Forty Under 40: Alex Ahmad

Alex Ahmad had planned to return to Jordan after graduating from the University of Arkansas, but he fell in love with Fayetteville.

In 2005, the Amman, Jordan, native moved here to complete a master’s degree in computer engineering.

He graduated in 2009, the same year he became a U.S. citizen.

In February 2006, he started working for the UA admissions office and rebuilt the department’s website, completed database work and essentially “made people’s lives much easier.”

After completing his coursework in June 2008, he moved to Fort Smith and joined Coffee.org as senior developer. He turned the company blog into a website that was making $250,000 in sales per month.

He was promoted to chief technical officer and went on to manage more than 3,000 domains and build over 500 websites for the owners’ other businesses. He and his team of two or three developers were launching eight websites a day — a website every hour.

In 2010, he returned to Fayetteville to work for Zweig White as director of e-commerce and data intelligence and was soon promoted to director of IT and digital marketing.

About a year later, he and Eric Howerton started the marketing agency WhyteSpyder.

In January 2012, when Ahmad left Zweig White, he and Howerton had $850 in the bank and one employee. Four and a half years later, the multimillion-dollar company has grown to about 30 employees.

“June was the biggest revenue month in the past 1 ½ years,” he said.

Ahmad enjoys working out, road biking and swimming.

He supports Kendrick Fincher Hydration for Life, The Cancer Challenge and Boys & Girls Club.