The Parc at Bentonville and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. In July, the company started its biggest contract so far, a 120,000-square-foot school in Mineral Springs.

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CRAIG COCKRELL is a tax bond lawyer in Mitchell Williams’ business practice group, specializing in the intricacies of municipal bond financing. He helps cities, schools and other public entities borrow money for infrastructure. He also handles tax controversies, business transactional matters and trust and estate planning.

Cockrell was raised modestly in Monticello in south Arkansas. His third-grade teacher predicted his skill in disagreeing would make him a good lawyer. He hadn’t decided upon a career path when he set off for the University of Arkansas, so he majored in English literature.

A job posting in his fraternity house changed everything; he applied to be a runner at the Mitchell Williams firm in Rogers. While he served subpoenas and stocked sodas, he observed the lawyers and developed an interest in estate planning. He went on to graduate from the UA School of Law in Fayetteville (clerking at Mitchell Williams dur-ing summers), then earned a Masters of Law in taxation from the University of Florida School of Law and returned to the firm.

Since 2013, he has helped public entities throughout Arkansas to issue more than $600 million in bonds — including the $120 million issue for the UA’s Razorback Stadium ex-pansion project.

Cockrell now jokes that translating tax bonds isn’t vastly different from analyzing Shake-speare.

As a board member for Northwest Arkansas Junior Achievement, Cockrell aligned with the local chapter of Court Appointed Special Advocates to teach financial literacy to teenage foster children aging out of the system — practical skills like budgeting, creat-ing resumes and using debit and credit cards.

“They’re about to roll out into the real world, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised how receptive they are,” Cockrell said. He’s also active with Mercy Health Foundation’s Planned Giving Committee.


Until recently, the company completed most of its work within an hour of Northwest Ar-kansas. With a new travel crew, that’s changing. “We’re starting to explore some other markets in Little Rock, Tulsa and Oklahoma City,” Castagna said.

A son of missionary parents, the Waukesha, Wis., native lived in the Philippines for about 10 years.

In 1999, he moved to Northwest Arkansas to attend John Brown University, and in 2005, he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in construction management.

He’s a volunteer coach for the Boys & Girls Club of Western Benton County, and for a traveling volleyball team. He spends his free time competing in barbecue competitions, playing basketball and watching the Razorbacks.

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During the four whirlwind years that JACQUELINE COFFMAN has worked for Mercy Hospital Northwest Arkansas, she has led the opening of two inpatient depart-ments and spearheaded two new ventures: a nurse residency program and a system of team nursing care.

Coffman, the hospital’s director of nursing, joined Mercy in 2013 as director of the med-ical/surgical department. She moved into her current role one year ago. She oversees more than 350 employees at the 200-bed hospital, and by 2019 the number of beds is set to double through expansion.

The one-year nurse residency program began in June and aims to acclimate nurses and retain talent. A common refrain heard from recent nurse graduates is, “This [job] isn’t what I thought it was going to be at all,” Coffman said.

For the team nursing model, nurses of varying levels jointly care for nine to 10 patients; already, the model is reducing costs and increasing both patient and caregiver satis-faction. Mercy Fort Smith will soon adopt the method, which reintroduces Licensed Practical Nurses to ease staffing shortages.

Coffman, a Springdale native, began college intending to be an accountant, but switched majors to find more human interaction. Four years into her nursing career, she was invited to take a leadership role.

Her focus is on visibility and presence, while fostering respect and honesty and “taking care of the staff, which is already stretched thin, to ensure patients get nothing but our best every single encounter.”

Coffman is pursuing an MBA in healthcare administration. Ultimately, she aims for a chief nursing officer role, following her mentor Charlotte Rankin.

As Mercy emphasizes compassionate service, Coffman often volunteers to help the community’s underserved, including homeless residents at the Eighth Street Motel in Rogers.

TOMMY COUGHLIN grew up in the world of Wal-Mart. But instead of retail, he’s making a name for himself in banking.

Coughlin, son of Cynthia Coughlin and the late Tom Coughlin, who was a close friend of Sam Walton as a high-ranking executive with Wal-Mart Stores Inc., is a Bentonville native. He said advice from now-retired Arvest Bank executive David Short put him on his current career path.

“He said, ‘If you want an opportunity to learn a little about a lot, you ought to look into banking,’” Coughlin recalled.

After previously working for two other lenders in the area for a combined nine years, Coughlin joined Grand Savings as vice president and loan manager in November 2013, coinciding with the opening of the Oklahoma bank’s first Arkansas office on Arkansas Highway 72 at the western edge of Bentonville.

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RYAN DAGLEY and his team of two commercial lenders and two loan assistants have increased loan growth by 40% in four years at Signature Bank in Bentonville.

“I think we’re very blessed in our market,” he said. “We have a great clientele base.”

Dagley started at Signature Bank in May 2008 after working for A&B Financial. In col-lege, he worked as a teller at A&B Financial and had the opportunity to take the man-agement training program. “It kind of stuck with me,” he said.

At 26, he became vice president and commercial lender. Three years later, he was promot-ed to senior vice president and loan manager. His ability to advance quickly at the bank was a result of working at a small community bank and taking advantage of opportunities.

He also worked for IberiaBank, between 2012 and 2013. In 2010, he earned an MBA from John Brown University. In 2007, he received a bachelor’s degree from the Univer-sity of Arkansas.

The highlight of his career has been building the team at Signature Bank in Bentonville and being a part of that. “We have a phenomenal team,” he said. While he was born in Tulsa, he considers Bentonville his hometown.

The greatest challenge he’s faced in his career was going through the financial crisis, “struggling through that and coming out the other side with a lot of great customers,” he said. The best part of the job has been working with customers and watching them grow their business. “It’s very rewarding to me.”

He’s served as a volunteer for Rampy MS Research Foundation, the Greater Bentonville Area Chamber of Commerce and downtown Bentonville events. He enjoys reading and running and soon hopes to complete an ultra-marathon, which is anything longer than a marathon.


In the years since, he’s been part of a team that’s helped the bank grow its regional footprint to seven Arkansas locations. The financials are on a strong growth path, too. The bank had net income of $6.9 million in 2016, compared to $1.6 million in 2013, and a 1.95% return on assets (ROA), the lender’s best annual performance since 2007.

