ON THE TABLE

ENTREPRENEURS

New Pillow Bar owner Connie Kleinert Babikian carries on her family’s entrepreneurial legacy.

story by

CHRISTINE PEREZ

after earning two degrees in business and economics at southern methodist University and an MBA at UCLA, Connie Kleinert Babikian worked as an analyst for Goldman Sachs before taking a finance job at Hunt Oil Corp. She loved her work but always felt a pull to become an entrepreneur like her mother, Ashlee Kleinert, who launched the food truck company Ruthie’s Rolling Café, and her maternal grandfather, Ray Hunt, the magnate behind Hunt Oil.

So, when a chance to become the owner of The Pillow Bar came up last year, Babikian decided to take the leap. “I always it in the back of my mind to be hands-on and build something,” she says.

The Dallas-based company makes luxury, custom-designed and monogrammed pillows and related products, such as bedding, loungewear, boyfriend shirts, bath linens, and even dog beds. They’re sold online, at specialty shops, and through national retailers like Bed Bath & Beyond, Neiman Marcus, and Macy’s. The Pillow Bar was founded by Merrimac Dillon in 2008 after she was unable to find a high-quality pillow for her husband, who was recovering from spinal surgery at the time. Babikian’s grandmother was a friend of Dillon’s and loved her pillows so much she’d take them along on travels. It soon became a favored brand of the extended family, including Babikian, who received some of the pillows as gifts when she got married in 2018 and whose bridal party wore the boyfriend shirts during the wedding weekend. After about a year of talks, Babikian became became The Pillow Bar’s new majority owner on Sept. 1, 2021. With manufacturing in solid shape, she’s focusing on marketing—testing social media and digital initiatives. And as a new mom, she’s also eyeing a more aggressive push into products for children. Babikian declines to reveal revenue for the private company, but when asked about reports showing the company generating $2 million in sales in 2020, she allows, “We’ve been very lucky and happy to grow on those numbers.” Demand is being driven by the pandemic, with people spending more time in their homes, and health and wellness trends, with a growing awareness of how sleep quality affects one’s physical and mental health. “People also want to buy things that are responsibly made—that are right for our community and our society, and these pillows are GROWTH made by an all-women team, locally, with PLANS Babikian aims the highest-quality, non-toxic ingredients,” to expand The Pillow Bar’s Babikian says. “We’re at the intersection of digital and all three of these trends. It’s the right prodsocial media strategies. uct at the right time.”

ON THE TABLE

Michael Thomas Is Reinventing Support for Dallas’ Special Needs Community

My Possibilities’ new college-style campus is revolutionary for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

story by WILL MADDOX

illustration by JAKE MEYERS

it didn’t take long for michael thomas and I to connect over soccer during our lunch at Blue Sushi Sake Grill in North Dallas. We both grew up playing the game and came close to doing so at the same college. We met to talk about My Possibilities, the nonprofit for which he serves as executive director. It offers academic and vocational training, socialization, independent living skills, therapy, and more for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

The nonprofit opened in 2008 after founder Charmaine Solomon—and two other mothers— found few options for full-time continued education for her son with special needs. Thomas grew up in East Dallas and attended SMU to study classical piano and music therapy, but when the school pulled his major, he found his way to working with many charitable events via Greek life. His favorite event was a Special Olympics volleyball tournament.

After graduation, he took a job with the Muscular Dystrophy Association before working for two years at Opportunity Village, a Las Vegas company providing similar services to My Possibilities. He was looking to move back to Dallas and find a job in the nonprofit world, when he found out about My Possibilities after a conversation with a friend whose sister attended the program. It so happened that they were hiring an executive director, and he applied. A week later, at just 27 years old, he was offered the job. “I’m a byproduct of letting the world tell me what to do,” he says. “In the best way possible.”

The nonprofit was small, with Thomas and a few teachers serving 20-25 HIPsters (Hugely Important People) a day, and he had a lot to learn about leading a nonprofit. But the past decade-plus has seen the organization become one of the fastest-growing and most innovative organizations in the space.

