Icon (Close Menu)

Logout

William Rockefeller, Samar Ali Join Winrock International Board

2 min read

Winrock International of Arkansas announced on Thursday the appointments of Samar Ali and William Rockefeller to its board of directors.

Ali is the first Arab-American board member in the organization’s history. Rockefeller is the grandson of founder Winthrop Rockefeller and will become the first Rockefeller of his generation to join the board.

“In Will, our board gains an outstanding strategic thinker, planner and analyst with on-the-ground experience in a broad range of domestic development issues and an important connection to the legacy of Winthrop Rockefeller, whose lasting impact and vision inform our mission to this day,” Winrock President and CEO Rodney Ferguson said in a news release.

Ferguson said Ali has “a passion for both rural economic development in the South and innovative peace and reconciliation initiatives in the Middle East …”

Ali has worked for South African Constitutional Court Justice Edwin Cameron, President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano. From 2007-2010, she was an associate at Hogan Lovells U.S. LLP, establishing the law firm’s first Middle East presence in the United Arab Emirates.

Ali was appointed as a White House fellow and joined former President Jimmy Carter as part of an international election observation delegation to the 2012 Egyptian presidential elections. She is from Tennessee and returned there to serve as assistant commissioner for international affairs for Gov. Bill Haslam. 

Ali co-founded multinational consulting firm Lodestone Advisory Group in 2013 and serves as a senior adviser to GSIS in Washington, D.C., and as a mediator on the Syrian conflict through her law practice with Bass Berry and Sims PLLC.  

Rockefeller is from Little Rock. He was an aide in then-Rep. John Boozman’s (R-Ark.) senate campaign.

After the 2010 elections, he interned at the Heritage Foundation and later joined Boozman’s staff in the fall of 2011 as a legislative correspondent.

Rockefeller moved back to Arkansas in 2013 and served as projects director for the third and fourth congressional districts.

In January, he began handling projects for the Winrock Group, which has holdings in car dealerships, real estate development, row crop and cattle farms, and timber, oil and natural gas interests. He is also vice president of Winrock Farms.

Send this to a friend