Ep. 21 - Part 1 - Building a Vibrant Northwest Arkansas with Nelson Peacock

What makes Northwest Arkansas a magnet for talent and opportunity? Discover the secrets behind this burgeoning region with Nelson Peacock, President and CEO of the Northwest Arkansas Council. On this episode of Pitch to Pro Podcast, Nelson takes us on his incredible journey from his humble beginnings in Arkansas, through pivotal roles in Washington DC and California, and back to his roots. His rich experiences set the stage for an enlightening conversation on job creation, talent recruitment, infrastructure, healthcare, and enriching the quality of life in Northwest Arkansas.

We trace the Council’s historical milestones, from its founding by regional titans like Sam Walton and JB Hunt, to the transformational projects that have spurred its growth, such as the creation of the XNA airport. Nelson highlights the Council's evolution to tackle modern challenges like healthcare, affordable housing, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. Join us as we unravel the proactive city planning and visionary leadership that propels Northwest Arkansas forward, learning from the successes and missteps of other fast-growing cities.

Finally, dive into the economic future of Northwest Arkansas and how it promises to remain vibrant and resilient. Nelson sheds light on the importance of supporting startups and scale-ups with early-stage venture funding, bolstered by significant investments from the Walton Family Foundation and the University of Arkansas. As we explore the region's path to sustainable growth, we celebrate the Council's commitment to preserving the community's core values while embracing new opportunities, including the exciting prospect of professional soccer. Don’t miss out on this insightful look into what makes Northwest Arkansas a thriving place to live, work, and play.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

pitch to pro is the official podcast of usl arkansas. This will be our platform to tell our story about the club and the special place that we call home, northwest arkansas. This is a journey we want to bring you along for the ride. We'll share what's going on behind the curtain, help educate the community at large about soccer, our league, and give updates on the progress of the club along the way. Together, we'll explore and unpack our journey to professional soccer, the magic that is NWA, our community and talk all things soccer from on the pitch to behind the scenes, telling the story of our club. Pitch to Pro Podcast is proudly sponsored by PodcastVideoscom. Podcastvideoscom is Northwest Arkansas' premier podcast recording studio, equipped with industry-leading equipment. The recording studio and services save you time, money and hassle. They are dedicated to helping you create, record and publish high-quality podcasts for your audience. Be sure to check them out today at podcastvideoscom.

Speaker 1: 1:07

Hey everybody and welcome back to the Pitch to Pro podcast. I am your host, wes Harris, managing Director for USL Arkansas, northwest Arkansas's professional soccer club, playing in the United Soccer League. Today. I am really excited because we have a really awesome discussion on deck for you guys, centered on our region and where we're headed. This is something that we've heard a lot about in our feedback, from fans, surveys, listening sessions. It's just that residents are so excited about the potential for Northwest Arkansas and that they feel connected as a community. And that they feel connected as a community being able to be a part of this journey together and feel lucky to be here in this moment in time to help shape that future of Northwest Arkansas together. It's a really special lightning in a bottle type moment for our community and there's perhaps no one better in the area in the country to talk about this topic than my guest today, mr Nelson Peacock.

Speaker 1: 2:02

Nelson is the president and CEO of the Northwest Arkansas Council, which we'll get into in a little bit, but as a precursor, it's a private nonprofit organization that works to advance job opportunities, talent recruitment, physical infrastructure, healthcare and quality of life in Northwest Arkansas. That is a mouthful and you guys do a lot. So, nelson, thank you so much for joining me here today. Sir, thanks for having me, nelson. I thought we would kick things off with you. Know, we'll get into the council, we'll get into what you guys do, but I wanted folks to help understand you. Give us your background a little bit. Are you a Northwest Arkansas native. How did you come to the area and just give a little background?

Speaker 2: 2:44

on you. Yeah, sure, so well, thanks for having me. First of all, I'm excited about Northwest Arkansas, as you are apparently, but I was actually born in Fayetteville. My dad was in law school. We immediately moved to eastern Arkansas where I grew up over on the Delta, came back here to go to school, went to undergrad in Fayetteville law school in Fayetteville and about I guess I had a job as a real lawyer for about four months and I was a debt collector. Basically they said I was going to be a corporate attorney but I collected debt.

