Forty Under 40: Addam Hardy

Addam Hardy started computer programming in middle school but didn’t see it as a challenge, so he joined the Army and studied linguistics.

The Siloam Springs native spent about a year learning Korean and earned a degree in the language from the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif., in 2006. He was a Korean cryptologic linguist for the Army supporting the National Security Agency (NSA) and was a software engineer for the NSA in Hawaii between 2006 and 2010 before returning to Northwest Arkansas. He was a sergeant when he left the Army in 2014.

He was a software developer for startups and the first employee for RevUnit in 2013. He joined DataRank in 2014 as its first developer and remained with the company after Simply Measured acquired it in 2015.

In August 2017, Hardy joined RichContext as vice president of technology. He leads a team of eight software engineers. The software and marketing company is one of 12 of Walmart’s connected content partners and maintains two verticals in the program. RichContext is one of two partners supplying rich media to vendors and one of three to provide user-generated content for Walmart suppliers.

PathLink is a technology Hardy created to ensure consumers don’t receive ads for out-of-stock items. It redirects shoppers to similar items that are in stock. The geospatial image server is another technology he created, and it allows brands to send relevant images to online consumers.

“When it comes to technology, people always ask the question, ‘Is this possible, is that possible?’” he said. “The answer to that is almost always ‘yes.’”

As a volunteer, he built the website for Arkansas Early Childhood Association, speaks and teaches at technology conferences and started an area chapter of CTO Lunches.