Sunday Informer: More Than a Seat at the Table

For Ventrell Thompson, leadership is rooted in family, shaped by experience and measured by impact.

By Angel Townsend-Burt

Ventrell Thompson can sit in executive meetings, help make decisions affecting hundreds of thousands of customers and appear on television explaining the complexities of the energy business.

But none of that carries much weight with his 84-year-old grandmother when her electric bill goes up $5.

She calls her grandson.

And she wants answers.

“She will call me and ask me about her bill and why has it gone up $5 or $7,” Thompson said, laughing.

Never mind the executive title. Never mind that he has spent more than two decades building a career at Entergy.

To Grandma, Ventrell is still Ventrell — and he works for the electric company.

“She’s going to tell me, ‘I haven’t done anything that I didn’t do last month,’” he said.

It is funny, familiar and remarkably grounding. And perhaps it says as much about Thompson as any title on his résumé.

Thompson serves as vice president of Customer Service for Entergy Arkansas, leading a team that serves residential, commercial, governmental, and industrial customers across the state. His more than two decades with the company have included roles in regulatory affairs and customer service, experience that ultimately prepared him for the executive position he holds today.

But long before corporate meetings and consequential decisions, a curious boy grew up in Dermott, Arkansas, surrounded by family and already wondering what lay beyond the boundaries of his small hometown.

“I just knew that there was a bigger world out there,” Thompson said. “I kind of wanted to figure out what else was out there because I just knew it had to be more than what was right here in Dermott.”

He played sports, spent time with friends and participated in the life of his community. But leadership began showing itself early.

His mother thought he was too small for football, so basketball became his sport. Thompson played year-round and eventually became captain of his junior high and high school teams. Leadership followed him off the court through student organizations and, eventually, he served as president of his senior class.

His personality already had a duality: He wanted his ideas heard but didn’t necessarily crave the spotlight.

“I always kind of wanted my voice to be heard,” he said, “but I was also a little bit wanting to be behind the scenes.”

The Man Who Showed Him Impact

One of Thompson’s earliest lessons about leadership came from his grandfather, a minister.

As a boy, Thompson watched his grandfather stand before congregations, tell stories, command attention and move people. At first, the public speaking fascinated him.

As he grew older, he realized he had been watching something much more important.

Impact.

His grandfather could walk into a store and people would stop him. One person might need advice. Another needed encouragement. Someone else simply wanted to be acknowledged.

“He was able to give that to them almost effortlessly, just by being himself and showing up,” Thompson said.

His grandmother did not always appreciate how long those interactions made a simple trip to the store, Thompson remembers with a laugh. But the lesson stayed with him.

Leadership was not simply about being able to command a room. It was about what people received because you were in it.

That understanding would eventually follow him into rooms his younger self could not have imagined.

When Capability Met Confidence

Thompson said he never mapped out a path that ended with an executive title.

What he did possess was an expectation that he would find his way.

“I just knew that I would be successful in whatever it is that I ended up doing,” he said.

Thompson earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a major in accounting from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and later a Master of Business Administration from John Brown University.

But education was only part of his development. Part of his confidence came from an uncomplicated willingness to work. Even as an executive, Thompson admits he is still inclined to roll up his sleeves and jump into the work. At times, team members remind him they can handle the task at hand.

But Thompson is particularly drawn to work that puts him close to people.

“That’s where I get my energy from,” he said.

One of the most consequential shifts in Thompson’s development came when he began to see himself differently. He realized difficulty did not mean impossible.

And he realized something else: He was just as capable as anyone else.

“When I gained confidence with my competitiveness, and then the drive for continuously improving and getting better, then my capabilities caught up with my confidence,” Thompson said.

The sentence could almost stand alone as the story of a career.

Once confidence and preparation began moving together, Thompson stopped viewing difficult things merely as obstacles. They became opportunities to grow.

Today, he passes on a lesson to his two sons, Chase and Caleb: Do not run from hard things.

His younger son, Caleb, once struggled to learn to ride a scooter. There were falls, scars and tears. At one point, stopping for the day would have been easier.

Thompson told him to try again.

Eventually, the boy called his mother outside.

“Mama, I got it.”

Thompson still reminds him of that day when something new seems too difficult. On the other side of hardship, he tells his sons, is evidence that you can do more than you thought.

