Blake Woolsey to speak at 10th annual Fast 15 event

Public relations executive Blake Woolsey will be the featured speaker at the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s 10th annual Fast 15 networking event, scheduled for May 15 at the Janelle Y. Hembree Alumni House on the University of Arkansas campus. It is sponsored by United Bank of Springdale and begins at 5:30 p.m.

Woolsey was most recently executive vice president at Fayetteville public relations firm Mitchell, working with some of the best-known global brands at the C-suite level, and showing them how to integrate into the fabric of local communities through hyper-local activations.

Before joining Mitchell in 2008, she was partner and co-owner of Executive Communications Consultants LLC.

An experienced fundraiser, Woolsey also spent more than a decade working with the UA. She took a lead role in the Campaign for the 21st Century, which exceeded its $1 billion goal. Perhaps her greatest achievement while at the UA was participating in and receiving a gift of $50 million from the Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation — the charitable program created by the family of Walmart Inc. founder Sam M. Walton — in 1998. It was the largest gift, at that time, ever made to an American business school.

A Texas native, Woolsey was a member of the Business Journal’s inaugural class of Forty Under 40 honorees in 1997. She is a past president of the Junior League of Northwest Arkansas and serves currently on multiple boards, including the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport, Delta Dental Foundation, Doing Business in Bentonville and Cancer Challenge of Northwest Arkansas.

Beginning in 2009, the Business Journal’s Fast 15 program has annually recognized a small, exclusive group of 20-something professionals on the fast track to success. To be considered, nominees must not turn 30 before the Fast 15 issue is published. The deadline to nominate is Friday, March 23.

This year’s Fast 15 issue will be available on newsstands and online Monday, May 14.