ARKADELPHIA — Phil Baldwin, the financial force behind the Arkadelphia Promise scholarship program and many other projects offering opportunities and economic development in the Arkadelphia area, is stepping down as president and CEO of Southern Bancorp.
Late Wednesday, the Arkadelphia-based bank reported Baldwin’s retirement at age 52. According to the announcement, Baldwin will remain at Southern for several months to help provide the company with a smooth transition to new management. Baldwin, who joined Southern in April 2000, said he is retiring to slow down, spend more time with his family and pursue philanthropic interests.
“After retirement from Southern, I would hope to work much less, but intend to continue to work in furtherance of providing help to those in need,” Baldwin said. “Southern will be in very good hands after my retirement, based on the succession plan that we’ve been implementing over the past few months.”
Southern Bancorp is the largest rural-development banking organization in the United States. The bank holding company established a group of nonprofit development affiliates in Arkansas and Mississippi in an attempt to drive change and development in the region.
In 1986, then Gov. Bill Clinton and the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation announced an initiative to improve economic conditions in rural Arkansas by creating means for investment. A consortium of private foundations, governmental entities, corporations and concerned individuals was formed to create and to incorporate Southern Bancorp later that year. Founding directors included then Arkansas first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, Thomas F. McLarty, Rob Walton and Walter Smiley, chairman of the board of directors of Southern Bancorp Inc., the holding company for the community-development bank and nonprofit affiliates.
Smiley announced that he will serve as chairman and interim CEO of the holding company. He was founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Systematics Inc., a financial data processing software company ranked by Forbes magazine as one of the top 100 companies in the nation.
Scott Fife has been promoted to president and CEO of Southern Bancorp. Fife, who is president of Southern Bancorp Bank’s El Dorado market, joined Southern in June 2009 with more than 20 years of banking experience. Fife will manage all banking operations for Southern Bancorp. Prior to joining Southern, Fife served as president of Simmons First National Bank in El Dorado.
Tanya Wright will continue to serve as group president of Southern Bancorp Inc., heading up the nonprofit affiliates.
According to the company’s announcement, Wright will oversee the nonprofit company’s “mission activities,” along with key functions, such as the company’s human resources, audit, compliance, marketing and communications efforts for both the bank and nonprofit companies. Wright joined Southern in January 2010 from Heifer International in Little Rock, where she served as global executive vice president.
In the decade that Baldwin was with Southern Bancorp, the bank grew from a $252 million bank earning $427,000 in net income in 2000 to a $1.1 billion bank with net income of more than $9 million in 2010.
Baldwin also spearheaded an expansion into Mississippi aimed at better providing banking and community-development services to disadvantaged people and establishing Southern as a regional development organization in that state as it was in Arkansas. Southern now has 16 branches in Mississippi and 24 branches in Arkansas.
According to a statement by the company, Southern grants several million dollars to enhance the communities it serves and provides more than $300 million in loans to individuals and businesses in high-poverty areas each year.
In 2010, Baldwin and Southern were instrumental in establishing the Arkadelphia Promise Scholarship program in Clark County in partnership with the Ross Foundation.
“The Arkadelphia Promise is truly a game-changing initiative,” Baldwin said when the project was announced. “A college degree is a passport to future prosperity for individuals, and a more college-educated work force makes Arkadelphia a more attractive community in which to locate a business. Southern is proud to help make this promise to Arkadelphia students and parents.”
The company also recently announced a similar program, called the Grant River Promise scholarship program, in Phillips County in east Arkansas to help area students attend Phillips Community College of the University of Arkansas.
“The recently announced Arkadelphia Promise and Great River Promise scholarship programs are the capstones of Phil’s legacy at Southern,”
Smiley said. “Phil will leave Southern in impressive financial condition, but most importantly, his visionary leadership has established a strong foundation for Southern’s mission of building communities and changing lives to endure for many years to come.”
Another highlight of Baldwin’s tenure includes the initiation of comprehensive community-development planning efforts in Clark County that became the blueprint for development and new investment in the area.
Wesley Kluck, vice president of Institutional Advancement at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia and chairman of the Clark County Strategic Planning Organization, which oversees the implementation of the regional development plan, said the plan for the future of the region would not exist without Baldwin.
“Obviously, it was not just him; we had the help of the entire corporation, but it was his leadership and support that made the Clark County Strategic Plan possible,” Kluck said. “Most people don’t know all that he has done for the region.”
Kluck said the community’s relationship with the development bank will continue, but will not be the same.
“We will see how the corporation will reorganize and be ready to adjust to the new structure,” he said. “We will miss having Phil; he was our champion and biggest cheerleader.”
Baldwin’s wife, Dee Dee Baldwin, has also been active in the community. She served as a member of the Arkadelphia Board of Directors from Ward 3. She resigned from the city’s governing body on Sept. 2, citing a “division” among board members. She had another year remaining in her term.
Kluck, who is a close friend of the Baldwin family, said he and the community are glad to know the Baldwins will continue to be a part of Arkadelphia.