Meet our founder, Jared Arnett.

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Jared is married to his wife, Bethany. They met at college in Pikeville, KY and now live less than a 10 minute walk from where they first met. They have two amazing children: Rosalind (Rozzie) and Harker, and a small entourage of pets.

 

Jared is a pastor, speaker, entrepreneur, Appalachian (rural) optimist, and musician, who took improvisation and applied it to everyday life. Nearly 20 years ago, he decided what he wanted to do with his life, and that was to make a difference in his rural community. He’s never had a job that existed before he took it.

He was the Founding Executive Director (2014-2020) of Shaping Our Appalachian Region, Inc. (SOAR), a special initiative in Appalachia KY formed in 2013 by KY Governor Steve Beshear (D) and KY’s 5th District Congressman, Hal Rogers (R) as a regional effort to empower the region to chart its own future beyond the coal industry. During his tenure there he helped draft, with input from nearly 3,000 residents, SOAR’s blueprint for the future of Appalachia. He was able to enlist nearly 300 partners to formally adopt the blueprint and commit to help implement it. He led a team that designed a tactical approach to collective impact that ensured the region’s blueprint did not sit on a shelf.

While building the organization from the ground up the movement delivered historic results including adding over 3,000 remote jobs, a $300 Million pubic-private statewide fiber project (KentuckyWired), STEAM integration into K-12 education partners, Digital Careers NOW hubs at 3 Community and Technical College, the Startup Appalachia Pitch Competition, Annual summits averaging 1,200 attendees, new farmers markets, Telemedicine implementations, innovative workforce development, AppHarvest’s $100 Million+ investment for a 2.5 million square foot controlled environment green house, ground breaking on the Appalachian Wildlife Center, and helping launch BitSource a startup that retrained coal miners to do software development.

Jared currently spends a majority of his time a pastor at New Beginnings Fellowship church and has recently launched FaithLife Ministries a non-profit dedicated to inspiring and equipping people to live out their faith through bible teaching, leadership development, and social entrepreneurship. You’ll find him occasionally at Mountain Music Exchange, a guitar store in Pikeville, KY with a national reach that he co-founded in 2012.

Jared has an MBA and a bachelor’s degree in Paralegal Studies with a minor in Government. He’s also a graduate of Oklahoman University’s Economic Development Institute (EDI), the US Chamber’s Institute for Organizational Management (IOM), and MIT’s Regional Entrepreneurship Accelerator Program (REAP).

For more about Jared, click here.

Quick facts about Jared’s experiences.

Speaking.

  • 500+ Speaking Engagements

  • Largest keynote audience 1,300

  • Breakout Speaker or Panelist at

    • Harvard’s Conference on Poverty & Equality with the topic “Big Ideas in Solving Local Poverty” (Cambridge, MA)

    • Robert Woods Johnson Foundation Conference (Louisville, KY)

    • National Association of Community Colleges (Chicago, IL)

    • Multiple Appalachian Regional Commission Conferences (Somerset, KY; Tupelo, MS; Washington DC)

    • Amazon Web Services Conference (Washington DC)

  • Keynotes including:

    • EntreEd Consortium of Entrepreneurship Education (Charleston, WV)

    • Kentucky League of Cities (Covington, KY)

    • University of Pikeville Convocation (Over 500 faculty, staff, and students) More..

    • Appalachian Association of Community Colleges (Hazard, KY)

    • East Kentucky Leadership Conference (Morehead, KY)

    • 5 Annual SOAR Summits (Average attendance of over 1,200)

    • Appalachian Education and Workforce (AEW) Network Conference

Rural Future Creating.

As the Founding Executive Director of Shaping Our Appalachian Region (SOAR):

  • Built and Maintained Consensus across 54 counties, the Governor’s office, and Congressman’s office around the Blueprint for the Future of Appalachia

  • After waking up in the middle of the night and securing the URL, www.thereisafuture.org, helped his team launch a PR campaign for Appalachia KY that reached 2 million+ annually

  • As a champion for Remote Work efforts, specifically with Teleworks USA, FlexJobs.com, and Digital Careers Now, Jared was part of a team that created more than 3,000 jobs in rural Appalachia KY.

  • Support of AppHarvest and its $100 Million+ investment in Morehead, KY to build a more than 2.5 million-square-foot high-tech greenhouse and create more than 280 jobs.

  • For more impact from Jared’s time at SOAR, visit www.soar-ky.org/impact

Start-ups.

  • Scaled a start-up political initiative, (SOAR) into a national model of collective impact backbone organization with a $1 million+ budget, reserves, and a talented team of 12 in 6 years.

  • Invested a keyboard as his start-up capital in 2012 to Co-Found Mountain Music Exchange, LLC with some friends, that now ships guitars to all 50 states, has a 5,000 square foot show-room, and 6 employees. Based in the heart of central Appalachia.

  • Founder of the StartUp Appalachia regional Pitch Competitions

  • Founding Pastor of New Beginnings Fellowship Church, a non-denominational Christian church in downtown Pikeville, KY. Starting in the choir room at the University of Pikeville with about 25, now in located on Main Street with a Sunday congregation of nearly 200.

  • Co-Founder of FaithLife Ministries and FaithLIfe Market a non-profit Coffee Shop and Thrisft Store in Downtown Pikeville, KY.rence.