Then and Now: Blake Woolsey in new role at Walton College of Business

Blake Woolsey is a builder. Throughout her career in public relations that’s included building teams, relationships and brands.

“Because my brain thinks strategically I love to think about what that North Star is and then work with the team to figure out how are we’re going to achieve that,” Woolsey said. “There’s an excitement of starting something and not having the map, and then you get to help your team create the map to achieve that.”

Now, in a full circle moment, she’s “building again with a new strategy,” at the University of Arkansas as chief strategy and communications officer for the Sam M. Walton College of Business.

“I’m right back where my career really did spark in a positive way,” she said.

In 1997, just a few years after moving to Fayetteville from Texas, Doyle Z. Williams, dean of the UA’s business school, recruited her to work as senior development officer at the University of Arkansas’ College of Business Administration. While there, one of her greatest career successes came when she participated in the receipt of a $50 million gift from the Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation Inc. At the time it was the largest gift ever made to an American business school. Woolsey was named to the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s inaugural Forty Under 40 class of 1997.

For about seven years, while still working part time at the UA, she co-owned Executive Communications Consultants LLC with friend Elise Mitchell. ECC became part of Mitchell Communications Group in 2008, and Woolsey left the UA to join Mitchell full time as executive vice president. In 2018, Woolsey opened and built up her own consulting business, Blake Communications Inc.

Woolsey was appointed chairwoman of the board of directors for the Northwest Arkansas National Airport (XNA) in 2018, after serving on the board for three years.

In 2020 Woolsey helped build Heartland Forward, the first U.S. think tank focused exclusively on the heartland region’s economic situation. So, in late 2025, when a call came from Brent Williams, dean of Walton College, offering a role in strategy and communications, Woolsey said she “couldn’t pass it up.”

“He’s been in this role for three years, and he wants me to focus on a new strategic plan — which we have well underway as we celebrate our 100th anniversary in July — to really focus on national visibility for everything this college deserves because it’s doing incredible work,” she said.

In her role since January, Woolsey is leading in strategic alignment, expanding partnerships, and creating national visibility to elevate student success and research impact.

“We have over 10,000 students at the college of business,” she said. “We’re one of the largest business schools in the U.S. We’re a third of the size of the university’s population, so we have a lot at stake in getting these students educated and employed.”

Woolsey “likes drafting behind very strong people,” which has included Doyle Williams, Elise Mitchell and Ross Devol at Heartland Forward, and now, Brent Williams.

“I don’t need to be out in front,” she said. “I just really like giving that halo and shining as best I can to achieve the goals that the leaders would like. And I’ve been able to do that in all of my jobs.”

For Woolsey, it’s not about “being the smartest person in the room; it’s more about building the smartest room,” she said. She gets her team to “work together authentically and transparently” to figure out “how are we going to accomplish this amazing task that’s been put in front of us. I’m incredibly collaborative. I really am about developing people, building teams and creating opportunity.”

Woolsey, a self-described “glass half full kind of gal,” said she’s learned “you can be competent and kind,” and to always ask questions because “if you’re not learning, you’re not living.”

Woolsey is a Junior League Sustainer, serves on the Circle of Life Foundation Board, represents Fayetteville on the XNA Board of Directors and is vice chair of the Delta Dental of Arkansas Foundation Board. She has three sons and enjoys cooking, abstract painting, reading and “being in the sunshine” working in her yard.