Speaker 2: 3:18

And that was really not the way I saw my life planning out, so I ended up moving to Washington DC. Through some good fortunate connections, I saw my life planning out, so I ended up moving to Washington DC. Okay, through some good fortunate connections, I found my way into the Senate Judiciary Committee Wow the Department of Justice for a while and in my most senior role I was an assistant secretary at Homeland Security and I oversaw the congressional relations for the Department of Homeland Security, so anything from TSA or Coast Guard or Border Patrol. We oversaw that at the department and became really close to the Secretary of Homeland Security. Her name was Janet Napolitano, had been the governor of Arizona. She was hired to be the president of the University of California system out in Oakland, california. She invited me to come with her and so I did, and so we moved out there.

Speaker 2: 4:08

My wife's a California native and went out there. We were there for four or five years and higher ed was an interesting place to work and a friend of mine called and said if you ever wanted to move back home, the perfect job for you just came open and it's the Northwest Arkansas Council. My predecessor left to take another job, so they did a search for this job and I normally, when I would come back here, I knew things were changing and happening, but I pretty much only went to a football game or a basketball game. I stayed in Fayetteville pretty much, but Northwest Arkansas was moving up on these lists and a great place to be, and obviously Walmart and Tyson and JB Hunt were in the news a lot, but I didn't know much about it.

Speaker 2: 4:56

When I came back I learned about the council, what the role of the council was, the future for this region. I really got excited about the job, told my wife that I wanted to take it. Once I was accepted. She was a little bit more skeptical about it, being a California native, but we, we ended up saying yes and moving here, and that was about seven years ago. Um, and it's just been great. Uh, what is happening here? Uh, I'd like to take a lot of credit for it, but I can't. Uh, uh, it's just a lot of great factors that have come together to build where we are now and I think the future is really bright for northwest arkansas I think a lot of people would agree with you.

Speaker 1: 5:34

Um, that's a heck of a background and and I think just you, you, you touched on it on. A friend of you called and said hey, I think I have the perfect job for you. I, I think your, your background just speaks to um, the, the power that is behind um, some of the strategy and where we're going at the council. I would agree with that. I mean in DC for a long time in a multitude of roles. Actually, I grew up in and around DC and you know, despite what people may feel, there's a lot that gets done, yeah, and there's a lot of nuance to it. So I'm glad that we have you bringing your experience.

Speaker 2: 6:14

I got to work in the legislative side. I got to work in the operational division where people are out doing real work every day and seeing that and so good perspective on you know, coalition building, government affairs, how to work with different groups, and so trying to leverage a lot of that here in this role, and so I feel like it's been a good fit for my skill set and I think it also plays in well because we are more than just one town, one city.

Speaker 1: 6:42

We are definitely a collection and a collective and a region and an area, and I think that that takes a special skill set to help play well in sandbox with others and all move ahead together. We're doing the best we can. Yeah, exactly, there's hard days and hard days with everything. Talk a little bit about what you love about NB Wave.

Speaker 2: 7:01

You've been here now seven years back, yeah, you know what I like about it is it's really got a small-town feel but kind of big-city amenities, and you put both of those together it really makes for a special place. And plus, it's a melting pot. Over 60% of the people aren't from here. You just said you're not from here. I spent most of my adult life not from here. Like I said, over 60% from Texas, from California, from other places, and it's still small enough where that mixes really well Together.

Speaker 2: 7:34

You get to meet people with different backgrounds, with different ideas about the future, different perspectives, and that really makes it an interesting place. And you get all that and you don't have to deal with the hassle of a big city Right, even though I know the traffic is getting worse, it's not like it is in DC or California. No, hopefully we can keep it that way Right, in dc or california. Hopefully we can keep it that way right. Um, and you know you've got great museums, great music, uh, great sports, uh, and going to continue to, to grow in that capacity. So a lot of things to do and with a small town vibe which really appeals to a lot of people. Not many people want to leave once they come here it.

Speaker 1: 8:13

It is that nice special balance and we hear that a lot. You know, big city amenities without big city problems, yeah, and so that's great. You talked a little bit about how you came to the council. I think if you could talk a little bit about more, shed some light on what does the NWA council do I introduced it a little bit but what you guys do.

Speaker 2: 8:33

Yeah, a lot of things. So just a little bit. But what you guys do? Yeah, a lot of things. So just a little background. On the council, this was an organization started by Sam Walton, don Tyson and JB Hunt and Mark Simmons back in the early 90s and at that point their companies were growing. They were starting to scale. I think Walmart had just become the number one retailer, but this was still half the size it is now.

