Elizabeth Bradley

Third-generation Rotarian named district President of the Year

Elizabeth Bradley of Wooster was named Rotarian of the Year by the Conway Rotary Club; then she was named Rotary Club President of the Year by District 6170. “I was really taken aback by that and really honored,” she said. Bradley is also the new grants chairwoman for District 6170.
Elizabeth Bradley of Wooster was named Rotarian of the Year by the Conway Rotary Club; then she was named Rotary Club President of the Year by District 6170. “I was really taken aback by that and really honored,” she said. Bradley is also the new grants chairwoman for District 6170.

One of Elizabeth Bradley’s childhood memories is going to Rotary Club meetings in Monticello with her grandfather and her dad, who served as the group’s president.

“It was primarily men at that point in time,” she said of the club’s membership.

Times definitely have changed.

Bradley was honored in June in Hot Springs as President of the Year for Rotary Club District 6170. She is immediate past president of the Conway Morning Rotary Club, which also named her Rotarian of the Year.

“I was really taken back by that,” she said. “This year was not me at all; this was our club. They just did such an awesome job, and it made my job look really easy.”

The Conway Morning Rotary Club was named Club of the Year, as was the Conway Noon Rotary Club.

“I thought that was awesome because most of our projects were together,” Bradley said of the two Rotary clubs.

She’s not taking a breather after being president; she has taken a district-level position as grants chairwoman. When Rotary clubs apply for grants, Bradley and a committee will help choose which ones to fund.

Bradley’s entry into the Conway Morning Rotary Club was at the invitation of Linda Tyler of Conway, a former state representative. The two had met over coffee to discuss Bradley’s dilemma of whether to move from her job at Southern Bancorp in Little Rock to a position at First Security Bank in Conway.

Bradley, who lives in Wooster, said she “loved, loved” her previous job and wasn’t looking to move. However, a friend at First Security Bank in Conway persuaded her to take the new job. Bradley said not having to drive to Little Rock from Wooster was a big plus because she wanted to spend more time with her three children.

She took the job in January 2016 as compliance audit manager for First Security Bank and works under the internal audit department out of the Greenbrier branch to be closer to home.

Her husband, Brett, is a pilot for Southwest Airlines out of Dallas. They met when she was taking flying lessons in Conway — from him.

Bradley’s goal was to work for the FBI.

“That’s part of why I wanted to get my flight lessons, because that kind of sets you apart,” she said. “I had gone to a conference, and they talked about white-collar crime. … I was really just trying to find myself and find out what I wanted to be.”

Bradley’s 90-year-old grandfather, Jerry Davis, is a pilot. She said that’s how he helped the family forestry business he founded, Davis Forestry, by flying the family from state to state. Her grandfather encouraged her to take flying lessons and offered to pay for them.

“Granddad was like, ‘The people in aviation will change your life forever, Elizabeth.’ … I told him, ‘I didn’t realize how much you meant that,’” she said, laughing.

“I soloed and passed my private-pilot written exam. I just needed my cross-country and was due cross countries before my checkride. Yesterday, I just got signed up with my flight instructor again. Twelve years later, I’m trying to accomplish that goal,” Bradley said.

She grew up with both sets of grandparents living across the street, and she said she’s lucky that her parents are her best friends.

“They’ve all groomed me to be who I am today,” Bradley said. “We have very, very close relationships. I’ve been influenced all my life by great mentorships.”

Her banking experience started her first summer after college.

In high school, Bradley was working at a Chinese restaurant, and when she’d take the deposits to the bank, Union Bank and Trust Co., she said the employees would always ask her if she wanted to work there. After her first year at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, she served as an intern at the Monticello bank.

She also wanted to work at a bank while attending college.

“When I moved to Conway to go to UCA, funny enough, I was referred to First Security Bank, but they had just filled a position,” Bradley said. A First Security employee referred her to First State Bank, now Centennial Bank.

She worked at First State Bank through college as a teller and opening new accounts — as well as putting on the hot mascot costumes to portray Penny, Nick or Buck. She and friends who worked there would take turns being each mascot.

“Oh, my gosh; literally, they would put ice packs in those. It was hot, but it was fun. In college, you’ll do anything for some money,” Bradley said, laughing.

