Dr. Karama Neal Talks Genetics, Nuclear Reactors, and Community Development at LeadAR 40th Anniversary Event

by Lisa Davis - April 16, 2024

What do genetics, nuclear reactors and rural community development have in common? These are topics covered by Dr. Karama Neal, Neal Firm principal and keynote speaker for the LeadAR 40th Anniversary celebration banquet on April 13, 2024.

A crowd of nearly 100 LeadAR alumni, friends, family, faculty and staff gathered at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts to celebrate the milestone anniversary for LeadAR. The theme of the event was “LeadAR: 40 years of empowering leaders; celebrating the legacy; shaping the future."

During Neal’s keynote address, she asked attendees to look back one, 10, 25, maybe 40 years after their LeadAR experience on obstacle faced.

Below are excerpts from her talk:

“I expect that not everything in your path was completely predictable, always smooth, or perfectly to your liking. We all have challenges and disappointments - internal and external – to deal with. Perhaps the new business you were developing sputtered a bit. Maybe a policy you were advancing stalled or failed. Perhaps there were family or health challenges to deal with.

Still, you pushed boldly through, ideally learning from the challenge and using it to make yourself a stronger person. Maybe your LeadAR colleagues were able to be helpful in that path. When I look around and see the way you support each other, it is clear that you all have created a community, elements of which can sustain you for years to come. I’m sure you cherish the memories, the experiences, the lessons, the friendships you’ll take from LeadAR since sometimes, that can make the past bumps look smoother in the rearview mirror, especially with the context of time.

For some, maybe many, of you, your decision to do LeadAR, your work before and since, and your presence here today, your success, all of that comes from your ability to hold fast to those things that matter most to you, while still going boldly into new experiences and opportunities.

As you may have found, there can be a certain magic that happens when one embraces the tension between being rooted in that which sustains you while also embracing new or uncommon opportunities. That ability to balance two sometimes competing objectives will continue to serve you well and benefit the people in our great state. So, in that spirit, I offer three examples of other Arkansans who have also successfully sought that balance.”

Example One: History of Southern Tenant Farmers Union

Given her work in rural development, Neal said she became intrigued and inspired by the history of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union. Founded in 1934 during the Great Depression in Tyronza, Arkansas (Poinsett County), the Southern Tenant Farmers Union aimed to help sharecroppers and tenant farmers negotiate better financial and living arrangements from landowners.

Four years later in 1938, the Southern Tenant Farmers Union had more than 35,000 members in Arkansas and neighboring states. She encouraged attendees to visit her favorite museum in Arkansas - Arkansas State University’s Southern Tenant Farmers Museum - to learn more of the story.

Importantly, they had multiracial leadership at a time when that was particularly uncommon, Neal said.

Similarly, women worked at all levels of the organization, and many used their union organizing experience and skills to inform later work in civil rights in Arkansas and beyond. These were bold leadership decisions, especially for the time, decisions that were not based on what was commonplace but were rooted in what is right.

Their work was also grounded in the rural agricultural Southern US experience that the membership all shared. Holding fast to those shared connections provided a foundation to support such bold inclusive leadership decisions.

“Hold fast and go boldly.”

Example Two: Nuclear Reactors

Arkansas Nuclear One in Russellville is a familiar sight, but did you know there are natural nuclear reactors with an Arkansas connection?

Paul Kazuo Kuroda was a chemistry professor at the University of Arkansas and according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, he “brought international attention to scientific research in Arkansas by correctly predicting the presence of naturally occurring nuclear reactors nearly twenty years before the first discovery of a reactor of this kind in the Oklo Mines in the Republic of Gabon.”

Neal shared he made this prediction early in his career and no one believed him. They thought he was an “idiot.” (That’s his word.) But Dr. Kuroda understood the science, held fast to what the data showed him. He used that date to predict and share the locations of existing or past self-sustaining, naturally occurring nuclear reactors.

“So, when almost 20 years later in 1972, the Atomic Energy Commission of France identified a past natural nuclear reactor in Wisconsin just where Dr. Kuroda had predicted, his work at the UA got more and now positive attention. This positive attention only increased when an active self-sustaining, naturally occurring nuclear reactor was eventually found in Gabon.

Information from that site, the only known active self-sustaining, naturally occurring nuclear reactor, is now being used to understand and develop options for nuclear waste storage. This is the power of basic scientific research. Dr. Kuroda saw something in the data, in the math, in chemistry that no one else had seen - the possibility of a natural nuclear reactor. And despite being ridiculed for what seemed like a crazy idea, he held fast to that which he knew to be true - what the data showed him – and continued to test and refine his bold prediction until it, in fact, it was proven true.

Hold fast and go boldly.”

Example Three: “My Parents”

Neal shared, “the last brief story I want to share is that of my parents. My mother was born in Hempstead County and reared in Ouachita County and my dad is from Lee County. Like many Southerners at that time, particularly Black Southerners, in the early 1960s they became part of the Great Migration and moved to Chicago where they met. Both of my mother’s siblings also moved 'Up North' and most of my father’s left the South as well. But here’s what my parents did differently - they chose Arkansas.

After about a decade of living in Chicago, they each, independently decided to move back home. They held fast to their Southern roots and relationships and recognized opportunities in Arkansas that others didn’t see. Then, they made the bold decision to seize that opportunity by returning home at a time when very few people were making that decision.

As someone born in Arkansas to the blessings of family, community, and opportunity in our great state, I am truly a beneficiary of their decisions to hold fast and go boldly. I am inspired by examples like these. It is stories like these that influenced me to hold fast to my roots and return home for a year after college to teach chemistry at what was then the Arkansas School for Mathematics and Science in Hot Springs and more recently, my more permanent return to the state after 18 years away. And it has made me willing to go boldly and take a chance on sometimes unusual or atypical paths. I’ll share two examples.

