Forty Under 40: Jessica Dearnley

Jessica Dearnley has worked under the bright lights of New York City, Chicago and Miami, but now her home is Fayetteville.

Her life is anything but leisurely, though, as the highly motivated daughter of John and Karen Flake — two of the capital city’s most successful business people — makes her own mark.

Midwest Mall Properties, which purchased the Northwest Arkansas Mall in 2006 along with malls in Oklahoma and Colorado, assumed management of the 500 tenants and 90 employees in July.

Dearnley earned degrees in psychology and creative writing from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1996 and sold television advertising from 1996-1999 in New York and Chicago.

She received her MBA from the University of Miami in corporate finance and investment while she worked for Royal Caribbean. After graduation in 2001, she moved to August Bessemer Trust where the average client net worth is $50 million.

Her dynamic spirit showed as she studied and passed all the Chartered Financial Analyst exams while having three kids in four years. If Dearnley man-ages MMP as efficiently as she’s managed her life so far, she’ll achieve her goal of helping the company acquire more malls in the future.