Forty Under 40: Alli Thurmond Quinlan

Dedicated to sustainable growth, urbanism and historic preservation, Alli Thurmond Quinlan started her multidisciplinary design consulting firm to focus on architecture, master planning, landscape and infrastructure investment analysis.

Quinlan, who grew up on a cattle ranch in western Oklahoma, graduated in 2008 with a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Oklahoma, adding a master’s degree in landscape architecture in 2010 from Virginia Tech. Living in the Washington, D.C., area, she was a staff architect for SK&I Architectural Design Group, then a landscape architect for Landscape Architecture Bureau. Quinlan moved to Northwest Arkansas in 2012 as project designer at the University of Arkansas Community Design Center, then was projects and construction coordinator at Arvest Bank. In 2015, she started Flintlock LAB.

Quinlan’s work has won awards from the Congress for New Urbanism, the American Society of Landscape Architects, the American Institute of Architects, Architizer and the American Planning Association.

With the ability to “integrate a wide variety of different information and requirements into elegant solutions,” Quinlan plans “to grow both the size and the impact of her company in the future and hopes to continue to help contribute to the growth of the region.”

She sees her greatest accomplishment as building a team that “produces high-level, thoughtful, valuable work” and believes work/life balance is key for her team.

Passionate about ensuring that fire sprinklers are in multifamily buildings, she works to build the community and provide affordable housing, including serving on Fayetteville’s Planning Commission and Construction Board of Appeals.

Her second full-time job is acting director of The Incremental Development Alliance, a nonprofit that supports small-scale developers.