Speaker 2: 8:59

No, x&a did not exist. To get to I-40 south of here you had to take a mountainous road, and so there were really the pieces. Community pieces were not in place for those companies to grow. So those leaders got together and said we need a few things for us to stay here. Basically, one was an airport. So they got together and formed what was going to become XNA. Alice Walton led the effort on behalf of her father to get XNA completed. That opened in 1998. They worked with the highway department and then Bill Clinton was the president, worked with him to get the funding for that airport and also to get a connection to I-49. That opened in around 1997 or 98, and they also said we needed to connect to Asylum Springs. 412. Were 12. So those are the three main things that the council was formed to do.

Speaker 2: 9:55

After those were completed in the late 90s, they decided we needed to keep this council going and it stayed roughly focused on physical infrastructure until about 2010.

Speaker 2: 10:06

That's when my predecessor, mike Malone, came in and they expanded to workforce development, economic development, a quality of life, which is a bucket for a lot of different things the trails, the green space, all those types of activities. And since then, since I've come in, we have added a healthcare focus, we have added affordable housing focus. We are really digging into entrepreneurship and innovation as our next kind of driver of our economy here. Entrepreneurship and innovation is our next kind of driver of our economy here and we also have a DEI lens. So, as we've changed demographically, as a lot of your listeners may know, when the council was formed, 96% white in northwest Arkansas. Now we're roughly one-third underrepresented minorities. Rogers and Springdale are both majority Hispanic school districts. So a lot of change here, a lot of change happening with all the growth and you know, as we will probably talk about projected to be up to a million people here over the next 20 years, spread across all of these different communities.

Speaker 1: 11:11

Yeah, what is? Do you believe in the 20 years or do you think maybe even sooner? With what is it now Plus 38?

Speaker 2: 11:20

Yeah, 36 a day. Okay, net new, based on the people that have come before me and follow this, they've under projected our growth every five years. So you know that's a lot of growth, but we but we expect us to reach that probably before that milestone. And so when you think about infrastructure, how you do city planning, like the decisions we make now are determined the future, and so we're really looking at what happened to other cities.

Speaker 2: 11:49

How can we not have congested highways? How can we have teachers, firefighters others live in the communities where they serve. You know, if you grew up in DC, you're an inner city. You know, if you're a teacher in DC, you're probably living in Virginia or Maryland, in the community, and that is the last thing that we want to have happen. If you're a teacher in Bentonville, you need to be able to live in Bentonville, or if you're a firefighter at Rogers, you need to be able to live in Rogers, if you choose. And so we are trying to work with the cities and the counties, the businesses, to make sure that we have the right rules in place development rules, development codes so that we can preserve what we love about this place.

Speaker 1: 12:27

Yeah, that's a great point and it's an interesting piece. A lot of times people think about looking forward, but in order to look forward and plan to your point, a lot of maybe what you guys do is look at some similar markets and stories and trajectories of hey, we think we may be like here in the next 15 years, what went well for those guys on their journey and then maybe what were some pitfalls that we very much like to avoid and what can we do differently. And so I'm sure a lot of what you guys do, too, is study other markets that may be similar size and kind of similar issues that you might deal with.

Speaker 2: 13:04

We do several things like that. Every year we put out a state of the region report and we compare ourselves. We've selected about five comparator regions. We actually changed that five years ago because we weren't being.

Speaker 1: 13:16

We had kind of blown those other ones out of the water.

Speaker 2: 13:19

And we are starting to add and those have been economic analysis metrics we're starting to factor in growth around that traffic and other things.

Speaker 2: 13:28

And there's a lot of communities out there that we can point to, Austin, Texas being probably the one that most people refer to. I think they would admit that they weren't aggressive enough on some of the decisions that they made and that's harmed their quality of life through traffic and a lot of congestion and other things, and so we do look to a lot of cities to try to balance that out, and a lot of it's education. If you're in a small town here, maybe you didn't travel a lot. Do you know about what's happened in Charlotte, North Carolina, and how they made good decisions in some neighborhoods and poor decisions in others? So a lot of what we do is try to bring experts here to educate people, sometimes take people to other places to see how it can work, how it should work, and then add what we want to be here. Ultimately, it's up to the local people and the local decision makers to decide the community that they want. We just want them to be empowered through information to make those decisions.

Speaker 1: 14:31

It's actually a really good point, I think a lot of times, especially in communities where people have born, raised, small business owners, maybe, or decision makers in key communities that maybe haven't, you know, visited other parts of the country as many as as others, or other parts of the world even um, I think to your point, a lot of what I've enjoyed has been the diversity of thought that's been brought into Northwest Arkansas. We've grown in that. 6% that's not how I'm here, um, but it's. It's interesting to actually see how that's. Six percent, that's not come here, um, but it's. It's interesting to actually see how that's impacted. You know, actually the the growth of the region within the strategy that we take, to how we learn about other markets, and not just ourselves, but also business owners and decision makers in our in, lawmakers in our region yeah, to go and look at, yeah, you know and yeah.

