Jerry Adams of Conway is nothing if not self-aware.
As he handed over his two-page list of board positions and awards during an interview, he said, “It’s semi-
overwhelming” — for an observer, not for him, that is.
As he put it, “I’m good at spinning plates.”
By plates, he means serving on more than a dozen boards, including for organizations he helped create.
“I don’t join things just to join things. I join things that are making a difference,” Adams said.
He was honored with the Guy Murphy Distinguished Service Award at the Conway Area Chamber of Commerce annual meeting March 17.
“It was lovely — very much appreciated. You don’t get involved in a community for an award,” he said.
Adams is alone on this day in the Arkansas Research Alliance office on the third floor of the historic Halter Building in downtown Conway. He founded the company in 2008 with the goal of bringing new research talent to Arkansas.
The 72-year-old Adams made his mark at Acxiom Corp., where he retired in 2007 after 34 years in various leadership positions that led him to stints in New York and Malaysia.
It was fortuitous that he met Acxiom founder Charles Morgan when they both attended Sewanee: The University of the South in Tennessee and were Kappa Sigma fraternity brothers. Adams also learned that his parents were friends with Morgan’s parents.
Morgan left Sewanee after two years to attend the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville College of Engineering, but they remained friends.
After graduation, Adams went into Naval Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island, and became commissioned as an officer. He was stationed with a NATO security detachment in Norfolk, Virginia, for a few years.
From there, he went to work in Dallas at Electronic Data Systems, which was founded by H. Ross Perot. Adams spent 4 1/2 years in that position, and his friend Charles Morgan was working for IBM at the time.
“Charles left IBM and was enthusiastic about what he was doing with Demographics,” Adams said. In June 1973, Adams came to Conway to work for Morgan at Demographics, which became Acxiom.
Adams said he loved Conway immediately, as well as his job.
“I probably had the most varied career of anyone who started there,” he said. There were 25 employees when Adams started and about 7,000 when he retired, he said.
Adams and his wife of almost 52 years, Madelyn, moved to Brewster, New York, in 1989 so Adams could oversee Guidepost magazine’s technology, which had been outsourced to Acxiom. With their two sons, Jeff and Seth, out of the house, the couple were empty nesters by that time, he said.
They stayed two years, and Adams had the chance to set up an Acxiom office in Asia. He had spent 1 1/2 years doing research on where to open an office, and decided on Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Madelyn was not keen on moving to Malaysia, he said, so he traveled between Malaysia and Conway for 4 1/2 years, staying overseas two to six weeks at a time.
“It was an extraordinary experience,” he said. “There was a lot of opportunity, but the economy collapsed in ’98.”
When he came back to Conway, he took over corporate marketing at Acxiom.
His passion, he said, has always been helping others. At Acxiom, Adams ran external relations, which included university relations and community relations.
“In some ways, I’m a heart guy coming out of a head company,” he said.
In 2001, Adams and Bob Nabholz of Conway, the founder of Nabholz Construction, helped create the Faulkner County affiliate of the Arkansas Community Foundation. Nabholz died a few months after it started, and his brother Charles Nabholz of Conway joined the board. Adams said Charles is a mentor to him.
It’s a mutual-admiration society.
Nabholz compared Adams to an Energizer bunny: “He never stops; he’s always on the go. He’s on more nonprofit boards than anyone in the state of Arkansas, probably. He’s not just a member only — he’s real active and kind of a leader on every board I serve with him on. He has personal goals in helping whatever board he’s on; he’s really serious about advancing the goals,” Nabholz said. “He’s so smart and good at what he does; he’s more my mentor than I am his.”
Adams said he likes people who take action and get things done — people like his friend Shelley Mehl.
Mehl asked Adams to assist a group at First United Methodist Church that was working to start health services for the uninsured working poor, and in 2003, the group opened Conway Interfaith Clinic, now CHI St. Vincent Interfaith Clinic. Adams was the chairman of its board for four years.
“It was always challenging, but you knew you were doing the right thing,” he said. “We had a great board. We were good-hearted, but health care is complex,” he said. CHI St. Vincent took over this year, he said. “We couldn’t ask for a better transition.”
Adams also served on the Conway Regional Health System Board of Directors, and then-Gov. Mike Beebe
appointed Adams to a Blue Ribbon Committee on Health Care.
His list of educational efforts is a long one. He is a past chairman of the EAST (environmental and spatial technologies) initiative and helped start the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) initiative. Adams is also the founding board chairman of Arkansas Preschool Plus, a nonprofit organization founded by Charlotte Green of Conway to support preschool education.
He said one-third of kids who come to kindergarten aren’t equipped.
“If those children are behind in third grade, they’re indicted,” he said. Adams said Arkansas Preschool Plus gives awards to the caregivers who are touched by the recognition “and they cry — no one has rewarded them.”
For years, he has read to an elementary class at the former Sallie Cone Elementary School, now Carolyn Lewis Elementary School.
“I am an expert in Clifford the Big Red Dog and Arthur the Aardvark,” he said.
Thanks primarily to the three institutions of higher education in Conway, he said, 40 percent of its residents have a college degree, compared with 20 percent statewide.
“Conway is sort of an island community,” he said. Adams said he travels the state often, and “there aren’t too many Conways.”
A case in point is Eudora, he said.
Adams said he went to an event in Eudora as a member of the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation Board.
“One of the key issues is to reduce poverty,” he said.
“I’ll probably tear up,” he said, as he started to tell the story. A single mother sitting next to Adams told him that she got her kids up at 5:30 a.m. so they could catch a bus at 6:15 to go to school in Lake Village because she didn’t own a car, he said. His eyes glistened with tears behind his glasses.
“Most of my world is wealth creation. … I’ve learned an enormous amount,” he said. “A day in Eudora really informs you about how complicated Arkansas is.”
Adams has been on mission trips to Guatemala the past five years with St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Conway. He goes with medical personnel, and 50 to 100 people are lined up by 8 a.m. to be seen, Adams said.
“I’m an unskilled volunteer. I carry luggage, count pills and so on,” he said. He challenged someone to spend a week with the Mayan Indians, “then come back here and whine.”
He helped found Accelerate Arkansas in 2000, which is made up of business and education leaders across the state who want to help Arkansas move forward in the 21st century, he said.
“It’s done most of the knowledge-economy visioning for the state. It was a platform for Beebe and has been embraced by the new administration, as well,” Adams said.
Adams founded the Arkansas Research Alliance in 2008, and he has two full-time employees and two part-time employees in his office on the third floor of the historic Halter Building in downtown Conway.
The Arkansas Research Alliance is a public/private partnership that includes five universities. The primary focus is to use university research in Arkansas for long-term economic impact, he said.
“We recruit research leaders to Arkansas and try to convert their innovations into economic opportunities,” he said.
A grant provides $500,000 for Arkansas Research Alliance Scholars. Last year, the alliance started recognizing research leaders already on the campuses by giving them $75,000 over a three-year period.
Wanting to make a difference is in his DNA, but he concentrates his efforts in Conway or statewide, not nationally, Adams said.
“I feel fortunate to have landed in Conway,” he said.
Adams likes to share a story about living in New York and telling people that he had traveled and lived other places, “but central Arkansas was my favorite place to live. They’d look at me like I’d taken
a blow to the head,” he said.
“I’m a little embarrassed by everything I’m involved in, but I care about them,” he said. Arkansas needs leaders, Adams said. “Being present, showing up, taking responsibility — everybody can do something like that.”
Adams said his favorite quote is: “The world is run by the people who show up.”
And he shows up — again and again.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.