In 2018, My Possibilities opened a first-of-itskind 40,000 square-foot, college-style Campus for Higher Learning in Plano that will soon have the ability to serve around 1,000 students with disabilities once complete.

In addition, the nonprofit also launched a social enterprise project called MPact that acquired a soap and hand sanitizer brand Soap Hope, which provides jobs for those with disabilities. Thomas was also recently recognized by FC Dallas as a Community MVP.

My Possibilities is growing its entrepreneurial endeavors with Mission Hills, a real estate venture in Garland. It’s converting the shuttered Eastern Hills Country Club into a community with more than 300 homes, trails, and amenities such as security and shuttle services. One-third of the homes will be reserved for the organization’s special needs clients, and the rest will be sold like any other residential development, though all will be universally designed—suited for those with or without disabilities.

“In Texas, we’re so far behind the community housing options that are out there,” Thomas says. “Our educational systems are not fully inclusive. We have a lot of work to do, but the hope is that this community becomes an example of what it looks like.”

FROM THE BATTLEFIELD TO THE BOARDROOM

How the military careers of some of DFW’s most influential xecutives shaped their leadership strategies.

DOUG JONES KNEW VERY little about the commercial real estate business when he retired his Army Ranger fatigues in 2014. But the West Point grad had learned plenty about resourcefulness, servant leadership, and making decisive moves during his military career. He performed entry-level tasks at Cushman & Wakefieldas a rookie broker for months before being given larger roles. Today, he oversees the fir ’s Dallas operations and is one of the global company’s youngest leaders. Similarly, former Navy SEAL platoon commander and NASA Chief Astronaut Chris Cassidy had no related experience when he was asked to serve as president and CEO of the National Medal of Honor Museum Foundation, which will open in Arlington in 2024. “I don’t think I could even spell museum when I was firt told about the job,” Cassidy jokes. But, having led precarious missions beneath the sea and beyond the ozone, he was confidentthat he’d be up to the challenge. Bob Pragada at Jacobs, Christine Peyton at Amentum Aviation, and Scott Rowe of Flowserve also credit their military experiences with shaping their leadership styles and propelling them into the C-Suite. Here, they share their remarkable stories of bravery, fortitude, and adventure—and the lessons they learned along the way.

story by BEN SWANGER portraits by TREVOR PAULHUS

Cassidy and his SEAL team were awarded the Presidential Unit Citation for their heroism in Afghanistan.

Former Navy SEAL Cassidy spent a total of 378 days in space throughout his career as a NASA astronaut.

“HOLY SHIT,” Chris Cassidy thought to himself in 2013 as he tethered to the International Space Station for a spacewalk 227 nautical miles above the earth. He was watching his partner Luca Parmitano’s spacesuit fill up with wter—1.5 liters worth, to be exact. Cassidy, a former Navy SEAL, had previously captained mini submarines, led SEAL Team 3 as one of the firt teams to deploy in Afghanistan following 9/11, detonated piles of Al Qaeda intel, and never once lost a single SEAL team member he managed. But, now in the vastness of space as the NASA Chief Astronaut—the farthest away from the battlefield he had ver been—death was on the prowl.

Cassidy acted quickly, thrusting himself over to his partner, and the team within the space station prepared the airlock—the safe zone—for Parmitano. Just in the nick of time, Cassidy hauled his partner into the airlock, and the team safely removed his flooding helmt. The moment—captured in the Disney+ series Among the Stars—is something the now-president and CEO of the National Medal of Honor Museum Foundation in Arlington thinks about to this day.

“I say this all the time: ‘If you see something that is wrong, you need to act,’” says Cassidy, who spent 10 years in the Navy and 17 years with NASA. “In this case with Luca, even as early as a week prior on another spacewalk, we noticed indications of water, but it didn’t make any sense to us, so we brushed it off. Then earlier on the same day as the spacewalk incident, there were small indications that something was wrong with the suit. Things weren’t seeming right, but it was so easy at the moment to just press on and do our jobs.”

