Dr. Charles Little is a native Tennessean, born and raised in Nashville. He graduated from high school there in 1966, and attended Tennessee Tech University for his freshman and sophomore years of college.
After his first two years of college, Dr. Little entered the United States Air Force, where he served two years. In 1970, he returned to finish his college degree, majoring in business at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Upon graduation with his BS degree, he remained at the University of Tennessee to pursue the Masters in Business Administration (MBA). He was awarded that degree in March of 1974, and immediately accepted a position with the United States Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) in Washington, DC.
Dr. Little served almost ten years as a criminal investigator with the ICC in Washington, Chicago, and Fort Worth, achieving the level of district director and supervisor of investigations over an eight-state area while in the Fort Worth regional office. He moved into this supervisory position after less than six years of federal service. During this time, he either participated in or led major projects and investigations involving such criminal activities as illegal agricultural cooperatives, bogus brokerage activities, "lumping," weight fraud, and duplicate payments, all of which were covered by national news media.
Dr. Little was offered the position of director, Transportation Services with the United States General Services Administration (GSA) in November of 1982. He accepted this position and spent the remainder of his career in various managerial and then executive positions working out of GSA's regional offices in Fort Worth, Texas. Such positions included, director of the Southwest Distribution Center, director of contract management, and director of marketing and business development. During the course of Dr. Little's federal career, he led supply projects for military activities in the Middle East, Somalia, and the Falklands. He also led supply projects for such disasters as floods, earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes, and the bombing of the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Dr. Little received the award for Manager of the Year a number of times during his service with General Services Administration.
During his career with the federal government, Dr. Little (beginning in 1980) pursued his Ph.D. in business at the University of North Texas. After earning this degree in 1985, he began teaching as an adjunct professor in the MBA programs at Dallas Baptist University and Texas Wesleyan University. He taught various graduate classes in management and marketing at these two institutions.
Dr. Little worked closely with several nonprofit organizations during his tenure with the General Services Administration. He was an avid supporter of the Javitz-Wagner and O’Day Act which designated the National Industries for the Blind and the National Industries for the Severely Handicapped (NIB-NISH) mandatory contractors for the US Government. He was also an avid supporter of the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute, a nonprofit organization. From 2007 to 2013, Dr. Little served as a board member for the Tarrant County Association for the Blind, acting as its board chair from 2009 to 2011, and chair of the endowment trust from 2012 to 2013.
In July 2004, Dr. Little retired from the U.S. General Services Administration and accepted the associate dean of business position at Texas Wesleyan University. He left that position in May 2008 to serve as senior lecturer in the Department of Marketing and Management at Texas A&M University-Commerce. He is now teaching for King University in Bristol, Tennessee. He has been teaching for the Bush School's graduate Certificate in Nonprofit Management program since 2009.
In his spare time, Dr. Little stays busy researching and writing in his chosen academic fields of marketing and management. He enjoys golf, fishing, and traveling.
