Conway native Tab Townsell is a 1979 Conway High School honor graduate. In 1984, he received a degree in political science with a minor in economics from the University of Central Arkansas, where he served four years in the Student Senate, including terms as student body president and treasurer. Townsell worked for U.S. Sen. Dale Bumpers as a summer intern in 1985. After earning a master’s of business administration degree from Texas Christian University in 1986, he joined Townsell-Hill Construction Inc. in Little Rock in 1988. He traveled to Germany in 1990 as part of a six-week Group Study Exchange Program sponsored by Rotary International through the Conway Rotary Club. In 1992, he and his brother Todd joined their father as co-owners of Concrete Forming Inc., a sister company to Townsell-Hill. He is a 1993 graduate of the Faulkner County Leadership Institute. Tab was involved in many government and community affairs prior to being elected as mayor in 1998, including the Conway Planning Commission (1993 –1995) and Conway Transportation Advisory Committee (1992, 1993). From 1993 to 1995, he was one of Conway’s three representatives on the first Transportation Advisory Committee of Metroplan, the long-range planning body for the Little Rock Metropolitan Statistical Area. He later served as Metroplan president in 2001 and in 2008. In 2007, he served as president of the Arkansas Municipal League and served on the National League of Cities Steering Committee.