31 Dec 2024 Five-Oh-Ones to Watch 2025: Keaton Beasley

By KD Reep

Named after the first and best actor to portray Batman, Michael Keaton Beasley is quickly becoming a superhero himself. He is an Assistant Financial Center Manager for Simmons Bank in the Little Rock Metro area, and his passion is giving back to the community by teaching financial literacy to children and adults alike.

“I work with nonprofits and schools, anywhere I can give back or share my experience,” Beasley said. “The financial literacy portion of it is about teaching discipline. I speak to any age, from second and third grade up to junior and senior high school to adults. The key is to make financial literacy fun. Sometimes, we work with students to create their own businesses, and they must do everything from deciding what they are going to offer to naming the business to how many people they will employ. As we go through the steps, the students get an idea of what monthly expenses would be.

“For adults, I work with people who have little to no understanding of how finances work,” he said. “It can be something as simple as how to open a banking account. You may think everyone knows how to do this, but there are people who don’t have others in their lives to teach them these things. Maybe someone just got out of prison or just moved to our country, and they have no idea how to manage money. I work with them to get them the information they need to know, such as why it is important to have a savings account, how to use credit to your advantage, maintaining a sound credit score, etc.”

Before joining Simmons Bank, Beasley, a native of Hope (Hempstead County), moved to Little Rock after attending Henderson State University in Arkadelphia (Clark County), where he studied communications. He then took a job at an AT&T store, where he interacted with customers and built relationships daily. It wasn’t until a fraternity brother (Alpha Phi Alpha) suggested it that he considered banking as a career.

“I was having a bad day, and I really wanted to find something different career-wise,” Beasley said. “He asked if I ever considered banking, and I said no because I was not a fan of math. He told me about a job at another bank, and I went in for an interview. I really feel like for the first time in my life, I’ve found something I’m so passionate about. The thing I love the most is that it allows me to gain information so I can make an immediate impact on communities or underserved citizens or even family members by giving them financial advice. When I come here and sit inside an office, I challenge myself every day to work hard and be better than I was the day before. At some point, I’d like to be able to do commercial lending and get into executive leadership in the future. I’m a true believer that if you find something you’re passionate about that you really love doing, it’ll take you far.”