McCombs Magazine Fall 2023

REMEMBERING RED McCOMBS 1927-2023 THE MAGAZINE OF THE McCOMBS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN

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CRACKING THE DOOR MELBA TELLEZ, MS ’18, TAPS HER MENTORING EXPERIENCE TO HELP OTHERS SOAR

PLUS: 10 WAYS TO MENTOR AND INSPIRE

TAKING WORLD-CLASS RESEARCH TO THE CLASSROOM STORYCORPS ASKS: WHY DOES BUSINESS EDUCATION MATTER?

RETURN. RENEW. REFRESH.

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2 0 2 3 02 Letter from the Dean 07 Upfront 19 Big Ideas 53 Community 48 Remembering Red 68 Forward Thinking

24 MELBA ON THE RISE Melba Tellez, M.S. ’18, provides mentorship and support to empower others on their own paths of achievement through her company, Mujeres on the Rise.

30 FRIENDS, ROLE MODELS, MENTORS Meet McCombs faculty, alumni, and students who give guidance, resources, and support to rising high school students, freshmen adjusting to college, budding entrepreneurs, student-athletes, and young professionals.

36 RESEARCH IN THE CLASSROOM Accounting Professor Jeff Hales brings sustainability into the field of accounting.

McCombs is published twice a year for alumni and friends of the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin.

D E A N Lillian F. Mills C H I E F M A R K E T I N G A N D C O M M U N I CAT I O N S O F F I C E R Francesca Parodi E D I T O R A N D M A N AG E R , C O N T E N T S T R AT E GY Todd Savage A S S O C I AT E E D I T O R Mary Ann Roser C O P Y E D I T O R Adam Deutsch A R T D I R E C T I O N / D E S I G N Tucker Creative Co. C H A N G E O F A D D R E S S 512-232-2441 alumni@mccombs.utexas.edu O N L I N E http://issuu.com/mccombsschoolofbusiness F O L L OW U S facebook.com/utmccombsschool, twitter.com/utexasmccombs, LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/UTexasMcCombs

P H OTO G R A P H BY R O B E RT H O U S E R

42 VOICES OF McCOMBS Discover the human side of business education in an oral history project in collaboration with award-winning StoryCorps.

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A TRADITION OF UPLIFTING OTHERS As we at Texas McCombs start our second century, this issue of McCombs Magazine celebrates the power of mentors and the life-changing impact that a McCombs education offers. One shining example of this impact is Red McCombs, our school’s namesake. Red, who passed away in February, left behind a legacy that will reverberate in the lives of countless Longhorns for generations to come. Red was as generous with his with his time as he was with his money, and his mentorship is a significant part of his legacy.

University of Texas System Regent Rad Weaver, BBA ’98, recently joined me in a conversation to reflect on how his life was changed by Red’s mentorship. What started as an impromptu

meeting when Rad was a student athlete led to washing cars for the legendary entrepreneur – and decades later to steering McCombs’ company as CEO. Rad shared many heartfelt stories of Red’s character and worldview from their 26-year journey. I was moved by their bond, one that echoes similar stories about faculty, staff, and alumni mentors.

The tradition to lift others at McCombs has been on the top of my mind. During these past months, we recognized individuals who demonstrate this commitment, including distinguished scholars, devoted educators, and hard-working staff. Our annual season of celebration culminated at commencement with fireworks over the Forty Acres for our newest graduates.

As I shook 1,000 hands of undergraduate, master’s, and Ph.D. students, I took pride in our hard work – what my own mentor, the late Dan Dhaliwal, a renowned accounting researcher who grew up in a farming community, referred to as “the harvest.” We launch our grads into a world hungry for their ideas and skills. Then, we immediately begin a new season, with a new crop of Longhorns arriving for orientation throughout the summer.

I hope you can take inspiration from the stories in these pages that shine a light on the extraordinary people behind McCombs’ success – from Melba Tellez, M.S. ’18, founder of Mujeres on the Rise, who features on the cover of this issue, to alumnae Leilani Valdes and Arghavan Nawaby, whose StoryCorps conversation highlights the enduring friendship that sparked when they were Executive MBA classmates. Mentors in our community are key to our human-centered, future-focused values that prepare leaders to change the world.

With my warmest Hook ’em,

LILLIAN F. MILLS, Dean Lois and Richard Folger Dean’s Leadership Chair The Beverly H. and William P. O’Hara Endowed Chair in Business Centennial Chair in Business Education Leadership 2 _ McCOMBS.UTEXAS.EDU

P H OTO G R A P H BY SAS H A H A AG E N S E N

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Feedback from a BBA on mentoring: “Overall this meeting was incredibly helpful and insightful for me and I enjoyed it.

My mentor is an expert in his field and his expertise helped me tremendously when it came to understanding what I want to pursue as a career.”

Feedback from an alum on mentoring: “First, I was honored to meet and talk with the young student. She was everything and more than I expected from a UT student. The process of getting together was easy and we were able to have a meaningful conversation.”

ACCELERATE YOUR CAREER WITH A SPECIALIZED MASTER’S Do you crave new challenges?

How about an option for fast-tracking your career growth?

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Shape your future into something extraordinary.

Open yourself to more lucrative opportunities.

If you're ready for a bigger, better role, a master’s degree can prepare you to step up to the next level. High-value master's programs offer the skills and knowledge you need to take on more challenging, high-level roles. A master’s enhances your credibility and sets you apart from the competition.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that individuals with a master's degree earn more than those with a bachelor's alone.

Imagine the earning power of a master’s from a top-rated business school like McCombs. Each of our master's programs leads to bigger, better opportunities.

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When you can apply your expertise to challenges and develop real-world business solutions, employers see your value. When you choose a master's program that includes real work in a real company, you bring proven experience to the marketplace.

Choosing a master's program that prepares you to work across industries, or even to customize your curriculum, gives you career flexibility. You can choose to work in different locations and different verticals. You can work in business, nonprofit, or governmental organizations. With the right master's for you, you've got the power to shape a fulfilling career. Consider these options:

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN BUSINESS ANALYTICS • Develop quantitative skills from statistical analysis to artificial intelligence.

• Learn to develop models that leverage data and can estimate business trade-offs to support decision making.

• No. 1 ranking in the U.S. by Eduniversal.

• Choose to study full-time on campus for 10 months or study part-time online for 23 months.

• Average starting salary for the Class of 2022 is $108,260.

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN FINANCE • Learn real-world problem solving for profitable results.

• No. 2 U.S. ranking by the Financial Times.

• Finish in 10 months.

• Average starting salary for the Class of 2022 is $81,055.

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT • Obtain programming skills and business acumen in emerging tech.

• Finish in 10 months.

• No. 4 ranking by U.S. News and World Report.

• Average starting salary for the Class of 2022 is $110,731.

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN MARKETING • Develop quantitative and strategic skills essential for modern marketing.

• No. 2 ranking in the U.S. by QS World University Rankings.

• Finish in 10 months.

• Average starting salary for the Class of 2022 is $74,174.

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN TECHNOLOGY COMMERCIALIZATION • Learn skills for launching a successful business and products.

• No. 5 ranking for graduate entrepreneurship by The Princeton Review.

• Finish in 12 months.

MASTER IN PROFESSIONAL ACCOUNTING • Tailor your coursework to align with your career goals. Select a curriculum path, accounting electives, and MBA electives.

• No. 1 ranking graduate accounting program by Public Accounting Report.

• Average starting salary for the Class of 2022 is $64,367.

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STUDENT STARTUP

SUSTAINING LIVELIHOODS McCOMBS STUDENTS STEP UP TO HELP SOLVE THE PROBLEM OF OVERGRAZING IN AN AFRICAN DESERT – AND A COMPANY IS BORN B Y N AT H A N H A N

hen Mihir Bendre first arrived in Botswana in summer 2022 as a UT Austin sophomore and a vegetarian, he was in for a rude awakening. In that part of the Kalahari Desert, growing crops is nearly impossible. So, for every meal: wildebeest, kudu, springbok, impala (all different species of antelope that call Africa home), and, on one night, smelly mopane worms.

“They were pretty bad,” says Bendre, a computational engineering major. “The game was good, though.”

For months leading up to the trip, Bendre had been living off the salad bar at Kinsolving Dining Hall. Which, incidentally, was exactly where he got the idea that took him to the Kalahari.

The idea—an app to help ranchers in Botswana make data-driven decisions about grazing allocation on their land—grew from that first discussion among friends at Kinsolving into the student-run startup company Gazelle Ecosolutions. It’s taken Bendre, along with Amod Daherkar, BBA ’25, and electrical engineering student Siddharth Thakur, across the globe, from the national Fowler Global Social Innovation Challenge competition in San Diego to six weeks of intensive research and field testing in Botswana. And most importantly, to finding an even larger solution to ecological restoration and sustainability in Africa’s Kalahari Desert.

Bendre has had a single-minded focus for the environment since he stepped foot on campus in the fall of 2021. “Last year, if any event had

G A Z E L L E EC O S O LU T I O N S

To help ranchers in Botswa­na make data-driven decisions about grazing allocation on their land, a group of UT students started Gazelle Ecoso­lutions. A business model to earn income from a software app evolved into one involving the sale of carbon credits to companies to “offset” their own emissions.

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in Africa and a dwindling resistance to the changing climate.

Meyer told Bendre about his dream for a tool that could calculate carrying capacity— the number of animals, usually livestock or game, that can sustainably be supported on a rancher’s land.

The moment Bendre stepped out of Meyer’s office, he called Thakur, ready for the first of many Gazelle meetings. “I just remember Mihir calls me with such enthusiasm,” Thakur says. “He goes, ‘This professor—he’s great, he’s sustainable,’ and Mihir goes on and on about how (Meyer) needs this app. I was like, ‘How are we going to code an app? None of us have ever built an app in our life.’”

It didn’t take them long to learn. “Three weeks [after that first meeting], these students walk into my office and have actually built an app,” Meyer says. “I was blown out of my chair, because I had forgotten about this.”

By then, the team of the four students knew Gazelle could become more than just a nif-

ty idea to win a pitch competition. But how would they get buy-in from the ranchers? “[The ranchers] have been doing this for generations,” Daherkar says. “Why are they going to listen to some stupid smartphone app that says, ‘You need to kill three more cows?’”

That’s when Gazelle grew beyond an app to solve overgrazing for cattle ranchers. During one of many long nights, the team came to its “aha! moment.” Instead of trying to market their app to ranchers as a paid service, they realized their actual business model didn’t have anything to do with an app.

Instead, they realized Gazelle could use carbon offset projects to earn its revenue. Carbon offset projects can take many forms—planting trees, offering cleaner appliances to a community—but each project ultimately reduces greenhouse gas emissions or prevents future emissions. That reduction is measured and sold as a carbon credit to companies to “offset” their own emissions.

Their first carbon offset project became the first ever registered in Botswana in October

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the word ‘sustainability’ on it, I went,” Bendre says. After one such event, Bendre met Thakur while skateboarding. When Thakur approached him about participating in McCombs’ Texas Sustainability Innovation Challenge (TSIC) later, Bendre was game. So were Daherkar and former team member Ben Breed, BBA ’24.

But they still needed an idea to pitch. “The competition isn’t really about how hard you try. The idea comes first,” Bendre says.

Then Bendre met with geography professor Thoralf Meyer, who has been working in Africa since 1996 and has taught the university’s study abroad program in Botswana since 2012, where Meyer noticed a problem.

For most of the people in the region, ranching is the only way to earn an income off the land, where growing crops is nearly impossible.

“The bitter reality is that they need to make some money off the land, and that has led to situations where land has been overstocked,” Meyer says. That leads to overgrazing, which contributes to the loss of wilderness areas

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ART BY FIRST LASTNAME

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(Left) Gazelle roam the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, where the aptly named Gazelle Ecosolutions team spent its summer.

Student-run Gazelle Ecoso­lutions – led by (above) Amod Daherkar, BBA '25 (second from right), and the Gazelle team–created Botswana’s first registered carbon offset project last fall. (top) The audience listens as the Gazelle team presents to local stakeholders in Botswana.

2022 and is projected to prevent over 214,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions in its lifetime.

The money generated then funds the app and offers the ranchers money to use the app, which can be used offline.

“If we can put a more sustainable twist on land management, compensate the farmer who is at an economical loss, [and make] the entire operation more environmentally resilient, then we would not only kill two birds with one stone; we kill three birds with one stone,” Meyer says.

Armed with the new business model, the team won first at the TSIC in April 2022, qualifying for the Fowler Global Social Innovation Challenge competition in June 2022. At the national pitch challenge in San Diego, Gazelle again won first place.

The team was soon ready to take their talents past pitch competitions to the real world: Meyer’s research hub in Botswana, where Bendre, Daherkar, and Breed spent six weeks starting in July 2022 through UT’s Global Career Launch Student Internships program.

“There’s generally a distrust of the Westerner coming in because they think they know what’s

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best. So, we wanted to avoid that as much as possible,” Daherkar says. “Living with those people for a month and a half, in more or less the same conditions that they live in on a day-today basis … You develop a human relationship, and that was one of the most important things we accomplished in our time there.”

Setting up the carbon offset projects took most of the team’s time. When they weren’t taking painstaking measurements in the field during the day or eating wildebeest, the team pitched Gazelle to local ranchers, politicians, and other community stakeholders that offered crucial feedback.

That work is ongoing: Meyer was in Botswana during the fall semester, and on one October morning in 2022, the team woke up before sunrise in Austin to present to the First National Bank, one of the largest bankers in the Botswana area, over Zoom.

Bendre, Daherkar, and Thakur are adept at pitching Gazelle by now. That skill is also crucial to getting ranchers and politicians in Botswana on board. Their support is needed as members of the team, including Daherkar, who is Gazelle’s CEO, are back in Botswana this summer to develop more carbon offset projects and fully launch the app.

And at the heart of presentations is what makes Gazelle special: the idea. After all, the idea comes first.

“No one ever really thinks of the little guys to be part of the sustainability picture, but they are such a big part,” Thakur says. “If every rancher stopped overgrazing, millions of tons of carbon dioxide would not be released from the earth.”

But Meyer did think of the little guy, and the Gazelle team has taken his dream and made it reality.

“It is rare for students to pull through with an idea, and it is very, very rewarding for me to watch these young guys just make things happen,” Meyer says. “It’s actually unbelievable that students that have essentially just started at UT are doing what they are doing.”

This article was originally published in the January-February issue of the Alcalde, the UT alumni magazine for Texas Exes.

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THE HOME-FIELD ADVANTAGE

A CONVERSATION WITH BILL GURLE Y (Left) Bill Gurley, MBA ’93, general partner at Benchmark, appeared at “Featured Session: Turning the Tables on Tim Ferriss: A Conversation with Bill Gurley” to discuss investing in startups, reading as procrastination, and the art of the interview. Gurley shared his thoughts on the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, as reported

by Business Insider, which he contrasted with the 2008 financial crisis. “At the very least, we should reflect on what happened in the past before we throw a lot of darts at what’s happening here,” Gurley said.

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CHANGING THE G AME FOR COLLEGE ATHLE TIC S 2 Lillian Mills, Texas McCombs dean, introduced “How NIL Is Changing the Game for College Athletics,” which she referred to as “a seismic shift in the landscape of sports business.” The session — shining a light on how McCombs’ sports business education intersects with Texas Athletics, two world-class programs — was part of the university’s fullday Discover Texas on March 11. It included panels; a networking space; KUTX recordings; and live music from Nik Parr, BBA ’16, followed by headliner Lucius at the Burnt Orange Bash.

AI PITCH JUDGE Bryan Stolle, BBA ’81, MBA ’87, served as a judge at “SXSW Pitch: Artificial Intelligence, Voice, & Robotics Technologies,” where early-stage technology was presented to technology experts, high-profile media, venture capitalists, and angel investors.

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STUDENT MENTAL HE ALTH Anjali Bathra Ravikumar, MIS ’23, took part in Harvard Business Review’s SXSW EDU panel “What Is Educators’ Role in Student Mental Health?” to discuss the importance of college students’ mental health and well-being. “We tend to lose sight of accepting this additional responsibility of taking care of your mental health,” she said. “And I think the first step to that is normalizing that, and talking more about that, so that’s why I’m here today.”

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DIGITAL E THIC S (Center) Cara Biasucci, director of Ethics Education and creator of Ethics Unwrapped in the Center for Leadership and Ethics, appeared at a full-house fireside chat with Tino Kuehnel, CEO of byte, for “Unleashing Happiness — Why Digital Ethics Matter.”

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ALCOHOL’S CARBON FOOTPRINT 6 Tri Vo, BBA ’07, co-founder of Fierce Whiskers, and Aimy Steadman, MBA ’13, founder and COO of BeatBox Beverages, appeared on the panel “Brands Shaking Up Alcohol’s Carbon Footprint” to share their approaches to integrating sustainability in manufacturing and operations. “It’s not all about changing the world as a company. It’s about the chance to inspire others to change the world,” said Vo. Those sentiments were echoed by Steadman.

“Responsible business is love in action. We’re focused on being that next-generation company to serve the next generation,” she said.

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INCLUSIVE AND EQUITABLE VR DESIGN 7 Allison Morrison, EMBA ’25, reality labs policy manager at Meta, moderated “Metaverse Equity: Inclusive and Equitable Design in Virtual Reality” at the company’s downtown office.

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AT SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST 2023, THE TEXAS McCOMBS COMMUNITY TURNED OUT AS SPEAKERS, MENTORS, JUDGES, AND MODERATORS

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Interested stakeholders met in February to discuss design ideas for Mulva Hall, the future home of un­ dergraduate business education at UT Austin. The new building will be next to Rowling Hall and the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center.

MULVA HALL PROJECT AREAS

• Learning Environments • Student Experience • Faculty Experience • Centers and Institutes • Work Integration and Technology

BRAINSTORMING BEGINS FOR MULVA HALL, A FUTURE CENTER OF BUSINESS EDUCATION, FACULTY RE­S EARCH, AND ACADEMIC PROGRAMS AT THE GATEWAY TO CAMPUS Creativity and imagination were in the air as participants put on their design thinking caps during Mulva Hall Vision and Engagement Sessions held in February. Students, staff, alums, and faculty met with design criteria architectural firm Perkins & Will to provide feedback on early concept ideas.

Mulva Hall, an expanded new vision for undergraduate business education, faculty research, academic programs, and centers, has been in the inception stage for several years.

The project was formally launched last year as a teaching, research, and learning facility comparable with with Robert B. Rowling Hall for graduate education, which opened in 2018.

The new building will be adjacent to Rowling Hall and the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center, creating a unified campus 12 _ McCOMBS.UTEXAS.EDU

for business education at a prominent gateway to the Forty Acres.

The building takes its name from the lead donors, Jim Mulva, BBA ’68, MBA ’68, the former chairman and CEO of ConocoPhillips, and his wife, Miriam Mulva, who pledged $40 million through their foundation. Interest in supporting this landmark project is high, with $120 million raised so far (of the initial goal of $135 million) from approximately 30 early investors.

Dean Lillian Mills appointed two project advocates: Caitlin Mullaney, senior associate dean and COO of McCombs; and Ty Henderson, associate dean for undergraduate programs. The project plans are divided into five areas, each headed by faculty and staff with specialized skills and knowledge:

Learn more about naming opportunities. development@mccombs.utexas.edu

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NEW UNDERGRAD HQ IN THE WORKS

“Mulva Hall must be vibrant, imaginative, and multifunctional,” says Henderson, “enabling new ways of teaching, learning, and researching that are just over the horizon. We are thinking forward, which is challenging yet fun.”

