Arkansas Business 20th Annual 40 Under Forty
• The original Class of 2004 profiles
• 2013 Updates from this week’s digital edition of Arkansas Business.
Jeff Standridge is still at Acxiom, though he is not always in one place.
The multi-faceted Standridge has spent a great deal of his time traveling the world as Acxiom’s vice president of global partners and development, and for the last two years has been running the company’s Latin American market in Brazil.
But that isn’t the limit of Standridge’s world travel.
“I’ve done a number of acquisitions and new startups in Poland, China, the Middle East and Brazil,” said Standridge, a 2004 Arkansas Business 40 Under 40 honoree.
At that time Standridge, 46, was a 37-year-old organizational development leader at Acxiom, the technology and marketing services company headquartered in Little Rock.
But even at that age, Standridge was already on his second career.
A product of Glenwood, Standridge had a music scholarship to the University of Central Arkansas but was drawn to health care and worked as an emergency medical technician and then as a respiratory therapist. That led him to Angel One, the helicopter transport team at Arkansas Children’s Hospital, where he worked from 1983-93.
Standridge also taught cardiorespiratory care at UAMS during that stretch and went on to get his master’s in adult education/human resource development and his doctorate in higher education from UALR.
He joined Acxiom as a consultant in 1998 and was soon traveling the world.
“When I was growing up in Glenwood, I never would have fathomed” his current life and career, Standridge said. “I’ve been very blessed and very fortunate.”
Standridge also has been honored as an Arkansas National Guard Soldier of the Year and is chairman of the board for the Conway Area Chamber of Commerce and a member of the board of the Boys & Girls Club of Faulkner County. He is also active in youth ministry, with a three-year term as board president of Conway K-Life coming to an end.
Standridge has taken his family, including his high school- and college-aged daughters, on international trips, but he prefers coming home to them.
“It’s certainly been exciting,” he said. “But I love coming back home. There is no place like central Arkansas.”