Coughlin was promoted to his current job earlier this year, responsible for the bank’s branch locations in Rogers (2) and Bentonville. He said his long-term goals for the bank are to increase market share in Benton County, with an eye toward expanding into Washington County.

But besides growing the market share, he said an overriding goal is to grow the bank’s community profile.

“We are putting together a talented team of people who are really embedded in their local communities,” Coughlin said.

Married with two children, Coughlin is active in a number of organizations including Bentonville Noon Rotary and Open Avenues. He has a bachelor’s degree from John Brown University and also graduated from Leadership Benton County in 2015.

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Admiration for his family physician led GEORGE “BJ” DEIMEL to develop an interest in medicine.

“[Dr. Larry Brashears] worked tirelessly for his patients and community, and I always respected that quality about him,” he said.

Deimel, a Malvern native, completed his residency in physical medicine and rehabilita-tion at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester in 2013. He chose the specialty because he always enjoyed anatomy and how the body functions. Also, his father had a spinal cord injury, and Deimel saw how specialists in the field assist patients with functional limitations.

In 2014, he completed a sports medicine fellowship at the University of Utah and provid-ed on-site care for the hundreds of athletes on the U.S. Olympic team in Sochi, Russia.

After the fellowship, Deimel became medical director for the Acute Inpatient Reha-bilitation Unit at Northwest Medical Center — Springdale. Over the past two years, he’s worked to double admission by raising awareness of the rehabilitation unit and rebranding. In May, a $250,000 renovation project was completed on the unit, and he recently started work to have it become a certified stroke rehabilitation center and CARF accredited by the end of 2018.

In January 2016, he started at Ozark Orthopaedics in Bentonville. He spends about 80% of his time seeing patients in an outpatient setting there.

He’s written three textbook chapters, published between 15 and 20 articles on muscu-loskeletal conditions and sports injuries and spoken more than 40 times on musculo-skeletal ultrasound.

Deimel graduated from the University of Arkansas and received a medical degree from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

In his free time, he does CrossFit.

TARA DRYER grew up in the small town of Prairie du Chien, Wis., where both her parents were teachers, and she was taught to value education.

“One thing that I always remember my mom saying that my grandpa said to them was, ‘An education is one thing that, no matter what happens to you in your life, no one can ever take away from you.’ If you want to better yourself, nobody can stop you,” Dryer said.

In 2001, she earned her bachelor’s in business education from Winona State University and taught business at Mound Westonka High School for a year.

From 2003 to 2005, she served as a counselor and instructor at TRIO Educational Talent Research.

In 2006, she earned her master’s in educational leadership and technology from Min-nesota State University, Moorhead.

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Afterward, she moved to Fayetteville for a job at the University of Arkansas as assistant director of admissions, which she held for a year, followed by a one-year stint as aca-demic adviser in the Sam M. Walton College of Business.

Dryer’s career at the UA Global Campus began in 2008, and she was promoted in 2014 to director of training, corporate development and academic outreach, overseeing the satellite campus in Rogers.

At the Global Campus, Dryer is tasked with bringing the worlds of industry and aca-demia together to develop effective professional development and training.

“I enjoy working with people in the chambers of commerce and the Northwest Arkan-sas Council who can identify skills gaps and try to foresee where NWA is going to be in 10 years. What jobs are we going to need, and what do we need to do today to start to create a pipeline for that?” Dryer said.

Dryer enjoys playing golf with husband Michael, a former golf professional who works at The First Tee of Northwest Arkansas, and their two daughters, ages 5 and 7.


NATHAN GREEN discovered an interest in law while taking a required course, legal environment of business, during his study of economics at Saint Louis University.

“I loved that class,” Green said. Students could contest exam answers and convince the teacher to award more points.

“You could argue your way from a low A to high A, or from a B to an A,” he said. It was a novel and fascinating concept to him.

After earning his bachelor’s degree, the Camden native returned in 2005 to his home state to attend the University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law.

During that time, he served several months in 2007 as an intern for U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s office and became a law clerk at Plastiras Law Firm, where he later practiced estate planning and corporate and tax law until 2011.

That year, after a friend recommended he look at a public affairs career, Green started work in research and consulting at inVeritas. Four years later, he was elevated to the position of vice president of public relations and tasked with opening the firm’s office in Rogers.

Green’s wide-ranging work at inVeritas, which includes strategic planning, marketing, public policy work and campaign research, is all grounded by his intrinsic motivation to support others. “People come to you with an issue, and, whatever it is, I never want to say, ‘I can’t help you.’ I always try to think of a way I can help,” he said. “If I can’t, I try to find someone who can.”

Green is an advisory board member of Learning Disabilities Association of Arkansas and has done pro bono work for the organization.

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When CHARLENE GREER-JONES was recruited out of college for the Toys-R-Us management training program, she left New Orleans on a whim and moved to Fayetteville, having no idea that she’d discover Northwest Arkansas is the “retail capital of the world.”

For four years, Greer-Jones helped manage the local store, but because she had a young son — and her hours were so demanding — people suggested she consider work in retail merchandising.

Thirteen years later, she has tackled not only management, merchandising and store operations, but in diverse categories involving large retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores, Sam’s Club, Target and Best Buy. She earned a master’s degree in business administra-tion and continues to raise her son as a single parent.

Greer-Jones is now a regional sales manager for InComm, handling partner acquisi-tions for a six-state region. She seeks restaurants to sell gift cards in Sam’s Club, and has helped secure more than 150 partnerships in the southeastern U.S.

Greer-Jones attributes her success to a focus on building relationships and flexibility.

“It’s not our product, and I’m selling it twice [to the restaurant management and Sam’s Club],” she said. “At the same time, I’m a salesperson, forecaster, and analyst.”

Retail work offers change and challenges, both of which she loves. “Every day is differ-ent, and a lot of the things I’ve done are the things no one wanted to be doing: unload-ing trucks, working overnight and holidays, cleaning things, getting people to give me space for products.”

Greer-Jones has been a Den Leader and will serve as Cub Master this year for the Boy Scouts of Northwest Arkansas. She is a dark-haired player in the Blondes vs. Brunettes Charity Flag Football games supporting the local Alzheimer’s Association chapter.