The overall project is a set of three related projects: 1) utilities enablement, 2) parking assessment, and 3) building planning, design, and construction. Mullaney explains the importance of the Project Core Team, stating, “We are presently focused on what goes in the building before we begin to consider what the building might look like.”

To meet these goals, in December 2022, the university contracted with top architectural firm Perkins & Will, which has worked with over 35 universities across North America. The firm was recently ranked No. 2 in the country

by Architectural Record magazine.

Mullaney has high expectations for the project beyond just modernizing the facility. “Mulva Hall will elevate our research and learning environments as we aspire to become the highest-impact public research business school.”

Significant opportunities remain for even more naming-level investors. Mulva Hall is a rare chance for donors to connect their name to the future of business education at The University of Texas at Austin.

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McCOMBS

BY THE NUMBERS

SCHOOL NEWS

No. 1

Rank of the Texas M.S. in Business Analytics, Eduniversal, 2022

No. 2

Undergraduate Entrepreneurship, Princeton Review / Entrepreneur Magazine, 2023

No. 2

Rank of the Texas M.S. in Finance, Financial Times, 2023

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DEAN LILLIAN MILLS JOINS BUSINESS DEANS BUILDING BRIDGES IN WASHINGTON Texas McCombs Dean Lillian Mills and nine other deans of prestigious business schools traveled to Washington, D.C., in June to explore the future of business education.

The Business School Deans Delegation met with members of Congress, White House economic experts, and top business leaders.

They examined answers to the question: How should business schools be educating future business leaders to ensure a vibrant, dynamic American economy.

Mills called the trip “a productive step in building bridges between higher education leaders and policymakers.” The deans met with Joshua Bolten, chief of the Business Roundtable, which is made up of more than 200 CEOs from leading U.S. companies. The discussion covered some of the most pressing issues facing business and government, including geopolitical tensions, national security, supply chains, economic opportunity, spreading wealth equitably, immigration, and manufacturing’s potential for high tech and sustainability.

“I look forward to continuing conversations on how business schools will educate the next generation and support America’s economic future,” Mills says.

Total square footage at UT dedicated to incubator and accelerator space for MBA and MSTC programs.

706

Average GMAT score for the Texas McCombs Full-Time MBA (Class of 2024), second highest in the school’s history of MBA admissions

$144,546

Average starting salary, FT MBA Class of 2022, an 11% increase over previous year – a historic increase McCOMBS.UTEXAS.EDU _ 13

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NEW EXECUTIVE-IN-RESIDENCE JOINS McCOMBS Jeff Mihm, former CEO of Noven Pharmaceuticals, a leading developer of prescription transdermal patches, has joined McCombs as an executive-in-residence. In that role, he will provide practical insights on how companies operate and address daily challenges. Mihm is working with faculty members and students in several capacities, from acting as a sounding board to research faculty wanting to link theory to practice, to serving as a guest speaker and career mentor to students.

In addition, Mihm also joined the McCombs faculty as a lecturer, teaching Global Regula-

tory Strategy in the Business, Government & Society department.

WEEKEND MBA PROGRAM REDESIGNED, WITH FLEXIBLE DEGREE OPTIONS Launching this fall, a new curriculum will allow students in the top-ranked McCombs Weekend MBA programs in Dallas/For t Worth and Houston to tailor their degrees in flexible new ways. The Working Professional Weekend MBA programs will include five electives newly added to the students’ second year. New courses will address emerging trends around technology, marketing,

finance, business and society, and corporate social responsibility.

The more tailored Texas McCombs MBA experience is geared toward a rapidly evolving workplace, says Joe Stephens, senior assistant dean and director of Working Professional & Executive MBA programs. “From a student perspective, these electives will provide an opportunity to dive deeper in a particular area that they have an interest in, or in an area in which their company might like to see them attain more expertise,” he says.

Texas McCombs’ Working Professional programs consistently rank No. 1 in Texas and in the top 10 nationally in U.S. News & World Report.

Courses are selected based on input from students and employers, Stephens says. For example, a new elective focused on artificial intelligence and machine learning not only addresses how to do business better and more efficiently, but also more ethically.

NEW McCOMBS COURSE AIMS TO SPUR ENERGY ENTREPRENEURSHIP A new course that started during the spring helps graduate students from across the university develop startup plans to bring promising, Texas-based energy technologies and services from concept to deployment. Faculty members from McCombs’ Jon Brumley Texas Venture Labs and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology co-taught the TVL Energy Ventures Practicum that launched this spring.

The startup-incubator course is modeled after a class at MIT that has spun out more than 30 companies during the past decade.

“UT has always attracted entrepreneurial thinkers, and student demand for startup guidance and opportunity has never been stronger,” said Mellie Price, an eight-time entrepreneur, executive director of McCombs’ Texas Venture Labs, and co-teacher for the new course with

As McCombs’ executive-in-residence, Jeff Mihm, former CEO of Noven Pharma­ceuticals, will provide practical insights on how companies operate.

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STUDENT SHOUTOUTS

MIT’s Frank O’Sullivan. “This multidisciplinary practicum is a solid answer to that demand.”

The course is a joint effort of McCombs’ Texas Venture Labs; the KBH Energy Center for Business, Law, and Policy; the Cockrell School of Engineering; and the UT Energy Institute.

McCOMBS DEBUTS WELLNESS CENTER The new McCombs Wellness Center has opened as a place to support student, faculty, and staff wellness needs, an initiative spreading across different units and campus locations. The center delivers services – including yoga, counseling, and wellness workshops – all in one place.

“As dean, I regard self-care and well-being to be of utmost importance, and I will ensure that members across our community have the resources and tools needed for academic success and personal growth,” Dean Lillian Mills says. With the opening of the center, the school added a second academic counselor. Funding came through dean's discretionary funds and the generosity of donors, including a gift from Dean’s Advisory Council member Bryan Stolle, BBA '81, MBA '87.

TEXAS EXECUTIVE EDUCATION LAUNCHES PROGRAM FOR ENERGY LEADERS

NETWORKING WITH THE TOP DOG

This year’s National Pet Day brought McCombs students, staff, faculty and parents together at the GSB Plaza for conversations with Dean Lillian Mills and a study break with her dog, Reacher, as the end of the spring semester approached.

CREATIVE PROBLEM-SOLVING

Texas Enactus, a UT team that included McCombs first-year students Maria Cavazos and Abhinav Yarlagadda, led by adviser Dennis Passovoy, assistant professor of instruction, placed second in the nation for their project, Rainewable, a rainwater catchment system deployed in rural Nicaragua. All Enactus teams focus on using business concepts and principles to solve today’s social problems. Each year, students from these teams make presentations about their biggest and most impactful projects to a panel of judges in the hope of winning the Expo competition. The UT team was invited to advance to the global competition and will present their project at the Enactus World Cup in Utrecht, Netherlands, on Oct. 17-20.

FIRST YEAR, FIRST PRESENTATION

Texas Executive Education launched its inaugural Executive Program for Energy Leaders to provide energy executives with the tools, frameworks, and insights needed to advance their careers and make an impact on their organizations. The program was launched in collaboration with Emeritus, the global leader in making world-class professional education accessible and affordable.

The new nine- to 12-month program includes core modules focused on navigating the uncertain energy landscape; identifying, selecting, and executing risky capital projects; and delivering the business plan. The program is led by subject matter experts and industry veterans who also will provide one-on-one coaching to participants.

Gordon Leeroy, a first-year student in accounting, gave a joint presentation at the AAA 2023 Joint Midyear Meeting of the AIS, SET, and International Sections in Las Vegas. He co-authored a paper titled "Impact of Blockchain on Improving Taxpayers' Compliance: Empirical Evidence from Panel Data Model and Agent-Based Simulation" with University of Maryland Global Campus professor Eugene Lee. The paper is forthcoming in the Journal of Emerging Technologies in Accounting (JETA). The paper explores the impact of blockchain technology applications on taxpayer compliance and identifies the pivotal factors that affect blockchain technology applications in the tax compliance system. “I believe that technology and artificial intelligence are the future,” Leeroy says. “The model I used in the presentation and paper was an agent-based simulation model for a new tax system powered by artificial intelligence.”

TUNES FROM THE TOWER

From behind the clock face high atop the UT Tower, Justin Zhang, a graduating senior in finance in the Canfield Business Honors Program, played the carillon in April as part of the Spring Concert by the UT Guild of Carillonneurs. “Being able to have a common language between all these different students and even faculty and staff, maintaining that school spirit and tradition that’s been happening for over 100 years now, it’s just really valuable and the biggest reason I do this,” Zhang says. “The bells are something you can’t find anywhere else.”

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FACULT Y ACHIEVEMENTS

Dean Lillian Mills was awarded the prestigious 2023 Outstanding Accounting Educator Award from the American Accounting Association.

The award committee chose Mills after considering more than 30 nomination letters from her research co-authors, peers at top academic institutions nationwide, former students across the globe, and Texas McCombs colleagues.

“Dean Lillian Mills is recognized as the most prolific and impactful tax researcher in the accounting academy,” said Steven Kachelmeier, chair of the McCombs Department of Accounting, which has been ranked the No. 1 program in the country by U.S. News & World Report for the past 17 years. “Her teaching reputation at McCombs is second to none, both in the school’s No. 1-ranked Master of Professional Accounting program and in her supervision of many highly successful doctoral graduates over the years.”

Mills chaired the department for four years before becoming the first woman to be named permanent dean of McCombs in 2021.

The dozens of letters supporting her nomination highlight her enthusiasm and passion for accounting, her dedication to her students, and her uncanny ability to make complicated tax-related topics understandable and applicable. She has won numerous teaching awards throughout her career at McCombs and previously while on the faculty at the University of Arizona, and she continues to mentor McCombs doctoral candidates.

JEFF JOHANNS APPOINTED CHAIR OF THE TEXAS SOCIETY OF CPAS PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS COMMITTEE The Texas Society of Certified Public Accountants has announced that Jeffrey Johanns, associate professor of instruction in accounting at The University of Texas at Austin, has been named chair of its Professional Standards Com16 _ McCOMBS.UTEXAS.EDU

mittee. The Texas Society of CPAs is the state’s largest association of finance professionals, and Johanns has been a member since 1987.

He has served on the 18-member Professional Standards Committee since 2013.

That committee responds to exposure drafts and monitors potential new professional standards and rules that could affect the practice of accountancy in Texas. Johanns joined the McCombs Department of Accounting in 2012 and won the TXCPA Outstanding Accounting Educator Award in 2019.

ANDREW BRODSKY SELECTED TOP 40 UNDER 40 MBA PROFESSOR For excellence in research and instruction, Andrew Brodsky, assistant professor of management, was named among the 2023 Best 40 Under 40 MBA Professors by Poets & Quants.

Brodsky, 35, teaches The Art and Science of Negotiation for McCombs’ Full-Time MBA Program.

Poets & Quants’ selection committee received 26 separate letters of nomination from Brodsky’s students, who have consistently rated him from 4.8 to 5 points out of 5 in performance surveys since he joined the school in 2017. In 2021, he won UT Austin’s Trammell/CBA Foundation Teaching Award for Assistant Professors.

NEW AWARD HONORS HERB MILLER FOR EXCEPTIONAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO TEACHING, SERVICE, AND MENTORSHIP Associate Professor of Instruction Herb Miller is the namesake and the first recipient of the new McCombs School of Business Marketing Department Herbert A. Miller Jr. Professional Faculty Impact Award. The award was made

possible by William Cunningham, who served as McCombs dean, UT Austin president, and University of Texas System chancellor, as a way to recognize and honor the professional faculty in the department of marketing.

Miller joined the business school as an IBM Executive Faculty fellow and has been a professional faculty member in marketing since 1984. He developed a program to recruit and support historically underrepresented minority students toward graduation in the MBA program and served as an assistant dean in the undergraduate program.

SHERIDAN TITMAN CELEBRATED FOR FIELD-CHANGING RESEARCH For research that altered the face of investing, Sheridan Titman, McCombs finance professor, has received the Wharton-Jacobs Levy Prize for Quantitative Financial Innovation. The award recognizes the impact of a 1993 Journal of Finance study on momentum investing by Titman and Narasimhan Jegadeesh, chair of finance at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University, “Returns to Buying Winners and Selling Losers: Implications for Stock Market Efficiency.”

The paper marked a shift in investment thought, showing that strategies of buying recent stock winners and selling recent losers led to significant positive returns. Titman holds the Walter W. McAllister Centennial Distinguished University Chair in Financial Services at the McCombs School. The findings in Titman’s award-winning paper have been confirmed by many studies, some looking as far back as the 19th century. The research also led fund managers to adopt new strategies.

Herb Miller, center, is the first recipient of an award named in his honor, made by possible by (left) William Cunningham, former UT president and McCombs dean, and jointly presented by (right) Andy Gershoff, professor and chair of marketing. Miller, an associate professor of instruction, has been on the McCombs faculty since 1984.

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McCOMBS DEAN NAMED 2023 OUTSTANDING ACCOUNTING EDUCATOR

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COMMENCEMENT 2023

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Ishta Bahl celebrates earning a dual undergraduate degree in marketing and sport management May 6 during The University of Texas at Austin’s campuswide commencement ceremony at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium. Explains Bahl: "I had just exited the tunnel onto the field for commencement, and I knew my parents and sister were in the stands directly behind me, so I tried to spot them.

They were cheering and taking photos, and it just turned into a very happy and exciting moment! It is definitely something I will always remember."

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IN MEMORIAM

UNFORGETTABLE ALUM SHUDDE FATH, McCOMBS’ LONGEST-LIVED GRADUATE, DIED AT AGE 106 IN DECEMBER, LEAVING A LEGACY OF LEADERSHIP AND AUDACITY

BY MARY ANN ROSER

McCombs’ oldest alum, Shudde Fath, BBA ’37, is revered as a champion of equal rights, a conservationist who watched over the wallets of energy consumers, and an untiring activist who influenced generations of Austinites.

She died Dec. 9, 2022, a month shy of her 107th birthday.

Born Jan. 11, 1916, in Bastrop, Shudde Bess Bryson was Bastrop High School valedictorian in 1933 and then enrolled at UT Austin, where she met her future husband, Conrad Fath. She was among few women in a sea of men in the business school, some of whom did not think women belonged there.

“I was a good student, but I did not want to be a teacher or a lawyer,” Fath recalled in October. “It was a process of elimination. If you like mathematics, McCombs Business School is where you need to be. I didn’t want to teach math. I wanted to use math.”

After her 1937 graduation with high honors, she worked at the Texas Employment Commission, now the Workforce Commission, where she won a landmark settlement in 1980 in a sex discrimination claim over unfair treatment and pay. She was revered as a trailblazer for women’s rights and was a 40-year volunteer with Austin’s citizens advisory Electric Utility Commission, retiring in 2017. An avid Barton Springs swimmer, she also served for nearly 30 years as treasurer of the Save Barton Creek Association.

She received numerous awards for her work.

“We like to talk about our students changing the world. There is no better role model than Shudde Fath,” Dean Lillian Mills said after Fath’s passing. “She was an iconic leader. We will continue her legacy by preparing future leaders to follow in her footsteps.”

Fath’s daughter, Betsy Fath Hiller, interviewed her for a McCombs project with

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StoryCorps in October (see page 42). Here are excerpts, edited for concision and clarity.

Hiller: Do you have a favorite memory of your time at the business school?

Fath: There was an accounting professor who didn’t think women ought to be in business school. One of my favorite memories was in his class. One of the questions on the exam was a spreadsheet that had numbers missing. Growing up, my family took children’s magazines, and they had puzzles and things to challenge young people. Suddenly, it dawned on me there was a missing number and then a missing total. A couple of guys, front seaters, just couldn’t understand how I got the answer.

I was so happy that I just went skipping across the Forty Acres back to my dormitory.

against and you shouldn’t take it from those bastards.” The suit was in the caseload of a federal district judge in Austin, and he kept shuffling it to the bottom of the stack, and finally they began to negotiate about a settlement.

Hiller: For $200,000.

Fath: And wonderfully enhanced retirement benefits that I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.

My joke is that every day, the Texas Employees Retirement Fund people would look in the paper to see if I had died.

Hiller: What are you most proud of in your life,

and what important lessons have you learned?

Fath: I’ve had a wonderful life. A big lesson is to be patient, especially when it’s something very, very important to you. After retiring from activity, I developed a kind of a mantra about my life. One is that you’ve got to give a damn about something and work to make it happen. You can’t do it alone. You need help from others. You don’t win them all, but things might be worse if you hadn’t tried. That’s my mantra for life.

Hiller: When did you realize you had been dis-

criminated against at the Workforce Commission, and what did Daddy say about it?

Fath: He said, “You’ve been discriminated

Read more about Shudde Fath′s legacy by scanning the code.

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THE FUTURE OF GROCERY PRICING WHAT IF STORES SET PRICES THE WAY AIRLINES AND HOTELS DO? A CONVERSATION WITH IOANNIS STAMATOPOULOS, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF IROM

BY STEVE BROOKS

nyone who has shopped for an airplane seat or a hotel room has experienced dynamic pricing. Prices fluctuate often, even daily, depending on availability and how soon the shopper needs to book. Consumer demand drives these fluctuations.

Supermarkets, by comparison, are behind the times. They take months to change prices storewide because of printing new labels and putting them on shelves. But new technologies could bring dynamic pricing to grocery aisles, says Ioannis “Yannis” Stamatopoulos, an associate professor of information, risk, and operations management at McCombs since 2016. In several recent studies, he finds the ripple effects of two technologies – electronic shelf labels and expanded bar codes – can benefit not only stores, but also consumers and suppliers.

Stamatopoulos’ field is operations management: the study of maximizing efficiency in business operations. It’s an interest that began years ago when he took part in math contests. “I found that I enjoyed solving practical problems, as opposed to talking about abstract objects,” he says.

He’s particularly interested in obstacles to efficiency, which he calls operational frictions.

His research has examined ways to lower these obstacles in cleaning services, road salt procurement, and electric scooters.

Stamatopoulos, who has a doctorate in operations management and an M.A. in economics

(Left) McCombs Asso­ciate Professor Ioannis Stamatopoulos has found that the ripple effects of two technologies–electronic shelf labels and expanded bar codes–can benefit not only stores, but also consumers and suppliers.

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from Northwestern University, and a B.S. in mathematics from the University of Athens, describes ways to reduce frictions in setting supermarket prices. Modest operational changes could lead to multiple benefits, he says: cutting food waste, stabilizing supply chains, and discounting some prices for consumers. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did you become interested in grocery store prices as an operational problem?

I was taking a macroeconomics class, and we talked about why prices don’t move more often. I thought to myself: “This is an operations question, because if there are frictions, they must lie in the micro processes of pricing itself. This micro problem has macro implications.”

How did you go about finding a solution?

I connected with a chain in the U.K. that installed electronic shelf labels. They’re small screens that display a price and can also display a discount. You can have one price for fresh produce and a different price for produce nearing expiration. If you want to change your prices, you can execute the process from a tablet.

This chain tried it in a few stores first to see whether it was worth it. I offered to do a statistical analysis, comparing the stores that received electronic shelf labels with the stores that did not.

What were the results from introducing digital labels?

The chain went from changing prices every month and a half to every three weeks. And by the way, this came with increases in revenue. But I was disappointed that they didn’t go all the way to changing prices daily. I asked them why this didn’t fully resolve the issue.

One person told me, “The No. 1 reason we change our prices is to respond to inventories.

If we have two months’ worth of something in inventory, we put it on a discount.”

