NWA C-Suite: Ines Polonius
by October 6, 2025 10:30 am 530 views
Ines Polonius founded alt.Consulting in 1998 to help small businesses in the Arkansas Delta launch and grow. She led its 2014 merger with Community Resource Group to form Communities Unlimited Inc., a nonprofit community development financial institution addressing the capital, infrastructure needs and economic development of rural communities.
What is the best business advice someone has ever given you? Build your financial muscle. Understand your organization’s costs and financial triggers. Review all financial statements every month. Create financial transparency within the organization.
How significantly has technology impacted your work? As an organization with 115 staff members working across seven states every day, technological solutions to share information and stay connected have been critical to our success. Sharing technology solutions including those for cybersecurity and AI has become increasingly important in our work with clients as well.
How do you handle pressure and stress in your leadership role? Asking, “Now what?” when crisis hits or meetings are stacked on top of each other shifts the brain out of its fight/flight response to a place of curiosity. Adding a good dose of humor at all times allows work to remain fun despite the mounting pressure.
What are some aspects of leadership you are still working to improve? I reflect on my leadership often to identify areas to lean into. In these times of uncertainty in our industry, I am working on leading from my heart to help staff cope with their stress while continuing to push for a culture of accountability and results.
If you were not in your current role, what would you be doing? I would be working with young professionals to help them address the pressing issues of our day while encouraging them to step into leadership roles. Today, we need strong leaders that can unite and solve problems.
How do you stay current with industry trends and changes? I am active in a number of national associations. Conversations with peers from around the country as well as spending a specific amount of time on a curated news feed each day allows me to stay current.
What advice would you give someone wanting to be a leader in your industry? Take calculated risk. Identify the gap and figure out a way to fill it even if no one has tried that before. These times require new solutions, and those require new thinking.
Who are your favorite leaders, and why? Thomas Halverson, CEO of CoBank. Mr. Halverson is laser-focused on strategies that benefit rural America. He regularly leaves the C-suite to put boots on the ground in rural places across the country to better understand their challenges and opportunities. In my interactions with him, I found him to listen intently and ask great questions. These experiences help shape his vision and strategy for CoBank.
Sherece West-Scantlebury, president and CEO of the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation. Dr. West-Scantlebury has a strong moral compass that she utilizes in every decision she makes on behalf of the foundation. She embodies servant leadership by putting all Arkansans and by extension the organizations that serve them first. She has become a leader in trust-based philanthropy which recognizes that foundations do not have all of the answers and can trust the grantees in utilizing their resources for the people they serve. She encourages bottom-up decision making.