Janet Jones*

Jones’ Career Spans Real Estate, Civics

Janet Jones made history at the Greater Little Rock Chamber of Commerce in 1998. That’s when she became the first woman to lead the civic group as chairman – uh, make that chairwoman.

“I enjoyed being the head of the Chamber of Commerce because I love Little Rock,” says Jones, president and chief executive officer of her namesake residential real estate firm. “I’ve been selling the city of Little Rock my whole life. Frankly, it’s an easy sell.”

She has made a career of selling homes in Little Rock for 24 years and branched out on her own in 1980 to form The Janet Jones Co. The firm helped sell more than $128.7 million worth of homes during 1998, the largest share of any real estate firm in Pulaski County.

The company has established itself as a market leader in the northern neighborhoods of Little Rock, stretching from the Heights/Hillcrest area westward to Chenal Valley.

Jones brings the same effervescent personality that has served her well marketing homes to everything she does. This marks her sixth year as a member of the Little Rock branch of the Federal Reserve Board, which she chaired in 1997.

She has served four years on the executive board of the Fifty for the Future group of business leaders in Pulaski County and has been recognized as one of the Top 100 Businesswomen in Arkansas.

Her self-professed weakness is to occasionally over-commit her time and energies so that it strains her business-civic-family schedule. The former English and math teacher cites as her greatest strength the ability to gracefully shift between leadership and “followership.”

In past years, she has brought her unabashed enthusiasm to a wide array of community work, including the Junior League of Little Rock and to the board of directors of Youth Home Inc., Big Brothers-Big Sisters and the CARTI Foundation.

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