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What light bulb went off when you heard that?

Inventory records are garbage. There’s research demonstrating that they are wrong 65% of the time about what’s really on the shelves. So, when I heard him speak, it was a light bulb moment. Bad information about inventories is an information friction. Better information might speed up price changes from every month to every day.

But I needed some empirical proof of concept. In collaboration with two other professors, we found a chain that adopted two changes at the same time. They adopted electronic labels, and they adopted expanded bar codes to improve their inventory records.

Can you explain expanded bar codes and how they help with changing prices?

A typical UPC bar code only captures the kind of product. It tells you, “This is a pack of Tyson chicken thighs.” An expanded bar code captures what day it was packed on, at what facility. You have an ID for every package, as a unique item that you can follow through the chain.

With expanded bar codes, they had very detailed and much more accurate inventory records, including expiration dates. They were able to do dynamic pricing. If there was more of a product about to expire, they gave it a deeper discount. Or if they just got a new batch, and they had lots on the shelf, they might lower the price. They could make daily changes.

So, what impacts did dynamic pricing have on those stores?

They used to waste 20% to 30% of products.

They went down to wasting almost nothing, and it was all through the smart discounts.

Because they were able to move more quantity, their revenues and profits went up.

How did shoppers react to these fluctuating prices?

They did surveys, and the pricing seemed fair to their consumers. If a product was about to expire, they thought it was fair to

lower the price. If the consumer wanted a fresher product, they thought it was OK to pay a little premium.

You found that suppliers as well as stores could benefit from dynamic pricing. How would that work?

With a colleague, I got data from a large supermarket chain in China and their distribution centers. I could observe all the product flows and prices. We put that empirical data into a model to simulate what would happen if there was no cost to changing prices.

We found that with dynamic pricing, when stores waste less, they can order more often. The amounts are more consistent, rather than seesawing up and down.

It counteracts the bullwhip effect, that volatility increases as you go upstream in the supply chain. Instead, the whole supply chain is more efficient. Suppliers can plan better. They’ll know they won’t need an extra truck and that their labor level is going to suffice.

If these technologies have such big payoffs, why aren’t most U.S. grocers adopting them?

Their biggest problem is the high fixed costs of adoption. A lot of innovation in dynamic pricing is coming from Europe, because their labor costs are higher, and they can be harsher about food waste. But it's going to come to the States. It's just a question of when and how. If other competitors start adopting these technologies, you don't want to be late to this party. I hope that my research will show them real data about the benefits.

What can be done to speed up adoption?

If we really want to combat food waste, it might make sense for policymakers to provide incentives to supermarkets to adopt some of these technologies. If they get help doing this, such as tax credits, they’re going to order more and waste less. This will benefit all of us.

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I SHARE, THEREFORE I KNOW SHARING ARTICLES ON SOCIAL MEDIA, EVEN WHEN WE HAVEN’T READ THEM, CAN LEAD US TO BELIEVE WE ARE EXPERTS ON A TOPIC. BASED ON RESEARCH

BY SUSAN M. BRONIARCZYK A N D A D R I A N WA R D

After people post an article on social media, they often think they know more about it than they actually do.

Susan M. Broniarczyk, McCombs associate dean for research and professor of marketing, and Adrian Ward, assistant professor of marketing, explored this inflated sense of knowledge in a new study, along with Frank Zheng, Ph.D. ’20. They found that social media sharers believe they’re knowledgeable about the content, even if they’ve only glanced at a headline.

Because they are publicly committing to an expert identity, social media sharing shapes their sense of self, helping them feel as knowledgeable as their post makes them seem. This is especially true when sharing with close friends.

ADOPTING AN E XPERT IDENTIT Y

I L LU ST R AT I O N : Z H I T KOV B O R I S S H U T T E R STO C K

The researchers conducted several studies that support their theory. First, they presented 98 undergraduate students with a set of online news articles and said they were free to read, share, or do both.

Next, the researchers measured participants’ subjective and objective knowledge for each article — what the students thought they knew, and what they actually knew.

Reading articles led to increases in the participants’ objective and subjective knowledge.

Sharing articles predicted increases in their subjective knowledge — even when students hadn’t read the content.

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In a second study, the researchers tracked changes in subjective knowledge over time for participants who were asked to share an article on cancer prevention tips versus those who didn’t share. The sharers came to believe they knew more about cancer than those who didn’t share, even if they hadn’t read the article — providing further evidence that sharing can cause increases in subjective knowledge, even when lacking objective knowledge.

Three additional studies then tested the idea that this effect occurs because people internalize their sharing behavior into their self-concept, especially when sharing under their own identity versus an alias, when sharing with friends versus strangers, and when they could freely choose what to post.

RISK IER DECISIONS In a final study, the researchers tested whether sharers’ behavior would reflect overconfidence.

They asked 300 active Facebook users to read an article on investing for beginners.

Then, they assigned students to a sharing or no-sharing group. All participants were told

RESE ARCH BRIEFS

Acquisitions Can Nix Existing Partnerships

the content existed on several websites, and they saw Facebook posts with the sites. Sharers were asked to look at all posts and choose one to share on their Facebook page.

Next, in a supposedly unrelated task, participants completed a robo-advised retirement planning simulation. They learned that allocating more money to stocks is considered “more aggressive” than bond investing and received a customized investment recommendation based on their age.

Participants then distributed a hypothetical $10,000 in retirement funds between stocks and bonds. The researchers found that sharers took significantly more investment risk, dedicating 60% on average to stocks versus the non-sharers’ 54%. Those who shared articles were twice as likely to take more risk than recommended by the robo-adviser.

“When people feel they’re more knowledgeable, they’re more likely to make riskier decisions,” Ward says.

STAYING VIGIL ANT The findings are especially relevant in a world in which it’s all too simple to share content.

Business alliances are valuable because they help companies supplement skills, enter new markets, and gain competitive advantages, but acquisitions can fray relationships.

What They Studied: Because acquisitions and alliances occur frequently there, the biopharmaceutical industry was the focus for Associate Professor of Management Ram Ranganathan and his co-authors – Vivek Tandon of Temple University and Navid Asgari of

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Fordham University. Such strategic alliances help companies reduce risks and share the large R&D costs of bringing new drugs to market — like the partnership of Pfizer and BioNTech on vaccines.

These partnerships can take years to develop and are critical to a pharma company’s success.

What They Found: The odds of terminating alliances exposed to acquisitions are 11% greater than for unexposed alliances. Moreover, termination odds of inherited alliances are

Recent data from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism show only 51% of consumers who “read” an online news story read the whole article, while 26% read part, and 22% looked at just the headline or a few lines.

The McCombs research suggests there’s merit to social media companies piloting ways to encourage people to read before sharing. “Anything that’s effective in getting people to read articles or recalibrate their self-knowledge is important,” Ward says.

Consumers should pay close attention to their online reading and sharing habits to make sure sharing isn’t making them overconfident.

That can lead people to become entrenched in their beliefs.

“If people feel more knowledgeable on a topic, they also feel they maybe don’t need to read or learn additional information on that topic,” Broniarczyk says. “This miscalibrated sense of knowledge can be hard to correct.”

“I Share, Therefore I Know? Sharing Online Content - Even Without Reading It - Inflates Subjective Knowledge” was published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.

— DEBOR AH LYNN BLUMBERG

1.78 times as great as the termination odds for all alliances (inherited and not inherited combined).

“High-performing alliances depend on trust and well-developed knowledge exchange routines between the two partners,” Ranganathan explains.

“Acquisitions disrupt both trust and exchange routines, particularly those between the target company and its partners.”

Why It Matters: The research suggests that companies miss

opportunities by ending or damaging existing alliances. If they maintained these alliances, acquirers could strengthen their partnership networks and realize new synergies. After all, as Ranganathan says, synergies are a big reason most companies merge.

“Divestment of Relational Assets Following Acquisitions: Evidence from the Biopharmaceutical Industry” is published in in the Strategic Management Journal.

— ALEXANDRA BIESADA

Read more stories about faculty expertise online at Big Ideas.

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What Makes Speaking Up Productive When an employee offers a novel idea for workplace improvements, and managers listen and act, both the organization and employee win.

What They Studied: Much depends on whom those employees speak to, according to research by Professor of Management Ethan Burris and three co-authors. They examined what factors make speaking up productive, by increasing the likelihood that a suggested change will occur.

What They Found: Two characteristics of the listener enhance sales for both an employee and a business: Having the authority and resources to make the change happen (hierarchy) and having the know-how to make the change happen (competence). Some employees make the mistake of speaking up to someone who is no higher in the hierarchy than they are, Burris says.

“They target people who simply do not have the power or social standing to initiate effective change.”

Why It Matters: When speaking up often to managers who have the authority to effect change, sales performance increased 12% to 15%. Speaking sideways to peers who have no more power than they have was associated with a 10% decrease in sales performance.

“The Agency to Implement Voice: How Target Hierarchical Position and Competence Changes the Relationship Between Voice and Individual Performance” is published in Organization Science.

— ALEXANDRA BIESADA

How AI Can Reveal Corporate Tax Avoidance Words in annual reports can be as useful as numbers when spotting corporate tax dodgers.

What They Studied: Using natural language processing (NLP), McCombs Dean and Accounting Professor Lillian Mills, co-author Kelvin Law, Ph.D. ’12, of Nanyang Technological University, and their team examined 18 years of U.S. multinational companies’ annual reports. The researchers analyzed the text and identified patterns and word choices in 183,061 reports to gain insight into companies’ activities in tax havens.

What They Found: The computer searched for about 80 words, including “manufacturing,” “purchasing,” “importing,” “warehouses,” and “distributors” to suggest operations that might be avoiding taxes. A new set of measures in the study assesses not only whether a company has a subsidiary in a tax haven country, but whether it’s an active subsidiary. The new measures are three times as effective as existing ones for predicting that a company is avoiding taxes. Machine learning techniques also can identify companies that may have tax haven operations but do not disclose them.

And nondisclosers flagged by

machine learning have lower effective tax rates than other companies.

Why It Matters: As Mills explains, AI can be “a powerful tool for both regulators and investors to detect corporate tax avoidance. That information could especially help regulators other than the IRS, who don’t have access to companies’ tax returns. It could guide them in looking at publicly available data to find companies that might be using abusive profit-shifting strategies in tax havens.”

“Taxes and Haven Activities: Evidence from Linguistic Cues” is published in The Accounting Review.

—KELVIN LAW

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MENTORING HELPED FIRST-GENERATION STUDENT MELBA TELLEZ, M.S. '18, STAY AFLOAT. NOW SHE’S A BEACON FOR OTHER YOUNG WOMEN.

by Alberta Phillips | photograph by Robert Houser

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MENTORING COMES IN DIFFERENT WAYS Although Tellez didn’t have what she called “official mentors,” people in key positions provided critical support. They taught her the value of mentoring and community. She says they made the difference between staying the course and losing her way.

“Mentoring is important to me because I honestly don’t feel like I would have gotten to where I am today without people supporting me,” she says. Doors that might have stayed closed cracked open when she began learning about opportunities – and went after them.

Before she attended that pivotal training session, “I was living my life according to what I knew was possible,” Tellez says. “When I finally started branching out, I saw that there’s a lot of things I could do, but it takes the right people

to help you get there, especially when you are part of an underserved or minority group. You don’t know what you don’t know.”

Her great-aunt encouraged Tellez to “dream big.” She was a nurse and had gone to college; she urged Tellez to do the same and not be hamstrung by her family’s finances.

Tellez enrolled first in her local community college, Northwest Vista College in San Antonio and after that, at Texas A&M University-San Antonio, earning a bachelor’s degree in communications in 2017.

That is where she met the mentor who helped shape her future. Brian Brantley, an associate professor in the Department of Communications at Texas A&M University-San Antonio, supported Tellez’s desire to reach further and go to McCombs. He encouraged her to continue her education and provided key advice about the application process, Tellez says.

“We always like to keep our eyes open for those students who not only want to go to graduate school, but really are shaped the right way for that. Melba definitely was one of those,” Brantley recalls. He says he strives to steer students from his Latino-serving university to selective institutions such as McCombs for advanced degrees.

When Melba Tellez was a child, a future involving college and a professional career seemed unlikely.

She had to quit high school after her mother, Isabel Guzman (below, at left), lost her job. But Tellez, 30, is now a product marketing manager at Google and founder of Mujeres on the Rise, a company that helps Latinas ascend in the professional world.

F M A I LY P H OTO S C O U R T E SY O F M E L BA T E L L E Z

elba Tellez, M.S. ’18, admits she was “not too thrilled” when, at age 19, she attended a training session for her job at an Austin AT&T call center.

It might have been just another routine training, but when Tellez saw that the speaker, a sales director, was a Latina like her, a spark was lit.

“It was the first time I had ever seen a Latina leading an entire meeting for such a large group,” she says. “I remember thinking, ‘Wow, she’s so eloquent, poised, beautiful, and smart.’”

That was the motivation that propelled Tellez from high school dropout in an entry-level job to master’s student at the McCombs School of Business pursuing a career in tech. Tellez, 30, is now a product marketing manager at Google and founder of a company, Mujeres on the Rise, aimed at helping other Latinas rise in the professional world.

Tellez left that meeting with a vision of what was possible. “‘OK,’ I told myself, ‘That’s what I want to do.’”

Until then, college and a professional career were not in her game plan. Money was tight in her single-parent household in San Antonio during her first nine years and then in Monterrey, Mexico, during the next nine. Her call center wages helped her mother pay the bills.

“My mom ended up losing her job, and because there is no free public education in Mexico, we couldn’t afford for me to keep going to high school,” Tellez says. “She was very hesitant about me quitting and wanted me to keep going. But unfortunately, we just didn’t have the money.”

Tellez, the youngest of three daughters, says her mother wanted to protect her girls and envisioned them living in the same house in a multigenerational family. That’s not unlike many Latinos living in Mexico and the U.S. Her sisters started their families early. Tellez, the youngest, followed her own path into the job market. She was unaware of opportunities or careers outside of the world she knew.

But right after the training session in 2011, Tellez started the journey that would change her life.

“It was the first time that I had ever heard of marketing. I went home that day and I started researching the field. How do I get into marketing? How can I work in this space? That's when I realized that the first step I needed to take was getting my GED.” Tellez took prep courses and earned a GED certificate in 2012 while working full time at call centers for AT&T and Citibank. She was ready to set her sights on college, and later, graduate school. Her time at McCombs would lead her to create Mujeres on the Rise, which offers training, support, and mentoring for other aspiring Latinas.

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Despite earning a bachelor’s degree, Tellez was unable to shake doubts about whether she as a first-generation college student could make it at McCombs. She says she saw few women who looked like her, and her feelings of inadequacy grew as she learned many classmates had graduated from elite schools.

“I felt like I couldn’t keep up. I felt like everybody was so much smarter than I was,” Tellez says. “There were so many things my peers learned in high school that I never did because I learned just what was necessary to pass the GED.” As Tellez discovered, sometimes peers can be mentors. She found kinship with another Latina student, also a first-generation college graduate. Together, they weathered the ups and downs of what might otherwise have been a lonely struggle.

The classmate, Rebecca Salazar, M.S. ’18, describes unique challenges Latinos face at McCombs and, no doubt, other graduate schools because of generational and cultural disparities. Just 5.9% of Latinas in the country hold master’s degrees, according to 2021 data compiled by Education Trust, and the figures were even lower when she and Tellez enrolled in graduate school.

“Being a first-gen student and being in grad school at a time when just 4% of Latinas in the U.S. had master’s degrees – there really wasn’t a blueprint,” says Salazar, 30, who is a copywriter for University Marketing and Communications at UT Austin. In all, Latinos make up 10% of students in McCombs’ graduate programs, according to 2021 figures.

“You have to find things out on your own, and you have to reach out for help,” Salazar says.

She adds: “Other students in the program seemed to know what was going on. They had family members or parents who had gone to 28 _ McCOMBS.UTEXAS.EDU

grad school. So, it was a lot of us having to lean on each other and figure things out.

“It’s rare to find someone that you can really see, relate to, and that was the really great thing about Melba. I was like, ‘Well, this person really understands me.’”

K EEP SWIMMING Perhaps most challenging, Tellez says, was a first-semester finance course. She had never taken introductory courses in statistics or finance. Her instructor was Sanford “Sandy” Leeds, a professor of instruction in the McCombs finance department.

“I remember walking into his office one day and I literally told him, ‘I feel lost. I feel like I need to drop out. I feel like I’m swimming against the tide,’” Tellez recalls.

“He just looks at me and says, ‘Well, Melba, keep swimming then.’”

That resonated. She kept repeating the phrase – “Keep swimming. I have to keep swimming.”

The waters continued to be choppy, she says, but those words helped still her doubts, steeling her determination to finish graduate school.

Eventually, Tellez says, she knew she was OK. The words that motivated her, Leeds says, underscore what teachers can do – even in brief encounters with an overwhelmed student.

“This is a good reminder that we can have a positive impact, and it’s a great thing,” Leeds says. “I went back and was looking at grades from that semester. She did fine. I think it’s just that she needed to realize that she could do it.”

RE JECTION AND ACCEPTANCE Reflecting on first-generation college students navigating graduate school, Leeds says, a huge hurdle is “they have no one to guide them through the application process” and manage expectations. Tellez agrees and says the barriers

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OVERCOMING CHALLENGES AT McCOMBS

for first-gen students, and especially Latinas, follow them into the job market.

“I thought, there are not a lot of people getting graduate degrees, which means when I graduate with my master’s, I’m going to have job offers left and right,” she says. “Lo and behold, when I graduated, I had zero job offers and I had no idea what was next.”

While hunting for work, Tellez reflected on what she had accomplished. She thought about the people who had encouraged her, about inspiration, and about what she could do.

“All I needed was one ‘yes,’ one person to believe in me and guide me. All of my experiences opened my eyes and made me realize that I could also be that person for someone else – I could be that one person who says, ‘Hey, things are tough, but you're tougher. You can do this. Keep going.’”

That passion to equip other Latinas with the career support and skills that shaped her led Tellez to create Mujeres on the Rise in 2019.

Tellez credits McCombs for giving her the confidence, skills, and knowledge to launch it.

Her education was key to “identifying unmet needs in the market and using that data to build something of value for people.”

While developing her company, she landed a

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“MENTORING IS IMPORTANT TO ME BECAUSE I HONESTLY DON’T FEEL LIKE I WOULD HAVE GOTTEN TO WHERE I AM TODAY WITHOUT PEOPLE SUPPORTING ME.”

job at Amazon as a marketing specialist and later joined Google as a product marketing manager.

Married and living with her husband in Fremont, California, Tellez works long days.

She’s at Google in nearby Mountain View from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and from 5 to 9 p.m., she works for Mujeres on the Rise.

As a Latina in the tech field, Tellez once again is in an underrepresented group. Latino workers make up 8% of tech workers, according to 2021 figures from the Pew Center. Data from the National Center for Women and Information Technology show a greater disparity for Latina women, who made up just 1% of the computing workforce in 2017.

TELLE Z ON THE RISE In building her business, Tellez embraced lessons from her days as a call center employee to her current job at Google. It’s her way of giving back.

Mujeres on the Rise offers free services, including tips on improving résumés, newsletters, and podcasts; information about job opportunities; and access to a private Facebook group.

Her paid services include customized coaching.

Tellez doesn’t have employees but enlists

contractors as needed. Once or twice a month, she does public speaking often focusing on “rising through adversity, the importance of representation, and how to create a life of meaning and purpose,” Tellez says.