“I didn’t know I’d stay in banking,” she said. “I knew I liked numbers. I had already had a fascination of being around business, being around my dad. My dad would set me up with a calculator at his desk. They just always encouraged me about business and let me sit in on business meetings. I heard it; I wanted to be around it.”

After Bradley graduated from UCA in 2003 with a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in finance, she worked for Bank of the Ozarks, now Bank OZK, as an auditor.

Home Bancshares, the parent company of First State Bank/Centennial, called her.

“They were getting ready to go public,” she said. Bradley joined the parent company as senior auditor.

“[Home Bancshares] started buying banks in Florida, and I was on the acquisition team, sort of as an ambassador,” she said. When a bank was purchased and it changed from “whatever XYZ bank to Centennial, we’d go in and help with that process.”

She then left Home Bancshares to work for Southern Bancorp in Little Rock. While she was working there and raising her children, she earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting. Bradley said she’d been there five years and had no desire to leave.

Then she got a call from Erin Simpson, director of compliance at First Security Bank, about a job opening there. Bradley said she and Simpson had worked together at Home Bancshares.

Bradley said Darrin Williams, the CEO of Southern Bancorp and a former state legislator, suggested that before she made a decision, she should meet with Linda Tyler of Conway. Tyler, a former state representative, and Williams are friends.

Tyler said Williams really

hoped that she could talk Bradley out of taking another position. Tyler said Williams thought “the world” of Bradley and said she had the ability to be in the “C suite,” referring to a COO or CEO.

“He really just wanted me to talk to her about her career and goals,” Tyler said.

Bradley recalled that Tyler listened to her and said, “You can do it all; you just can’t do it all at the same time.”

“I thought, ‘My kids are just going to be little one time,’” Bradley said.

Her children are Emory, 12; Kyra, who will turn 11 on Aug. 31; and Olivia, 4.

Tyler also told Bradley that if she did take the job in Faulkner County, she needed to join the Conway Morning Rotary Club.

Bradley took the job at First Security and joined Rotary almost immediately, she said. In a three-year process, she was president nominee, president-elect, then president.

“When [Tyler] invited me, the women outnumbered the men, actually,” Bradley said. “I got to learn, and because I had worked for so many years outside of Conway, … I had friends and contacts but didn’t know what was going on.”

Being a member of Rotary has helped her network and “get in sync with the bank and nonprofit organizations,” she said.

Tyler said Bradley has excelled in Rotary.

“I am so very proud of her,” Tyler said of Bradley’s recent honor. “One of the things Elizabeth brought to Rotary was this desire and interest to collaborate with other Rotary clubs, particularly the Noon Rotary Club,” Tyler said.

She said that under Bradley’s leadership, the Conway Morning Rotary Club established a satellite club in Greenbrier.

Bradley said the Greenbrier club’s first meeting was in July, and it has 20 members to date. It was one of many highlights of her year, she said.

“We accomplished so much,” Bradley said. “There are right at 40 members on [the Conway Morning Rotary Club] roster. ‘I always say, ‘We’re small, but mighty.’ We did over 16 service projects in my year,” she said. “Our motto is ‘Service Above Self,’ and I felt like we exhibited that.”

One of the club’s bigger projects was getting a $5,000 grant through the Rotary Club’s district to put picnic tables at the splash pad in Laurel Park in Conway. The morning club partnered with Conway Noon Rotary to “get Rotary out there more,” she said.

Bradley said two other longtime projects of the Conway Morning Rotary Club are giving dictionaries to every third-grader in the Conway, Vilonia, Mayflower and Guy-Perkins school districts and conducting the annual cleanup of Cadron Settlement Park.

Bradley said a personal highlight of her year was being nominated as a Paul Harris Fellow for her contributions to the club.

“That was quite an honor,” she said.

She said Rotary clubs follow the four-way test: Is it the truth? Is it fair to all concerned? Will it build goodwill and better friendships? Will it be beneficial to all concerned?

“That’s one thing I have really taken away from Rotary, is to make sure that I continue to live my life in everything I do under the four-way test, as well as that service-above-self motto.”

For this third-generation Rotarian, it’s the only way.

Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.

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