Then & Now: Former reporter advocates for lower-income Arkansans

Laura Kellams went from writing about the news to shaping it when she left the newspaper profession to become Northwest Arkansas director for Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families in 2008.

AACF works to improve the lives of lower-income children and families through public policy advocacy.

While Northwest Arkansas is the wealthiest part of the state, it still is home to many people living in or near poverty, said Kellams, a 2010 Northwest Business Journal Forty Under 40 honoree. Housing is limited and expensive. The region has a high number of immigrants. At the same time, the region’s growing overall population is creating more legislative districts, increasing its power and influence.

“The most important thing that I do, I think, is showing people how they can be part of the policy process and why their voices are important,” she said.

Soup Sunday, the Northwest Arkansas office’s biggest annual fundraiser, is scheduled for Feb. 2. The event started as a small event attracting 100 people and raising about $10,000. Now it draws over 1,000 and raised more than $220,000 last year.

Raising money for AACF is challenging because it doesn’t purchase tangible items like coats or meals, Kellams said. Instead, she said donors are asked to give to “complicated, long-term policy work where we have a lot of losses and occasional wins.”

Among Kellams’ biggest successes occurred in 2017 when her advocacy helped children from the Marshall Islands, as well as other immigrant children who had lived in Arkansas for less than five years, become eligible for Medicaid coverage. She was the recipient that year of the Georgetown Center for Children and Families’ Bulldog Award for her work on immigrant child health.

Federal legislation passed this year, co-sponsored by U.S. Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., and U.S. Rep. Steve Womack, R-Rogers, made the Marshallese eligible for the first time for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and other federal programs.

Originally from Texas, Kellams, 52, moved to Green Forest (Carroll County) as a junior and never left. Told by an English teacher she should be on the high school newspaper staff, she became editor and then, at the University of Arkansas, managing editor of the student newspaper, The Arkansas Traveler.

She started working at the now-defunct Morning News of Northwest Arkansas in 1994 before she graduated and would be a print journalist for the next 15 years. In 1997, she moved to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, where she covered the city of Fayetteville and statewide politics and worked in the Capitol bureau during legislative sessions.

Kellams used her journalism experience to land her AACF job. She covered and admired the organization for its data-driven approach and its emphasis on children and families. When a former reporter told her the organization was opening a Northwest Arkansas office, she approached Rich Huddleston, then the executive director, about the possibility.

“Rich and the board and other staff were willing to, I think, take a leap of faith on me that I could do something I’d never done before, which was, one, just work for a nonprofit,” she said. “Two, become an advocate from having just observed the process — actually become an advocate and take a stand on issues.”

Taking a stance was a change for the former reporter. She realized she had been holding the community at arm’s length. As a reporter, she had seen both good and bad testimony in committee meetings and knew what might make a strong argument.

AACF takes politically progressive stances at a time when the Legislature is certainly conservative. Kellams said she is able to connect with legislators who come from a different point of view because they are united in wanting what’s best for children and families. She noted that her father and uncle were identical twins who grew up poor in a boys’ home outside of Dallas. They had the same values but voted differently.

“I try my best to keep them always in the back of my mind, just reminding myself that the way someone votes and the party that they align with does not define whether their values are different from mine or not,” she said.