Ronda Hughes has been an educator for 24 years. She was a fifth grade ELA teacher for 14 years and has been a Library Media Specialist for ten years. She works as an LMS at Fountain Lake Middle School in Hot Springs. She served on the Arkansas Diamond Book Award Committee and Charlie May Simon Book Award Committee for several years. She has been the Intellectual Freedom Committee Chair for the Arkansas Reading Association. She was also a blogger for AASL’s Knowledge Quest Journal.

Creating a culture of reading in her school and community is very important to her as she co-founded the Garland County READS Committee that works diligently to unite the seven school districts of Garland County to bring a countywide focus to literacy. Ronda was named Arkansas Library Association’s Rising Star in 2018 and AAIM's Library Media Specialist of the year in 2019, and received the Herb Lawrence Leadership Award in 2020. Also, in 2020 she received the Arkansas Alpha Delta Kappa Excellence in Education Award. In 2022 she received the Arkansas Library Association’s Retta Patrick award. She has served AAIM as President Elect/Conference Chair, President and is currently the Immediate Past President .

She holds a Bachelors in Education Degree from Henderson State University and a Masters in Education Of Library Media Degree from Southern Arkansas University.