Thomas Wayne Allen
Tom Allen remembers growing up in Russellville fondly — thanks to his parents. Now, the president of Cushman & Wakefield | Sage Partners is leading the 2023 Walk to End Alzheimer’s in an attempt to aid people who live with the disease, like his mother.
When Tom Allen’s mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, his family felt that there wasn’t a facility in the state of Arkansas that knew how to properly care for her — or anyone else with Alzheimer’s or other dementias, for that matter.
“Nobody knew how to deal with it, [though] they did the best they could,” Allen says from his office in Rogers, where he is the president at Cushman & Wakefield | Sage Partners.
Watching a loved one change as a result of the disease that destroys memories and crucial cognitive function is a struggle, he notes, as is seeing the other parent’s resources grow depleted in search of help.
As the chairman for the 2023 Walk to End Alzheimer’s, Allen has honored his mom and “remembered and reflected on that experience,” says Kirsten Dickins, executive director of the Arkansas chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association.
Allen also serves as an active board member for the Arkansas chapter and hopes other families will become aware of the support and company they can find in the organization that serves all 75 counties.
“Tom has been super generous, not only with his time but his advice in terms of helping a nonprofit like ours to see real change in the local community,” Dickins says. A total of 60,000 Arkansans are dealing with dementia, along with more than 180,000 caregivers, and yet it’s common to feel very isolated in the experience. “Many times, if a family is going through that, they feel like they’re alone. They don’t always recognize that a lot [of people] in their circles are walking the same journey.”
EXPAND THE REACH
About half of the Alzheimer’s Association board is located in Northwest Arkansas, while the other half is in Central Arkansas. The board leaders work as partners, Dickins says, to expand the reach of the nonprofit, recruit support and volunteers, but also to make sure people are aware of the help they can find with its services.
“He is working all the time to expand opportunities, especially on that real estate footprint in Northwest Arkansas,” Dickins says. Allen was responsible for helping the Walk to End Alzheimer’s gain more visibility by changing its location to the Pinnacle Heights area. He was also crucial in Sage Partners becoming a leading sponsor of the event. “He recognized what our walk could do and helped expand that recognition.”
“Watching his service with the Alzheimer’s Association, Quorum Court, his church and so many other organizations really has been inspirational,” says Marshall Saviers, CEO and principal at Cushman & Wakefield | Sage Partners. “What I can count on from Tom is that you know he will do the right thing. His integrity and faith is first and foremost, and it emanates throughout Sage.
“Our core values of service, authenticity, give-back and being entrepreneurial truly sum up Tom as well.”
What makes his service particularly effective, Dickins says, is Allen’s firsthand knowledge and understanding of the significant impact that Alzheimer’s has on the workforce. He knows that people may often have to leave work early or take extended leave to care for loved ones, which makes a negative financial impact as businesses try to take care of that workforce, she says.
His volunteerism brings more attention to that in the corporate space as an issue worth considering and taking a closer look at.
“Alzheimer’s is something that hasn’t been publicized as much, people don’t want to talk about it, they ignore it and hope it goes away,” Allen says. “They can treat it, can make it better, but there’s no cure.” The Alzheimer’s Association “educates caregivers on how to treat it through medicine, how to take care of people and how to respond to them,” while money goes toward research for cures, medicine to treat and manage the disease and education in how to care for and respond to individuals living with Alzheimer’s.
TRIAL AND ERROR
Allen grew up in Russellville where, as the youngest of three boys, he would try to play with his brothers and their friends but would get beaten up badly. He was 10 years old when his oldest brother was a high school junior, after all. He laughs at that now.
“It was a wonderful life that my parents provided,” Allen says. Any struggles they faced were typical ones. “They always showed us love and raised us in typical small town America. We went to church, got involved in the community, we had our neighborhood friends and typical values of hard work, respect your neighbors, respect your friends, don’t lie, don’t steal, help each other out and behave.”
Allen’s father was personnel manager for the Morton’s Frozen Foods plant in Russellville before he got into state government, working as director of commerce under two governors. In the mid1970s, he was approached to lead the Arkansas Poultry Federation as executive vice president. The special interest group lobbied for and pulled together poultry suppliers in the Natural State.
Because of his dad’s role as a lobbyist, Allen became familiar with big players of the time — the Hudson family, the Tysons, Georges, Petersons, Simmonses and many others.
“It was interesting enough and gave me a little flavor of politics,” Allen says. “I got to meet governors and senators and representatives; I got to know them as a kid growing up.”
His dad made the commute to Little Rock each day to keep all the boys in the Russellville school system, a sacrifice Allen wouldn’t fully appreciate until years later. And although his dad’s work was more public, Allen learned his work ethic from his mother just as much as from his father.
‘NOT GOOD’ JANITOR
At Macy’s, the dress shop his mother owned in Russellville, Allen got his very first taste of work as the “not good” janitor. She would later open another dress shop in North Little Rock and worked during the months of the legislative sessions in the state Employment Security Division, while still managing to balance all the work of family life, raising the boys amid their father’s travel.
