Christian Olson
Chairman
Christian Olson is a founding board member of Opportunity Arkansas. Day to day, he is a real estate investor and policy advisor with more than two decades of experience in Arkansas public policy, political campaigns, and government.
Christian has worked to elect conservative candidates to the U.S. Senate and the Office of the Governor of Arkansas, as well as to the role of Justice of the Peace. Throughout his career, he has not only overseen budgets, hiring, and administrative functions at state agencies, but he has also advocated for limited government, free markets, and family values.
Christian earned his B.A in political science from the University of Central Arkansas before serving as a policy analyst with the State Land Commissioner. Christian then became the policy director for Asa Hutchinson’s successful 2014 campaign for governor and served as a policy advisor on taxes and social issues to Governor Hutchinson. Christian then joined the Arkansas Agriculture Department as marketing director and then director of the Bureau of Standards.
Until 2021, Christian was deputy commissioner at the Arkansas Securities Department before leaving to build his own residential real estate investment business.
Christian resides in Little Rock with his wife Melissa and their two sons, Seth and Matthew.
Policymakers need quality research and analysis to make good decisions and Opportunity Arkansas does that work. Quality policy work is hard to do; it’s not scoring political points or cheerleading for a team. It’s digging down into the details and figuring out what solutions will make Arkansas a better place for all of us. Government has a job to do, but good policy also gets government out of the way. There is no one I trust more to do the hard work in policy than Opportunity Arkansas.
