Rose Stuckey Kirk to Deliver 2025 Greenfield Lecture
JONESBORO – A journalism program alumna who has enjoyed remarkable levels of success in the corporate world, Rose Stuckey Kirk of Austin, Texas, will present the fall 2025 Corinne Sternheimer Greenfield Lecture at Arkansas State University.
Titled “From Innocence to Innovation: A Lattice (not Ladder) Climb to the Top of Corporate America,” her presentation will begin at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 17, in Riceland Hall of Fowler Center, 201 Olympic Dr. The public is welcome, and admission is free.
First presented in 2004, the annual Greenfield Lecture is funded by an endowment established by Drs. Rosalee and Raymond Weiss to honor her mother, Corinne Sternheimer Greenfield, who was born in Jonesboro in 1896.
The Sternheimer family was among the first to support the state agricultural school, established by legislative act in 1909, that has evolved into Arkansas State University. The Greenfield Lecture is also supported by the College of Liberal Arts and Communication, which coordinates the event.
A member of the Board of Directors of Casella Waste Systems (NASDAQ: CWST), Kirk serves on the Compensation and Human Capital Committee and the Nominating and ESG Committee.
She is a seasoned C-level executive with over 35 years of experience leading sales, marketing, customer service, go-to-market strategies, and responsible innovation functions. Having worked in the telecommunications industry during five transformational periods of technology and industry change, Kirk is effective at leading teams and driving growth within evolving competitive environments.
During a career that began as an award-winning journalist and concluded as an executive at Verizon, Kirk served in a number of senior executive roles including vice president of enterprise and government sales with accountability for generating $500 million in revenue. She also oversaw customer service, employee communications, and a number of marketing functions. Prior to her senior leader roles in profit-and-loss functions, Kirk served as a senior director with the former GTE telecommunications company’s CLEC (competitive local exchange carrier) and previously worked in marketing for Southwestern Bell Telephone Company, now AT&T.
In her final role with Verizon, where she served as its chief corporate social responsibility officer, Kirk used her extensive portfolio of experiences to transition Verizon from philanthropy to responsible innovation. She delivered revenue-generating solutions by using societal insights to identify unmet customer needs and to create new business products. She developed new professional services solutions for the education and the small business sectors.
In addition to her public board service, Kirk serves on the board of BSR, a global business consulting firm, and is an adviser for the C-Suite organization World50 and serves as a strategic adviser for NationSwell, an invitation-only membership program for senior leaders seeking to drive positive change. She was previously a board member for Gill St. Bernard’s, a private, K-12 college-preparatory school. Additionally, she has served as board chair and executive committee chair for the global firm Dress for Success Worldwide and as a member of the board of directors of the international entity, World Childhood Foundation, which was founded by the Queen of Sweden.
Kirk is an executive producer of and is featured in the documentary Without a Net: The Digital Divide in America. A supporter of the arts, she is a member of the Texas Women for the Arts | Texas Cultural Trust and is engaged with several national professional organizations. She was also featured in a BBC documentary on bridging the digital divide in classrooms and has appeared in a number of national and international media outlets.
She holds a Bachelor of Science from A-State and is completing her master’s degree in international affairs at Washington University.