Both brothers were major positive influences in his young life as well. When it came to school, “Dad and Mom didn’t tell me exactly what to do,” Allen says. “They didn’t push hard on grades; they just told me to study.”
More significant than school studies was observing his father at work and on occasional business trips, where Allen would watch his dad interact with people. He thought he might want to do something like that, the sort of work where he could have an influence on others.
At first, while attending the University of Arkansas, Allen thought he might do that through accounting. Two years into his studies, he realized he ought to change majors if he was going to succeed.
Marketing consumer goods companies was the big thing at the time, and one of his brothers had wound up in sales, so Allen switched to marketing. The next question was what to do with it. Allen accepted various jobs at Walmart stores and in management and sales, but the early years of his career took a lot of trial and error to find a good fit.
“I just knew I wanted to work hard, have opportunities and do the best I could,” Allen says. “I wanted to try out a career and see how it works, but not be miserable, be honest with working and with myself.”
FINITE SET OF WALLS
Allen landed in commercial real estate, where he thrived. Before he left his work at Walmart stores, management tried to convince him to stay. He knew it would have been lucrative if he had, but he wasn’t happy with what he was doing, so he set out to find what would set right with him.
During the economic recession, Allen worked in poultry plant management for Pilgrim’s Pride. In Little Rock, he worked for CJRW and had some work with the Arkansas Children’s Hospital. Then he “got the bug” for entrepreneurial work and bought a franchise, opening a Back Yard Burgers, which took him to Northwest Arkansas. It was successful for a while, but ultimately the long hours wore on him, and he would move on.
Of all the things that happened because of his move to this corner of the state, arguably the most important occurred at the Summerhill Racquet Club in Fayetteville. Allen was working out there one summer day with his best bud Rick Fine, during a phase of their life when these two young, single guys felt like they’d missed the boat on getting married. Then into their aerobics class walked a cute girl in an University of Oklahoma T-shirt.
Allen was born in Oklahoma and his father’s family are all Oklahoma natives. His oldest brother went to the University of Oklahoma, and the whole family was raised on Oklahoma football while growing up in Arkansas. Obviously, he and the cute girl had one very important thing in common and to top it off, their favorite coach had resigned from Oklahoma that very day.
‘A PLAN OF ACTION’
“Immediately I had a plan of action; I was star struck,” Allen says. “Somehow, I needed to get to know this girl. She had a big smile, was very outgoing and didn’t know anybody” in town yet. She had just started a job at Bristol Myers Squibb after graduating from OU herself.
“I told her, ‘I’ll show you your cleaner’s, your hair place, etc., and that strategy took,” Allen says. They went out every weeknight as friends, then soon they were going out on the weekends for dates. The pair had met in June, and they married only months later in February.
What helped make the right match for Allen’s career, however, was a generous offer from a dear friend of the family. He had been looking for a job in 1998 when Paul Carter, who was president of Walmart’s real estate division, opened the door on that industry for Allen.
After a series of interviews and passing the real estate exam, Carter and his vice presidents taught Allen the ins and outs of corporate real estate. He started at Walmart as a real estate manager and worked to put in new stores and find new tenants for the locations they moved out of. Sometimes, when they couldn’t get another retailer in, it required creativity: inviting car dealerships, city administration, hospitals and go kart tracks to make their new business home in the old Walmart space.
“It wasn’t always easy,” Allen says. “Stores moving out of [that large a space] with a finite set of walls and finding somebody who could fit.”
A LEARNING EXPERIENCE
Sometimes it took discounting to get the space filled, but all in all, it was a great learning experience, and finally Allen had hit on something he truly liked. To find the right space for a business, Allen says, you’ve got to learn a lot about what they’re doing, how they work, the size of their staff. He got to know a lot about many types of businesses, including consumer goods companies, Walmart vendors, law firms, sales offices and more.
The only downfall for Allen, at a time when his family was young, was that the job required a lot of traveling. So when, in 2006, the Pinnacle Group offered him an opportunity that would keep him working close to home, he jumped at the chance. He could be there for school activities and still work in the field that he loved. That team would later become Hunt Ventures, and Allen got on board during the beginning stages of the Pinnacle Hills project, the first of many big developments he would be a part of.
Down the road in 2016, Allen would be instrumental in the merger of the asset services division of Hunt Ventures with Sage Partners and Capitol Properties.
A WIN-WIN MERGER
“Tom and I always talked that we wanted our firms to have a more formal partnership when the timing was right,” Saviers says. Once it was in motion, they structured what they call a winwin merger for all parties. “Tom is first and foremost a great man and friend. He is the ‘rock’ of Sage, and I know he will always give well-thought-out, measured advice.”
Whenever Allen talks to those at Sage who want to climb the ladder, he questions whether they have a servant’s heart, because to find yourself in leadership means having more people to serve.
“The icons who stayed here invested in the area and serve not just families, but have given back through infrastructure — hospitals, schools, charitable organizations — and that is what makes a community thrive,” Allen says. “We try to have the same model … whatever little blessings we’ve been given, we do not just hold on to, but pass on: our time, expertise and money. We do that as much as we can.”