When Cassidy, an MIT grad, was approached about the opportunity to lead the National Medal of Honor Museum, the opportunity felt right. “When I retired, I thought long and hard about what it was going to take to fulfill y sense of service. When I met with our board, I realized there is a whole city, state, and country that supports this mission.” The 101,000-square-foot project will break ground this month.

For Cassidy, the challenge of raising $200 million to construct a museum—a goal the organization has nearly accomplished—seemed overwhelming at firt. But he quickly realized there were similarities to past missions. “‘I don’t know how to raise $200 million by myself,’ I thought when I started,” Cassidy says. “But the fundamental aspect of every job is people. Whether I’m on a battlefield, flying space missions, or buildin museums, it’s all about the people. When I was in the military and in government, I thought that was just how it was in those lines of work. But when I got to Arlington, I realized great people are crucial to all great accomplishments.”

When Chris Cassidy told his parents he was going to be a Navy SEAL during his final ear in the academy, his mother asked,

“What are you going to do after you’re done? Be a mall cop?” But Cassidy quickly proved that was never in his plans. “In 1993, when I went to BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL school), we started with 120 people,” Cassidy remembers. “Seventeen of us graduated. The training is generally six months long, broken up into three phases. The firt phase is the weed-out phase, known as hell week. The second phase is all about diving. And the third phase is all about land warfare, shooting, detonation, and navigation. To this day I am most proud of finishin as the honor graduate of BUD/S.”

Cassidy (far right) spent his firt four years in the Navy captaining underwater missions in the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf.

CHRIS CASSIDY

PRESIDENT AND CEO National Medal of Honor Museum Foundation

U.S. NAVAL ACADEMY Class of 1993

U.S. NAVY SEALS TEAM 1993–2003

NASA 2004–2021

DOUG JONES

MANAGING PRINCIPAL Cushman & Wakefiel

U.S. MILITARY ACADEMY AT WEST POINT Class of 2008

U.S. ARMY 2008–2014

Jones spent his deployment in eastern Afghanistan as part of the Operation Enduring Freedom mission.

HAVING TO RETAKE a land navigation test while working through Army Ranger school, Doug Jones felt lost. “I remember thinking to myself, ‘My girlfriend will break up with me, my parents will disown me, my friends will laugh at me.’ I felt like a failure,” Jones says. Standing deep in the woods, trying his best to pass the five-hour makeup test, he sulked, convinced he was going to fail a second time. If a trainee fails twice, he or she is sent packing.

“I had never failed land nav before this,” Jones says. “And in my makeup test, I found myself collecting three of the six points I needed to collect with only 30 minutes left. Mentally, I had already failed. As I walked back to the starting line, thinking it was too late, I saw a flash of light out of the corner of my eye. So, I run to it, and it's a point, but it isn’t mine. It does tell me, though, where I am on the map. So, I strap up, get serious, get accurate with my navigation, and I make it back with all my points and pass the test.”

Going into the test, Jones thought the course would be the same as the year prior; it was not. “We thought we were running to the same points, so we didn’t trust our map or compass,” he says. “I learned that day I need to wholly trust the information I have available, trust my inner compass, and follow the plan that is in front of me.”

Jones says lessons from his last mission set the tone for his career trajectory in commercial real estate. “My last assignment in the Army was in company command,” Jones says. “I was responsible for 250 soldiers and a $100 million property book, which was not my forte—property being the things that a unit needs to deploy, not property like real estate—but things like a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, armory, and all the little nuts and bolts. Today, I know that leadership is not a salad bar of things where I get to pick and choose what’s fun. It’s digging in and doing what I can to help Cushman & Wakefield win, no mtter what it is.”

The leadership experience helped him land his current position—managing principal of his fir ’s Dallas office, one of the la est and most active in the company. He also serves as executive director of Cushman & Wakefiel’s Military & Veteran Programs. “I have the best of both worlds,” Jones says. “Being able to lead our incredible team here in DFW while serving the military community, transitioning veterans, their spouses, and their families, is a true blessing.”

Although at one point he thought he was facing inevitable failure, his military experiences taught him to rise above. “West Point and active duty gave me my integrity and my character,” Jones says. “It taught me that we, as people, are way more capable of accomplishing greatness than we might think.”