She donates 10%-20% of proceeds to nonprofits. Tellez says about 50,000 women mostly ages 26 to 40 are part of the Mujeres on the Rise community, including 1,000 subscribers to her newsletter.

“There are women from Mexico, Spain, and the United States, and, honestly, it’s a really beautiful thing to see women coming together to ask questions, support one another, and provide resources that make us stronger,” Tellez says.

Estrella Serrato, 27, tapped Tellez’s free services during the pandemic in 2020 as a student at California State University, Stanislaus. She also is a first-generation college grad from a low-income family.

“Melba made it her mission to look over my statement-of-intent that I used to get into the school district I’m in today and move up the ladder, because I didn’t have anyone else in my circle to go through my résumé,” says Serrato, an English language resource specialist for the Riverbank Unified School District in California.

Serrato, who is applying for doctoral pro-

grams at several California universities, now is paying for coaching from Tellez, which has helped Serrato create a podcast, “Cafecito con Estrellita,” or “Coffee Chats with Estrella.” It guides first-generation scholars through their education paths, she says.

Tellez is planning her own next chapter. It’s another leap of faith, underscored, once again, by passion.

“It’s always been a dream of mine to write a book,” she says. “The best way I can give back to the community is by distilling everything that I’ve learned throughout my journey in one consolidated format in which it’s easy to find everything you need.”

Until then, as a mentor once advised her, she’ll keep swimming.

Tellez found kinship with classmate Rebecca Salazar (left photo, at right), another first-generation college graduate. Salazar, M.S. ’18, says Latinos at McCombs face unique challenges because of generational and cultural disparities. Latinos make up 10% of students in McCombs’ graduate programs, ac­cording to 2021 figures. These days, Tellez works at Google from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and she works for Mujeres on the Rise during the evenings.

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FROM VIRTUAL PROGRAMS TO ON-CAMPUS INITIATIVES, THESE ALUMNI, FACULTY, AND STUDENTS MAKE A DIFFERENCE THROUGH MENTORSHIP Aarushi Khandelwal

As students everywhere switched to online learning during the height of the pandemic in 2020, many of them struggled academically. Aarushi Khandelwal, then a sophomore at McCombs, saw an opportunity. She created a virtual mentorship program for high school students living in underprivileged areas.

Mentoring for All, the nationwide mentoring program Khandelwal created, matches students with mentors who connect them with resources ranging from career advice to financial aid information. The program is part of Robotics for All, a nationwide student-run nonprofit Khandelwal has been involved with for about two years. It provides coding and programs in science, technology, engineering,

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AARUSHI KHANDELWAL, BBA ’22 BUSINESS ANALYST, McKINSEY & COMPANY, DALLAS YEARS AS A MENTOR: 5

Brandon Hunter

Anthony Romero

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and math (STEM) for elementary and middle school students.

“A lot of schools, especially in underprivileged areas, are lacking those STEM resources,” Khandelwal says, “to create a good foundation for college.”

The mentors who participate in Mentoring for All, most of whom are college students, meet with their mentees virtually as they help them “recognize their strengths,” build their confidence, and identify the best career path, Khandelwal says. One aspect of college preparation on which they focus is helping mentees pursue extracurricular activities that will help them stand out on college applications.

“We work with a lot of schools in different areas of the U.S., and not all of them have a really big focus on going to college – choosing your courses and following your interests throughout high school in order to be able to create a good foundation for college,” she says.

In addition to her work with Robotics for All and Mentoring for All, Khandelwal spent the past two year as a teaching assistant for an introductory statistics class, where she frequently coached younger students.

Asked what inspired her to devote so much time to mentoring, Khandelwal recounted one of her first experiences as a mentor, when she was in high school and tutored an elementary school student in math.

“We just really formed a good connection,” Khandelwal remembers. “She thought of me as a friend.”

— ALICE POPOVICI

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ANTHONY ROMERO, BBA ’24 CURRENT McCOMBS STUDENT YEARS AS A MENTOR: 2 When Anthony Romero started mentoring with McCombs Success Scholars in 2021, he helped four mentees in their freshman year navigate the transition from virtual learning during their last year of high school to attending college in person. The accounting major was well prepared for the task after weathering pandemic-related disruptions with the help of a mentor during his own freshman year, in 2020.

“My mentor, he just was amazing,” Romero says. “He just always made me feel as if I was seen on campus. That's something that really resonated with me and inspired me to become a mentor the next year.”

Now in his second year as a mentor with McCombs Success Scholars – aimed at students who will be the first in their families to attend college and have demonstrated commitment to learning and leadership development – Romero helps his mentees improve their résumés, discover campus resources, and find organizations to join. Several of his mentees joined the Hispanic Business Student Association, in which Romero serves in a leadership role.

As he grew into the role of mentor during the past two years, Romero has adjusted his approach.

“Last year, I kind of was very professional around my mentees,” Romero explains, but this year he is trying something different. “I started off this year establishing boundaries with my

mentees and told them, ‘Hey, you know, I'm your friend.’”

Mentoring is rewarding, Romero says, adding that he never realized just how big an impact he was having until one fellow student recently told him they “would be lost” without his help.

“That was kind of like my ‘aha’ moment,” Romero says. “I was like, ‘Oh, I'm actually making a change here.’”

– ALICE POPOVICI

BRANDON HUNTER, MSTC ’19 FOUNDER AND CEO, ROOG INC. YEARS AS A MENTOR: 8 Brandon Hunter was in high school when he started his first job, repairing cellphones in a shopping mall kiosk in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.

But the lessons he learned as a young person about the challenges of being a small-business owner from an underserved community continue to drive him as he helps budding entrepreneurs fine-tune their business strategies, secure funding, and overcome obstacles.

While some of Hunter’s mentees have been part of formal programs, including the Entrepreneurship Minor Pilot Mentor Program at McCombs, others are simply shop owners he meets as he is going about his day.

“A lot of it has been not so much from a structured perspective, but it's been from the perspective of, ‘Hey, I stopped by your business.

Great service, great food, great product. What are some of the challenges?’” he says.

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– ALICE POPOVICI

NILOUFAR MOLAVI, BBA ’91, MPA ’91 OCCUPATION: GLOBAL ENERGY LEADER, PwC, HOUSTON YEARS AS A MENTOR: 25 Looking back on her career, Niloufar Molavi says finding the right mentors was crucial to her success. She urges young people to cultivate a wide range of mentors – and benefit from as many perspectives as possible.

Some mentors could be college professors who offer guidance on the working world.

Others may be colleagues who help you see an issue through a different lens. And some mentor-mentee relationships morph from mentorship to sponsorship, like Molavi’s relationship with a partner, Liz Yant, MPA ’79, who hired her from McCombs to work at PwC and guided her career for many years. Both women have been named to the McCombs Hall of Fame.

“She then started to open doors for me, extending her personal reputation within the firm and outside the firm with clients, creating opportunities,” Molavi says. “You pay that forward once you’ve had that experience.”

Molavi, who now serves as global energy leader and U.S. tax environmental, social, and governance (ESG) leader at PwC and is chair of the McCombs Advisory Council, says working professionals need both mentors and sponsors. Though there is some overlap, sponsors go above and beyond proving career guidance;

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Niloufar Molavi

they actively help you advance, opening doors and often putting their own reputations on the line.

Molavi says she tends to mentor young women who are looking for career guidance and meets many of her mentees organically.

Sometimes she identifies someone who could benefit from her help and simply reaches out.

A former chief diversity officer at PwC, she has helped the firm not only hire but retain and promote more people from diverse backgrounds.

When she sees someone with much potential, Molavi does not hesitate to step into a sponsor role.

“It happens both formally and informally a lot of times,” she says. “You find the opportunity and you just do it.”

endowment to support the dinner, which is organized by the BBAAdvisory Board. His commitment to mentorship also extends to UT’s McCombs Master of Science in business analytics degree plan and his company’s initiative to mentor women.

For Tonkon, mentoring is about giving back to honor the many excellent advisers he has had throughout his career. He begins a new relationship with a mentee by establishing an understanding of their goals and by determining how best he can help, he says. “Often, I will recommend that my mentee speak with someone in my network that can help them.”

Whether he is the one mentoring or it’s someone in his network, he says it’s important to adopt a regular schedule for meeting with mentees – usually every two weeks – and stick to it.

Much of what he learned came from the experiences he had and still has with his mentors, he says. “All of my mentors knew me very well, some of which I had worked for or served together on a board. They could then provide honest and direct feedback that ultimately helped me in some of the most challenging career decisions I made.”

His newest challenge is guiding the participants in his company’s women in technology program. “As an ally to women, I am learning a great deal that I hope will help me be a more effective mentor to my group.”

– MARK BARRON

– ALICE POPOVICI

ED TONKON, BBA ’78 PRESIDENT, ZEBRA RETAIL SOLUTIONS, DALLAS YEARS AS A MENTOR: MORE THAN 20 Ed Tonkon, president of Zebra Retail Solutions, a business unit of Zebra Technologies, counts the McCombs Executive Mentor program as the greatest mentoring project that he has been involved in. It grew out of a dinner he hosted for 13 McCombs student leaders in 2013, and the program is now in its 10th year. And that networking banquet has grown to about 15 tables – each holding 10 undergraduates – in the McCombs Hall of Honors. A distinguished UT alumnus is the host for each table.

In one of his family’s biggest legacies, Tonkon and his wife, Jamie, B.Ed. ’78, have created an

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Hunter got started as a mentor while attending the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in business while helping high school students navigate the challenges of entering college. He continued mentoring and sharing his business expertise, on and off, while living and working in New York City, and later while earning a master’s degree at McCombs.

Now based in Dallas, Hunter still checks in with current and former mentees even as he juggles a full-time job managing a warehouse for Xpedient Logistics and running his own tech startup, Roog Inc. Hunter says the company, which focuses on connecting consumers with minority businesses, was inspired by the community of minority business owners in his hometown of Pine Bluff.

“They’re typically underserved. They’re underfunded,” he says. “Whether it's Roog or something else, I will always work toward striving to make sure those communities get an opportunity to succeed.”

Ed Tonkon

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ship is leading by example in your day-to-day life, he says.

“You’re not going to sacrifice telling the truth and doing the right thing even though there might be a shortcut,” Adams says. “They see that

and then they go, ‘That is something I’ve got to stand by myself, because I deeply respect that.’”

Thinking back to his early career, Adams recalls a role model who had a significant impact on his life and career: McCombs Hall of

COURTNEY WEBSTER, BBA ’21, M.S. ’22 PROGRAM MANAGER AT MICROSOFT, AUSTIN YEARS AS A MENTEE: 1

John Adams

JOHN ADAMS, BBA ’66, J.D. ’69 FORMER CHAIRMAN AND CEO OF CHASE BANK OF TEXAS (NOW JPMORGAN CHASE & CO.) YEARS AS A MENTOR: MORE THAN 30

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Whenever a young mentee addresses John Adams – former vice chairman of Trinity Industries, McCombs School of Business Hall of Fame inductee, a Distinguished Alumnus of UT Austin, and chairman of the McCombs Scholars Program – as “Mr. Adams,” he quickly dispenses with the formalities. “No, I’m John,” he says. Rather than identify as a mentor, he says he just loves and enjoys working with young people.

Despite his decades-long career in business, numerous professional affiliations, civic leadership, and scores of accolades, Adams explains that he prefers to connect with mentees in a personal, lighthearted way to put them at ease.

Since Adams and his wife, Susie, B.S. ’67, endowed their first Forty Acres scholarship more than a decade ago, they have shepherded the careers of many McCombs alums.

In his relations with young people, he finds it helps to show that he is vulnerable and human.

“They’ve got to become comfortable and really get to know you,” Adams says. “They also need to know you’ve had your share of struggles and mistakes you have made. When you become comfortable with someone, then you’re more willing to share and open up.”

One of the main aspects of effective mentor-

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Before beginning the Master of Science in IT and Management (MSITM) program at McCombs in 2021, Courtney Webster says she used to think a mentor was someone older with years of career experience. But after she was matched with Dhrov Subramanian, BBA ’19, MSITM ‘20, a recent McCombs graduate who had completed the MSITM program in 2020, she discovered that an informal mentor-mentee relationship – meeting once a week for candid conversations about curriculum options, career opportunities, and next steps – was exactly what she needed.

“He was able to act like a sounding board for anything that was happening,” Webster says of Subramanian. “It was mainly just like a good friend that was just a few steps ahead of me in their journey.”

When Webster’s mentor learned that she was interested in pursuing a job in product management, he was able to break down the process into a few actionable steps, as well as coach her through her concerns, she remembers. As a result, she was not only able to successfully finish her year at McCombs and land a job as a product manager at Microsoft, she has become a skilled problem solver in her own right.

In her current role, Webster works with Microsoft’s VS Code team, where she spends much time doing customer research, helping troubleshoot problems, and bringing program bugs to the engineering team’s attention.

Webster now gladly pays it forward, sharing what she has learned with McCombs students who reach out to her. And she has some advice for prospective mentees: Seek out mentors, ask for help, and keep in mind that the mentor-mentee relationship does not need to be formal or intimidating.

“Just identifying people that are two, three years ahead of you that have been through similar situations – they have so much advice and wisdom that they can share,” she says.

– ALICE POPOVICI

Courtney Webster

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Lyndsey Bagby

Fame inductee John Duncan, BBA '49, the late co-founder of Gulf & Western Industries and Gulf Consolidated Services. “If he asked me to do something, I knew it was for my good,” Adams says. “I maybe didn’t understand it, but I just did it.” Duncan guided him at key moments in his career and honed his eye for good timing.

“He was a strong supporter and encouraged me along the way,” Adams explains.

Now, Adams focuses on paying it forward, though he is quick to add that mentoring goes both ways.

“I don’t know if I’m the mentor or the mentee,” he says. “I certainly get joy from it and joy from working with bright young people.”

– ALICE POPOVICI

asked her mentees to come to her apartment so they could bake cupcakes and play a video game.

“I felt that by inviting them over to my apartment and letting them meet my cat and be in my space made it easier for them to feel like they know me.”

One of her secrets to guiding her mentees is opening up to them so they can develop more personal relationships. “I feel it's important to let them know of your failures and successes, as they're more likely to share theirs with you and won't feel judged. I also enjoy celebrating their successes, so I was sure to tell them how proud I was of them.”

Some mentees were shy and some were outgoing, she says, so she had to alter her style for each during their one-on-one meetings. She would take notes and follow up later. “I made sure to learn about their families at home as well as how their academics were going and their personal well-being.”

Bagby studied in Scotland during the fall but stayed in touch with her mentees. “I can't wait to meet up with them when I'm back in Texas after my semester abroad.”

She will have much to share.

– MARK BARRON

MICHAEL CLEMENT McCOMBS PROFESSOR OF ACCOUNTING YEARS AS A MENTOR: MORE THAN 30 When he was younger, UT accounting professor Michael Clement says, he realized that the mentors and role models in his life were a critical factor in his success. Those mentors

and role models were the only difference between his accomplishments and the struggles his less-fortunate friends endured, he says. “My parents were great role models, and they raised me to believe that my blessings were a responsibility for me to be a blessing to others.”

To live up to that standard, Clement helped start The PhD Project, which seeks to increase the diversity of doctoral programs and academia. At UT, he reached out to the athletics department and offered to mentor student-athletes from underrepresented groups, regardless of their major. Eventually, he was picked to serve as the university’s faculty representative to the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

Clement, who is also the Clark W. Thompson Chair in Accounting at Texas McCombs, says there is nothing unusual about his approach.

“The main thing I do is listen and take a real interest in the mentee as a person. I try to understand the mentee and his or her perspective.”

He tries to help his mentees become the best versions of themselves, he says. “It is not my job to tell them who to be. My job is to help them figure out who they want to be, to take a real interest in them, to help them reach their full potential according to who they want to be.”

His most rewarding mentoring experience, he says, involves a UT basketball player. “We established a relationship when he was a student here, and he left UT to play professional basketball before he graduated. We maintained our relationship after he left UT, and at the age of 38, he came back to finish his degree.”

– MARK BARRON

Michael Clement

LYNDSEY BAGBY, BBA ’24 CURRENT McCOMBS STUDENT YEARS AS A MENTOR: 1 Marketing junior Lyndsey Bagby likes to bring a touch of family to the younger students she mentors. She is the oldest of four children and draws on her experiences with her siblings to reach out to those students.

“It's important to me that my mentees felt they had someone they could rely on at UT and that they viewed me more as an older sibling they could confide in,” she says.

Bagby, who was a mentee in the McCombs Success Scholars program, has been a peer mentor for a year. For her first group meeting, she

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TIME TO MENTOR

CONNECT WITH McCOMBS TO FIND A WAY TO MENTOR THAT’S RIGHT FOR YOU

Ed Tonkon, BBA '78, at this year's Executive Mentorship Dinner

Texas McCombs is known as a connector, helping to enhance careers and seeding long, fulfilling friendships. Mentorship programs are often the key to unlocking those relationships. McCombs offers a variety of opportunities for mentors and mentees, from an annual dinner that brings together undergrads and executives to industry-specific match-ups to a new virtual community called McCombs Connect, which includes mentoring opportunities for alumni and students.

Would you like to mentor someone in their academic studies or career journey?

Here are opportunities McCombs offers for alumni to connect:

IF YOU ARE NEW TO MENTORING, START HERE

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McCombs Connect Launched last year, McCombs Connect is a comprehensive virtual community for alumni and students offering alumni career management resources, including mentoring, coaching, career education, and a job board. Look for information and opportunities for formal and informal mentorship programs or groups tailored to your education, industry, affinity group, and location. Look for ways to mentor (or benefit as a mentee) for specific McCombs programs, from BBA to MBA. Mentoring is easy, with matches based on data and

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even “flash mentoring” with one to two sessions. Students and alumni can find connection and community through this program with tons of resources, event information, and career content, plus video chats and discussion boards.

Sign up at https://connect.mccombs.utexas.edu or scan the QR code

IF YOU HAVE INDUSTRY EXPERTISE TO SHARE Canfield BHP Alumni Mentor Network This program matches alumni to Canfield Business Honors sophomores and juniors based on similar academic or professional interests. Canfield BHP alumni come from a variety of fields and may advise their mentees on academic majors and career exploration, graduate school preparation, and professional development, as well as balancing school, career, and outside interests.

The matches are made in the fall and mentors and mentees communicate monthly.

Contact: Stephanie Cantu stephanie.cantu@mccombs.utexas.edu

KBH Energy Center’s Annual Energy Mentoring Program This is an excellent opportunity for students to be mentored by experts in the energy, law, and business industries.

The center is looking for mentors to guide and help rising talent. The Annual Energy Mentoring Program is a two-semester experience that matches mentors with students from various parts of campus based on industry interests. The expectation is that the mentee and mentor build their relationship virtually or in person through monthly meetings.

Contact: Alexa Robinson at alexa.robinson@mccombs.utexas.edu

by Oct. 6, 2023.

Wall Street for McCombs This program develops high-performing undergraduate and graduate students to become financial services industry leaders. WSFM graduates mentor students in the program, serve on the New York for McCombs Council, and act as UT ambassadors at their companies.

Contact: Xavier Sztejnberg at xavier.sztejnberg@mccombs.utexas.edu Wealth Management Center The McCombs Wealth Management Center’s Mentorship Program connects students with wealth management professionals and provides them with an invaluable opportunity to learn and develop relevant industry skills. Mentors will be paired with two to three students for a fall or spring semester.