JENNIFER HEIGES has almost had to reintroduce the watch to the world. With the advent of smartphones, watches have become more of an accessory and less of a necessity.

“We still hand make every single watch,” Heiges said. She’s worked at Timex for more than four years and is part of a three-person Wal-Mart team.

The greatest challenge in her career has been “driving sales in an industry that’s had to turn itself around,” she said. Through research, she finds out what sells and where it’s selling and brings this information to the product team. She meets with the team four times a year and reviews every style of watch the company sells.

Before Timex, she managed the intermodal business in the Chicago area for Low-ell-based carrier J.B. Hunt. It’s the largest and most productive area for the company’s intermodal segment. “It’s the mecca where all trains come through,” she said. Anyone who needed a price to ship intermodal freight through the area would come to her.v

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The highlight of her career is the more than three years she spent as intermodal pricing manager, increasing revenue by 20% in the business there.

She started at J.B. Hunt as fleet manager in the trucking segment. She also was part-nership development manager, acting as a liaison between the business segments and sales people.

In 2002, the Little Rock native graduated with a bachelor’s degree in marketing from the University of Central Arkansas. Her husband’s job working for a general contractor brought her to Northwest Arkansas. They previously lived in Alabama and Little Rock.

She is a volunteer for the Junior League of Northwest Arkansas, the Taylor McKeen Shelton Foundation and Mamie’s Poppy Plates.

She spends her free time running and is training for her fifth marathon.


As senior manager of the Walmart Foundation’s NWA Giving program, ERIN TURNER HOGUE puts her years of experience in fundraising to work on the other side of the equation.

Before, Hogue focused on bringing people together and meeting needs directly, but the potential for long-term impact is what drew her to the foundation, she said.

“Now, I’m doing that same type of connecting. I’m a strategic partner on the other side,” tasked with “understanding the community’s needs and connecting that to our corpo-rate and philanthropic goals,” Hogue said.

“The greatest thing about what I do is I get to go into these organizations that are doing really tough work, day in and day out. I get a glimpse into their world and play a small role in achieving their mission, meeting that need or closing that gap,” she said.

Hogue has been with the Walmart Foundation a little more than a year.

Before that, she was director of development at the Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville for two years. From 2007 to 2014, she worked in fundraising at the University of Arkan-sas, first for the College of Education and Health Professions and later for the Office of Student Affairs.

After earning a degree in political science/history from Ouachita Baptist in 2004, the Arkadelphia native moved to Washington, D.C.

There, she was state legislative assistant for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, earned a master’s in public affairs from George Washington University and worked as executive assistant to Congressman Mike Ross. She then returned to Arkansas and worked on his re-election campaign.

Hogue teaches a night class in history at the UA and recently earned her Ph.D. in the subject.

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When DUSTIN HUGHES started with Kimbel Mechanical Systems he was a plumb-er apprentice making $10 an hour. Now, he oversees two divisions, seven locations, nearly 250 employees and about the same number of subcontractors for the growing $76 million company he owns along with CEO Brad Smith.

Hughes started with the company almost 14 years ago when it had about 30 employees and quickly progressed after becoming a journeyman plumber and master plumber.

As assistant superintendent, he oversaw small projects, including 20 to 30 homes in a subdivision. Two years later, he become head superintendent, overseeing Kimbel’s first military housing project at Columbus Air Force Base and a more than 500-unit project at Barksdale Air Force Base. The $5 million project took two years to complete and was the largest air force base project the company had completed at the time.

“That was really the job I got to get out there and spread my wings,” he said.

In 2011, he became market manager overseeing 15 to 20 workers handling the compa-ny’s residential business in central Arkansas. In 2013, he started as director of market housing, leading a division with $20 million to $25 million in annual sales and expanding it into northern and southern Colorado and Kansas City. He became chief operating officer in 2015, and in 2016 became a partner in the company with Smith.

The Alma native attributed his success to making the most of opportunities, and for Smith and former owner Rob Kimbel believing and investing in him.

Hughes is a volunteer for Pack Shack, leads a boy’s life group at Alma First Baptist Church and serves on the Northwest Arkansas Home Builders Association Board of Directors. He spends his free time bow hunting deer, coaching and at Lake Tenkiller.

CHRISTINA KARNATZ is a storyteller.

It’s what she did as host and reporter for almost six years on the radio program Ozarks at Large, and it’s what she does now as associate director of development at University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Northwest, a role she’s held since May 2016.

As a fundraiser for the Office of Community Health and Research, she tells the stories of minority populations and their healthcare needs.

In particular, she works with the Marshallese and Hispanic populations in Northwest Arkansas.

“I’m telling the story of someone that doesn’t always have a voice,” Karnatz said. “North-west Arkansas is growing fast. Not only is it bringing in Wal-Mart vendors, it’s bringing in people who might need help. They need to be welcomed warmly, and we need to have services for them.”

The Fayetteville native was raised by parents who valued volunteerism and helping those less fortunate. “They instilled that in me from a young age,” Karnatz said.

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In fact, it was Karnatz’s work as an AmeriCorps member that initially led to the radio hosting job at the National Public Radio affiliate KUAF 91.3 in 2010.

Before KUAF and Ozarks at Large, she worked for several years as a waitress and then restaurant manager, after deciding a career in accounting wasn’t for her.

Karnatz was drawn to storytelling at a young age, acting as editor for her high school newspaper, but she chose a different route for her undergraduate career, earning a de-gree in international business and accounting in 2005 from the University of Arkansas.

Now, she is back in school and studying online for a master’s degree in communication and media from Purdue University.

Karnatz enjoys spending time with her husband and two children, ages 2 and 15. She also likes to read, including the Sunday edition of The New York Times, and she likes to swim, do yoga and Jazzercise.


CASEY KINSEY believes culture is the most important aspect of the workplace. It’s why he started his own business in 2014, and he considers the nine jobs he has created to be the biggest achievement so far of his professional career.

“I really like the people aspect of running a business. Even though it’s the most chal-lenging part, it’s also definitely the most rewarding,” he said. “The day I made my first hire, my girlfriend and I went out to dinner to celebrate,” Kinsey said. “I had a new job, too. I was somebody’s employer.”

