Showcasing the State’s Best

Shannon Rich splits her time between Bentonville, Arkansas, and her hometown of Oklahoma City. The arrangement is so she can spend time with her stepdaughter Mia and husband Kelly Kerr, who is an attorney based in Grove, Oklahoma. While in Bentonville — Thursday through Sunday, typically — she likes to remind people that Sam Walton is from Oklahoma. She’s not just taunting; she’s working. As the President and CEO of the Oklahoma Hall of Fame, a position she has held for almost 20 years, Rich is much like the state’s chief evangelist for how great Oklahoma’s people are. 

“I think of myself as an ambassador for the state, and I really do believe we generate some of the best, brightest, most talented people in the country, and I like reminding the good people of Arkansas that,” Rich says.

Listening to her tell her story is like listening to encounters with a who’s who of business and philanthropic luminaries: John Q. Hammons, Clay Bennett, Kari Watkins, E.K. Gaylord II and a roll call of Hall of Fame board members who constitute 63 of the most influential people in our state. It wasn’t going to go this way, not early on. Rich said her plan after graduating Yukon High School in 1988 was “peace, out.” 

“My older brother had gone to college, so I saw it as a viable option,” she says, “so I headed to Oklahoma State to study radio and television journalism.” 

Meeting Rich face to face, it’s immediately apparent why broadcast journalism would have been a great call: exceptionally bright, a quick thinker, buzzing with what feels like a low-frequency energy when you’re around her, a gift for communicating clearly and a smile that is the textbook megawatt trope — she would have been great on television. But journalism wasn’t to be the thing, and neither was marketing. She finished her program at Oklahoma City University, but before that, she’d started working as a sales manager in a hotel. It was a job that would shape everything that would follow.

She would trade up to the new Renaissance Hotel after a brief stint with Hilton not long after college. She was young for the job — 23 or 24 — when she decided to apply for the Renaissance gig, but one thing that is decidedly true about Rich is that when you interact with her, you walk away with a comfortable level of certainty that she can handle any task assigned. She got the job, and worked her way up to Hammons’ advance team, helping to open hotels. 

The Renaissance was the first full-service hotel in the city since The Waterford was built, but Rich remembers being downtown and reckoning with what OKC really was in 2000. “My team had to work hard to sell OKC back then,” she says. “We were betting on what was coming, not what was. Bricktown was an idea more than a reality. The ballpark opened in 1998, but there wasn’t a lot else to support it.”

Part of the struggle was watching potential clients say no because of easily fixable issues like alcohol laws and catering issues, but also serious were the lack of amenities and low density in downtown. It’s hard to picture it for those who have only known the area post-MAPS, but it was grim. The frustration started her thinking about how policy changes could make it easier to sell OKC, so politics was suddenly on the board as an option. 

Her last year with Hammons was 2004, and that was the year of Tom Coburn vs. Brad Carson for a U.S. Senate seat. “I don’t care what side of the aisle you were on, it was ugly,” Rich says. “There were weekly spats on ‘Meet the Press,’ and national news stories about the race, the things said, all of it — and it was just ugly.”

Clay Bennett reached out with a proposal. He wanted her to take the Hall of Fame job, but she was thinking politics. “Clay pointed out that I needed more experience, and that the Hall of Fame would give me access to a statewide rolodex that was a literal who’s who of Oklahoma politics, non-profits, philanthropists, CEOs, etc. I didn’t really want the job, but I wanted to impress Clay.”

She took the job — Nov. 1, 2006 — reluctantly, but now she loves the role. It was the Coburn-Carson race that helped her reframe the issue of politics vs. nonprofit.

“I was headed for a divorce at the time,” she says. “I was married at 23, and we made it 20 years, but I could tell it was nearly over. I’d seen up close the personal toll a campaign can take, and I didn’t trust how I’d be portrayed by the media — woman, divorce, works too much — so I realized that I could work for the most 63 influential people in the state or put my name on a ballot.”

“There are only six states that have a Hall of Fame to honor not just entrepreneurs or athletes, but to honor its best ‘sons and daughters,’ and I’m proud that Oklahoma is one of them.” –Shannon Rich

Not long after taking the job, she got to see firsthand how the board and alumni of the Hall of Fame affected policy via scholarships, advocacy, networks, favors for friends and supporting nonprofits. But she also saw the changes that needed to happen. 

“The Hall of Fame was started in 1927 to create educational opportunities focused on Oklahoma, and to give out the state’s highest honor,” she says. “But because it is the state’s highest honor, the inductees need to look like the state of Oklahoma, and it took time to get everyone to look at the state with a broader vision. Representation matters, and young people should be able to look at our inductees and find someone that inspires them, no matter who they are or where they come from.” 

The difference is changing the optics of how the Hall of Fame inductees look to changing the way the Hall of Fame looked out on Oklahoma; to see more fields, more qualified people, more diversity, more opportunities and better ways to instill pride in all Oklahomans. The Mid-Continent Life building at NW 13th and Shartel is the organization’s home, which has increased its outreach by making it easier for people to come there, meet with the staff, sit in on educational programs, see the portraits of the inductees and learn about the ways Oklahomans have consistently generated more and better talented Oklahomans. 

“There are only six states that have a Hall of Fame to honor not just entrepreneurs or athletes, but to honor its best ‘sons and daughters,’ and I’m proud that Oklahoma is one of them, and I’m glad I said yes to Clay,” Rich says.