The Responsibility of Being Seen

Thompson does not spend much time thinking of himself as an inspiration. Yet he understands that being seen in an executive position can matter, particularly to young people still imagining what might be possible for their own lives.

He and his wife, Joy, a longtime educator in the Little Rock School District, teaches those lessons to their sons.

Thompson’s community involvement has included mentoring through 100 Black Men of Greater Little Rock, where he saw firsthand how exposure could expand a young person’s sense of possibility.

Sometimes seeing someone in a position you have never imagined for yourself changes the question from Can someone like me do that? to Why not me?

Thompson hopes his presence can serve that purpose without becoming the purpose itself.

“If he’s in that position, maybe this is an example of what’s possible for me as well,” he said of what someone might see in his journey.

But Thompson quickly rejects the mythology of the self-made executive.

“I had a whole lot of help getting here,” he said.

His family was his original support system — “the best hype people that I got,” as he describes them — encouraging him before he always recognized his own potential.

That includes the grandmother who still takes his calls, remembers conversations from years ago, celebrates when she sees him on television and, yes, holds him accountable for explaining her electric bill.

Leadership Still Comes Back to People

At Entergy, Thompson’s responsibilities are tied to an enormously technical business. Electricity must be produced, transmitted and delivered reliably around the clock. Infrastructure matters. Technology matters. Poles, wires and equipment matter.

Yet when Thompson talks about leadership, he continually returns to people.

“None of that really matters if you don’t have the right people in the right places, doing the right things to make all of those things work,” he said.

That philosophy also shapes how he views community partnerships.

A utility may understand the business of providing electricity, Thompson said, but community organizations understand the people they serve. Meaningful partnerships allow both to bring something to the relationship.

“We partner with those in the community because they’re the experts,” he said.

The company can bring resources. Community organizations bring knowledge, relationships and an understanding of what residents actually need.

That same belief in relationships shapes Thompson’s advice to college students and young professionals.

Invest in yourself, he tells them. Build your knowledge and capabilities. Then build relationships — not merely a network.

“Build real connections and real relationships that you can lean on,” Thompson said.

And finally: Do the hard things.

“Don’t get stuck by the hard things,” he said. “Push through.”

Off the Clock — Sort Of

For all the responsibility surrounding Thompson’s professional life, there is another Ventrell.

He enjoys traveling with his wife and spending time with longtime friends, including Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity brothers from his college years whom he still considers family.

He likes golf, though he readily admits he doesn’t get enough time to play.

Basketball, however, is another matter.

Thompson proudly claims the title of neighborhood HORSE champion — with one important jurisdictional limitation.

His yard.

“Anybody that comes over in my yard and wants to play HORSE, I don’t lose in my yard,” he said.

And then comes perhaps the most unexpected revelation from a man whose career requires constant interaction with employees, customers and communities.

Ventrell Thompson says he is shy.

People energize him, he said. They also require energy. After days filled with conversations, decisions, calls and responsibilities, Thompson values quiet — time to reflect, decompress and regroup.

It rarely lasts forever.

When the lights go out, Thompson said, his phone is often one of the first to ring. When something goes wrong, someone needs an answer, and he takes pride in being available.

Service, after all, does not always respect the boundaries between the public executive and the private man.

What Will His Seat Mean?

There is a phrase often used to describe progress in corporate America: getting a seat at the table.

Thompson sees that seat differently.

Occupying it is not enough.

“It’s important to hold a seat at the table, but it’s not only important to be at the table,” he said. “It’s what are you doing at the table?”

Years from now, when people assess his career, Thompson hopes they will find evidence that his presence changed something.

He wants the experiences he carries — including perspectives that may otherwise be absent from a corporate boardroom — to influence the conversations and decisions happening there.

“He didn’t just have a seat at the table,” Thompson said of how he hopes his career will be remembered. “What he brought to the table impacted what was considered at the table.”

And what Thompson brings did not begin at that table.

He brings Dermott.

He brings a grandfather who taught him that leadership could look like stopping in a store long enough to make someone feel seen.

He brings a family that believed in him.

He brings fatherhood and mentorship.

He brings the experience of discovering what can happen when capability and confidence finally meet.

And he brings an understanding that decisions made in powerful rooms eventually land in real homes and real communities.

Sometimes even his grandmother’s.

(Story courtesy of Arkansas Black Vitality)