Contact: Lorna Henry at msb-wmp@mccombs.utexas.edu

IF YOU WANT TO INSPIRE YOUNG ENTREPRENEURS Jon Brumley Texas Venture Labs Although TVL does not offer a traditional mentoring program, TVL alumni lend their expertise to young entrepreneurs through TVL classes, competitions, and public events.

Contact: Christy Grady at infoTVL@ mccombs.utexas.edu Undergraduate Entrepreneurship Mentor Program Join this program through the Harkey Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies and empower aspiring entrepreneurs with your guidance and support. Share your

expertise and real-world experiences to shape the next generation of business leaders. Engage in one-on-one mentorship sessions, judge business plans, host webinars, or contribute to the institute.

Contact: entminor@utexas.edu

IF YOU WANT TO GIVE BACK TO YOUR COMMUNITY Graduate Women in Business GWiB provides resources for women at McCombs to enhance their professional skills and support the advancement of women in the workplace. It offers an annual mentorship program for first- and second-year MBA student members. GWiB second-year MBA students and recent alumni members can serve as mentors to first-year MBA students seeking guidance as they navigate the internship and job search process.

Contact: graduatewomeninbusiness@ mccombs.utexas.edu Subiendo Academy Undergrad and graduate McCombs students work with rising high school seniors during the summer to help shape them as future leaders. The student mentors volunteer as team leaders and may join the Subiendo Longhorn Chapter. In addition, business community volunteers assist with encouraging the teens in the program. That may include speaking at an event, hosting a get-together, or serving as a resource for a student project.

Contact: Leticia Acosta, Director, leticia.acosta@mccombs.utexas.edu or 512-232-6780

IF YOU’RE NOT SURE ABOUT MAKING A COMMITMENT BUT WOULD LIKE TO DIP YOUR TOE INTO MENTORING Annual Executive Mentorship Dinner Celebrating its 10th year, this popular gathering was created by the McCombs BBA Advisory Board and is endowed

by Ed Tonkon, BBA ’78, president of Zebra Retail Solutions at Zebra Technologies. About 150 high-achieving undergraduate business students dine with about 15-20 executive-level mentors who are invited to attend. In this intimate setting, students get access to some of McCombs’ most successful graduates and friends, along with a chance to learn more about the mentor's field and gain career insights.

Contact: alumni@mccombs.utexas.edu McCOMBS.UTEXAS.EDU _ 35

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by Matt Turner illustration by Marysia Machulska

AC C OU N T I NG FOR A BE T T ER F U T U R E PROFESSOR JEFF HALES’ RESEARCH ON SUSTAINABILITY COMES TO MCCOMBS, THANKS TO DONOR SUPPORT THAT ENDOWS DISTINGUISHED FACULTY EXCELLENCE FUNDS

McCOMBS.UTEXAS.EDU _ 37

WHEN JEFF HALES ASKS

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CREDIT TK

His work attracted UT’s attention, and in 2019 he accepted the Charles T. Zlatkovich Centennial Professorship of Accounting. He also holds the Bake Chair in Global Sustainability Leadership and is executive director of the Global Sustainability Leadership Institute.

McCombs relies on donor support to endow distinguished faculty excellence funds so it can compete for top-flight faculty members such as Hales.

“While the students are the lifeblood of a business school, the faculty are the heartbeat,” says McCombs Dean Lillian Mills. “Our faculty change the career trajectories of students by exposing them to new frontiers in business.

They attract other talented students and faculty, and they enhance a school’s reputation.”

Hales wasted no time bringing his trailblazing sustainability expertise to the classroom.

In fall 2021, he launched the Corporate Sustainability class for graduate MBA and MPA students and a few undergrads who competed for slots from across the Forty Acres. A waitlist formed immediately. Despite increasing the graduate enrollment over 40%, the waitlist did not go away.

“Having somebody who’s at the forefront of his field like Hales gives me a front-row seat to what’s happening in the world right now,” says Josh Costo, a graduate student in the Integrated MPA Program. He took the Corporate Sustainability class during the fall.

his students questions, they are not the ones usually addressed in accounting classrooms or on financial reports. ¶ “What is this company’s strategy on climate? Is the leadership team assuming a 1.5-, 2-degree C, or a higher rise in temperature? If so, by when? What changes are they anticipating in regulation and customer preferences under various scenarios? Or is management not tracking warming at all?” ¶ Accounting standards are not top of mind when thinking of sustainability – how a company can balance its longevity and future value while acting as a good steward of the environment, community, and society at large. But Hales, a McCombs professor of accounting, has done research on the importance of accounting standards that consider future generations when assessing a company’s profitability. That’s at the core of sustainability. As Hales puts it: “How can a company thrive now without sacrificing the long term?”

P H OTO G R A P H B Y B R I A N B I R Z E R

Whether it’s the latest discussions at the United Nations’ COP27 (climate change conference), the EU’s adoption of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, or simply something he learned in a board meeting, Hales brings to the classroom leading-edge issues that are “relevant, eye-opening, and fun,” Costo says.

“The SEC’s recent proposal to require businesses to add climate-related disclosures to their audited statements will likely encourage companies to seek strategic alliances or find better ways to produce clean energy,” Costo says. “What might be seen as ‘mere’ accounting data have real-world consequences. This is both exciting and hopeful.”

Hales’ inspirational instruction is paying off for Costo. After graduation, Costo will spend a year at the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) as a postgraduate technical assistant, a prestigious opportunity offered to only a dozen or so people at any given time, according to Hales. Afterward, Costo hopes to land a job with a ‘big four’ accounting firm. He plans to keep sustainability a focus, a passion for which he credits Hales.

“Hales’ research has helped me to define my interest in accounting. He’s definitely had a major impact on my academic and professional trajectory.”

Hales’ research centers on accounting standards and regulation. He has been a research fellow and advisory council member at the FASB, which determines the rules for how U.S. companies create financial statements. Moreover, he has spent the past decade on the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), serving in various leadership positions, including as chairman. Those standards are now used by thousands of companies, including more than 70% of the companies in the S&P Global 1200 Index. His research on sustainability has appeared in the leading academic journals of accounting.

Jeff Hales, a professor of accounting who holds the Bake Chair in Global Sustainability Leadership, studies the importance of accounting standards that consider future generations when assessing a company’s profitability. During fall 2021, he launched the Corporate Sus­tainability class for graduate MBA and MPA students and a few undergrads from across campus who competed for slots.

“WHILE THE STUDENTS ARE THE LIFEBLOOD OF A BUSINESS SCHOOL, THE FACULTY ARE THE HEARTBEAT,” SAYS McCOMBS DEAN LILLIAN MILLS. “OUR FACULTY CHANGE THE CAREER TRAJECTORIES OF STUDENTS BY EXPOSING THEM TO NEW FRONTIERS IN BUSINESS. Sustainability disclosures need to vary by industry, according to Hales, because each industry uses different resources, and each can have different environmental and societal impacts.

Take, for example, car manufacturers, most of which are now making hybrid and/or electric vehicles. Investors are increasingly interested in questions such as what is the average fuel efficiency of those cars and what percentage are zero emissions? Energy companies and their investors, on the other hand, will be more concerned with greenhouse gas emissions, efforts at carbon sequestration, and investments in renewable energy. None of that was reported in traditional sales or financial disclosures.

“I’m a believer in information as a public good,” Hales says. “Capital markets serve an important function in society – and help generate economic well-being. But they require robust information to function well. Adding sustainability data to supplement the financial reports about a company’s operations paints a much more complete picture. It’s essential for both good business and for society, and it is long overdue.”

Traditional accounting standards were not designed to address the issues facing today’s companies, Hales says. Most were created a century ago in the wake of the stock market crash of 1929, which became a clarion call for financial transparency and accuracy. Investors needed to verify a company’s revenues and expenses to ensure that its claims were not being manipulated and that its resources were being used efficiently.

Hales says it’s high time that accounting standards reflect the modern era. The subject

matter is so new that few textbooks cover the material, and many business schools tackle it with only a lecture or two. That McCombs students can take advantage of a full-blown, 14-week class from a sustainability standards guru explains the waitlist for his classes. Hales is in demand as a guest lecturer at the likes of the Georgia Institute of Technology, Emory University, Columbia University, and the University of Southern California.

Hales shared a thank-you note from a former student who took his sustainability course in fall 2021 and now works at IBM Corp. in sustainability software. “I find it really fascinating how life tends to come full circle, as I took your course not knowing what to expect and ended up loving it. It introduced me to the world of ESG (environmental, social and governance standards), and now I have the privilege to work in the industry every day.”

Hales grew up in Midland and earned a doctorate in management at Cornell University. He taught briefly at McCombs before rising quickly at Georgia Tech, where he was named a full professor in 2016. When UT came knocking, he wanted to make sure sustainability would be a major part of his work.

Alexis Greco, a second-year MBA student, calls Hales’ Corporate Sustainability class “a stand-out.”

“It has literally been the best class I’ve taken at McCombs,” says Greco, who has an extensive background in environmental policy, sustainability, and political campaigns. She chose McCombs because of the Global Sustainability Leadership Institute and Austin’s strength in technology. She targeted Hales’ class early on.

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“It’s one thing to be excited about sustainability,” she says. “But Hales’ class actually gives me the tools to interpret a company’s sustainability report.”

Greco co-chaired ClimateCAP, a global MBA summit on climate, capital, and business that McCombs hosted in the spring. She sees a huge demand for product managers and software engineers who understand sustainability performance metrics and accounting standards.

Hales sits on the ClimateCAP program committee and continues to infuse his expertise into new course offerings.

In fall 2022, he debuted Global Business Sustainability for undergraduates. He designed the class as a cornerstone for Leadership in Global Sustainability, a new 17-hour minor aimed at business and communication students.

Lindsey Black, an inaugural student in the class and the minor, finds the subject matter “new, exciting, and awe-inspiring.” A junior finance major, she was familiar with trends such as impact investing but had no idea that sustainability reports even existed.

“You don’t think climate and accounting would have anything to do with one another,” she says. But Hales’ class has shown her what now seems obvious: Natural disasters don’t affect only livelihoods; they have an immediate impact on business and the economy.

“If businesses incorporate sustainability ideas into their operations and strategy, they gain resiliency,” she says. “It’s simply good business.”

“IT’S ONE THING TO BE EXCITED ABOUT SUSTAINABILITY. BUT HALES’ CLASS ACTUALLY GIVES ME THE TOOLS TO INTERPRET A COMPANY’S SUSTAINABILITY REPORT.” — ALEXIS GRECO, A SECOND-YEAR MBA STUDENT

Learn how to help attract distinguished faculty members to McCombs or to support the Global Sustainability Leadership Institute through an endowment. development@mccombs.utexas.edu

Last fall, Jeff Hales debuted Global Business Sus­tainability for undergraduates. The class was designed as a cornerstone for Leadership in Global Sustainability, a new 17-hour minor aimed at business and communication students. Lindsey Black, an inaugural student in the class and the minor, says the subject matter is “new, exciting, and awe-inspiring.”

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P H OTO G R A P H S BY B R I A N B I R Z E R

Future of Business

New sustainability institute at McCombs combines profit and purpose for positive change

Meeta Kothare is managing director of UT’s new Global Sus­tainability Leadership Institute, a cross-campus initiative housed at McCombs that is taking a comprehensive look at sustainability in all its business manifestations.

It’s hard to talk about the future of business without underscoring a term that is gaining increasing significance: sustainability.

In the rapidly changing business world, sustainability is considered the key to unlocking a better future for coming generations. The term typically describes the practices of companies that seek to build long-term value without hurting the environment or society.

Sustainability is driving business culture. In turn, schools such as McCombs with a focus on the future are acting on that demand.

Now, UT’s new Global Sustainability Leadership Institute, a cross-campus initiative housed at McCombs and a

His predecessor is Laura Starks, a finance professor who was the institute’s inaugural executive director and now serves as an advisory director. Starks, along with Steve Limberg, an accounting professor, were co-executive directors of the institute’s predecessor organization, the Social Innovation Initiative. Starks says students were the drivers to create the original effort.

“There is a lot of student demand for learning more in this area,” Starks says.

To further the effort, Meeta Kothare, a professor of practice in finance and management at McCombs and at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, developed the initiative and oversaw its shift from initiative to institute.

She credits what she calls “a game-changing gift” in 2020 from Chris Bake, BBA ’88, and his wife, Cynthia. Bake lives in London London, a member of UT's International Board of Advisors, and a member of the executive London, a member of UT's International Board of Advisors, and a member of the executive of the executive committee at Vitol, a multinational energy and commodity trading company.

Now managing director of the institute, Kothare is passionate about it, saying global business cannot continue to act as it once did.

“This is not just environmental intervention,” she says. “We

partnership with the Moody College of Communication, is taking a comprehensive look at sustainability in all its business manifestations, including corporate, financial, infrastructure, and communications. The institute’s vision is to promote “a world where profits and purpose meet to drive positive change.”

Its roots are in the Social Innovation Initiative, which began in 2017 as a hub at McCombs for the UT community to explore social entrepreneurship and corporate social innovation. It morphed into a full-fledged institute, which launched in the fall of 2021. This past fall, the institute began offering a new interdisciplinary minor in sustainability to

students across campus.

“This is part of what’s needed to make sure that Moody and McCombs stay cutting-edge educational institutions going forward,” says Professor of Accounting Jeffrey Hales, the institute’s executive director.

“There are quite a number of initiatives I’m seeing pop up at various universities, but I would say this is one of the more significant ones,” he says. One of the new institute’s innovations is its inclusiveness: It’s open to UT students and faculty members across campus.

Because overall interest in sustainability has risen sharply, Hales says the focus must be on “how it relates to the intersection of business and society and the planet.”

have to protect the planet but also human rights, and develop inclusive technology and other innovation. Of all the things we could be doing today, to me, sustainability is the most important issue to address.”

Kothare describes her view of sustainability as “the ability of current generations to meet their needs while protecting the ability of future generations to support their needs.”

The Leadership in Global Sustainability minor was launched in fall 2022 with 15 students.

“What’s major about this minor is it gives the students the interdisciplinary approach to leadership in global sustainability,” says Starks.

Hales, who holds the Bake Chair in Global Sustainability Leadership, says making most of the institute’s activities – not just the minor – open to students across campus will give all UT undergraduates “concrete ways to signal to companies that they understand the changing nature of what’s expected of businesses.”

With space in Rowling Hall for graduate students and in the College of Business Administration building for undergraduates and institute staff members, Kothare says her goal is to“make sustainability education available to all students on campus.”

“Our actions now will determine the future of our planet and life on it,” she says.

— SHARON JAYSON

VOICES

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OF

MBS

IN 19 CONVERSATIONS WITH 37 PEOPLE FROM THE McCOMBS COMMUNITY, THE AWARD-WINNING ORAL HISTORY PLATFORM STORYCORPS REVEALS THE HUMAN SIDE OF BUSINESS EDUCATION.

by Mary Ann Roser photographs by Phil Kline

They bonded as McCombs classmates during the pandemic and became the closest of friends before ever meeting in person. Although the two women hail from different worlds, they were united by all they have in common.

Leilani Valdes, a physician pathologist in Victoria, Texas, and Arghavan Nawaby, an Iranian-born scientist who is an assistant director in the Office of Science and Engineering Laboratories at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and lives near Dallas, seem like lifelong soulmates, not like relatively new friends connecting in midlife. Had they not enrolled in the McCombs Executive MBA program in 2020, they might never have met.

Relationships like theirs are what McCombs wanted to spotlight when the school invited producers from StoryCorps, the award-winning oral history platform, to campus as part of the school’s 100th anniversary. Their assignment: record diverse stories of courage, community, and change-making, as told in conversation between students, faculty members, staffers, and alumni.

When StoryCorps brought its microphones to McCombs over two weekends last fall, its staff already knew the organization’s motto would come true: Everyone has a story. Whether the storytellers were students, faculty, staff, or alumni, they opened up about the hopes, fears, and lessons learned. For many, McCombs was key in shaping their lives.

The goal was to show the human side of business and how McCombs makes an impact. “As we thought about ways to highlight our 100-year history of impact, StoryCorps proved to be a perfect fit for us,” said Yolanda Urrabazo, director of internal communications, who steered the Voices of McCombs project.

“We set out to find untold stories and amplify diverse perspectives that expand our understanding of what business education is about at McCombs.”

The project was an opportunity to open the floor to those who make a profound difference in the everyday lives of people. Whether it was mentors helping students find their paths or admissions officers on the road, the stories shine a light on McCombs’ human-centered, future-focused core values.

“When we started with McCombs, we created a shared vision – wanting to take on misconceptions about business school and highlight the spirit of McCombs,” says Sarah Krauss, a New York-based StoryCorps account manager who helped produce the recordings.

A key misconception is that business majors are all about making money. The reality is, “people who go to McCombs are diverse, passionate, and interested in making a difference,” Krauss says.

McCombs Dean Lillian Mills participated and was joined in conversation with her friend and academic peer, Cristi Gleason, a professor of accounting at the University of Iowa Tippie College of Business. "Through this oral history project, we shine a light on the incredible relationships behind McCombs’ success,” Mills says. “I'm grateful to our community for taking part and especially to my friend, Cristi, who joined me in conversation to reflect on our longstanding friendship and how it’s played a role in my work."

StoryCorps producers guided and documented 19 conversations involving 37 people representing a cross section of the McCombs community, including staff members and their spouses, such as Charles Enriquez, director of BBA student affairs, and Caroline Enriquez, assistant director of admissions scholarship

PARTNERING WITH STORYCORPS StoryCorps often hits the road to record revealing conversations, but other times, universities, corporations, nonprofit groups, and others enlist StoryCorps Studios to come and help them tell stories the organizations deem important.

As part of its 100th anniversary, McCombs invited StoryCorps producers to campus to record stories from a cross section of the McCombs community, capturing conversations between pairs of people whose lives were touched by the business school.

McCOMBS.UTEXAS.EDU _ 43

administration at UT. They celebrated their 17th wedding anniversary by reflecting on their personal history, children, work, and partnership. Friends and longtime colleagues Arthur Allert, assistant dean for undergraduate programs, and Michael Clement, centennial professor of accounting, discussed their work supporting first-generation students, promoting diversity at the Ph.D. level, and their decades-long friendship. Shudde Fath, the school’s oldest alum at the time of recording, joined in conversation with her daughter, Betsy Fath Hiller, two months before Fath’s death. (See story page 18 in this issue.)

Typically, StoryCorps records two people who know each other and ask each other questions.

Other times, StoryCorps staffers step in and ask an individual questions. The same day Nawaby and Valdes came in, Krauss interviewed McCombs alum Arthur Mills IV, BBA ’96, MBA ’04, about his ongoing involvement with the school.

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“I felt honored and privileged to tell my story,” says Mills, a member of the McCombs Advisory Council and the McCombs MBA Advisory Board. “McCombs was transformative for me.

There’s something about the challenge of being in a big space. Taking then-Dean Jay Hartzell’s class was memorable, so was Professor John Doggett and Sandy Leeds and far too many others to mention. I felt the care from these faculty members and realize how phenomenal those relationship have been. I want more people who look like my wife and me to come here.”

He says that as a Black man, he stays involved with the school to encourage other people of color.

“I want to push and challenge McCombs to be as diverse as it can be,” says Mills, chief operating officer of America’s Promise Alliance, a partnership of more than 400 corporations, nonprofits, faith-based organizations, and advocacy groups seeking to improve the lives of young people. Mills also is the founder and

president of Mills Management Group, a boutique consulting firm.

