Brooksher L. Banks
Education:
Brooksher graduated from Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business with a BBA in Accounting and Management in 1975
Professional History:
Banks, a Certified Public Accountant, began his career with Ernst and Young in Little Rock. He left public accounting to enter a family business, growing a small dry cleaning company into the largest in Arkansas. Other business interests have included textile rental and maintenance and drapery and home furnishing manufacturing. He has held Board positions for a local bank and as a member of the Executive committee of an HMO, facilitated a merger to solidify a number one market share in the state. His areas of expertise include strategic planning, financial analysis, finance, teambuilding, and communications.
Melissa Banks Wolfe
Education:
Melissa earned her BBA from Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business in 2001. Her BBA concentration was in marketing and corporate communication. Melissa earned her MBA from the University of Central Arkansas in May of 2003.
Professional History:
In her professional life, Banks has six years of front line customer service experience, working with the public, point of sale computer systems, and. In addition to customer service, she has sales experience as a personal shopper for professional women shopping at an upscale retailer, Ann Taylor. Melissa has experience guiding startup companies through the trials and tribulations of establishing systems and procedures, training and implementation. When entering the workforce, she had consulting experience from Baylor’s Business Excellence Scholarship Team (BEST Team). A yearlong project resulted in a database marketing plan being presented and implemented for a large franchise of a national pizza restaurant.
Floyd Hickerson
Education:
Floyd is a 1969 graduate of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock with a BS in Mathematics. He has additional civil engineering hours from Arkansas Tech University and is a graduate of the Phillip Crosby Quality College.
Professional History:
From 1963 to 1999, he served in various positions with the Union Pacific Railroad Company. As manager of the Loco/Car Planning and Design group, he wrote job and engineering specifications and monitored the performance of locomotives and cars to those specifications. While in UP’s corporate office, he headed the company’s quality process team which covered all areas of freight transportation for the system and wrote the System Quality Manual to ISO 9002 standards. Floyd is also an enrolled agent, authorized to practice before the Internal Revenue Service, specializing in the resolution of tax problems, both personal and corporate.
Richard Whittington
Education:
Dick graduated from the University of Florida in 1961. He also has an additional BA from Chapman College in 1973 and the equivalent of an MA from the Industrial College of Armed Forces in 1981.
Professional History:
Whittington served in various management positions with the United States Air Force, both in the cockpit and Logistics. As Deputy Chief of Staff-Logistics, he supervised logistics operations at 15 stateside and off-shore locations which included various duties from vehicle and aircraft maintenance, contracts, supply line engineering, transportation and finance for 38,000 personnel. After leaving the service, he became Director of Quality Assurance and Configuration Management (Hardware, Software, Firmware, and Courseware) for CAE-Link Corporation; a 6000-employee aircraft simulator manufacturer and government aircrew-training contractor. Lead quality representative on all contract proposals. He was responsible for TQM training and ISO 9000 documentation preparation and certification efforts.
Jim Clemons
Education:
Jim holds a BA in Journalism from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and a cinematography degree from the Maine School of Photography in Camden, Maine.
Professional History:
After serving in the military as a photo-journalist, Clemons began his as creative director of Frazier-Irby-Synder, Inc, a full-service advertising and public relations firm. Jim was concurrently the CEO of FinMark Corporation, a company specializing in communications services for financial institutions. He has written articles on music and audio-visual equipment that have been published in four countries. One of Jim’s strengths is developing marketing strategy and plans for companies involved in technology and technical products and services.
Matthew L. Banks
Education:
Matt is a 2005 graduate of Ouachita Baptist University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Accounting. Banks is currently a candidate for receiving his Certified Public Accountant designation.
Professional History:
Matt’s work experience includes front line customer service, establishing operating procedures for point of sale systems and due diligence analysis for finance projects. While employed full time with Ernst and Young, he is available for special projects.
Emmett (Kip) Rushin, Jr.
Education
Kip graduated from Georgia Tech in 1965 with a BS in Industrial Engineering
Professional History
An Atlanta native, Kip spent 25 years in the Washington DC area with Trane Company in the mechanical contracting business. In 1990, he formed RDR Consulting in Boston, concentrating on merger and acquisition work for East coast clients. In 2004, he partnered with Tom Shane to form The Lending Team providing consulting and loan services to small businesses. In 2009, Rushin joined Banks & Associates as a senior analyst and focuses on the design of the best structure for the transaction matching loan programs to best meet client objectives.
Kip and his wife of 50 years maintain an office in the mountains of North Carolina to be closer to their three sons and five grandchildren.