Personal Bankers of Little Rock: Mike Barkley
May 10, 2018
Mike Barkley’s lifeline runs parallel to the technology boom, starting even before IBM started selling personal computers!
In 1944, Mike started life in Little Rock’s Trinity hospital, located on South Main Street. When he was in the third grade, his family moved from Battery Street to the new Lakewood neighborhood in North Little Rock. After graduating from North Little Rock High School, Mike headed up to Fayetteville where he spent four years studying journalism and photography. In fact, he was co-editor of, and photographer for, the University’s Razorback book during those years.
In the late 1960s, Mike’s love for photography drove him to open a professional studio in Little Rock, which became a successful operation, where he shot much of the photography used by Little Rock’s advertising agencies, local banks, and other clients. After three years, Mike had ambitions about working in a larger market so he closed his Little Rock studio and opened one in Denver, Colorado.
“I learned an important life lesson after that move,” Mike says. “Namely, you can’t overstate the importance of personal connections and having roots firmly planted where you live. Building that Denver business was much harder than I imagined it would be.”
After running his photography studio in Denver for three years, Mike was offered a job with a management consulting company based in Richfield, Connecticut, although Mike continued to live in Denver. “I traveled almost 100% of the time, working with various companies. It was in the early 70s and one of my associates had one of the first programmable calculators -- this was before Apple or any PCs existed. We learned how to program that calculator, using it for business analysis and to help find efficiencies for our business clients, and that’s where my technology career began.”
He was assigned to work with companies that had some of the first IBM Mainframe computers in the U.S. One of his clients, the Winnebego Camper Company, was an early adopter of using data processing and information technology and Mike was at the center of that.
Later, working with Novell Corporation, Mike worked with what was then called “Distributed Data Processing” -- which was the direct forerunner of personal computers (PCs).
A headhunter called on behalf of a large law firm who needed a specialist to help them operate their new Mini Computer (a scaled-down version of a Main Frame), and Mike became a pioneer in Legal Information Technology. At the time, litigation support, word processing, accounting, time and billing were becoming automated for the very first time. During the next two decades, Mike lived in New York City, Washington D.C., Orlando, and Atlanta, serving as the IT Director for several of the top law firms in the country.
In 2002, Mike woke up one day and realized how much he missed his home in Arkansas. So he moved back to Little Rock, reconnected with old friends, and almost immediately had the opportunity to be a developer and consultant at the Friday. Eldredge & Clark law firm. After two years, he was ready to move out of the legal world and a friend had heard that Bank of Little Rock needed a specialist to run the Bank’s networking. Mike interviewed, got hired and, today, has never been happier.
“It’s about the culture,” Mike says. “When you look at the things that are important to this bank, they’re the same things that are important to life, itself. We put customer service first, and a guiding principle is that everyone in the organization shares and is treated equally. Instead of internal politics, everyone is treated with love, trust, and respect. There’s really no apparent pecking order.”
For decades, Mike has been an instrument-rated pilot and motorcycle enthusiast (BMWs are his favorite!). Plus, he still loves photography and has added gourmet cooking to his repertoire. Mike is really worth knowing and we hope you get to know him soon!