That same night, the couple ran into Lofty Labs’ new staff member on Dickson Street. The new hire was also celebrating. Seeing the positive effect on that person’s life struck an emotional chord with Kinsey. “That was a really cool feeling,” he said.

A Hot Springs native, Kinsey studied English at the University of Central Arkansas in Con-way for a couple of years and designed web pages on the side for cash, but he quit college shortly after he started working as lead developer at the Log Cabin Democrat in 2007.

Following that, from 2008 to 2009 he worked remotely as a web developer for M&S Consulting of West Virginia, working primarily for one Cincinnati-based client, he said.

In June 2009 he took a job as web developer for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He worked there for two years, developing software in a number of different languages and frameworks.

In 2012, he took another job where he worked remotely from Arkansas. Serving as a web and mobile solutions consultant for Celerity in Washington, D.C., his primary client was PBS. After that, he worked remotely for seven months as chief technology officer at YourGuru, a New York City-based health services startup.

In his spare time, Kinsey runs a professional organization for software engineers who use Python and is involved with a number of groups within the tech community. He also enjoys cycling.

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MICHAEL MACECHKO didn’t take the traditional route to become a physician. Most know they always wanted to be a physician, but he didn’t find out until late into his college life after taking a microbiology course.

Yet taking care of others was something he always did. He awoke early with his grand-father to help him with his medicine. His grandfather would give him M&Ms as if they were medicine, and they would take their ‘medicine’ together.

Since 2012, Macechko has practiced as a physician under his own license after complet-ing the family medicine residency program at UAMS Northwest in Fayetteville. He went from co-chief of the residency program to supervising and instructing his peers there. Macechko also practices in two hospitals, two nursing homes and two clinics.

As a physician and a faculty member, it allows him more flexibility than if he had a pri-vate practice and makes house calls regularly.

“One of the most important things we can do is sit and talk with our patients,” he said. His focus is on the patients instead of a computer, and he often spends personal time completing documentation.

The highlight of his career is seeing resident physicians go on to succeed in their ca-reers. The biggest challenge in his career is he often sees patients at their worst and sometimes must give them bad news.

In 2009, he earned a medical degree from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock. In 2005, he graduated with bachelors’ degrees in microbiology and history from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

He was born in Oxford but moved to Fayetteville when he was 5. “Northwest Arkansas is really my home,” he said. “I would call Fayetteville my hometown.” He enjoys yard-work, woodwork and is a Razorbacks fan.

While attending college at the University of Arkansas, JOSH MCCASLIN began to dabble in investing with his family’s financial adviser in Little Rock.

A specialized portfolio management class at the UA sparked an even greater interest in finance, which led to an internship during his senior year at the Rogers office of Merrill Lynch.

McCaslin remained with the firm after graduating in 2006 with degrees in both finance and transportation and logistics, and in 2009 he became a licensed financial adviser.

Three years later, McCaslin and five others changed brokerage houses and established Benton County’s first Morgan Stanley Smith Barney office in Rogers.

The office now does business just as Morgan Stanley, and the team is known as the Hexagon Group, a boutique practice specializing in wealth management and financial planning for a limited number of clients.

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Despite a rocky start, JOSHUA MCFADDEN’S career in Arkansas has been a success.

A California native, McFadden and his father visited John Brown University in Siloam Springs while researching potential colleges.

During the visit, they were in a serious auto accident. McFadden’s memory of the week-end is hazy, but he does recall how impressed he was by the JBU community’s outpour-ing of support during his two-day hospital stay.

The response partly influenced him to attend JBU, where he graduated magna cum laude in 2001, earned an MBA in 2004 and was a Soderquist Fellow at the Soderquist Center for Leadership and Ethics. He then decided to go to law school, bowing to one of his earliest memories of childhood: becoming an attorney.

“Standing up for someone else and arguing for them really appealed to me,” he said.

McFadden earned a law degree from the University of Arkansas in 2007, became a licensed attorney that same year and went to work for Davis Law Firm. In the decade since, he’s built a succesful practice that focuses on business and commercial litigation.

McFadden said being involved in the successful defense of a complex litigation case that lasted seven years is a crowning career achievement thus far. The case survived two appeals and had more than 1 million pages of discovery documents.

McFadden, who maintains the prestigious AV-Preeminent rating from Martindale Hub-bell for ethics and legal ability, is beginning his sixth year as an elected delegate to the Arkansas Bar Association House of Delegates. He was also elected recently to a three-year term on the ABA Board of Governors.

Married with two sons, McFadden is an avid hiker and backpacker. He also teaches in the children’s ministry at New Heights Church in Fayetteville, and is a committee mem-ber for the Dream Big Gala charity event, a fundraiser for the Children’s Safety Center.

McCaslin’s personal portfolio of assets under management and production has been recognized nationally with industry “pacesetter” awards. His advice to up-and-comers entering the financial services field? Build your business on relationships.

“If you do the right thing over and over again, you’ll be OK in the long run,” he said.

Married with two children, McCaslin credits his parents (Randy and Sherry) and other family members for their “unwavering” support during his career. He said his future as-pirations are to grow the Hexagon Group into one of the premier wealth management offices in Arkansas.

Making personal connections is important to McCaslin, both in his role at Morgan Stan-ley and as a community leader and volunteer. He is a founding member of the Fayette-ville Future Fund, is chairman of the board of the nonprofit Fayetteville Area Commu-nity Foundation and is on the planning board for the Color of Hope Gala, the signature fundraising event benefitting Arkansas Children’s.

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ALEXA MCGRIFF is a senior social strategist with Moxie, which has been engaged by the corporate affairs division of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to enhance the retailer’s posi-tive reputation.

Alexa designed the successful #WhatMakesWalmart campaign, a storyline of photos and quotes from company associates that dramatically increased social media follow-ers, impressions and engagement.

Ultimately, McGriff is designing her own career path, one that is influenced by a dark and painful time in her life. She wants to be executive director of a nonprofit.

During college, McGriff, a survivor of rape, received support through the Northwest Arkansas Center for Sexual Assault.

“The help they gave me changed my life, and I want to dedicate my life to helping and giving back,” she said. Nonprofits often struggle with gritty business matters such as financials and business forecasting, she said, so she aims to develop skills in such areas.