Doug Jones was two weeks into Beast Barracks— an initiation program prior to joining West Point—when his leadership style began to take

shape. Amidst a ‘ruck march,’ a grueling, fast walk over rough terrain wearing a backpack of at least 35 pounds, his platoon leader commanded a halt. “He comes up to me and says, ‘Take a seat, and take off your boots and socks.’ I do as he says, and he looks at my heel, and asks, ‘How are your feet?’ I answer, ‘They’re fin.’ He told me, ‘OK. If you start to get hotspots, powder up and change socks.’ I got up, and we kept moving. But in that moment, he stopped and taught me a very specific leson: servant leadership. That is the foundation for my genuine care for people today.”

Jones' firt military deployment came out of Fort Campbell in 2010 with the historic 101st Airborne Division. Despite operating M240 and M249 machine guns, Jones was taught early that his most lethal weapon is the radio.

Peyton had between 40 and 1,500 service members under her command throughout her Air Force career.

Peyton went the route of ROTC during her service time in active duty to gain her commission in December of 1997.

TWENTY-FOUR-YEAR Air Force veteran Christine Peyton flw in F-15 bombers and KC-135s through the Middle East. She also served as an intelligence officer and helped fight human afficking. But wht stands out is the agony of losing fallen colleagues–soldiers she refers to as her kids. All were killed by ethereal ammunition. “I had six airmen commit suicide in the span of two years on active duty, and that was very difficult to deal with,” she says. “One of the biggest problems in the Air Force—and across all the services—is the number of suicides our teams experience.”

A retired Lieutenant Colonel, Peyton was trained to be tough since her childhood, but breaking the news to the families of the airmen was nearly unbearable. “Everything about it was devastating,” she recalls.

Seven years after retiring from the Air Force, Peyton is leading a new type of team at the Fort Worth office of aryland-based Amentum Aviation, where she serves as senior vice president. While on active duty, she made it her mission to “help as many people as she could.” And today, within the C-Suite, she continues to lead with that philosophy.

“As a leader, you need to listen to people—not just hearing, but really listening,” Peyton says. “Look at their body language, look at what they’re doing in their life; if they come to your office t talk to you, make sure you’re fully dedicated and 100 percent there with them. Because if you’re not, you’re going to miss the warning signs.”

It’s a dedication Peyton—who was one of only a few female aircraft maintenance officers in t Air Force in the early ’90s—proved over and again while in the academy and on active duty. Her leadership style greatly evolved in the ensuing decades.

“It wasn’t easy being a female in aircraft maintenance in the early ’90s,” she says. “When I enlisted, I was frustrated with outdated policies, procedures, and culture. I wanted to change things for the better. It may have been a bit naïve of me, but I had to try. When I finally became a lieutenant, I was a bull in a china shop. I wasn’t going about change in the right way.

“Thankfully, I had a very seasoned chief master sergeant put me in my place,” Peyton says. “I was raw early in my career and needed a major correction. It made me step back and reflet on what kind of leader I wanted to be. I wanted to be a leader who listened, encouraged, and brought out the best in her troops.”

It’s a philosophy she has taken with her to Amentum Aviation, which provides maintenance, logistics, flight opeations, and training for both manned and autonomous aircraft. “This year, I’m striving to mentor my folks so I can push them up into positions where I know they can be effetive.”

Christine Peyton came of age on a lobster boat off the coast of Wells, Maine, hearing stories about her father's Navy days. She

earned a dime per lobster processing the crustaceans, but it was the military seed that was planted that proved to be more valuable. Today, decades after those firt moments at sea with her father, the pride lingers on. “I can never put into words how creative, driven, and dedicated the airmen I served with were,” Peyton says. “It didn’t matter if we were under the gun to launch an entire fleetof aircraft for a hurricane evacuation, sending our aircraft overseas to support our allies in times of need or just flying taining missions, everything we did was done with expert skill, precision, and professionalism.”

Peyton learned the nuances of the F-15, F-16, E-10, C-5, and C-130 at Eglin Air Force Base in the Florida panhandle.

