VIDEO: Alden Napier: Business whiz finds his niche

Alden Napier, executive director of the nonprofit organization Credit Counseling of Arkansas, has wasted no time in making an impression on his peers. Online periodical Talk Business and Politics recognized this fact in 2018, when it put Napier on its annual "Forty Under 40" list. Prior to taking over the reins at CCOA, the Memphis, Tenn., native worked for the faith-based Camp War Eagle, where he started as a counselor and eventually became the associate director.

Napier hit the ground running immediately after he graduated with a major in economics and a minor in Spanish from the University of Memphis, which he credits to having worked for his family's construction business as an adolescent.

"I had some economic power that my friends didn't have, and it gave me some freedom and some experiences that were really cool," he says enthusiastically. "I had to start out as day labor -- basically, cleaning the job sites. That's all I did for a while, then mixing mortar, framing houses. And that turned into, eventually, project management. Dad let me bid jobs and work as a project manager in the company [during] my sophomore, junior and senior years in college and while I was preparing to go to law school. It was kind of crazy. He gave me a lot of responsibility. That was kind of a theme, being given a lot of opportunity early on. I failed a lot, but I tried to learn from that failure."

Napier was one of four boys in the family, all of whom started out being home-schooled. But each was given a choice before every school year.

"I always wanted to stay home," says Napier. "My brothers made other decisions, some of them with public or private school. The main incentive for me was -- I liked making money."

"When, at about age 16, he asked if he might start up a lawn care business, we were all in with the idea," says Napier's mom, Jennifer Napier. "He acquired his lawn accounts and was able to pay off [a] rig (trailer and equipment) in one summer. The younger brothers joined the team as soon as they were able, learning from big brother that using some of their free time in the summers wasn't so bad, especially when it came to payday!"

When Napier's family's businesses felt the hit of a dragging economy in 1998, says Jennifer, Napier was on hand to help out.

"By this time he was working his way through college, but he still found the time to help us in every way possible, estimating jobs, ordering materials, negotiating with customers and supervising subcontractors," she says.

Being at his father's side through all of this taught Napier a lot, he says, but it wasn't always easy.

"Working with the family has its own complications, tensions and things like that," he says with an amiable smile. "But largely, we got along and worked through it each day. You get to the end of the day and get to the supper table and say, 'Oh, let's leave all that behind, let's just talk,' and your family dinners last for three hours long."

Not the path he planned

In addition to the work experience, Napier's parents made sure that he had a lot of varied educational experiences, including lots of socialization in home school cooperative settings. He was also able to take college-level classes when he was close to graduation age -- an achievement that let him enroll at the University of Memphis with 15 college credit hours already under his belt. Settling into a traditional, large-scale educational setting was a bit of a challenge, but after a short period of adjustment, Napier was doing just fine.

His parents' biggest hope was that he would pursue either medicine or law as a career. Organic chemistry put an end to any plans he had for medicine, but he soon found that he excelled at economics, which struck him as a good pre-law major. After becoming friends with many of the Spanish-speaking men with whom he worked, he felt affinity for the language. So Napier also minored in Spanish, hoping it would be a useful skill for a lawyer to have. He was nearing graduation when he met a musical theater student named Heather. They were introduced by a mutual friend.

"She was working in a production company in Memphis, singing and dancing," says Napier. "She was a musical theater major, which was very attractive to me. For me, every bit of education had been purposed toward developing my economic potential. So I was inquisitive: 'What's happening here? How are you able to do this? This is so alien to me.'"

Heather agrees that the connection was instant.

"The conversation that we had in those two hours left me amazed that such a man existed -- and I remember thinking he is unlike anyone I have ever met," says Heather. We met at the perfect time. I don't think given the opportunity to know one another at a different season in our lives that we would have gotten along. I was a limit-pusher and Alden was and is very much a rule-follower. I wore pajama pants to class and Alden a tie and slacks. Needless to say God had quite an imagination bringing us together, and His timing was perfect."

Napier was smitten. When the end of college rolled around, he knew he wanted to keep Heather in his life. But his other plans had suddenly grown murkier. Though he took the LSATs and applied and was accepted at the University of Memphis School of Law, he balked at going on to those studies right away.

"I had just met this cute girl, and I was working for Dad and making good money. I thought, 'Maybe I should explore what working for Dad would look like a little bit more and see how that would complement my relationship with Heather as opposed to entering law school.' I just needed to explore some, so, I thought, 'I'm going to take a gap year, just figure this out and make some money before I get into law school.'"