I N T E R S E C T I N G

L I V E S

When Valdes and Nawaby met online in 2020 as McCombs classmates, they soon realized they shared similar perspectives on life, family, and service. And they had so many life circumstances in common. Both were married and worked full time in medical-related fields. They each had adult children enrolled at UT. Both had cared for aging parents and had recently lost their fathers to cancer, Nawaby in 2019 and Valdes in 2017. For each, that loss loomed large and was sometimes part of their daily Zoom conversations as students.

“We spent plenty of time crying on the phone together,” says Valdes, medical director of Regional Pathology Associates and a governor on the board of the College of American Pathologists.

“She gave all of her classmates a sand timer,” Nawaby says. “That’s something else we share, this concept of time and how no one ever talks to you about dying. Your time is so limited, so make it good. Do something. Be kind.”

Valdes told her McCombs classmates about her experience with her father and invited them to call her if they ever needed her help. It was a way to honor her father’s legacy. “He did that for the community,” Valdes says.

“She is the queen of gift-giving,” Nawaby says.

“She gave me a Persian rug,” Valdes immediately responds.

“My father gave small Persian rugs to people who mattered to him,” Nawaby explains. “She always gives me gifts, and she changed my life.

So, she got a rug from the region I’m from in Iran.

I didn’t even know she liked rugs until she once said to me, ‘I’m going to Turkey to get a rug.’”

In the Executive MBA program from which they graduated in spring 2022, their classmates noted their closeness. “We were voted best friends for life by our class,” Valdes says. They ended up working together on two of the five micro-consulting projects offered through the MBA+ program. Now they are planning to take another course together through McCombs +, which tailors experiences to professionals and includes seminars with industry experts and access to professional coaches.

Intimate conversations make StoryCorps powerful, Krauss says, and Nawaby and Valdes exemplify that.

StoryCorps recordings go into the nonprofit’s full collection and are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

The platform’s over-arching goal is to build connections between people and inject more justice and compassion into the world. Sharing Nawaby’s and Valdes’ story of friendship contributes to that legacy, Krauss says.

And the two women have inspired another generation to share friendship. Nawaby’s daughter and Valdes’ son – who were students at UT while their mothers were in the Executive MBA program – have become friends.

“It has been a great experience at McCombs,” Nawaby says, sitting beside Valdes.. “I never thought as a scientist I’d be going to business school and meeting someone like her.”

StoryCorps typically records two people who know each other as they ask each other ques­tions, such as MBA graduates Leilani Valdes and Arghavan Nawaby (top left). Others, such as fellow McCombs alum Arthur Mills IV (bottom right), were interviewed by StoryCorps staff members.

EVERYONE HAS A STORY THE FOLLOWING EXCERPTS GIVE A FLAVOR OF THE INSIGHTFUL CONVERSATIONS THAT MAKE STORYCORPS ICONIC. LISTEN TO THEIR STORIES IN FULL AT “VOICES OF McCOMBS,” A SPECIAL WEBPAGE HOSTING ALL 19 CONVERSATIONS. F R I E N D S

TAMARA FIELDS, BBA ’06

ANDREW PHONG VO, BBA ’95

Fields and Vo are friends, executive colleagues at Accenture, and McCombs alums.

Both have served on the McCombs Advisory Council, and Vo, a Vietnam refugee as a small child during the 1970s, is a McCombs Hall of Famer, known for his generosity. Fields and Vo shared what McCombs taught them.

Fields: How did you find out about UT? Vo: As a first-gen student, I didn’t have my act together whatsoever. My parents had never gone through the college admissions pro-

cess. So, I got a late start and ended up at the University of Houston. In my first semester, I said to myself, “There has to be something bigger, bolder – somewhere I can achieve my dreams.” After doing research and talking to friends, I said, “It’s the University of Texas.” I convinced my parents to let me fly the coop and spread my wings. I spent three amazing years here.

Fields: From the get-go, I had an awesome time in McCombs. I felt like I was part of a larger world. I was excited and full of joy. McCombs has done a lot of great things for me, but one of them was creating a strong base of friends, who I am very close to today, and a network that I just could not imagine how much it would mean in my life and career. It’s a big school to learn how to navigate, but it teaches you how to do that. I don’t think any school has a better career services center. It taught me how to do my résumé. It taught me how to do interviewing. It taught me how to show up and transition into adulthood.

Vo: I learned at McCombs the importance of giving back, of supporting that next generation.

I want to provide the students that are coming up the opportunity to thrive, to shine, to achieve their aspirations and ambitions.

Fields: You talk about being bold and challenging yourself. There were a couple of ways that I can say that McCombs did that for me. I had an internship in Boston. So, I had to get there by myself. I had to find a place to stay. I had to figure out how to get around the Northeast. So, what I really appreciated was that McCombs gave me experiences to challenge myself, and it was the first time I recognized that I could be independent and do it on my own. If I had never done that internship, I never would have done my study abroad in London. These experiences cannot be traded.

Vo: That international and cultural immersion that we had as undergrads has helped us in our day-to-day lives. I never envisioned when I joined Accenture in ’95 and you joined in ’96 we would be here today. I’ve been in Singapore for the past five years, and the lessons and values that I learned as an undergraduate – about appreciating people from all walks of life and working in teams – is that, together, you can solve big problems and achieve big things.

Fields: I just have to say thank you, McCombs.

Thank you for the connection that you gave me with Andrew Vo and for our shared passion for this school and our commitment to bringing others along on this journey. I think all we can say is Hook ’em!

Vo: Hook ’em Horns!

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FA M I LY

MARIA DE-ARTEAGA, IROM ASSISTANT PROFESSOR

HUSBAND BENEDIKT BOECKING

De-Arteaga, a Colombian native, brings diverse experiences to McCombs as an assistant professor in the Information, Risk, and Operation Management Department. A former journalist, she specializes in machine learning and policy. She earned a doctorate at Carnegie Mellon University, where she met Boecking, a fellow doctoral student and now her husband.

He interviewed De-Arteaga about her work.

Boecking: What is your research?

De-Arteaga: My research focuses on AI ethics and human-AI collaboration. So, primarily, I’m interested in the risks and the opportunities when we’re using machine learning for decision support. The other core area of my work is “algorithmic fairness,” how machine learning may replicate and compound societal biases.

Boecking: How did you choose McCombs as a place where you could do this research?

De-Arteaga: When I went on the job market, it was not very clear what type of department I was a best fit for because I was very interdisciplinary, and that’s not always how academia is structured. I considered computer science, information schools, a couple of policy schools, and a few business schools. When I visited the department where I am now, I really liked the multidisciplinary nature of people here. You

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had statisticians, psychologists, economists who were thinking about problems from very different perspectives. I wanted a place that wouldn’t force me to choose between one (field) or the other, and where, ideally, people around me could understand and appreciate the different types of questions I study. I really felt this is a great place for that.

Boecking: Were there any surprises?

De-Arteaga: I found advising students very intimidating. It’s different in research to pursue an idea when you’re taking a risk yourself. But taking someone else on that journey was very terrifying. It’s now one part of my job that I enjoy the most.

Boecking: What are the important topics in data and AI ethics for a business school?

De-Arteaga: McCombs’ slogan is “Human Centered. Future Focused.” It’s very funny whenever I use the McCombs slides in my talks because it really feels like a slogan about my research. It’s a visual reminder of what a good fit this is.

We’re training students to think about the ethical and societal implications of what they’re doing. I am really excited about bringing my research into the classroom and making that a part of how we’re training students.

C L A S S M AT E S

JINE UZOR, BBA ’23

MICHELLE IVBIEVBIOKUN, BBA ’25

Uzor, a McCombs graduating senior and president of the Black Business Students Association, and sophomore Ivbievbiokun, a member of BBSA’s executive board, bonded after meeting at a BBSA event. Both are of Nigerian heritage and found sanctuary in their friendship.

Ivbievbiokun: What would you say your favorite memory is of McCombs?

Uzor: The alumni event.

Ivbievbiokun: With Peggy Drake?

Uzor: Yes. We were expecting maybe 20 max to attend the event, and we got about 80 people responding back. It was amazing. Out of those 80 people, we had Peggy Drake Holland respond, who is the first Black graduate of McCombs.

We also hosted the event in a room dedicated to her called the Peggy Drake Holland Lounge.

So, it was a full-circle moment when she was there with her husband, Leon Holland. She was so excited. She said she’s been waiting for the opportunity to connect with other students. It really meant a lot to me, and to see how engaged the alumni were and how much they really want to help other Black students, it almost brought tears to my eyes.

Uzor: Michelle, what would you say is a challenging part of being at McCombs?

Ivbievbiokun: Coming to McCombs and UT in general, I was mostly worried about being behind the curve or feeling like I didn’t belong, which is, I guess, the whole imposter syndrome thing they discussed with us before school even starts. I would say it still affects me sometimes when I’m in other orgs besides BBSA because these people don’t look like me or they don’t understand where I come from.

At the same time, I’m trying to overcome it by just understanding: This is how the world is going to be. Everybody here is so nice and kind and willing to help. So, I never feel like, “Oh, I’m less than someone else,” or, “I don’t belong here or don’t deserve to be here.” I’m really glad that I came here. I can’t imagine myself at any other school. I just love McCombs.

Uzor: Same. At BBSA, the whole thing we’re trying to do is build this community. Community is the most important thing. That’s what’s going to last.

VOICES OF McCOMBS Listen to the complete archive of StoryCorps conversations by scanning this QR code.

StoryCorps is a New Yorkbased nonprofit whose mission is to record, preserve, and share the stories of Americans from all backgrounds and beliefs.

Its producers brought their microphones to McCombs for two weekends during fall 2022. “When we started with McCombs, we creat­ed a shared vision – wanting to take on miscon­ceptions about business school and highlight the spirit of McCombs,” says Sarah Krauss, a StoryCorps account manager who helped produce the recordings. Among those who took part was Shudde Fath, the school’s oldest alum at the time of recording at age 106. She was joined in conversation with her daughter, Betsy Fath Hiller, two months before Fath’s death in December.

McCOMBS.UTEXAS.EDU _ 47

CREDIT TK

The UT Tower was lit in a special configuration Monday, Feb. 27, 2023, in memory of Red McCombs, who died Feb. 19. He was 95. In addition to shining with burnt orange lights, the Tower was illuminated to honor McCombs by showing the word “Red” on its sides.

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ART BY FIRST LASTNAME

A GENEROUS FRIEND OF McCOMBS AND UT, BILLY JOE “RED” McCOMBS LEAVES A PERMANENT MARK ON THE SCHOOL HE LOVED story by Mary Ann Roser

In a state that brags everything in it is bigger, Red McCombs stood out.

At 6 feet, 3 inches tall, with red hair and a booming baritone, McCombs was a giant of entrepreneurship and philanthropy. The Texas legend, namesake of the McCombs School of Business that his giving transformed, died Feb. 19, 2023 at age 95.

A self-proclaimed “wheeler-dealer” who became a billionaire, McCombs had a big passion for sports, cars, and The University of Texas. Above all, he loved his wife, Charline, who died in December 2019 at age 91, and their daughters, Marsha, Connie, and Lynda.

Despite his prowess at making money, he once told McCombs Magazine that “money has never been a goal of mine. My goal was to be one of the guys that made the decisions.”

Fascinated at a young age by the decision-makers who made things happen in his community, McCombs made sure during his long entrepreneurial career that he’d call the shots. He often relied on instinct, according to his two memoirs, The Red Zone: Cars, Cows, and Coaches—The Life and Good Times of a Texas Dealmaker in 2002 and Big Red: Memoirs of a Texas Entrepreneur and Philanthropist, a 2011 follow-up that drew heavily on the first book.

“The fact is that, throughout his life, Red McCombs has had an uncanny ability to perceive business opportunities that most others were unable to see,” Don Carleton, executive director of UT’s Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, wrote in an introduction to Big Red. “Red calls them his ‘McCombs moments.’”

McCombs had many such moments in more than eight decades of buying, selling, and marketing. He created one of the nation’s most successful Ford dealerships; owned the San Antonio Spurs basketball team twice, the NBA’s Denver Nuggets, and the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings; and co-founded media and entertainment giant Clear Channel Communications, now iHeartMedia.

He also “dabbled”—his word—in cattle, oil and gas, racehorses, movies, real estate, minor league baseball, and more. And he was a collector. His 7,000 Old West artifacts make up one of the most extensive collections of its kind in the United States. His office at the McCombs Plaza building just north of downtown San Antonio displays some of the collection’s paintings, walking sticks, saddles, and firearms.

McCombs continued going to the office into his 90s. Speaking about his deal-mak-

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ing success in a San Antonio TV interview marking his 90th birthday, McCombs said, “Well, the best decision up and down from start to finish was marrying Charline.”

They were a power couple who left an indelible mark on the Alamo City, donating to thousands of nonprofits and institutions, including schools and colleges.

Their higher education giving was capped in 2000 by a $50 million gift to the UT business school that leaders called transformative. At the time, it was the university’s largest-ever single gift. UT officials renamed the business school for McCombs and held a Texas-sized party, complete with a press conference and faux power switch that enabled the honoree to “light” the Tower orange.

“I told the students at the press conference that, aside from my family, everything else I have ever been involved with in my life paled beside this,” McCombs said of the donation in Big Red. “It was truly the defining moment of my life.”

A SA LE SM A N AT 10 Billy Joe “Red” McCombs was born Oct. 19, 1927, in the small West Texas town of Spur to a car mechanic father and a mother who was a high school graduate and “a bit of a snob about it,” Red McCombs wrote in his memoirs. She was the only person who ever called him Billy Joe. McCombs’ entrepreneurial spirit emerged when he was 10. He figured he could earn a few bucks by providing something no one else was selling on the streets of Spur.

Peanuts. He sold a bag for a nickel to cotton pickers who passed through town. When his father and upfront funder pointed out that he spent more than he made, McCombs put half as many peanuts in each bag and soon grew a mountain of nickels.

He became a paperboy, then tried being a short-order cook. In high school, he played football and managed to skip his junior year when he moved with his family to Corpus Christi and declared himself a senior. No one ever checked. He was in a hurry to come into his own.

He talked his way into a football scholarship at Southwestern University in Georgetown, the only way he could afford to go, he said. “Legend has it that when he arrived on campus, he carried everything he owned in a single suitcase,” according to a 2017 tribute on Southwestern’s website.

He left school before graduating in 1946

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“AS IMPORTANT AS SPORTS HAVE BEEN IN MY LIFE, THE TRUTH IS THAT I DON’T THINK I COULD HAVE HAD THE SUCCESS I HAVE HAD IN MY LIFE WITHOUT GOING TO COLLEGE” — RED McCOMBS

to join the army, serving in Seoul, and then returned to Corpus Christi. He needed to finish his undergraduate degree and planned to study law at UT. He had noticed that lawyers were often the decision-makers in their communities.

When he heard that Del Mar College in Corpus Christi was putting together a football program, he went to enroll during his senior year and said he’d play for the team, if the school paid him. When Del Mar’s coach told him paying athletes wasn’t allowed, McCombs fibbed that a competing school had offered him $100 a week to play football. The coach countered the next day with an offer to pay his school expenses for the year, plus $10 a week if he would drive teammates to the ballgames.

“The deal with Del Mar was one of the best I ever made because it resulted in my meeting the woman who would be the love of my life,” he wrote in Big Red. In the registration line, he had heard Charline Hamblin, “one of the prettiest girls I had ever seen,” ask about transferring credits from Southwestern University. He walked over and asked her to help him because he needed to do the same thing.

He asked her out. She declined, but McCombs didn’t take no for an answer. They started dating.

He then enrolled at UT’s business school to earn additional credits before entering UT’s law school in fall 1948. “I was your basic B student with an attitude,” he wrote in his memoirs. During his second year as a law student, he realized “a career in law was going to be too confining for a guy like me.”

Back home in Corpus Christi, a friend said he should try selling cars with him—Fords at the local Austin Hemphill dealership. At age 22, he discovered that he was a natural salesman, and by the end of the year, he was named top seller. He upped his game and proposed to Charline, and though she didn’t

say yes immediately, McCombs later said he knew he had sealed the deal. They married a few months later, in November 1950.

CA RS, SPORT S, A ND MORE By 1953, McCombs, realizing that for every new car, two-and-half used cars were sold, opened his first used-car dealership. Later that year, an old Southwestern buddy suggested they buy a minor league baseball team, the Corpus Christi Aces, to save it from bankruptcy. McCombs bit. The two paid $5,000 each for the team in 1954, renamed it the Corpus Christi Clippers, and watched the team win the playoffs.

“There I found again the magic of sports,” McCombs says in Big Red. “I became a big deal overnight because I had the only sports team in town, and it was winning.”

He was winning in business, too.

Early in 1957, his former boss and friend, Austin Hemphill, recruited him to sell Ford’s new Edsel. The car did not win over the public, and McCombs bailed. He went back to the two used car lots he owned.

Hemphill, meanwhile, moved to San Antonio and asked McCombs to be his partner. McCombs discovered that Hemphill's business had been hit by recession and was $100,000 in the red. Like the Corpus Christi ball team, McCombs turned it around. When he did the same thing for a Ford dealership in Houston, he gained national attention.

The highway was paved for McCombs to become one of San Antonio’s most influential decision-makers, a role he had long wanted.

He worked with Texas Gov. John Connally as vice chairman of the executive committee that brought the 1968 World’s Fair to San Antonio.

HemisFair’s success “literally put San Antonio on the international map,” he said. To keep it there, McCombs decided his adopted home needed a professional sports team.

A TE A M OW NER A ND A REC KONING “He has proven that you can combine business and heart, and it comes out the best for everyone,” close friend and real estate developer Marty Wender, BBA '69, told McCombs Magazine in 2000. His success in the car business prompted his investments in a wide array of enterprises, including motion picture distribution. By 1972, he and a partner bought a radio station, then another and another. When they acquired a fourth station with a clear channel that beamed across North America and Mexico at night, their company became Clear Channel.

The partners sold it for $28 billion in 2008.

“Of all the businesspeople I know,” Wender told McCombs Magazine, “he has the best business sense and the ability to analyze a situation quicker than anybody.”

Charline said in the same article, “With the possible exception of fly fishing, he has never accepted mediocrity in anything he attempts.”

A friend who was a bar owner and later one of his top car salesmen, Angelo Drossos, told him the money-losing Dallas Chaparrals basketball team was for sale and urged him to be the lead investor. They bought the team in 1973, moved it to San Antonio, and renamed it the Spurs.

When he was 48, McCombs realized he had a drinking problem. One morning, Charline

Red McCombs enjoyed meeting students during his many visits to the business school that bears his name. “Red has always been concerned about the young people of Texas,” former UT System Chancellor William Cunningham says.

found him in a convulsive state; doctors did not expect him to live. But he survived and promised Charline he would “never, ever, have another drop of alcohol.” And he didn’t. “I can’t say this any plainer: God intended for me to do other things,” he wrote in his memoirs.

By 1982, he and Charline had a ranch in Colorado, as well as a Subaru distributorship in Denver. That same year, McCombs acquired the Denver Nuggets and sold his interest in the Spurs. He called selling that winning team in 1985 one of his biggest blunders.

He bought back the Spurs in 1988 and bought the Minnesota Vikings in 1998, the same year he and Charline created the McCombs Foundation. The National Football League named him one of its most influential owners.

In 2010, he brought Formula One auto-racing to Austin.

“My favorite business far and away, without any question, is the sports business,” McCombs wrote in Big Red. “I say that because sports makes my adrenaline flow faster than anything else. … There is no greater thrill.”

M A K ING A DIFFERENC E As a businessman, McCombs demonstrated his tough-mindedness; as a philanthropist he displayed his kindness.