“I want to work in as many roles as possible and gain expertise so I can help a nonprofit do its best possible work — to increase its efficiency and effectiveness.”

She previously was marketing director for Ozark Natural Foods. She also served as director of marketing for United Way of Northwest Arkansas, where for a time she worked under interim executive director Shawn Walker, a former executive at Tyson Foods. “He emulated the type of leader I want to be: tough but effective.”

McGriff is part of Moxie’s leadership program, and she expects to graduate with a Mas-ter of Business Administration in May 2018. She is currently on the Northwest Arkansas Rape Crisis board and recently helped launch an individual donor-focused campaign to raise $160,000 so the center can focus on helping rape victims to heal, rather than struggle to keep doors open.

Inspired as a child by then-Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, MYRA MCKENZIE-HARRIS set her sights on a legal career because she wanted to help people, especially women and minorities.

She chose the route of employment law, opting to work on the employer side rather than plaintiffs’ cases. “I wanted to make sure the system is fair from the very start and avoid people feeling mistreated in the first place,” she said.

While serving as outside counsel for Wal-Mart Stores through Porter Wright Morris & Arthur in Columbus, Ohio, McKenzie-Harris was offered a job by the retailer 10 years ago, and she saw an opportunity to have substantial influence.

“Being the largest employer in the country, Wal-Mart is uniquely positioned to have an impact on the work environments of hundreds of thousands of women and minorities and can, through its associates, ensure the fair and equitable treatment of over one million Americans,” she said.

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Efficiency expert JAMES MELTON spends his days finding ways to maximize the capabilities of the George’s hatchery, while minimizing the cost of labor.

He’s only been with the company since early July, but he certainly understands the importance of the work in a competitive poultry market.

“Our goal is to compete against companies who maybe have newer facilities with our efficiencies,” he said. “If the efficiency within our process is spot-on, that’s where we’ll see cost reductions in labor, damage to products, mishandled products, that sort of thing.”

Melton said if the process in his department can be perfected during the next year, “we can think about rolling some of the methodology out to other departments.”

Melton graduated from Missouri Southern in Joplin in 2007 with a double major in history and biology. In 2009, he began a five-year career working with the global product development team at Rockline Industries in Springdale. He credited two mentors there — Doug Cole and Lori Messenbrink — for giving him a strong basis in the manufacturing industry.

Melton has also worked for Triple T Foods in Springdale as director of operations.

“The joy I get from work is when a solution works,” he said. “Going through the research and implementation and saving the company money gives me great sat-isfaction.”

After graduating high school and before matriculating, Melton spent two years in the U.S. Coast Guard as a petty officer. He’s also a licensed pilot, and took full con-trol of his first airplane when he was 13 years old.

“My dad was a pilot in the Air Force; I started flying before I drove a car,” he said.

She accepted the role of assistant general counsel and has since worked in a number of divisions within the company. She was promoted to associate counsel in 2013 and senior associate counsel II in May.

She is an active member of St. James Missionary Baptist Church in Fayetteville, an officer in the local branch of the NAACP, board secretary for the Urban League of the State of Arkansas and vice president of the NWA graduate chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority.

She grew up in Slidell, La., attended Spelman College in Atlanta and the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and graduated University of Notre Dame Law School in 2002.

She loves to travel and has visited six continents. She and her husband live in Rogers and have one daughter, McKenna, 1.

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Born in St. Louis, MARTIN MILLER spent most of his childhood in Fayetteville and considers that his hometown. Through four years at college in Minnesota, then two years of graduate school in Chicago and working at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Miller often returned to Fayetteville to see friends.

He attended a performance of Rabbit Hole at the Walton Arts Center in 2009 and was at once struck by the beauty of the production and the sparseness of the crowd.

“It was one of the best theater experiences I’d ever had — in Chicago or anywhere else,” Miller said. So, where was the audience?

That was the missing ingredient. “I thought, ‘Northwest Arkansas is the perfect place for professional theater. There is so much hunger for the arts, it’s such a philanthropic environment, and the quality of the work was already so good,’” he said.

Around that time, he reconnected with Robert Ford, who had directed Miller as a teen-age play-actor. Ford is artistic director of what was then a budding professional theater company, TheatreSquared.

Miller joined T2 as executive director and moved back to Fayetteville.

In the eight years since, T2’s audience grew from about 3,000 to more than 40,000. Its annual budget went from $160,000 to about $2.5 million.

“It’s amazing what this community was ready for and is ready for,” he said.

Now, construction is underway on a $34 million, 50,000-square-foot permanent home for T2, scheduled to open in 2019.

“It’s just great to be part of the story of what’s happening in the arts in NWA,” Miller said.

In his spare time, Miller likes hiking, traveling and spending time with his wife and three kids.

Growing up amongst the row crops of northeast Arkansas, SHANNON MIRUS saw that agriculture was both the heart and economic engine of her community — whether people grew rice or soybeans, sold farm trucks, worked in banking or cooked for a farmer.

“Everybody where I’m from is in agriculture or is tied to agriculture,” she said. “It’s such a highly-regulated industry that I wanted to learn more about how to help people nav-igate the system that’s in place.”

She summarily earned a degree in agricultural business, then a law degree, and a mas-ter of laws in agricultural law, all at the University of Arkansas.

Being in a field dominated by men never fazed Mirus. In 2007, she joined the Nation-al Agricultural Law Center in Fayetteville as a staff and research attorney. There she worked under Harrison Pittman, whom she still considers a mentor.

At age 30, she became the first female general counsel for the Arkansas Oklahoma Gas Corp., where she remained until just a few weeks ago. She has overseen legal

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LANDI MKHIZE’S decision in 2005 to take a job with the Arkansas State Bank De-partment ensured that during the recession he was examining banks rather than being in the painful position of working for one. He recalls hearing about an early bankruptcy in 2006 and a colleague predicting, “This is the start.”

For eight years, Mkhize traveled the state as economic conditions worsened; he rose to a senior examiner. “It was trial by fire in a stressful period, and it was tough watching the people we examined.” He saw the industry begin to recover in 2012, and in 2013 was hired by Chambers Bank as a controller.

The following year, Mkhize was promoted to chief financial officer and in 2017 was also named CFO of Chambers Bancshares Inc. Coworkers say he has a brilliant mind and is a joy to work with.