So Napier worked and traveled, sometimes with Heather, and sometimes with a group of close friends who, he said, "held each other accountable -- just very intense friendships where iron sharpens iron." It was on one of these trips -- a Spanish language immersion trip to Guatemala -- where Napier came to a startling conclusion.

"I realized that I didn't want to go to law school, and I had to come home and say that," he says. "It was terrifying to me to say, 'I don't want to go to law school.' My mom and dad for years had said, 'One of the professions, one of the professions.' I had said 'No' to medicine, and now I was saying 'No' to legal. My heart was not in it.

"It was the first moment that I had to say, 'What you want is not what I want, and this feels really weird.' It was hard, specifically between me and my dad. It was really hard. But it was healthy. It allowed us to work through some things."

Another thing that Napier had decided in Guatemala was that he wanted to marry Heather. But beyond that, his future seemed uncertain -- he had no idea what he wanted to do. So when a mutual friend of his and Heather's suggested they both apply for the newly founded Walton Family Foundation-backed Camp War Eagle, they decided it was worth a try. They received job offers the day before their wedding, so they packed their bags and found themselves newlyweds in a brand new environment.

"It was hard for me to be away from what was so familiar," he says. "I had gone on long trips, but I always knew I was coming back [home]. This was a two-year commitment to be away from everything that was familiar. But Heather was so good about acclimating to new environments and developing new friendships and just being comfortable. She felt secure [right away]. I didn't -- I freaked out a little bit. At the same time, it was so healthy to have a strong relationship with her and a really great work family. I can't say enough about how pivotal that was for us, how affirming."

Napier says the key to helping him settle in and understand that this was his new home was finding a place of their own. That made it official.

"It feels weird to say that [the key to feeling at home] was a purchase, but now we had a sacred space that was ours, where we could host. I think that was the other pivotal moment: 'Not only do we now own this home, but we're bringing students into this home, in particular high school students into our home, to expose them to family.'"

Outputs and outcomes

Napier briefly left Camp War Eagle for another job, but he soon returned and discovered that his training in economics would be valuable in his new position.

"One of the things that was important to me was measuring our outputs and outcomes," he says. "'Are we adding value?' Because any time we had a customer [in the construction business], we were always trying to affirm that we were adding value to the project. 'This is what you can get from us that you can't get from anybody else.' So you're constantly communicating that in subtle ways and, sometimes, in really overt ways. But I didn't see that necessarily in ministry or in the camp context, really overtly. We would evaluate a lot, and we would make changes, but I wanted to know, 'Am I adding value to these children's lives? Are we being good stewards of our jobs, of our funding?' So it became my role to say, 'Let's quantify and qualify what we're doing.' So I just did that on my own, and then I started to implement that throughout the organization. They said, 'Hey, you're good at this. Do you want to do this in an administrative role?'"

"Alden has been involved with Camp War Eagle from the beginning and was very much a part of helping Camp War Eagle become one of the most unique camps in the United States," says its director, Scott Richards.

Meanwhile, Napier and Heather had started a family. They already had baby Ethne when they started the grueling process to adopt a little girl from Uganda, who would be named Noelle.

"Our journey started on a trip to volunteer at an orphanage in Uganda several years before," says Heather. "This is when God softened Alden's heart towards adoption through two little boys, David and Jonathan age 3 and 5. They crawled up in Alden's lap and just wanted to stay there day after day as we worked with the children. Alden said they didn't care about the color of his skin, or how tall he was or any of the details we think would be concerns, they just wanted to be loved. As we boarded the plane to head home, he leaned over and said, 'Okay, I think we are supposed to do this.' Several years later we found ourselves boarding a plane again to bring home Noelle Karis from another orphanage. The process was full of trails, surprises and miracles, and at the end of the day we were able to bring her home to meet her new siblings. We rejoice over the unconventional way our family was formed and delight in the fact that we get to be a part of her family."

"You're just in a completely foreign context," Napier says about the challenges of international adoption. "A lot of our travels prepared us for that, which was great. You're trying to develop that cultural acumen and understand what you need to learn as opposed to 'You're in my way.' That was really important to me, and it helped me survive. There were a lot of unknowns. There were a lot of breaks in that process that you don't expect. It's a whole 'nother story. But, at the end of the day, I think some amazing things happened throughout that nine-week roller coaster. One was that we got to spend a lot of time with [Noelle's] brothers, who were also being adopted by another family. They live in Virginia, but we see each other once or twice a year.