Speaker 2: 15:19

And then when they go, like many of us, we're going to be a tourist, so we're going to go and look at, yeah, you know, and yeah. And then, when they go, like many of us, we're going to be a tourist, so we're going to go to the tourism spots and we're not going to think about, oh well, how did that bike trail end up there? And wow, that's really neat how they, you know, did this, you know. And so when you go on these kinds of trips or we bring people in to just a different lens, that's such an interesting point and I love that you guys do that.

Speaker 1: 15:38

That's such an interesting point and I love that you guys do that. That's such an interesting point. So to that point, what are some challenges facing the region today that you guys are trying to, in those discussions and in those learning sessions, prepare for? Think about what are some of those things that are facing us today.

Speaker 2: 15:55

Yeah, there's quite a few. We talked about growth. I think that is going to be our ultimate challenge, because those are hard, long-term decisions and people don't always make the best decisions. Unless there's a crisis it's not a crisis yet. A lot of people think maybe there is, but can't we make the decisions? A lot of times you see these other cities by the time they realize what's happened, then they make decisions and it's almost too late. So I think that's really important for us.

Speaker 2: 16:24

But on the other side of the equation is we really want to focus, kind of where we are with our momentum, on economic growth. We have these anchor employers that we've leveraged for a long, for a generation now. So Walmart, tyson, jb Hunt, simmons, george's, the University of Arkansas continues to grow. All these companies continue to grow, but that doesn't create the kind of vibrant economy we need for the future. So we are trying to focus really on startups, scale-ups, bringing in early stage venture funds, which is a shortfall in every region.

Speaker 2: 17:03

How can we do that most efficiently? If you are the next Sam Walton, can you build your company right here, just as he did a generation ago or two generations ago? That is what we want to see happen, and that's going to help us. If there's a downturn in any market or anything like that, we'll have a robust economy that can continue to lift this community up, and so that's what's really so. It's like the opposite ends of the same coin. We need to continue to grow in the right way, and then how do we preserve what we love about this place as we grow?

Speaker 1: 17:35

And we've seen some of that already in terms of the startup and the entrepreneurial kind of sector and a lot of growth there over the last four or five years even just recent history.

Speaker 2: 17:46

There have been a lot of decisions made over the last four or five years that have really helped that. The Walton Family Foundation has funded numerous accelerator programs. There's been significant investment in the University of Arkansas in their research and commercialization enterprises, so I feel like we are right at the precipice of a lot of more founders and startups coming out. The shortage that we have, and we've identified, is this early stage capital. So what's that? First $100,000, $200,000? There's not a lot of people, a lot of venture funds, that make those kinds of investments, but that is what is going to keep people here and build their company here, and so we're focused on that right now.

Speaker 1: 18:31

And that's often what people will say in terms of their founding journey is kind of that first money in is one of the hardest things to come by and to get done and that it's a bit of a domino effect.

Speaker 2: 18:41

Yeah, a lot of them start with friends and family or they take out a loan. But it's that first outside check that kind of gets them over the hump, gives them a little runway to develop their product, or have a year or so runway and then they grow and scale, prove their product. Then, once they've got a successful business, the next check's always a lot easier.

Speaker 1: 19:04

Yeah, how do you de-risk? But you need. It's kind of akin to what we're doing. We have our founding partners in how we're putting our ownership group together, because we're building, flying and designing the plane a little bit as we fly it, and so it's a bit of an akin story there, where we're de-risking, showing a perfect concept and then continuing.

Speaker 2: 19:26

Oh yeah, once you're up and running and show what I believe will be true and you're packing the house there, you'll have a lot of people showing up.

Speaker 1: 19:34

Then, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly, but that's great insight into some of the challenges that we're facing today, things that we're prepping for, and I think it's a good point to kind of pause for today. Nelson, thank you so much for joining me and thank you for everything that you and your team are doing. It's a really, really important for those of us that love Northwest Arkansas and what it means to preserve that as we grow man, it's such an important job and just want to say thank you and kudos to your team for helping us set on the strategic vision and path to continue to be a successful region and place that everybody wants to live, work and play. So thank you so much. Make sure to tune in to our next episode to hear more about what's on the horizon as we look ahead for NWA and how professional soccer kind of fits into that mix. So until next time, northwest Arkansas cheers.