Mkhize was born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa, during the tail end of apart-heid, which he calls a period of great tension, violence and transformation. “[Nelson] Mandela’s reconciliation and the way he treated everyone had a big impact on my life,” he said.

He came to Arkansas for college in 2001 and earned a business degree from the Uni-versity of Arkansas. He became involved in banking while taking the Rebsamen Fund Portfolio Management course. He credits his professor and mentor, John Dominick, for advising him to take the position with the state banking department. In 2012, he gradu-ated from the Graduate School of Banking at Colorado.

Mkhize teaches financial literacy and is involved with Junior Achievement of Northwest Arkansas. An avid soccer player and coach, he hopes to engage in future charity work to provide much-needed soccer equipment to children in South Africa.


and regulatory matters with the Arkansas Public Service Commission, Oklahoma Corp. Commission and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. She drafted legislation, then lobbied and testified to see three bills become law.

Mirus also helped found the nonprofit Arkansas Women in Agriculture.

“It’s a statewide organization to educate and empower women who work in agricul-ture, so they can learn from each other,” she explained. “If you’re working a tractor on a 4,000-acre soybean farm, you’re not often encountering others. And because husbands often die first, many women have inherited farms and are seeking resources.”

Mirus is exploring possibilities for her next job, including considering private practice, but she intends to remain in Northwest Arkansas.

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DAVE PINSON was hired by Trinity in February 2011 as a regional director. He was in charge of supervising a handful of properties in Oklahoma and Fort Smith, just a small percentage of the company’s overall portfolio of approximately 2,500 units in Oklaho-ma and Arkansas.

The ensuing years at Trinity have been marked by the firm’s growth, and Pinson’s in-creased leadership. He was tapped as president in April 2015, and added the title of CEO a little more than a year later.

Today, the approximately $7 million company has about 315 employees and manages nearly 14,000 units in seven states (Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, Tennessee, Mississippi and Texas). Trinity will soon enter the Indiana market via acquisition.

“We’re a blessed company,” Pinson said. “We’ve had some phenomenal growth and some talented and good people.”

He said the growth plan for the next several years is distinct. The target is between 25,000 and 27,000 units under management.

“Our 2025 vision plan is to be one of the 50 largest property management companies in the U.S.,” he said.


Persevering through a downturned economy, two job layoffs and the challenges of a startup, JOE PAYNE has emerged as a respected member of the creative tech com-munity in Northwest Arkansas.

Payne now leads a nationwide design team for RevUnit, which builds digital platforms for companies such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and its suppliers. He’s described as a thought leader and design expert by his peers.

Payne’s drive and innovation emerged as young as age 11, when he began building websites on his Gateway PC using simple default programs such as Microsoft Paint and Notepad. He was one of eight students in his graduating class at Oark High School in Johnson County, and studied graphic design at Arkansas Tech University. “It felt closest to what I had in my head,” he said. “I always wanted to make things, but I haven’t always known how to express that as a career.”

Payne joined Walmart’s management training program for several years then took a management position with Old Navy, continuing to freelance in design on the side. He also worked for a Springdale print shop then helped launch print and design agency Moxy Ox with a partner. The company grew from five to 16 employees before Payne moved on to other ventures. In 2015, he joined RevUnit. Payne said he enjoys the mul-ti-disciplinary aspect of his work. “There are many trades within the umbrella, and it’s about solving problems and being facilitators.”

Along with his former Moxy Ox partner (who also works for RevUnit), Payne created and co-hosts The Sarcast, a podcast about design, business and technology. Payne also helped found Creatives United to connect creative professionals in the NWA commu-nity. He’s also a board member for avad3, a local production company.

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Pinson, a native of Umpire in southwest Arkansas, earned bachelor’s and master’s de-grees from Arkansas Tech University. His career began in student housing, working first for ATU and later for Morningside College in Iowa. He was later director of housing and residential life at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith.

“Dave has been one of the most impressive young people I have worked with in over a decade,” said Mark Mosch, a multifamily fund manager/investor and president of Cal-ifornia-based real estate investment firm AndMark Management Co. “He truly takes responsibility for all of the commitments made by his enterprise, and I think that’s a key to their growth over the past few years.”

Married with three children, Pinson has a certified apartment manager designation through the National Apartment Association.


If JARROD RAMSEY finds himself lacking motivation, he said, “I think of the Biblical principle, do everything as if you’re doing it for the Lord.”

The Preston, Okla., native holds himself and others to a high standard, and employees have thanked him for being like a “wall of quality” and never letting them “slack off,” Ramsey said.

In fact, Ramsey considers his greatest accomplishment “holding a long and steady course of investing in other people,” he said. “Behind me is a trail of people who have overcome some of their problems, or whose strengths have been doubled, or tripled or quadrupled.”

Ramsey moved to NWA because of Wal-Mart Stores, where he worked as a developer from 2001 to 2007. There, he started out on the company’s global email messaging team and later was “hand-picked” to work on helping to tweak the RFID (radio-frequen-cy identification) inventory system.

Afterward, he worked at Arkansas National Bank until 2008, when he joined Rockfish Digital as senior developer. He became senior director of mobile technology in 2012 and vice president of mobile technology in 2014.

Ramsey also serves as president of the NWA Tech Council, where he is focused on education programs and organizing the council’s main annual event, this fall’s NWA Tech Summit.

He holds a master’s degree in computer information science from Bellevue University in Nebraska.

Ramsey serves as a mentor with the youth group at New Hope Assembly church in Rogers. “I gravitate toward the kids that hang out by themselves, and I help provide them structure and guidance.”

His spare time is often spent with his wife and three kids. He also enjoys working on his car, a 1972 Plymouth Barracuda.

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MEGAN RAYNOR has an exceptional commitment to connectivity and community involvement, and her career is a testament to the rewards.

Raynor says she chose the field of accounting by accident. She was “just looking for bu-sywork” the summer before college when she took a job in the accounts payable office of Sparks Regional Medical Center. She got the job because she had been a babysitter to children of the hospital’s comptroller, who offered her a part-time position. Raynor enjoyed the accounting work, which she continued after earning a business degree from the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith.

In 2006, Raynor joined Hanna Oil & Gas, a family-run production and exploration com-pany. She was recommended for that job after mentioning to a former teacher that she was looking for a new position.