"And, finally, the African people and, specifically, the Ugandan people were just so kind -- and accustomed to suffering. I would talk about this experience being challenging, and then we would hear from them, 'My life has been a series of challenges, and yet the Lord has been so faithful.' And you look at that and say, 'Why am I complaining?' It was very humbling to have the experience of knowing I'm walking through what is just a seasonal bout with these various authorities who were calling into our decision -- and yet suffering has been a way of life for this individual, this group of people. It was very humbling. I had a lot to learn from the African brothers and sisters there."

Once Noelle was home, Napier and Heather would add two more children to the mix -- Norah and Max -- and Heather is now pregnant with baby number five.

"We love our big, messy family," Napier says.

More than money

Napier had already become associate director of the year-round Camp War Eagle program when Blair Johanson contacted him about applying for the position of CCOA's executive director.

"Alden was highly recommended, based on his leadership roles and responsibilities with Camp War Eagle," says Johanson, board chairman of CCOA. "During the interview and vetting process, we realized that Alden had wisdom and visionary skills beyond his age."

"After the first interview, I went back home and said, 'This is what I think they want, and I don't know if my skill set really matches up,'" he remembers. "And Heather kept drawing the lines between, 'Here are the pains that they're expressing that they have, and you have those pain relievers. Here are the gains that they want to create, and you've done these gain creators in the past.' And that was just an affirming thing to me. I also had a mentor, Jim Schenkel, during that time, who said, 'It's going to be important for you to walk through these questions effectively with Heather and incorporate that into your decision making and see what turns up."

In the end, Napier managed to convince himself -- as well as the CCOA board -- that he was the right man for the job. Part of the reason was that he believed so strongly in the mission.

"Our mission is to provide leadership and services that improve the quality of life for individuals and families," says Napier. "We do that through a number of different financial services -- but it's different financial services than most investment organizations or banks or other financial institutions. It's really focused around the individual's goals: 'What are you trying to accomplish? Let's provide you with some options, and let's be education-focused first. Here's what we know are healthy options you can pick from.' That's the leadership side.

"The service [side] is, 'You might not know how to implement that, and we understand that. So let's do some hand holding, if you will, and guide you through that process.'"

Napier points out that there are so many life circumstances that can lead to a person or family struggling with financial difficulties.

"The genesis of the organization was trying to address those life events, be it a divorce or a job loss or a death in the family or a kinship household where you have multiple generations living under one roof, with all of the various factors, constraints or disruptions that occur in that context."

CCOA is a nonprofit, so many of its services are free -- in fact, 75% of its clients receive services for free. Its other fee-based services can also have the fees waived, based on an individual's income. The idea is that there should be no barriers to those in need.

"All of this can be so overwhelming," he says. "And it's time consuming. So [it's vital to have] a set time where you have a coach across the table or an adviser across the table who can say, 'I've seen this before, you're going to be OK. Here's what I would say are some options for you. Let's craft a plan together with your goals.'"

Johanson notes that Napier has been strategic in helping to find new channels through which the organization can receive funding.

"Through Alden's leadership and direction, with the support of CCOA's team members, the organization has sustained a major shift in funding from debt management plan creditors to national and regional financial grant funders," he says. "Alden, CCOA's leadership team and staff have continued to provide credit counseling services while other like-type organizations across the country have closed their doors due to lack of funding for their nonprofit services."

And those outcomes -- cold, hard numbers that show whether an initiative is working -- can be found right there in black and white.

"We hope that that those outcomes are not just numerical, that they are truly impacting the individual stories [of our clients] and their goals," Napier notes. "That's something we focus on. We can have all these tangibles -- outcomes, reduced debt, increased savings, improved credit score, asset building, purchased a house and started a small business. I can tell you story after story: We had a client in not too long ago who had significant consumer debt, and it was because she was taking care of four generations. She's taking care of her dad. She's taking care of her husband who is disabled. She's taking care of her daughter who had just moved back after a divorce and her three kids. You look at that and you say, "We've got to create some margin for them so that they can get to a healthy spot in their relationships, not just in their finances."

Napier's job is an unusual one for which he is uniquely qualified -- he is a numbers guy, an econ major, whose heart tells him to serve. It seems the path he forged for himself was the right one, after all.

"I do not believe that it is by coincidence that Alden is diplomatic to the core, articulate in every situation, yet above all, humble in every respect," says Jennifer. "These character strengths, combined and designed by his Maker, have destined and equipped him for service to his community."

"While I am old enough to be Alden's father, he has become one of my best friends and has so much wisdom for someone of his age," says Richards. "Wherever he goes, he is always available to help anyone and will make the time to ensure that happens."

NAN Profiles on 09/29/2019