CHRISTINE PEYTON

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT Amentum Aviation

U.S. AIR FORCE 1991-2015

BOB PRAGADA

COO AND PRESIDENT Jacobs

U.S. NAVAL ACADEMY Class of 1990

U.S. NAVY 1990-1999

Bob Pragada met his wife Jessica his senior year at the Naval Academy and the two wed fie years into his active duty.

Pragada played rugby at the Naval Academy and broke his nose. As a result, he could not fly or go o a submarine.

WHEN INDIAN AMERICAN Bob Pragada began attending the Naval Academy in 1986, there were no classmates who looked like him or had the background he did. He didn’t think much of it when he graduated in 1990. That moment would come 21 years later when he was having dinner with his son after a baseball game in Myrtle Beach.

“When we left the restaurant, a young Indian American kid had a Navy tracksuit on,” Pragada says. “I stopped the young man and asked, ‘What year are you at the Naval Academy?’ Looking at me, he says, ‘I’m a sophomore.’ Then he said, ‘Sir, can I ask who you are?’ I said, ‘My name is Bob.’” The student instantly knew with whom he was speaking.

Afterall, Pragada, chief operating officer and pr ident of global engineering firm acobs, was the second Indian American to graduate from the United States Naval Academy. The firt came just one year prior in 1989. (Today, there are 39 Indian Americans attending the US Naval Academy.) “At the time of graduation, I didn’t think my accomplishment mattered,” Pragada says, choking up. “But now, realizing it has helped pave the way for generations to come is one of the most satisfying things.”

Pragada went on to fulfill, in his yes, his most significant duy alongside President Bill Clinton in the White House Military Office t Camp David, the retreat for the president of the U.S. located in the wooded hills of Catoctin Mountain Park in Maryland.

“Working Camp David is service to the country defined differently than building a bri e or setting up a base camp or flying a plane” Pragada says. “It’s service in the sense that our job was to put the First Family in an environment where they felt comfortable.”

Early into Pragada’s post at Camp David, he was assigned to look out for Ted Kennedy as Cabinet members and key senators visited for a delegation. Immediately, Pragada knew this assignment was written in the stars. His father, an engineer in India in the early '60s, came to the U.S. to study in a graduate program and work for NASA via a program sponsored by John F. Kennedy. “The Pragada family owes our American citizenship to your family,” Pragada told Kennedy. And just like that, a bond was formed, leading to Pragada sitting with America’s most powerful as one of the few military reps at the discussion.

It’s a personal moment that has stuck with him to this day as he leads Jacobs’ worldwide operations. “My service taught me to keep people firt,” Pragada says. “I could say we have the best engineers, best scientists, best technicians, best support staff, and we do,” Pragada says. “But how we reach our goals is through our culture—a culture that loves every single person on staff regardless of gender, who you love, and where you’re from.”

The 1982 movie An Officer and a Gentleman mesmerized Bob Pragada’s immigrant

mother. “She came home after seeing the movie and told me, ‘You should go to Annapolis,’” Pragada remembers. “When I asked her why, she said, ‘The uniforms!’” And so, the young Pragada went off o the local library in Chicago to study up on the Naval Academy, not realizing that he’d eventually go where just one Indian American had gone before. “I was just trying to do some good,” Pragada says. “And that has been ingrained in me since a young boy. In my time in the classroom, on the rugby team, and in training, I learned that life is all about making whatever team you might be on at any given moment, the best possible team it can be.”

Pragada once gifted Hillary Clinton scores of citronella candles, only to find ou she was allergic to citronella.

Rowe was in and out of the Middle East throughout active duty strenghtening the Gulf Coalition Forces.

Rowe played water polo at West Point and says his best friends, to this day, are still his teammates he swam alongside.

A MONTH AFTER Scott Rowe showed up in Fort Stewart, Georgia, as part of the U.S. Army Intelligence team in 1994, he was deployed to Kuwait. “The place was a war zone,” Rowe says. “And the reality of what happened in the invasion of Iraq into Kuwait set in—we were in the middle of bombed buildings and artillery shells. But the most rewarding part was making sure they had enough military might to defend themselves [moving forward] ... we essentially liberated an entire country.”