Raynor participated in 2010 Leadership Fort Smith and met a woman on the Clayton House Board of Directors who later contacted her about joining that board (Raynor has been there five years now). She is part of Keep Fort Smith Beautiful, is a Fort Smith Jaycee (once a Volunteer of the Year), and this month will travel to Quantico as an alumni of her city’s 2016 FBI Academy (she also went through the police, sheriff, fire and citizen’s academies).

“I want to be informed. I get to be in the know and meet people. The person who influ-enced me the most to get involved is my aunt, Peggy Weidman. She was very involved in many areas of Fort Smith, from helping grow the art museum and cancer support house, to being on the Parks and Recreation and Keep Arkansas Beautiful Commis-sions. I think it’s very important to give back and make your town a better place to live.”

JACOB ROBERTS says his life’s purpose is to help other people become successful and achieve their dreams, and he accomplishes this through mentoring, serving the community and focusing on relationships.

Now a senior executive recruiter at Stout Executive Search, Roberts says his work ethic and personal tenacity are the outgrowth of having observed the life of his 97-year-old grandfather, who survived as a prisoner of war during World War II and was married for more than 70 years.

“I believe if you’re genuinely interested in people’s lives and career, and doing things for the right reasons, things happen in a good way,” Roberts said. “I learned these values from my grandfather and have modeled myself after him.”

Roberts was raised in Fort Smith. While studying biology at the University of Arkansas, he took a job at the Dillard’s store in Rogers, where one of his customers was Marvelyn Stout.

After his graduation, Stout offered him a position at her firm, which recruits exclusively for supplier teams serving Wal-Mart Stores. Roberts was Rookie of the Year in 2011 and has since been named top producer three times. He earned pacesetter status to rank in the top 20% of recruiters nationally.

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Through the firm’s inaugural sponsorship of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Roberts said he developed an artistic knowledge and appreciation, and is now an active supporter and promoter of the arts.

He is a career coach and since 2012 has served on the Northwest Arkansas Paint the Town Red committee, benefiting the American Heart Association. Roberts also has a friend with cystic fibrosis, which led to his being named one of the 2017 Finest Hono-rees for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, a designation given to influential and successful young leaders in Northwest Arkansas.

Roberts is also a volunteer basketball coach at the Boys & Girls Club of Benton County.


Recruited to help develop the firm’s transactional business practice in its North-west Arkansas office, CAL ROSE has helped several companies in the tech and real estate space acquire or merge with other companies.

Though each client is different, he said the common denominator is problem solv-ing. That’s the side he enjoys most.

“Every day is different,” he said. “I enjoy new challenges and law allows me to do that on the business side. When someone calls their attorney, it’s not because they had some random musing on their mind. There’s a problem that has to be dealt with, and I enjoy helping clients in their time of need.”

A Blytheville native, Rose played basketball at Hendrix College in Conway and graduated in 2010. While there, he spent one summer as an intern for former U.S. Senator Blanche Lincoln.

He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Arkansas School of Law in 2013. While there he served as articles editor for the Arkansas Law Review and was a member of the Board of Advocates.

While working for another law firm in the region, Rose earned his Master of Laws in taxation from New York University School of Law in 2015.

Since joining WLJ last year, he’s worked with privately-held companies in the region for multiple capital raises, and public companies across the country with acquisi-tions.

Rose is also blazing a trail among his peers to help entrepreneurs find their busi-ness footing in the state’s newest industry — medical marijuana.

“These businesses have a huge need for services,” he said.

Outside of growing his practice with the firm, Rose said he also has aspirations of becoming more engaged in the community, working to make the region a better place to live and work.

Rose is a graduate of the most recent class of Leadership Fayetteville.

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In 2011, NOEL SANGER left behind the big bank industry and moved his family to Fort Smith to take a job at United Federal Credit Union. Sanger became the market vice presi-dent overseeing five branches and 49 employees in Arkansas and Oklahoma.

Sanger adjusted to a different pace and culture after working in the markets of Chicago, San Diego and Kansas City — and for large operations U.S. Bank and Chase Bank. Six years later he has built a team with high loyalty and exceptionally low turnover. He was named Boss of the Year in 2014 through the Fort Smith Junior Chamber, and his market has repeat-edly ranked at the top for employee satisfaction within United’s system.

“I fell in love with credit unions; we have our own niche. We’ll write the smaller loans and I value being able to serve in my community,” Sanger said.

Sanger’s original college major was psychology, and his first jobs were as a drug court liai-son and a tutor for prisoners; he always enjoyed helping people, but during college decided he’d rather do so in a field that was less taxing personally.

Sanger appreciates that he can overlap work and community outreach. He recreated a program in Fort Smith that he had seen in a larger market; the River Valley Corporate Chal-lenge now raises funds for the Children’s Emergency Shelter and Fort Smith Boys and Girls Club. He also implemented a Perfect Attendance program at seven area schools, which has created a dramatic spike in attendance.

He is a board member, coach and volunteer for the River Valley Futbol Club.

Sanger is also a board member of the Fort Smith Regional Chamber of Commerce, and he was president of the nonprofit First Tee of Fort Smith in 2015.

The cornerstone of MARSHALL SAVIERS’ business philosophy is making sure Ar-kansas is an attractive place where companies and individuals can invest and expect to flourish.

And the attraction has been strong of late. Saviers helped broker the $56.8 million sale of the nine-story Bentonville Plaza office building late last year. He also represented the seller of nine industrial buildings in Bentonville totaling 233,000 square feet that went under new ownership in April in a $25.1 million deal.

The buyers in both of those deals were from out of state.

“The market really feels vibrant and healthy right now,” Saviers said.

Saviers also facilitated the merger last year of Sage Partners, Hunt Ventures of Rogers and Capital Properties in Little Rock. The commercial real estate and property manage-ment firm now has more than 3.8 million square feet under management, and Saviers oversees the company’s brokerage operations across the state.

“He shares many of the same corporate values that I think are important in good busi-ness,” said Johnelle Hunt, the chairwoman and owner of Hunt Ventures. “Trusting him to execute the merger was a smart decision, and I’m very proud of how he has successfully brought our companies together.”

