Sean Williams was installed Thursday as chairman of the Arkansas Bankers Association for 2016-17, and Dave Dickson was moved up to chairman-elect in preparation for becoming chairman a year from now.
But the 126-year-old organization's new vice chairman will probably steal the spotlight.
That's because, as vice chairman, Cathy Owen is in line to become the first woman elected to the top position in 2018.
Williams is president and CEO of First National Bank in Wynne and a lifelong resident of Woodruff County. He received bachelor and master's degrees in agricultural business and economics from Arkansas State University at Jonesboro, and he is a graduate of the Graduate School of Banking at Louisiana State University.
Dickson is president and CEO of Union Bank & Trust Co. in Monticello. He is a native of Crystal Springs, Mississippi, and has a bachelor’s degree in banking and finance from Mississippi State University. He is also a graduate of Mississippi School of Banking at the University of Mississippi and the Graduate School of Banking at Louisiana State University.
Owen, chairman of the board of Eagle Bank & Trust of Little Rock, was featured on the front page of the May 9 issue of Arkansas Business and in a story about women in the banking industry. In that article, Bill Holmes, the president and CEO of the ABA, said the organization was "working on diversifying our board and our leadership."
The fact that Owen is the ABA's first woman vice chairman and in the normal course of events will become its first woman chairman was not mentioned in the press release announcing her new position.
But in a recent interview, Owen spoke of entering the banking industry 42 years ago next month, when women in executive roles were even rarer than they are now. She started as a 16-year-old intern at the bank — originally First State Bank in Sherwood — that her father, businessman Harry Hastings Jr., had founded and served as chairman.
"My first day in banking, the then-bank president told me he didn't want me there. He knew my father had founded the bank and was chairman of the bank at that point, but he told me he didn't want me there. He felt like I was there to spy on him. He thought I had no work skills and that he was going to have to babysit me all summer."
By the time she finished high school, the bank president tried to talk her out of going to college so she could work at the bank full time.
Instead, she went to the University of Arkansas, where she was "one of few women getting a finance and banking degree" and the only woman in a study group of future bank leaders in Arkansas.
The Eagle Bank board of directors is still made up of Hastings family members — Owen has no sisters — as well as CEO Jeff Lynch and his father, Bill Lynch. But half of the executive officers at Eagle Bank are women, she said, and she has brought her daughter, Sara, as well as her son, Steven, into the business.