McCombs told t he Sa n A nton io Express-News in 2017 that he learned to give to others by watching his parents. “We’d seen people that really through no fault of their own had no place to go. I saw my mother take them in, take care of their children, sometimes for as long as a year or so until they could get a job. So, I’ve watched philanthropy in the small ways, but it is so ingrained.”

McCombs’ largesse extended to other schools beyond his beloved UT Austin: to Southwestern, the University of Minnesota Women’s Athletics Department, UT San Antonio Athletics Department, and the UT M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

“As important as sports have been in my life, the truth is that I don’t think I could have had the success I have had in my life without going to college,” he wrote in Big Red. Nodding also to his support for public education, he adopted a struggling San Antonio elementary school that became a national award winner within three years.

In 1997, McCombs donated $3 million to UT women’s athletics to fund a women’s softball stadium.

“What he has done for Texas is just unbelievable,” DeLoss Dodds, former UT men’s athletic director, said in a UT video. “His legacy will be here forever.”

A statue of McCombs stands in the Royal-Memorial Stadium food court, part of the Red McCombs Red Zone.

UT leaders sought out McCombs, not just for donations but for his counsel. Former UT System Chancellor William Cunningham, now the James L. Bayless Chair for Free Enterprise at McCombs, said when he was chancellor, McCombs “was the man we went to see.”

“Red has always been concerned about the young people of Texas,” Cunningham says.

“He has always understood the importance of having first-class institutions and first-class organizations.”

When then-UT President Larry Faulkner approached McCombs in 2000 for a $50 million donation to the business school, he appealed to McCombs’ competitive spirit, to see the school ranked among the country’s best. Faulkner did not have to wait very long for McCombs to say yes.

The gift marked the first time UT had ever named one of its schools for someone other than a campus leader.

McCombs says at the end of Big Red that he went to bed each night asking himself what he did that day.

“Is there some worthy cause with which my philanthropy might make a real difference?” he would ask. “And some days I find myself deficient.

“So, I grade myself,” he wrote, “and I want to make every day count, because I realize, at the end of the day, we’re all a speck of sand. But, while I’m here, I want to make a difference.”

On that score, Big Red earned an A.

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ENTERPRISING LONGHORNS SEE BIG BUSINESS IN LITTLE HANDS SCHOOL SPIRIT INSPIRES MCCOMBS ALUMS TO LAUNCH LINE OF COLLEGE-THEMED BABY APPAREL fter their first children were born, Alex Bourdeau, BBA ’09, and Woody Apfel, BBA ’11, saw a business opportunity to spread a little Longhorn love. Bourdeau and Apfel, who met as McCombs students, discovered each had amassed a collection of baby mittens used to prevent newborns from scratching their faces.

But no one was selling what they really wanted: UT Austin-themed mittens featuring the Hook ’em Horns sign.

They believed the mittens could continue providing the protection their baby girls needed while boldly proclaiming school spirit.

The friends, who now have two daughters apiece, thought there was a market for licensed baby mittens for fans of UT Austin – and other schools. So, in spring 2021, they started the baby apparel company, Day1Fans.com LLC. “We were passionate about the idea, and we felt like we were resourceful and scrappy,” Bourdeau says. “It took us about a year, maybe more, to bring the idea to a mitten that we were ready to sell, that met all of the quality levels that we had in mind.”

Fast-forward two years and the company has fulfilled nearly 3,000 orders of officially licensed FanMitts, which often include multiple pairs of mittens per order. In addition to the Longhorns, they sell baby mittens for 19 other college sports teams, including the Texas A&M University Aggies, the University of Oklahoma Sooners, the University of Hous-

Samantha Bourdeau, daughter of Alex Bourdeau, models the Longhorn mittens. Since founding their company, Bourdeau and Woody Apfel have fulfilled thousands of orders of FanMitts. In addition to UT’s Longhorns, they sell baby mittens for the Texas A&M Aggies, the University of Oklahoma Sooners, and many others.

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— ALICE POPOVICI

Alex Bourdeau and Woody Apfel saw an opportunity to sell college-sports-themed baby apparel. “It took us about a year, maybe more, to bring the idea to a mitten that we were ready to sell, that met all of the quality levels that we had in mind,” Bourdeau says. Understanding the collegiate licensing process was one of the most challenging aspects of the business, Apfel says. Now, he and Bourdeau say they want to be a resource for other McCombs alumni who aspire to start businesses.

McCOMBS ALUMNI DOMINATE LONGHORN 100 AWARDS 30 McCOMBS BUSINESS LEADERS HONORED AT INAUGURAL TEXAS EXES CELEBRATION OF BUSINESS EXCELLENCE One hundred alumni of The University of Texas at Austin earned a place in The Longhorn 100, an inaugural award recognizing the 100 fastest-growing businesses owned or led by Longhorns worldwide.

Thirty of the honorees and four of the top 10 are graduates of the McCombs School of Business, making it the most highly represented school among those recognized. The winners were honored at the Longhorn 100 Gala on Thursday, May 18, at the Etter-Harbin Alumni Center.

Popular Austin-based companies Rambler Sparkling Water, Beatbox Beverages, and Poncho Outdoors, as well as Houston’s BHW Capital were among McCombs’ top winners.

The list showcases a diverse range of businesses that have not only achieved remarkable growth but have also made a significant impact in their respective industries.

“The Longhorn 100 brings together some of UT’s best and brightest,” said Chuck Harris, executive director and CEO of Texas Exes. “Recognizing the entrepreneurial achievements of Longhorns is a way the university can support its alumni long after they’ve left the Forty Acres and encourage future growth and innovation from Texas Exes.”

“The McCombs School has always been a breeding ground for trailblazing entrepreneurs,” said McCombs Dean Lillian Mills. “That spirit of innovation is inspired by the vibrant city we call home, where our Austin ethos celebrates individual passions and inspires students to launch new ventures.”

Read more about The Longhorn 100 at www.texasexes.org/longhorn100.

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CREDIT TK

ton Cougars, and the Baylor University Bears.

“Those numbers continue to trend up pretty aggressively,” Apfel says. “Our month-overmonth growth has continued to increase, both due to the addition of new schools and to improvements in our marketing and our targeting.”

Bourdeau and Apfel, Dallas-Fort Worth-area residents who work full time in the technology industry, sell the mittens exclusively through their website, day1fans.com, generating customers mainly through social media marketing.

Bourdeau’s daughters, Samantha and Alison, and Apfel’s daughters, Penny and Marty, have all modeled the mittens on the site and on Instagram.

Apfel says understanding the collegiate licensing process was one of the most challenging aspects of the business – from reaching out to the schools to dealing with different stakeholders, to navigating protocols. Now that they have mastered the process, they want to be a resource for McCombs alumni who aspire to start a business.

“If we can inspire one person who is thinking about it,” Bourdeau says, “we would consider that a success.”

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Bottom: Top 10 Longhorn 100 award winners in attendance at the gala, left to right: Ted Pettijohn, Ph.D. ’86, president of Raven Butene-1, LLC.; Martin Bronstein, BBA ’71, president of BHW Capital; Asim Razzaq, B.S. ’00, CEO of Yotascale; Angela Dunham, B.A. ’94, COO of OJO; Jay Hartzell, Ph.D. ’98, UT Austin president; Dave Mead, B.S. ’93, co-founder and CMO of Rambler Sparkling Water; Jeffrey Trucksess, MBA ’01, co-founder and COO of Rambler Sparkling Water; Chuck Harris, executive director and CEO of Texas Exes; Mark D. Walker, B.A. ’98, co-founder and CEO, Direct Digital Holdings; Clayton Spencer, BBA ’03; B.A. ’06, founder and CEO of Poncho Outdoors.

Top, left to right: Catherine Cruver; Longhorn 100 honoree Brian Cruver, MBA ’99, founder and executive chairman of Austin’s AlertMedia; and McCombs Dean Lillian Mills at the 2023 Longhorn 100 celebration.

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and Case LLP and previously served as the U.S. ambassador to Mexico during 2002-2009.

ALUMNI NOTES

Joyce Goss, BBA ’83, was named regional director for Texas by the Phillips art auction house. She previously was the executive director of the Goss-Michael Foundation for 15 years.

UPDATE US Please send your updates to alumni@mccombs.utexas.edu for publication in the next issue of McCombs Magazine. Feel free to share news on behalf of fellow graduates.

Mike Lafitte, BBA ’83, has stepped down from his roles as the head of CBRE’s client care business and as CEO of Trammel Crow Co., the development wing of CBRE.

1970s Frank Towery Jr., BBA ’72, was appointed by the governor to the Texas Appraisal Management Companies Advisory Committee. He is vice president of licensing and compliance at MyAMC LLC. W. Allen Tate, BBA ’75, has been promoted to senior vice president of marketing for W&T Offshore. He joined W&T in 2006 as vice president of marketing and midstream.

Robert Shelton, MBA ’78, has been named vice president of intellectual property at H2 Clipper, an aerospace and alternative energy company. He previously served as vice president of administration.

1980s Antonio Garza, BBA ’80, has been selected to serve on the board for newly formed railway Canadian Pacific Kansas City Limited. He is also counsel in the Mexico City office of White 56 _ McCOMBS.UTEXAS.EDU

Ted A. Marcuccio, MBA ’87, was named chief business officer at Kaléo, an integrated pharmaceutical company. He held a similar position at Summit Biosciences before joining Kaléo.

Father and son share their suggestions for career success from new book Ron Kurtz, BBA ’64, spent decades as a corporate executive in the airline, hospitality, and cruise industries, frequently sharing hard-earned career advice with his son, Jason Kurtz, BBA ’90, and his daughter, Carrie Turner. In 2020, Ron teamed up with his children to compile the business tips into a book aimed at recent grads, Fast Start to Career Success: Making the Most of Your First Job. Ron and Jason Kurtz recently shared some of the book’s highlights.

What inspired you to write this book together?

Ron Kurtz: I was kind of proud that both of my children had been very successful and that they attributed part of their success to the tips that I had given them. And I thought maybe it might help others as well.

Could you each share some key pieces of advice from the book?

Ron Kurtz: You don't want to have unpleasant surprises for your boss.

You want to try to protect them from unpleasant surprises or give them advance warning or alerts if bad news is coming down the line.

Jason Kurtz: Be nice to everyone in the office. You never know who's going to be giving feedback or having input or could be the next CEO. – ALICE POPOVICI

1990s Scot Parnell, BBA ’91, has been appointed chief financial officer by life reinsurer Munich Re Life US. He was previously the CFO for DailyPay, which provides payroll services.

Rajesh Subramaniam, MBA ’91, was selected for membership in the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans. Subramaniam, president and CEO of FedEx, was also a winner of the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award for 2023.

Alamdar Hamdani, BBA ’93, was sworn in as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Texas. He is the first Asian American to hold the office in

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the Southern District. Hamdani has been with the Department of Justice since 2008.

Scott Johnson, BBA ’95, has been named a portfolio manager of the Highland Income Fund.

He is managing director and portfolio manager at the NexPoint asset management firm.

Anita Tulsiani, BBA ’96, discussed “The Five Things You Need to Succeed as a Senior Executive” in an interview with Authority Magazine. Tulsiani was appointed chief marketing officer for Carpe Data in October.

Kyle Duffy, BBA ’98, has been hired as vice president of sales

by Pivot, a behavioral change health company. He previously worked for PagerDuty as vice president of global solutions.

Carla Vernón, MBA ’98, was appointed CEO of The Honest Company, becoming one of the only Afro-Latina CEOs at a U.S. publicly traded company. She previously worked for Amazon and General Mills.

Kim Konikowski Voss, MPA, BBA ’98, has been promoted to chief financial officer by American Campus Communities, a student housing manager, owner, and developer. She joined the company in 2004.

Amanda Hsieh, BBA ’99, spoke at an Energy Workforce workshop about creating an environmental, social, and governance framework. She is the vice president for ESG at ClimeCo consultants.

Jason Stone, BBA ’99, has written The Beauty of the Days Gone By, a fictionalized biography of legendary cattleman Charles Goodnight. Stone is an author living in Central Texas.

2000s Erin Callahan, BBA ’00, was featured in San Antonio Woman for her and her sister’s business, Some Elbow Room.

Callahan is the president of their specialty construction business. Her sister is vice president.

Louis Jean Chartier, MBA ’01, was named CEO of Infra Corp., the infrastructure holdings company of the Romero Group. He was previously the head of investments for IAL Infrastructure.

Jonathan Edwards, MBA ’01, was interviewed by MarketWatch about his strategy as senior portfolio manager of the Invesco Small Cap Value fund. Edwards, who is based in Houston, has been at Invesco since 2001.

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Finance industry veteran follows her passion for community broadcasting television Working in banking, finance, and startup companies for the past three decades has taken Dustin Dumas, MBA ’96, around the world, from Chicago to Germany to Silicon Valley. But nearly everywhere Dumas has gone, she also has worked on public access television shows.

Dumas says she gravitated toward local TV, sometimes putting in long hours in the evenings and weekends, because it gave her a different, creative outlet.

“I've always been in finance,” she says. “And this was the side where I could actually just go and produce and find people that I thought were interesting to interview.”

In 2015, Dumas saw an opportunity to take over as station manager and editor of the South Orange and Maplewood New Jersey Community Television (SOMAtv) station, where she had worked part time since moving to New Jersey several years earlier.

“Having worked at startups, having worked in business, I approached managing the station as a businessperson,” she says.

Working with elected city leaders, Dumas overhauled station policies and syndicated the shows for the first time while continuing to produce her own public access program, “Dustin’s Kaleidoscope.” Instead of shutting down operations at the height of the pandemic, Dumas pushed to continue broadcasting on Zoom.

“We had come such a long way in that year that I didn't want to stop everything,” Dumas says.

Her tenacity paid off. The station’s programs now air in 14 states, and in 2021, SOMAtv won the Award of Excellence from the New Jersey Access Group for its “Get Out the Vote” public service announcement.

Dumas credits her success to her McCombs training, which enabled her to rapidly assess the fiscal and organizational challenges the TV station was facing and work with multiple stakeholders to resolve them.

“Communication,” she says, “was key.”

– ALICE POPOVICI

Alex Alexandrov, BBA ’02, was appointed CEO of Ungerboeck, a venue and event management software company. Alexandrov previously worked for SoftwareONE, where he was an executive board member.

Kris Torres, BBA ’02, was listed among the top tech influencers in Dallas-Fort Worth by Idea Grove. She is the managing director of Accenture’s cloud innovation center.

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Vanessa Perez, BBA ’04, was named the mayor pro tempore for the Laredo City Council. She represents the city’s District VII. Gardner Pate, BBA ’04, was named chief of staff to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. He previously served as deputy chief of staff in the Office of the Texas Governor.

Vivian Rhoads, MBA ’04, joined a roundtable discussion on the challenges of being a female leader in the health and wellness industry. Rhoads is the president of the women’s health unit at Pharmavite.

Jordan Waldrep, MBA ’04, has been hired by Bank OZK as chief investment officer for trust and wealth.

He was formerly principal and chief investment officer at TrueMark Investments.

Erol Yayboke, BBA ’04, wrote about the critical questions facing Turkey and Syria in Politico Magazine and other publications after the earthquakes of early February. He is a program director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Rodrigo Salas, MBA ’05, was interviewed about his marketing and advertising career

by Talk Business & Politics of Arkansas. Salas is the executive director of Entrepreneurship for All Northwest Arkansas.

Steve Fulton, MBA ’06, wrote about “Correlating Clues: Cybersecurity’s Big Data Challenge” for Solutions Review.

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What would you do with $20 million in seed funding?

Entrepreneur hopes to lead an AI-driven revolution When John Winner, BBA ’11, was in middle school, he started his first business. He helped his neighbors in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, set up their home computers and assisted with technical problems. Three decades later, his work has expanded considerably, but Winner remains driven by the same overarching goal.

“I have consistently seen opportunities to help people leverage new technologies,” says Winner, now CEO of Kizen, a company that harnesses the power of artificial intelligence to streamline work and save time. “And that happened from the first business when I was 13 to what we do today with Kizen.”

The company recently raised over $20 million in seed funding for its work in industries ranging from health care to financial services to B2B technology. It uses AI to accelerate data processes and reduce the amount of time employees spend on any given task. For instance, the software can help doctors and nurses more quickly access patient information, provide a diagnosis, and deliver care.

Winner thinks the software could significantly reduce the average work week. “We really see over the coming years that AI is going to fuel an unprecedented age of prosperity for everyone around the world,” he says. “And that's going to impact everything from health care to work – enabling things like a 20-hour work week – to universal access to world-class education.”

– ALICE POPOVICI

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He is the chief product officer at Secureworks. He has also worked for Dell and EMC. Robin Gordon, MBA ’06, was honored for her contributions to the insurance industry with a 2022 CEO of the Year & C-Suite Award. She is the chief data and analytics officer at MetLife in North Carolina.

Nate Y. Sharp, Ph.D. ’07, was named the dean of the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University, where he holds the Nelson D. Durst Endowed Chair in Accounting.

Kevin Imes, MBA ’09, was interviewed by the Golf Content Network about his career.

Imes is the founder and CEO of HIO Media Inc. and the creator of ReelGOLF, a videographic teaching system.

2010s Zack Leonard, BBA ’11, talked about “How to Diversify Your Supply Chain Outside of China” on the Enterprise Podcast Network. He is the president and co-founder of Gembah.

Mark Fuselier, MBA ’12, spoke on the growing challenge of semiconductor design leadership at a Semiconductor Industry Association webinar.

He is a senior vice president at AMD. Adam Haughton, MBA ’13, was named chief investment officer of Bridge Renewable Energy, a partnership between Bridge Investment Group

Holdings Inc. and Lumen Energy Inc. He was previously the chief investment officer of New Energy Solar Manager.

Nick Long, BBA ’05, MBA ’13, has joined Alliant Insurance Services in Texas as senior vice president in its employee benefits group. He is also the mayor of League City.

Pearl Agarwal, BBA ’14, was interviewed by Startup Success Stories about her micro venture-capital fund called Eximius Ventures. Agarwal spent a decade investing across the U.S. and United Kingdom before starting the fund in 2020.

Kevin Johnson, MBA ’14, has been promoted to partner at Capstreet, a Houston-based private equity firm. He previously worked for Brentwood Associates and Morgan Stanley.

Michael Rubinett, MPA, BBA ’14, has been appointed senior vice president of loan origination for the Americas at AV AirFinance, an aviation loan servicer. He was previously vice president of mba Asset Management.

Nik Parr, BBA ’16, has been touring the country with his band, Nik Parr & The Selfless Lovers. He is the lead singer and songwriter for the band. Parr is also a prolific visual artist.

Samantha Pierre, MBA ’16, talked about her career journey as a Black woman and the child of immigrants with The Muse.

She is a marketing manager for Palo Alto Networks.

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Deb Sanders, MSTC ’16, has been promoted chief customer officer and senior vice president at Avid Technology.

She joined the company as vice president of global customer care in 2019.

Dana Le, BBA ’17, spoke on “Changing Your ‘What Ifs’ Into Reality” at TEDxUTAustin’s sixth annual conference. Le is the CEO and founder of Wander Health and was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for 2022.

Ishan Bhaidani, BBA ’18, wrote about the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX exchange on Cointelegraph.com. He is a content manager at Serotonin, a Web3 marketing agency.

Preshit Gawade, MBA ’19, was featured on Hart Energy’s Oil and Gas Investor after he was named a Forty Under 40 honoree. He is the executive director of new energies at Baker Hughes Co.

