Kim Hadley: The Unexpected Pattern
By Traci Manos
January 15, 2025
Kim Hadley grew up on a dairy farm in Barber, Arkansas, watching her mother tailor the suits her dad wore to his job as a loan officer. Hadley was 8 years old when she sewed her first project, a little mushroom print dress. At 12, she took her first tailoring class and, through 4-H, began to enter and win competitions in fashion design and sewing. In addition to being creative endeavors, the competitions allowed Hadley to travel and earn scholarships.
During high school, Hadley expanded to art — watercolor and pointillism were her favorite mediums — and won several regional art competitions. She also found she excelled in the more left-brained field of accounting. Still, Hadley dreamed of becoming a fashion designer.
At 16, she was one of four students to win a national McCall Pattern Company competition. She flew to Hollywood, California, and received a makeover on Rodeo Drive before a professional photo shoot to feature her design in the McCall’s pattern catalog. At 18, Hadley’s talents took her to the Fashion Revue at The Magnificent Mile in Chicago to model a garment she’d designed and sewed. While there, she was offered a half scholarship to a fashion design school in New York but couldn’t afford the remaining tuition.
While researching fashion design as a career, she met the designer who created the wardrobe for Elizabeth Ward, crowned Miss Arkansas in 1981 and Miss America in 1982. He told Hadley he used his accounting degree daily to run his design business.
Hadley took his story to heart and went on to earn her degree in accounting and passed the CPA exam. Her goal was to become financially stable and then pursue fashion design, but the CPA firm where she worked offered to pay for her MBA, and she couldn’t pass up the opportunity.
While completing her MBA, Hadley met and married her husband, Kelly, and their daughter was born three years later, one week after she graduated. Hadley planned to continue working, but when her daughter’s day care forgot to feed her for an entire day, she knew she couldn’t leave Savannah there again.
When she resigned from her job to care for Savannah, her supervisor suggested that she contact JBU about part-time teaching opportunities. At age 27, Hadley started teaching evening business classes for JBU’s Fort Smith Center. She taught as an adjunct for eight years, moving to Northwest Arkansas midway through when Kelly’s work relocated them.
In 2004, with their two kids in school, Hadley joined JBU full time as the organizational management program director. She held faculty positions before becoming vice president for finance and administration and chief financial officer in 2009, eventually earning her doctorate in marketing in 2016. In 2020, she was named Arkansas Business’ Education CFO of the Year, and in 2022, JBU President Chip Pollard promoted Hadley to vice president and chief operating officer.
Today, as executive vice president, Hadley leads the operational aspects of JBU, including finance, facilities, technology, enrollment, marketing, athletics and the university-owned radio station.
When asked about her most personally meaningful JBU contribution, Hadley pointed to the university’s partnership with Sunshine Montessori School. After hearing employees’ struggles with local day care shortages and knowing from her own experiences the critical importance of good care, she championed converting a recently vacated JBU building into an infant and toddler care facility. JBU offered Sunshine Montessori a reasonable lease rate in exchange for priority enrollment for employees’ children.
It’s this kind of problem-solving that Hadley says uses her creative aptitude.
“I enjoy pulling a group of people together to collaborate in creatively resolving issues or improving operations to benefit our students, faculty and staff,” Hadley said.
Hadley believes that JBU is an excellent place for first-generation students because of the caring faculty and staff.
“Students are not just a number. Our staff and faculty invest their lives in helping students navigate the college experience,” Hadley said.
She doesn’t have any regrets about not pursuing fashion design and loves her job.
“University administration is not what I imagined or dreamed of, but I sought the Lord at each juncture, so I know it’s the path he had for me,” Hadley said. “I’m energized by the work we do at JBU.”