Rowe didn’t realize it at the time, but his country-building experiences in Kuwait would give him the confidence and skills to lead and implement a $14.8 billion corporate merger in 2016, two decades after he retired from the Army. Six months after being promoted to president and COO of Cameron International, oilfield sevices giant Schlumberger made an offerto buy the company, a provider of flow manaement equipment. “It was one of those situations where you go, ‘Really? Like now we decide to sell the company?’” Rowe says. “But when I think back to the operational manual in the military, it is about evaluating different courses of ations. And that’s exactly what we had to deal with in the Schlumberger offe. $14.8 billion is a big number. It was an uplift on our stock about 30 or 40 percent. And we had to evaluate if we wanted to take the offer from Schlumberger or if we wanted to work out a plan that, theoretically, could get us to that same value. We evaluated and discussed, and because the offer was cash-based, we made the sale.”

Roughly a year later, Flowserve recruited him to become its new president and CEO. “I think the military teaches you to expect the unexpected,” says Rowe. “One night, I got a piece of information on the Iraq border that said, ‘There’s going to be a truck driving your way, in the next six hours, that has significant xplosives in the back. And they’re a participant in X organization.’ I received a lot of intel, but this one was an ‘Oh, my god, this is real’ moment. Sure enough, three hours later, a truck rolled into our checkpoint with the license plate on the piece of intel, and there was a bunch of C4 explosives in the back of the truck with two terrorists at the wheel. We didn’t fully know what their intentions were, but it wasn’t good.”

It’s a save Rowe is proud of—and an experience that helped build his leadership skills that he now puts to work at Flowserve, which generated $3.7 billion in revenue in 2020. A primary focus for the company going forward is environmental emissions. “In 2022, we’re going to diversify, decarbonize, and digitize,” Rowe says. “We will help customers with their operations, so productivity, reliability, and decarbonization are driving CO2 emissions down and driving energy use down.”

The longer Scott Rowe is away from the military, the more he appreciates what it did to shape his leadership skills,

he says. A peer review exercise in Ranger school taught him about building trust with teammates. “We had a squad of 10 people, and we ran around the woods for 10 days with no food and no sleep. Afterward, we rated each other on various skills like assault and defense. And then, at the very end, the last thing we did as a team was rank our peers strongest to weakest, one through 10. The lowest ranking person gets kicked out, and they don’t return. I see the same thing in business. If leaders aren’t building their teams by passing along inspiration for workers, it is not sustainable, and you will fail.”

Rowe firt deployed with the 24th Infantry Division, now known as the 3rd, toward the end of the Gulf War.

SCOTT ROWE

PRESIDENT AND CEO Flowserve

U.S. MILITARY ACADEMY AT WEST POINT Class of 1993

U.S. ARMY 1993–1998

The four restaurateurs (from left): Chas Martin, Ross See, Benji Homsey, and Corbin See

AFTER PERFECTING

THE AMBIANCE AND MENUS AT THEIR FIRST THREE POPULAR CONCEPTS, DURO HOSPITALITY GROUP’S FOUR FOUNDERS PLAN TO KEEP THE HITS COMING WITH THREE NEW RESTAURANTS AND A MICRO HOTEL.

story by KELSEY J. VANDERSCHOOT

portrait by SEAN BERRY

The Sees brothers bring their expertise in antiques and art to each Duro concept, including Sister (at right).

Nooks and custom seating, such as this area in The Charles (below), are staples in Duro Restaurant Group venues. COMPARES CREATING a restaurant to making music. “It’s like putting out an album and watching it get played over and over again and watching people enjoy it,” he says. An interior designer at Sees Design, he’s one of four co-founders of Duro Hospitality Group, which has had a string of successes since The Charles made its debut in 2018. For the 2022 edition of the Dallas 500, which profiles the most influential business leaders in Dallas, we asked those on the list about their favorite restaurants. Respondents raved about The Charles, compelling us to learn more about the restaurant and the hitmakers behind it.