2020s Amanda Cavaleri, MSTC ’21, has been appointed to the CleanSpark board of directors. She is managing director of Aprés Tech, a Bitcoin advisory firm, and a partner at Pearl Snap Capital, an investment business.

Keith James Asmussen, BBA ’21, MPA ’22, was interviewed by Trackside View about his continuing experiences as a jockey. He resumed riding last fall after receiving a master’s degree.

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GATHERINGS

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INAUGURAL SCHOLARSHIP APPRECIATION DINNER, APRIL 13, 2023 McCombs hosted 180 guests at the AT&T Hotel and Conference Center, including Dean’s Advisory Council members, current scholarship recipients, and McCombs scholarship supporters. In fall 2022, 341 MBA students received McCombs fellowships and 117 MPA students received McCombs scholarships.

Of 4,757 undergraduate students, 555 received a McCombs scholarship. At the graduate level, just 293 of the 490 full-time MBA students and 117 out of 239 MPA students received McCombs fellowships. The event was also a chance to honor the late Red McCombs, whose legacy continues to inspire generosity, especially toward students. Regent James C. “Rad” Weaver, BBA ’98, who was a scholarship recipient when he attended the McCombs School of Business, shared his own experiences as a student in need of extra breathing room. “I, like so many other students, went to school on someone else’s dime,” said Weaver, former CEO of McCombs Partners who was mentored by Red McCombs as a student. “My father passed away when I was a freshman in high school, so money was tight.”

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BUSINESS OUTLOOK: FOCUS ON THE FUTURE, FEBRUARY-MARCH 2023 The annual McCombs Business Outlook series, in partnership with the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank for the 11th year, focused on the near- and longer-term future of three key industries in Texas: fintech/crypto, energy, and real estate.

Dean Lillian Mills moderated the full series of events at the Federal Reserve Bank branches in Houston and Dallas.

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10TH ANNUAL EXECUTIVE MENTORSHIP DINNER, FEB. 16, 2023 Students and industry leaders gathered for the annual dinner with McCombs alumni, sharing a meal and conversation in an event hosted by McCombs Alumni Relations.

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CENTENNIAL TOWER LIGHTING, NOV. 10, 2022 The UT Tower shone in burnt orange lights and displayed “100” on each side Thursday, Nov. 10, 2022 — the culmination of a year of special events celebrating McCombs School of Business’ centennial. Centennial events ranged from informal campus-based meetups, such as the Pizza on the Plaza spring event and a Welcome Back fall event, to an alumni reunion in London, to Longhorn parties in several major U.S. cities. “It’s been both grounding and inspiring to spend this year reflecting on where we’ve come from, and casting a vision together for the future,” said McCombs Dean Lillian Mills.

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DONOR STORIES

THE GLOBAL LONGHORN $2.5 MILLION BRIMBLE GIFT POSITIONS UT AUSTIN STUDENTS TO TACKLE THE CHALLENGES OF INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS Ray Brimble, BA '74, is 100% Texan but grew up watching his dad prosper in the world of global business.

Born to a family that recognized the value of hard work, Brimble says his childhood led him to pursue a B.A. in international studies at UT. “My dad was a lumber trader on a global scale, and my great-grandfather traded in chocolate,” he explains. “So, I recognize the benefit of education in international matters and the importance that international trade has had in my life and also in Texas.”

Brimble, who eventually formed and managed over 30 businesses globally, is a former McCombs faculty member and emeritus chair of the Board of Advisors of the Center for Global Business (CGB) at UT. He still spends much of his time abroad, knows many alums living and working internationally, and sees a need for more international educational opportunities for UT students.

Brimble, founder and CEO of Lynxs Holdings, and his wife, Karen, gave a $2.5 million gift in 2022 to the CGB to launch the “next generation” of international business education at The University of Texas at Austin. With the gift, he hopes to enhance global resources for students entering an increasingly multicultural and interconnected workforce.

The Brimble Global Impact Initiative will elevate student access to the professionals, curriculum, and skills that an international perspective requires. Programs will help McCombs to provide global business education to students within the school and throughout campus, to engage with international alumni, and to remove financial barriers to experiential learning.

“Texas is a global player, and its future professionals need to be ready,” Brimble says. “It’s our dream that we can support new and enriched programs that will make an international business

A gift from Ray Brimble (above) and Karen Brimble (not pictured) will enhance global resources for students entering the workforce. “Offering these scholarship awards is about training the next generation of global leaders,” says Deirdre Mendez, director of the Center for Global Business (above right).

education available to more students. Rapid global change calls for the leadership that a UT education provides.”

In keeping with Brimble’s belief in a connected global world, the gift’s benefits are open to all students across the UT campus, regardless of their major. Through the Brimble Global Change Makers Scholarship program, any student can apply for grants for study abroad opportunities and enroll in one of the three newly formed international business minors.

“Offering these scholarship awards is about training the next generation of global leaders,” says Deirdre Mendez, director of the Center for Global Business.

The CGB is already seeing increasing participation from students who say they would not have previously applied to go abroad due to financial restrictions. Sixteen summer and fall 2023 scholarships were announced during the spring, with more anticipated in the fall for the following fiscal year.

“Enrollment in international studies is up, and I think a large part of that is this gift and the encouragement that the awards generated among the students,” Mendez says.

Raj Mahale, chair of the advisory board and a graduate of the International Business program, sees an opportunity to cultivate valuable global business acumen for students from diverse backgrounds and nonbusiness fields of study. He is eager to grow enrollment and strengthen global alumni connections to expand mentoring and career opportunities.

“I am deeply grateful to Ray for this contribution. When I was a student, the International Business program opened my eyes to resources and opportunities beyond any I envisioned when I first stepped on campus,” said Mahale. “I felt the pull to develop as a global citizen, and these programs showed me the way. Now, more students will have access to relevant coursework to become competitive on the world stage.”

Currently a partner at KPPB Law, Mahale has spent nearly two decades as a corporate attorney advising businesses in South and Southeast Asia, China and the Middle East.

He mentors international business students and encourages them to build international professional networks. The Brimble Initiative McCOMBS.UTEXAS.EDU _ 63

HOW TO CHANGE A LIFE: FORMER FORMER SCHOLARSHIP RECIPIENT PAYS ITSCHOLARSHIP FORWARD

HOW TO RECIPIENT PAYS CHANGE A LIFE: IT FORWARD You might call it a full-circle moment.

When Allison Cayce Halley attended the University of Texas McCombs School of Business, she was just starting out in life, a young adult who had just received the George Kozmetsky Forty Acres Scholarship. It changed her life.

And now, as a successful business owner and Executive Coach, she is ready to pay all of that back through a scholarship of her own.

“I get teary eyed thinking about it,” she said. “This is something I’ve always dreamed of doing.”

In fact, when writing her scholarship thank you letters as a student Allison closed one of them by saying she hoped she could one day be in the position to give back to a student and help them the way she has been helped.

Now, sitting at the University Club with her husband, Craig, that dream is coming true. For both of them, this is an opportunity to make an indelible mark on someone’s future.

“Since COVID, people have been through the wringer,” Craig said. “We hope this scholarship takes some of the pressure off.”

Allison graduated with her BBA from McCombs in 1994 and went on to work in human resources at a software company, where she met Craig. After 25 years in corprorate HR, she founded her own human resources firm, Panorama HR, where she works with small to medium sized businesses to create dynamic and rewarding cultures.

“Neither of us came from a lot of money,” Allison said. “Education was

emphasized in our families, so that is one reason this is very important to us.”

Also, she adds, because something like this can make all the difference for a person’s future.

“It gives me goosebumps,” she said.

“It’s so rewarding to think that we are changing someone’s life.”

To learn more about how you can establish an endowment or scholarship, contact the McCombs School of Business Development Office at development@mccombs.utexas.edu.

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will help enhance networks such as these.

The initiative is well timed as the rising pressures of world events affect all markets and nations, Mendez says.

“Understanding global repercussions has never been more important. This gift positions us to prepare UT students as global leaders,” she says. “It’s been a pleasure working with Ray to find ways to expose more students to a global experience while strengthening connections to international alumni.”

Immediate goals for the initiative include new and updated international business course offerings; scholarships to make study abroad and other experiences more accessible; enhanced advising services; and broader outreach to alumni who can serve as speakers, mentors, and potential employers.

The new opportunities are expected to appeal to traditional business majors and students, adding a valuable minor.

“We like to point out that business has no borders, and that applies on campus, too. Whether you are studying communications or engineering, natural sciences or computer science, understanding international business has never been more relevant,” says Deborah Salzberg, global readiness adviser for the center. “This gift will open doors to global readiness across the university.”

Brimble says he hopes his gift encourages generosity from fellow alums during the next five to 10 years to make the university a leader in international business. The program has already attracted another donor, Randall Kempner, UT, MBA ’98, whose donation will help fund the Brimble endowment in perpetuity.

“The gift is meant to catalyze other people to contribute,” he says, calling it “another expression of that connectivity that is foundational for me.

“This is a chance for other alumni to give back in a specific way with already funded programs.” — DAVID WENGER

ENTREPRENEURIAL JOURNEY THE HARKEY MATCH INVITES ALUMNI TO INSPIRE STUDENT INNOVATORS ACROSS CAMPUS John D. Harkey, BBA ’83, grew up in Central Texas in a family that shared and fostered his entrepreneurial spirit. Harkey recalls his father telling him, “You have the freedom to explore and be creative if you control your destiny by being captain of your ship.” Harkey followed his father’s advice, becoming a private investor, philanthropist, and chief executive in the public and private sectors.

In 2021, Harkey took action to give other young captains the same opportunity. The Harkey Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies was established in 2021 by a naming gift from Harkey and his wife, Peni Barfield (see below).

The donation was stipulated as a one-to-one match, the Harkey Match, for other donors and, to date, has raised $3.5 million of the $10 million match. Blair and Bubba Moffett, BBA ’91, and family; Carol and Ronnie Goldman, BBA ’64; and Ben Friedman participated in the match.

The Harkey Institute provides entrepreneurship teaching, mentoring, and support for undergraduate students of all majors on campus. Signature programs of the Harkey Institute include the Entrepreneurship Minor, the Blair and Bubba Moffett Family Summer Entrepreneurship

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Academy, the Entrepreneurship-in-Residence Mentor Program (which grew from four to 35 mentors during the spring of 2023), the Longhorn Investment Seed Fund, and many more to come.

The minor launched in 2018 with fewer than 80 students and only one faculty member. With the additional financial support from the Harkey Match, it is now the fastest-growing minor on campus, boasting more than 750 students from over 150 majors and features 50-plus electives.

The Harkey Institute has created a campuswide epicenter to support undergraduate student innovators. Taking inspiration from Michael Dell’s entrepreneurial activities as an undergrad in his dorm room, the institute has established an undergraduate entrepreneurship Living, Learning, Community initiative at Jester Center. Participants begin the year with a readymade support network of fellow entrepreneurial students, mentors, and custom programming.

Alums and other supporters of entrepreneurship can engage with students through speaking opportunities, mentoring, and competition judging. Matching opportunities are available for all institute investments of $500,000 or more in endowed funding. Specific naming recognition opportunities remain at the $1 million-plus level. — DAVID WENGER

Learn more about contributing to the Harkey Match. development@mccombs.utexas.edu

Do you know an international alum we should connect with, or do you want to help a first-gen student study abroad? deirdre.mendez@mccombs.utexas.edu

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INVESTING IN NEW LEADERS ENERGY LEADER'S $1 MILLION GIFT WILL TOUCH ALL STUDENTS 66 _ McCOMBS.UTEXAS.EDU

Marshall Eubank, MBA ’91, has donated $1 million to support the Center for Leadership and Ethics at The University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business. This gift is the largest in the center’s history.

Eubank, owner and manager of SEG Interests LLC of Houston, said the donation recognizes the profound impact of the center’s sponsored curriculum and research.

“The Center for Leadership and Ethics teaches students the core competencies to become great leaders and managers, while also increasing the reach and reputation of the school within both the academic and business worlds,” he said. Eubank has served on the center’s advisory council since 2019.

Stacey Rudnick, director of the center, said it was important to Eubank that his gift have the

greatest impact on the students themselves. “The benefit of giving to the Center for Leadership and Ethics is that every student at McCombs— graduate or undergraduate—is touched by our programming, staff, and faculty,” Rudnick said.

“We’re so grateful to Mr. Eubank and excited for what this generous gift means for the future business leaders as they leave our classrooms and go into the working world.”

A leader in the energy industry for more than 30 years, Eubank has now elected to work less, but he still follows the equity markets and the rapidly changing energy markets. Besides working on the occasional oil and gas project, he said he has reinvented himself by opening his mind to researching and investing in new markets, which is an exciting opportunity to take on new challenges.

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Having held leadership roles at Black Stone Minerals LP, Enron, and EnCap Investments, Eubank was actively involved in the early stages of the shale revolution. He also is a recognized expert in buying and selling oil and gas properties and advising energy companies.

A native Texan, Eubank started out on Wall Street in 1987. After two years in New York, he returned to his Texas roots and enrolled in the McCombs MBA program.

“I made relationships at McCombs that have lasted a lifetime and helped me in business,” he said. “I also gained a lot of analytical and problem-solving skills, and I learned how to communicate and be a more effective leader.”

Eubank was drawn to explore ways he could give back. “I saw an opportunity to get close to the staff and students, something I loved as a student and dearly missed,” he said. Once he started serving, he recognized the desire to do even more: “There was a clear need for both me and the center.

“In particular, I am grateful for the center’s programs such the MBA Capstone Showcase Event and Ethics Unwrapped,” he said. “With Capstone, it’s rewarding to volunteer as a judge to observe students work together as teams and then combine all of their skills to make recommendations for real businesses and charities.

With the Ethics Unwrapped program, their fabulous content offers any individual or institution the skills to address challenging situations and decision-making. By bringing the outside world into the classroom, the center’s programs change how students learn, grow, and lead.”

In addition to providing its core curriculum, the center facilitates applied research and houses the Business of Sports Institute. athletic performance.

Eubank said he hopes his gift will kick-start more donations. “The center’s potential is great and expansive,” he said.

—MAUREEN BALLEZA

Learn more about supporting the Center for Leadership and Ethics. development@mccombs.utexas.edu

CREATING A LEGACY ESTATE PLANNING BENEFITS STUDENTS OF TOMORROW Holly Goodrich, MBA ’04, nourishes a steady loyalty toward fellow McCombs students and alums. In 2015, she was among elite New York finance executives who helped establish a pipeline for McCombs students to New York finance careers, Wall Street for McCombs, emphasizing the importance of having “an alum in the seat saying, ‘You’ve got to look at Texas.’”

So, it comes as little surprise that she continues to put her money where her heart is. Goodrich explains that while doing estate planning, her counselor asked her what she was passionate about. She immediately thought about her connection to UT and “asked whether [she] could write into her will to continue giving to Texas and the McCombs School.”

Goodrich says the process was surprisingly easy, particularly after talking with Wendy Anderson and Byron Liles, the McCombs endowment and estate planning officers.

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“I realized that the best way to proceed was to add a certain percentage to my existing endowments,” Goodrich explains, referring to two endowments she has set up for businessstudents. “It makes tremendous sense if you want your legacy to continue in things you have already established.”Goodrich says that she finds peace knowing her estate planning is covered and her future endowments to the university are well taken care of according to her desires.

Such planned giving is a powerful way to benefit the McCombs School of Business. A planned gift works in favor of both the giver and the recipients, including many tax advantages for the donor, with money flowing to deserving students.

Alumni donors who include UT Austin in their estate plans qualify for Texas Leadership Society membership, recognizing significant contributions that support the McCombs School’s vision. — DAVID WENGER

Learn how to set up an endowment or an estate plan. development@mccombs.utexas.edu.

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Manasa Murthy oversees H-E-B’s innovative venture into health care.

The company has 11 primary care clinics at stores in Austin, San Antonio, and Houston. These one-stop shops enable a customer to see a physician, dietician, physical therapist, or pharmacist – all without needing health insurance.

How food connects to wellness Almost 50% of our customers are diabetic or prediabetic. Almost 60% of our customers are trying to shop for some kind of lifestyle or eat better.

So, there's an opportunity to educate them on the role of prevention.

We've started to merchandise more lifestyle products, and we’re in the process of building a meal planning experience. At the end of the day, we feel like we can meet customers at various touch points and help to support their journeys.

Why retail health care is booming It's becoming increasingly hard for patients to navigate the health care space because there are so many different players, and it's so hard to get into a lot of clinics. There’s an opportunity for retailers to drive convenience and fill the gaps in the health care system.

FOOD AS MEDICINE MANASA MURTHY, MBA ’19, IS REIMAGINING WELLNESS AT A TEXAS RETAIL GIANT After four years as a critical care pharmacist in a hospital system, Manasa Murthy got frustrated with how business interests influenced care decisions. She took a career left turn and got a McCombs MBA. Today, she works for a very different employer: the iconic Texas supermarket chain H-E-B. As director of health and wellness strategy, she oversees H-E-B’s innovative venture into health care. The company has 11 primary care clinics at stores in San Antonio, Houston, and Austin. These one-stop shops enable a customer to see a physician, dietician, physical therapist, or pharmacist – all without needing health insurance.

H-E-B Wellness is part of a national trend. The U.S. Census Bureau counts 2,000 retail clinics based in chains such as Walmart, Target, CVS, and Walgreens. Murthy spoke with McCombs magazine about putting food at the center of wellness and how she’s using her MBA. Her responses have been edited and condensed.

What attracted her to H-E-B I was taking care of the sickest patients on a day-to-day basis. Many had comorbidities that could have been prevented. H-E-B is shifting the pendulum by focusing on the preventive side. What was also compelling was that Texas is big and has high health care needs, and H-E-B has significant market reach, and thus potential to change health. You can think about prevention on a scale you really couldn't do anywhere else.

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How the “food is medicine” model differs Incorporating dietitians into the clinical experience is a big part. Often, our customers will meet with them multiple times a year. They’re also walking the stores with you, showing you products, and curating them to your lifestyle needs and your budget.

Making primary care affordable We attempt to democratize health care and make it more accessible. We have the option of one-time visits or a monthly subscription model. With a subscription price, you get 24/7 access to a medical provider, physical therapist, labs, and medication management. By not taking insurance, our doctors can spend much more time with patients. They’re not just focused on cutting costs.

Applying her McCombs experience I worked with the Texas Health Catalyst program and with Capital Factory to look at early-stage startups and provide advice. The exposure to startups has been helpful, because I feel like, at H-E-B, we’re kind of a startup within this big company.

The future of retail health care We have an opportunity to show a better care model that others can replicate in other areas. We can show that this model, which doesn't accept insurance and is focused on prevention rather than reactionary care, has legs. We’ll start to see the impact of nutrition in terms of long-term health outcomes and how those outcomes change in Texas.

– STEVE BROOKS

Read more of the conversation by scanning the QR code.

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LISTEN UP!

INTRODUCING McCOMBS MADE, A NEW MONTHLY PODCAST We invite you to tune in for interviews with notable Texas McCombs alumni and supporters sharing their “made it here” moments. Listen to business leaders from a variety of industries and experiences share their career and life trajectories—and how McCombs impacted their journeys.

START LISTENING TO McCOMBS MADE: HOW ALUMNI AND FRIENDS ARE CHANGING THE WORLD TODAY. LOOK FOR IT ALONG WITH OTHER McCOMBS AUDIO STORIES AT BIT.LY/ VOICESOFMcCOMBS OR FIND IT WHEREVER YOU GET YOUR PODCASTS.