While attending college near Philadelphia, I fully claimed and owned my identity as a Southerner. And since then, this centering of place, in my case, Arkansas, helps me hold fast to the promise of my family’s land, in the family now for five generations. The ownership structure for that land, called heirs property, is more common than often realized in rural and urban communities of all types across the country. It occurs when someone dies without a will, or their will isn’t probated. In that case any real property - land or a home - is passed down undivided to their heirs. So, while the land, at least initially, stays in the family, its ownership structure is complex and creates significant challenges for families who want to retain and use their land as an asset for current or future generations.

So, while I am not an attorney or a legislator, in 2013, I started a statewide grassroots organization that successfully advocated for a change to probate law to protect property rights and family land ownership so that families can make the most of their shared asset.

We were successful and Arkansas became the fifth state to pass the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act which is now law in 22 states, D.C., and the US Virgin Islands. This includes eight southern states and three of our neighbors.

For me, it felt bold to work in this space - public policy and advocacy - for which I had not been formally trained and did not have extensive experience. But it helped to be grounded, to hold fast, in the family, place, and possibilities that mattered most to me.

Hold fast and go boldly.”

Her Career

Neal said probably the question she gets asked most often is “How did you go from genetics to rural development?”

“It’s a fair question and the answer has to do with my commitment to holding fast to the changing path before me and with my willingness to make bold and often uncommon decisions.

I started working in a fruit fly genetics lab at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences when I was in high school. As you can tell from my story about Paul Kuroda, I love science. And I loved the lab - the community of people from all over the word, the ability to collaboratively ask and answer questions in a rigorous manner, the discovery of new information that no one has known before. It was really exciting. So, I studied biology in college and genetics in grad school and worked in bioinformatics after graduating.

While working in Atlanta, I volunteered at an after-school program and an international aid group. When my family and I decided to move to Arkansas, I asked myself that question you always hear ‘What would you do for free?’ My honest answer to myself helped me realize that while I enjoyed being in and around the lab and doing basic research, I also really enjoy work that is more immediately beneficial to the people and communities around me.

I was glad to accept a position in rural development finance. For me this was a bold change in direction and it was enabled by my commitment to holding fast to the support in this state.

Those are two examples of what it has meant for me to hold fast and go boldly and I’ve already shared three examples of what it has meant for others."

Hold fast and go boldly; what might it mean for you?

Neal recounted:

"Perhaps you’ll take inspiration from the November 2023 Arkansas Civic Health Report. You can find it easily online if you haven’t already seen it. I want to highlight three key findings. Arkansas has:

1. The lowest voter registration rate in the country
2. The lowest voter participation rate in the country
3. And, except for young people, a voter participation rate that has been declining for decades.

There is work for all of us and more in those statistics. In addition to voting, the report reviews other aspects of civic health. Arkansas ranks 42nd in our rate of volunteering, 34th in membership in community groups, and 23rd in donating to charitable or religious groups.

There are some challenges, but I believe in Arkansas, and I believe in Arkansans. I understand our small state advantage. I understand that if we hold fast to our shared values and work together to make informed and bold collective decisions, we can ensure a better future for each of us, all 3 million of us, that we all deserve.

As I close, I note that the challenges and issues that face our state weren’t created overnight and they won’t be resolved overnight. It takes long term dedication from people like you and your colleagues and from organizations like LeadAR to ensure our state is the best it can be for each of the 3.1 million of us.

My favorite author, the late Octavia Butler, has a line from an unfinished novel to have been titled Parable of the Trickster. In it she wrote, ‘There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.’

New suns shine on the improbable intersection of popular paths. New suns shine on possibility. New suns shine on YOU!  So, hold fast to that which sustains you and go boldly toward your new sun! I look forward to seeing where this journey will take you!”

About Dr. Karama Neal

Dr. Neal is currently the principal for the Neal Firm, which provides consulting and mediation services. In 2021, she launched the Heirs Property Information Project which grew out of a statewide grassroots organization she started in 2013 to promote passage of the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act. The legislation was passed with no dissent in 2015. Her consulting work is built on 15 years of experience in personal and rural development finance and prior work in academic, corporate, philanthropic, nonprofit, and government sectors.

Previously, Dr. Neal was the Biden Presidential appointee to serve as Administrator of Rural Business-Cooperative Service, an agency of the US Department of Agriculture. Prior, Dr. Neal served as President of Southern Bancorp Community Partners, a Community Development Financial Institution loan fund and financial development organization promoting economic mobility in rural Arkansas and Mississippi through development lending, public policy advocacy, and asset building programs.

She is the author of the award-winning blog, So What Can I Do, and served or is serving on theboards of the Central Arkansas Library System, the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, Arkansas Access to Justice, and the Little Rock Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, among others.

After a career in the basic biosciences, she transitioned to work that has a more immediate effect on human well-being. She speaks frequently on family economic security, rural development, and career development and has taught both online and in the classroom at Emory University, Loyola University Chicago, Shorter College, and the Arkansas School for Mathematics and Sciences.

After graduating from the historic Little Rock Central High School, she earned a BA in biology at Swarthmore College and later a doctorate in genetics from Emory University and a master's in bioethics from Loyola University Chicago. She also completed executive education in impact investing at the University of Oxford Said School of Business. Additional information is available at www.nealfirm.co.

LeadAR is a program designed to help Arkansans broaden their understanding of issues and opportunities facing our state and strengthen their ability to make a difference. For more information about LeadAR, visit the website or contact Robinson, jrobinson@uada.edu, or Lisa Davis, ldavis@uada.edu.