UA Little Rock to Welcome Elizabeth Bowles to Speak on Importance of High-Speed Internet Access
The University of Arkansas at Little Rock will welcome alumna Elizabeth Bowles, president and CEO of Aristotle Unified Communications, as the C. Earl and Kathy Ramsey Lecture Series speaker on Thursday, April 6.
Bowles’ lecture, “Last Place Isn’t Good Enough: The Importance of High-Speed Internet to Futureproofing the Economy,” will begin with a reception at 5:30 p.m. followed by the lecture at 6 p.m. The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held at UA Little Rock Downtown, 333 President Clinton Ave., Little Rock.
Bowles graduated summa cum laude from UA Little Rock in 1989 with a bachelor’s degree in international studies. She is an alumna of the Donaghey Scholars Honors Program, which provided her a full scholarship and the opportunity to study in Europe.
“The Donaghey Scholars Program provided excellent preparation for a career in the legal profession,” Bowles said. “The Socratic teaching methods, the debates with teachers, and the small class sizes all prepared me for law school. I think UA Little Rock gave me exactly what I needed to be successful at Vanderbilt Law School, and in fact, I graduated first in my law school class.”
After Vanderbilt, Bowles clerked for the Hon. Judge Richard Arnold, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, and worked for five years at the law firm of Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C. She moved back to Arkansas in 2000 to join Aristotle Internet Access, the company her father, Dixon Bowles, co-founded.
When Dixon Bowles passed away in 2010, Bowles took over as chair of the board. In 2018, Bowles spun out Aristotle’s broadband division, Aristotle Unified Communications, into its own company so that she could focus on delivering broadband to unserved and underserved communities in historically overlooked areas of the state. Since 2017, she has served as chair of the FCC’s Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee.
The C. Earl and Kathy Ramsey Lecture Series was created in honor of Dr. Earl Ramsey, director emeritus for the Donaghey Scholars Honors Program, and endowed by a generous gift from Earl and Kathy Ramsey in addition to many individual donations from Donaghey Scholars alumni.
For more information, contact the Donaghey Scholars Honors Program at 516-916-3389 or dsp@ualr.edu.