The band of four includes Corbin and his brother, Ross See, who create each concept’s melody with eye-catching architecture and décor; drummer Benji Homsey, the restaurant, finance,real estate, legal, and hospitality operations expert who keeps the group on beat; and its front man, Chas Martin, a restaurateur and cuisine expert with a sales background and big presence. “The four of us know our lanes really, really well,” Martin says. “We challenge each other, but we trust each other in those lanes.”

Duro has released several singles since The Charles opened in Dallas’ Design District. First came an addon called Bar Charles, dedicated to aperitifs and light bites. Next came an expansion to Lower Greenville with a Mediterranean-infused concept called Sister, which opened last September. Now, the hitmakers are readying their newest productions—a second concept in Lower Greenville and another in Highland Park. Far from an overnight success, though, their path to multiplatinum has been difficult, as the name Duro suggests in nearly every romance language.

ROUGHLY A DECADE AGO, Homsey hired Martin to help him re-concept a restaurant at Hotel ZaZa, where he had been president since 2008. “That’s when we got to know each other and gained tons of appreciation for each other’s work product,” Martin says.

An Oklahoma City native, Homsey graduated from Texas Christian University and was an aspiring investment banker, working in the Dallas offic of a Silicon Valley telecom startup that scaled quickly but crashed. In 2000, family connections helped him segue into hospitality, when he was hired to oversee the development of Hotel ZaZa in Dallas, guiding construction, design,

Sister, an ItalianMediterranean concept, opened last September in Lower Greenville.

sourcing, hiring, and installation—at age 24. “I had never been in the hotel business. I’d maybe been kicked out of a few hotels,” he jokes.

Homsey went on to open Hotel ZaZa in Uptown, oversee the development of a collection of condos next door and their subsequent sale, and help convert a Houston hotel into a ZaZa location. Eight years after joining the company, he was named president of Z Resorts, when ZaZa’s owners decided to start their own hotel management firm.He met Martin along the way at a nearby restaurant. “I got to know him at Nick & Sam’s, and we just kept crossing paths here and there,” Homsey recalls.

Martin had graduated from culinary school in 2004 and took an internship at Nick & Sam’s. He left fiveyears later, overseeing all front house operations. He went to sell wine for a local distributor before becoming a hospitality consultant for billionaire Tim Headington, who owned The Joule hotel in downtown Dallas. It involved, in his words, “putting some glue on a restaurant that wasn’t working” there. He began talking to Homsey about collaborating, but the timing wasn’t right; ZaZa was restructuring during the 2008 recession.

The two recall an elevator ride where they casually discussed launching a Mediterranean restaurant that tapped into Homsey’s Lebanese roots. “I saw sparks,” Martin remembers. He left Hotel ZaZa in 2011 and invited Homsey to join him on a golf trip to Denver, where he was taking on a new venture in sales. “We had a good rapport, but we weren’t super close,” Martin says. “It was that three-day weekend when I thought, ‘No, we’re going to be best friends for a long time.’”

In 2013, the duo and their significantothers took a trip to Italy. “We thought, ‘Dallas is missing everything about this culture and cuisine,’” Martin says, adding that back then, one could count the number of interesting Italian restaurants in North Texas on one hand. After two years in sales, he confidedin Homsey that he’d had a professional epiphany: He wanted to get back into the restaurant world, and didn’t want to wait.

“It started as a side hustle,” Martin says. “We thought, ‘Hey, let’s do something small, a high-energy bar with pizza, maybe a little pasta, little snacks.’ And then, it morphed into, ‘I’m going to quit what I’m doing. I’m going to come back and run this for us.’”

The budding restaurateurs wanted to plug their new concept in at the top of the market rather than bootstrapping a reputation over several years. They developed a stellar menu alongside Chef J. Chastain and purchased a piece of prime real estate in the Design District, but

The Charles, Duro’s Flagship restaurant (above), opened in 2018 and showcases custom-designed lighting fixtues.

Sister’s culinary nods to Mediterranean food, such as baba ganoush (left), stem from Benji Homsey’s Lebanese roots.

