Q: What has your journey to become
the President of the largest chamber
of commerce and Greater Houston
Partnership been like?
A: I’m a native Houstonian. Grow-
ing up in Spring Branch, I went to
Spring Woods High School. Later, I
went to Texas A&M and studied Me-
chanical Engineering. While I was at
A&M, I was very active on Campus,
serving as the Core Commander and
the Student Body President. Upon
graduation, I went to work for an
energy company, Amoco Produc-
tion, now a part of British Petroleum.
Then I went to Harvard Business
School. After finishing Harvard, I
went to work for McKinsey & Com-
pany where I spent 17 years, all in
the Houston office. However, our
clients were global, therefore a lot of
travel was involved. In 1999, I went
to Reliant Energy as the Vice Chair-
man of Reliant. Reliant back then
included what is now Center Point
Energy. By 2005, I was 49 and semi-
retired, which allowed me to become
more active in the community. I was
Chairman of the United Way and
Chairman of Montessori Schools.
Also, I became active at the Houston
Zoo. In 2012, I received the call from
the Greater Houston Partnership
to meet with the search committee
about this opportunity. I have been
here ever since.
Q: It has been reported by the US
Department of Commerce in 2016
that Houston is the second largest
exporter of chemicals, petroleum, and
coal products in the U. S. What are
your thoughts on industries such as
Life Science and Technology? What
can businesses and companies do to
push growth in these sectors?
A:
Let me step back a little bit to
that first point you made. We are the
second largest merchandise exporter,
which is the term, meaning there are
services and merchandise. We are the
second largest merchandise exporter
after, New York. New York is liter-
ally three times the size of Houston
in terms of population and GDP, but
we go back and forth between New
York. Some years we are number one;
some years they are number one. We
will be number one again.
We have a very large export commu-
nity in Houston, which we should be
proud of as Houstonians. We are very
globally connected. The energy and
petroleum products, refined products,
and chemical byproducts are all a big
part of that.
We now identify Life Sscience as
our second major industry. When we
think about diversifying the Hous-
ton economy, we point specifically to
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