The recent passing of Uvalde Lindsey — legislator and a long-time leader of the Northwest Arkansas Council — gave many friends, colleagues and admirers a chance to reflect on Lindsey’s wisdom, guidance and leadership.
Mike Malone, now a partner with economic development firm Economic Leadership, succeeded Lindsey as CEO of the Northwest Arkansas Council. Lindsey spent years at the helm of the council and was crucial for many of the region’s advancements ranging from Interstate 49 to the Northwest Arkansas National Airport (XNA).
Malone recalls how supportive, sagacious, and humble Lindsey was throughout his years of service in a recent conversation with Northwest Arkansas Business Journal Editor-in-Chief Roby Brock.
Roby Brock: Mike, remind everyone what you’re doing now with Economic Leadership.
Mike Malone: I’m thrilled to have joined the team as a partner at the firm, Economic Leadership. It’s a national economic development consulting firm. It’s been around probably 12 years now. It was founded by an economic development legend, a guy named Ted Abernathy. He’s based in North Carolina. He’s done through the years, a lot of work in building North Carolina into the economic powerhouse that it is, and he’s working all over the country. And so there is much client work. He invited me to come and join the firm as a partner, and so I started there in April of 2025. I’m three months in, and I’m loving it.
Brock: And you’re on an airplane periodically, I would imagine as well?
Malone: Yes, we have clients in about 30 states right now and are approaching 60 contracts at any given time, but currently we have that many. And so it’s taken me already to places like Virginia and North Carolina. I’ve been in Oklahoma plenty. I’m about to head to New Mexico. The work is diverse and varied. We help places figure out how to be more economically competitive and that can be analyzing their economic strengths, their workforce systems, their tech sector. It can be a more comprehensive economic development strategy process, and we certainly did a lot of that when I worked at the Northwest Arkansas Council. You build a plan, then you work for a few years to execute the plan and then you tune it up and refine the plan and go again. We do that for clients as well.
Brock: Let’s talk about Uvalde Lindsey, who recently passed away. He was also the leader of the Northwest Arkansas Council from its earliest days, and you succeeded him. You knew Uvalde personally in a way that some people didn’t. Tell me about the nature of your relationship and just what he meant to you.
Malone: Losing Uvalde is a huge loss for our state. He’s built so much, led so much, and taught so many and he continued serving. He was absolutely a servant leader, and he continued serving every day of his life. And he’ll be missed. Arkansas won’t be the same without him.
Now, having said all that, he put so much in place throughout his life and throughout his career. The real direct projects and activities that he led, he wouldn’t directly take credit for, but we wouldn’t have an XNA or we might not have a four-lane, 412 highway designation that connects New Mexico all the way across Arkansas, and we probably wouldn’t have some of the other great things we do if he hadn’t been directly involved.
He was a servant leader, but also led gently and kindly, and he taught people things and exposed them to things and caused people to think about things in different ways, but he never did it in overbearing fashion. He never beat you over the head with the fact that he was the smartest guy in the room. Everybody knew it, but he was always so modest and so humble and so kind in how he brought people along.
Brock: I love that description of him because I had a lot of interaction with him with the council, but even more so when he was a state legislator. He would pull the pipe out of his mouth and start to speak, and you had to stop and listen to what he had to say because you knew it was going to be profound. You knew it was.
Malone: It’s so true. And he asked a lot of questions. I got to observe that early on when I was around him and was so fortunate to get to work with him. He had retired from the Northwest Arkansas Council, and they did a job search. And I was lucky enough to get the role. But I think the council leaders also knew they’d hired a young guy who’s pretty green and didn’t know much, and so they kept him on contract to help me. And he did it in such a great way. I feel like I learned so much from him, but he certainly wasn’t overbearing or didn’t tell me how to do things. He helped me figure it out. That was about the greatest professional gift he could have given me was to be able to learn from him and have him coach me along the way.
Brock: For people who did not know him well, we have talked a little bit about what made him such a great servant leader, as you said, but there’s just so much that Northwest Arkansas will need to be appreciative of him for. I hope that they do something special to honor him. Eventually, he should have something named after him, although that would be the last thing on the planet that he would want, but it’s deserving for the legacy that he leaves.
Malone: I agree with both of those comments. It should be done and that he wouldn’t want it because he was humble and it was about the good of the region, the good of the state, not about him, but it should be about him because he’s done so much.