Editor’s note: The following story appeared in the May 23 issue of the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal. “Then and Now” is a profile of a former member of the Forti Under 40 class in the Business Journal.
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When he’s not working, Faietteville patent attorney Meredith Lowry, a partner at Wright Lindsay Jennings, is mostly on the run.
As a hobby, Lovri travels the country participating in half marathons. It is in 23 countries and counts and is on its way to reaching 26 by the end of the year.
A trip to Mizulu, Mont., Is Loury’s next race scheduled for June 25th.
Lovri also regularly moves from one civic engagement to another in northwest Arkansas as a top supporter of the community and a supporter. Her schedule has many entries, including networking, speaking engagements, fundraising, and board meetings.
In a recent interview, a married mother of three (15, 12 and 9) said she accepted to be part of the hectic pace in the region and to pursue a number of goals.
“I think Arkansas and the NVA can be on top of everything,” she said. “We have seen great success in business and I think that success could be shared throughout the community. So if I say we can do it, I have to help. At least that’s how I feel. “
Lovri’s love for northwestern Arkansas comes naturally - she grew up in Faietteville. She holds a bachelor’s degree in English and a bachelor’s degree in law from the University of Arkansas.
She said she continued her career in the legal field to help people, especially businesses. Lovri began her career at Faietteville at Keisling & Pieper PLC and was named a partner in 2010. In October 2013, she joined another Faietteville law firm, Smith Hurst, to create and build an intellectual property practice group at the firm.
In 2014, Northwest Arkansas Business Journal included Lovri in the annual class of Forti Under 40. In the spring of the following year, Lowry took her internship to Wright Lindsay Jennings, a Little Rock-based firm with an office in Rogers.
His work focuses on acquiring and licensing various aspects of intellectual property rights for companies operating in the retail space, from individual entrepreneurs to large companies.
“I help business owners and inventors get protection for inventions they work on or products that are valuable to them,” she said. “They want to make sure they have exclusive rights.”
One of Lovra’s notable cases was her work on Broyles’ law, named after former University of Arkansas football coach and sports director Frank Broyles. Working on behalf of the Broiles family, Lawry drafted a law that creates rights to publicity that allows public figures in Arkansas greater control over the way their images are used. Bill 1002 of the House of Representatives, known as the Frank Broyles Law on the Protection of Public Rights, released both the House and the Senate in May 2016, after Governor Asa Hutchinson vetoed an earlier version of the law in 2015.
Currently, Lovri’s case number includes representing a business client in a 3,700-dollar customs lawsuit against the U.S. government and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative over $ 300 billion in Trump-era tariffs on Chinese products.
“It’s a little weird to go through the president’s Twitter feed and quote them in court documents,” she joked.
Lovri actively supports artistic and technological communities through his participation in the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Scott Family Amazeum and the Northwest Arkansas Technology Summit.
In 2018, she was named Young Woman of the Year at the 20th Annual NVA Business Women Conference. In 2019, Lovri led Wright Lindsay Jennings Woman-Run program. The state-level initiative supports women and minority-owned businesses and entrepreneurs through networking, mentoring, education and resources.
Across Arkansas, Woman-Run hosts events that include speakers on a variety of topics relevant to them, networking opportunities and mentoring.
Lovri said that the increase in live streaming during the pandemic contributed to the spread of Women-Run in Arkansas.
“We have brought in more partners in the community and we have seen that many people are interested in supporting women in business,” she said. “There is also an opportunity to solve the problem of access to capital, and we have moved that [needle] in the right direction. ”
Lovri graduated from Leadership Arkansas and Leadership Faietteville and has been included in the “Best Lawyers in America” in the field of patent law - a survey reviewed by experts - since 2018.
She is a board member of the Greater Bentonville Chamber of Commerce and the Faietteville City Board of Health.