There are plenty of family dynamics at play in the running of the company.

Duro Hospitality’s founding members say that knowing their individual roles has been key to their success and keeping peace in the family and their brotherly relationships. The Sees, literal brothers, have been business partners for about a decade, and say the structure of working in hospitality has bettered their bond. “Corbin and I might have butted heads a lot more before this,” Ross says, “because

continued from page 041 Respecting everyone’s role has been key to smooth operations.

now, we stay in our own lanes.” Meanwhile, Homsey and Martin have formed their own relationship. Homsey is six years Martin’s senior and grew up with two sisters; Martin is an only child. The two have become very close and, according to Martin, are like brothers, too. “I’m sure the same fights tht [Corbin and Ross] have behind the scenes—and in front of the scenes—are the same that we have,” he jokes. they wanted to take an all-encompassing approach. “We wanted to check all the boxes, not just from a culinary perspective, not operationally, but everything—music, lighting, design,” Homsey says. He had grown up with two of the best interior designers in the country—the Sees brothers—and hoped to leverage their expertise.

ROSS AND CORBIN Sees’ father, who began the firmthey now run with Corbin’s wife, had designed the Oklahoma City home of Homsey’s parents, and Corbin connected with Homsey after graduating from college. Corbin had moved to Chicago to work for Holly Hunt design, firt in marketing then overseeing furniture production, but he’d kept in touch. “We’ve always stayed in contact and started to talk about trying to figureout a way to work together,” Homsey says.

The Sees, whose expertise is in residential design, wanted to branch out into hospitality. Homsey gave them that opportunity. “I called Corbin and said, ‘Get your ass down here. You’re going to buy this piece of real estate with us. Let me introduce you to your new partner, Chas,’” Homsey says. Corbin roped in Ross, who specialized in interior architecture and space planning, and the four met up in New York for the firt time in 2014. The Sees brothers were immediately drawn to the opportunity to design a public space with themselves as the client. “It’s a differentchallenge to do hospitality,” Corbin says.

The industry was rebuilding after the recession, and very few restaurateurs were staking their bets in fin dining. But Martin, Homsey, and the Sees wanted to make a killing in the rebound that was to come, and go

A trio of spritzers bend toward the Italian side of Sister, where the eclectic menu was curated by Chef J. Chastaini. top-shelf with their new venture in every way. So, rather than having Corbin and Ross work as contract designers, they decided to split the pie as equal partners. The band was born.

After making its debut in May 2018, The Charles quickly garnered attention for its approachable but luxe feel and Corbin’s signature antique touches. “The Charles almost immediately had soul,” Homsey says. “You walk into the room, and you feel good. It may be the smells from the kitchen. It may be the hip hop playing on the stereo. It may be the beautiful chandelier over table 12—it’s all those things.” Food is served family-style doesn’t shy away from spice, acid, fat, and salt; Martin describes the menu as electric. The Charles became an instant success, and 18 months later, the group was ready to riff again

The four had set up their offic in a building next to The Charles, which a locksmith owned. Martin was general manager at The Charles, running day-to-day operations. Homsey, still working full-time for Z Resorts, was a silent partner. The Sees were dividing time between their firm in Oklahoma Ciy and Dallas.

Realizing their landlord didn’t need all the space he had, the group asked if they could run a restaurant out of the back of the building. “That’s how Bar Charles came about,” Martin says. It opened in the summer of 2019, and now, what the group says was an afterthought has become a popular cocktail haven.

SEEING THE SUCCESS of the two restaurants, Homsey exited from ZaZa in April 2020—despite the havoc the pandemic wasd wreaking on the industry. “There were some anxious moments, but we were in a great financialposition,” he says. “The restaurant had done really, really well, and we had confidencethat things were going to normalize.” Now formally operating under the Duro Hospitality Group moniker, the partners got serious. “[The pandemic] allowed us to sit down and talk about where we saw this going,” Homsey says. “We began talking about concepts. ... Whereas a lot of restaurateurs were just trying to stay alive, we had our foot on the gas, and we were having conversations with developers.”