Arkansas Business

Hunter Carpenter

Hunter Carpenter was standing in the pre-med line at Ole Miss when the school’s legendary dean of accounting called him out. “Carpenter, I know you,” said Jimmy Davis. “I’ve heard about you. You need to become an accountant. Accounting is the language of business.”
The shout-out got his attention, and Carpenter concedes it didn’t hurt that the accounting line was a lot shorter than pre-med.
He became a triple graduate of the University of Mississippi at Oxford with a bachelor’s (1999) and master’s (2000) in accountancy and a law degree (2003). Carpenter flirted with practicing law, but his family’s entrepreneurial roots in the Little Rock small business scene (they had operated Unpainted Furniture, since sold) proved too strong.
“I knew I always wanted to be in business, but I didn’t know what that meant,” he said. “Now, I invest with entrepreneurs.”
After clerking in Memphis and Oxford, Carpenter returned to Little Rock and joined Stephens Inc. in corporate finance. He later was the executive assistant to Witt Stephens Jr., supporting a broad range of principal investing activities, and remained with him when The Stephens Group was formed in 2006.
As a managing director at the firm, Carpenter is responsible for sourcing and executing new investments and monitoring and advising portfolio companies.
A member of the University of Mississippi Foundation Investment Committee and a member of the Arkansas Bar Association, Carpenter has published articles on the topics of corporate finance and constitutional law.