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MATT SPENCE leads a team of 140 employees across 17 stores throughout the region, overseeing AT&T sales and operations. In 2007, he started as a sales repre-sentative in Russellville and was promoted to assistant store manager before leav-ing to open a store in Poplar Bluff, Mo., near his hometown of Piggott.

“When I was at Poplar Bluff, we had the No. 1 store in the nation,” Spence said. He transferred to a struggling Little Rock store before progressing to area manager for southern Arkansas.

Since moving to Northwest Arkansas in 2015, he’s worked to improve customer service and sales. He’s hosted pool parties and barbecues at area subdivisions and apartment complexes to get the word out about the services the company offers.

He’s also worked to make sure that customers get the services they want when they expect them. “We’re extremely competitive in this industry,” he said. “What’s going to separate yourself is going to be customer experience.”

His area leads in customer service for the AT&T submarket, which includes Arkan-sas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri.

In 2015, he was selected to develop a program to improve customer service in stores across the nation. He opened the area’s first Store of the Future in Rogers, and he’s also working to redesign the area stores with Razorback branding.

Spence has promoted more than 50 employees, and his sales team has received the AT&T Summit Award four times. He won the first employee engagement award in Arkansas and was selected to take the Retail Management Development Program.

He is a volunteer for Junior Achievement for Northwest Arkansas, United Way, Girl Scouts and Susan G. Komen. He enjoys golf, deer hunting and is a Razorback fan.

A Little Rock Central graduate, Saviers earned a business degree from Southern Meth-odist University in 2002, then worked in Dallas for three years before relocating to Northwest Arkansas.

He went to work for Irwin and Saviers, where his father, Mark Saviers, was a partner. The firm split in 2005, and Sage Partners was formed.

Married with two children, Saviers is currently serving a three-year term on the execu-tive committee of the Northwest Arkansas Council.

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Because her parents ran a women’s shelter, NATALIE TIBBS was exposed early to trauma and difficult circumstances, and she decided: “I want to be part of the hope and the beauty and not the ugliness in the world.”

Though it made an impression at the time, Tibbs knows now through her work that she was shielded from the darkest aspects of abuse as a child.

Tibbs has served as sexual assault nurse examiner for 11 years at Children’s Advocacy Center of Benton County and in an administrative role for about four.

She considers it a calling and leans on her Christian faith to get through tough days.

“These children’s stories — no matter how traumatic, horrible and scary they are — I need to be able to walk through that time of ashes with them, because we all need someone who can walk beside us in our darkest times,” she said.

Her proudest professional moments are when former clients return to the center, often years later.

“Sometimes, they tell me that small window of time that I spent with them was life-chang-ing for them,” Tibbs said. “We never know what type of impact we’ll have on the children.

“I’m here to make a difference in that child’s life, no matter how big or small,” she said.

Tibbs graduated with an associate degree from NorthWest Arkansas Community Col-lege in 2006.

Outside of work, she serves on the school board at First Baptist Christian School and on the community health board for Mercy Health.

She and her husband have four children, including a baby they adopted six months ago.

Tibbs follows the CrossFit fitness regimen, coaches her daughter’s soccer team and is active at the family’s church, First Baptist Church in Rogers.

KRAIG WILLIAMS was 17 when he started in the financial industry as a client as-sociate, but he’s been a part of the industry since he was 8 when his mother became a financial adviser.

“We grew up playing in the office,” said Williams, adding it was across from Orange Julius at Northwest Arkansas Mall. His stepfather later joined the business, and he remembers seeing how fulfilling it was for his mother and stepfather to help people.

“It didn’t feel like we worked for a company,” Williams said. “It felt like we were working with people.”

Over the next 22 years, the Springdale native worked his way up the ladder, becoming managing director — investments for Williams Investment Group of Wells Fargo Advi-sors on Jan. 1. Though the firm’s name has changed, he’s worked at the same firm over that period.

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And from the time he became financial adviser to taking on a leadership role as a managing director, he continually worked to build up the business through continuing education and earned several internal achievements. But the three things that have led to his success include his team, clients and the foundation his mother and stepfather built before him.

“It never gets old helping people,” he said. “We’re not afraid to meet with people who don’t have money. Everybody starts somewhere.”

Highlights of his career include the opportunity to work alongside his mother and step-father for more than 20 years and to take a leadership role in the firm.

“I’m most proud of the fact I’m able to carry on the legacy and tradition,” he said.

In 1999, Williams graduated with a bachelor’s degree in financial management from the University of Arkansas.

The diehard Razorbacks fan and musician is actively involved in conservation. He enjoys golf, the outdoors and fishing.


AARON WIRTH remembers how strong the real estate market was before the recession.

“We were literally hanging the sign at [Fayetteville subdivision] Salem Heights when we had people asking to buy the lot,” Wirth said.

In 2005, the Harrison native became treasurer and co-owner at Cobblestone Homes after earning an MBA from Wichita State University. Wirth, who always wanted to own his own business, became vice president after buying out another partner in the business.

The company focuses on residential projects but also has more than 50 rental prop-erties and some multi-family developments. It’s built six residential developments, with the largest ones in Fayetteville. In May, work started on the first phase of Brooklands, an 85-lot neighborhood with room for additional phases. It’s adjacent to Mountain Ranch, a 117-lot project built by Cobblestone Homes.

As a real estate broker, Wirth sells a majority of homes he’s built, which in Northwest Arkansas, is “several hundred.” The biggest deal he’s closed on was the $2.4 million purchase of 101 acres for the Brooklands development.

In the recession, Wirth was instrumental in “tightening the belt” and implementing a new software system. “When the recession hit, we saw it fairly early on.” The “war chest” the company had built up for growth was used to remain in business. No jobs were cut, but sales were impacted. Before the recession, Cobblestone Homes was selling the same number of houses in a month that it sold in six months after the recession.

“I was pretty proud we survived and made it,” he said.

Wirth is a deacon at Mount Zion Baptist Church in Greenwood, finance chair for the Northwest Arkansas Home Builders Association and a youth sports coach. He spends his free time remodeling his house and property, formerly a dairy farm.

Documents

A Better Brand for Arkansas - Winthrop Rockefeller · Working as a strategist, meeting designer, facilitator and coach, Gregory works with a range of groups from small non-profits