Hudson Finds Calling Centers Around Service

Tim Hudson’s last job before moving to Northwest Arkansas from Atlanta in 1996 was as marketing director for a shopping center.

That also was the last job Hudson had in the for-profit sector.

“I found that that really wasn’t much of a professional calling,” he said. “I wasn’t that terribly concerned about who shopped where.”

Hudson and his wife, both University of Arkansas graduates, wanted to move back to Fayetteville to raise their two sons, and decided an offer from Ozark Guidance was the opportunity they’d been waiting for. Hudson was executive vice president of the Ozark Guidance Foundation, in charge of fundraising and marketing, when he was named to the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s Forty Under 40 class of 2000.

Happy in that position, he was unsure what to do when an offer came “out of the blue” in 2007 to join the University of Arkansas for Medical Science’s initiative to open a regional campus in Northwest Arkansas.

Hudson had been focused on helping see Ozark Guidance through the retirement of CEO David Williams and the transition to a new director. So he talked with Williams about the UAMS offer.

“He did a really nice job of helping me look through the pros and cons, and ultimately I made that decision to go ahead and take the opportunity,” Hudson said.

He started at UAMS in October 2007.

“As you would expect, the state budget and state revenues don’t always allow for us to do everything we want,” Hudson said, “and so my role in development is to help bring additional private philanthropic support, in support of this campus and in support of UAMS at large.”

His first task was to secure funds to turn the old Washington Regional Medical Center building on College Avenue into a medical campus.

UAMS wanted to accomplish this before the 2009 Arkansas Legislature convened, and by early 2009, it had raised $3 million. UAMS-NW admitted its first six medical students that summer.

Also that year, Hudson was named outstanding fundraising executive by the Northwest Arkansas chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals.

Because of the economic downturn of the last few years, Hudson said, the campus hasn’t been able to grow as quickly as it wants to. Still, as of mid-December, UAMS-NW has raised just over $8 million in the last five years.

About 140 students in medicine, nursing, pharmacy and other health professions are enrolled in the current academic year, and by summer, Hudson said, that figure will likely be closer to 155 or 160.

“At the moment when our population is about to really experience a major shift in terms of the need for providers, more and more of those providers are themselves retiring,” he said. “And so the UAMS part of the answer to that is to produce more of those professionals, to kind of enlarge the pipeline, if you will.”

It’s also hoped that some of those students will stay on to practice in Northwest Arkansas after completing their training, he said.

Hudson’s passion for serving doesn’t stop when he leaves the office each day. With his sons in the Fayetteville school system, he was active with school organizations like PTA. Then in 2004, he was elected to the school board.

While his older son is now a college sophomore, the younger one is a junior at Fayetteville High School, which has been undergoing its own renovation.

Hudson, who became president of the school board in September, is proud that the first phase of the expansion called the FHS Transformation Project was completed in August without a millage increase. Now in phase 2, the expansion is scheduled for completion in August 2015.

A member of the Springdale Rotary with 16 years of perfect attendance, Hudson is serving on its board.

Although all these commitments leave little spare time, Hudson, 49, enjoys sports and outdoor physical activities.

He’s run four marathons since 2000, and though he was sidelined for a couple of years with a torn calf muscle, he ran the Tontitown Grape Festival 5K in August, and hopes to continue to ease back into running competitively.

Hudson said he also tries “to catch up with my wife,” who works at the UA. They enjoy canoeing “when there’s water in our rivers,” but their favorite way to unwind is Friday night happy hour at George’s Majestic Lounge.

“We like George’s because it’s a wonderful cross-section of our town, and beyond our town,” he said.