No Place Like Home For Engineer Matt Crafton

After eight years of active duty in the United States Air Force, Matt Crafton returned to his Rogers roots in 1998 to take his place in the family business, engineering and design firm Crafton Tull.

But during those eight years in the military, before Crafton had settled down, he saw some things that he’ll never forget.

He was in Somalia building airstrips in the early 1990s during operation Restore Hope. Gangs of dangerous warlords roamed the streets of Mogadishu, and giant lizards preyed on the dead who had been buried in shallow graves. The homeless and the impoverished and the orphans who begged for food — to this day Crafton keeps up with events in the Horn of Africa.

“That was a harrowing experience,” he said. “Mogadishu was probably the worst city in the world at that time.”

Mogadishu, however, wasn’t the only far-flung place Crafton went as an Air Force engineer. He spent a month in Greenland, above the Arctic Circle, with the understanding that he’d be deployed there for an entire year. But in that month, he saw all he wanted to see of Greenland.

“There were lots of mosquitoes and the sun never went down,” he said. “That was a sign that it was time to do something different.”

He and wife Kristi, who fell madly in love and married within a year of meeting one another, moved their young family back to Rogers. Crafton went into the reserves and joined Crafton Tull, thus setting the stage for his ascension from project manager to senior vice president to chief operating officer to president and CEO in 2009.

Crafton, 46, was a member of the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s 2000 class of Forty Under 40.

Though he officially joined the company 16 years ago, his entire life has been shaped by the company his father, Bob Crafton, and partner, Lem Tull, founded in 1963.

“I grew up with this company,” he said. “I’ve always known this company. When I was a kid, I mowed the lawn for Crafton Tull.”

The firm has expertise in the fields of planning, architecture, infrastructure engineering, mechanical engineering and landscape architecture, among others. Crafton Tull has six offices in Arkansas and Oklahoma and employs over 300 people.

An enduring philosophy behind the company’s success is that Crafton Tull has to hire, and retain, the right people. Looking at the current staff, that philosophy is no doubt alive today.

Tom Hopper, Crafton Tull’s chairman, was hired by the founders and has been with the company since 1970. On the other hand, up-and-comer Jonathan Ely, who joined the firm straight out of college nine years ago, was a Forty Under 40 honoree this year who has been nominated to the Emerging Leaders program of the American Council of Engineering Companies of Arkansas. 

Looking at Hopper and Ely, Crafton is convinced he and Jim Tull, the company’s chief financial officer, are following in the footsteps of their fathers.

“It was always about the people they hired,” Crafton said. “And that’s the same with us. That’s what I’m proud of — the longevity of the staff.”

Crafton was at the helm when the firm faced its most trying time, the Great Recession, when a lot of the firm’s core work just wasn’t there. But around the same time, the firm entered a new and lucrative field, surveying for the oil and gas industry. The economy has since improved, and last year, Arkansas voters passed a half-cent sales tax for road improvements, the lifeblood of firms like Crafton Tull.

With the business doing better than ever and with the support of his family, Crafton truly can’t complain.

“I’m very blessed,” he said. “Better than I deserve, no doubt about it.”