hall of famers

6 tycoons join prestigious Texas Business Hall of Fame

Whitney Wolfe Herd, of Austin, is the youngest inductee ever.

Photo by Kristen Kilpatrick

The Texas Business Hall of Fame Foundation has inducted six new Texans to its prestigious ranks.

Austin-based Whitney Wolfe Herd; Dallas-based Thomas O. Hicks; and Houston's John Arnold, Ric Campo, Jeffery D. Hildebrand, and Paul W. Hobby will be honored at Texas Business Hall of Fame Foundation's 40th Anniversary and Induction Dinner on November 3.

“The Texas Business Hall of Fame is pleased to announce its six inductees for 2022," says TBHF Chair Amanda Brock in a news release. "Inductees are recognized as trailblazers in business and exemplary leaders who have made significant contributions in their local communities and beyond, through both philanthropic and civic engagement. Although inductees can be nominated by anyone from the general public, they are selected by their peers and determined by a majority vote by Hall of Fame members."

The TBHF honors business leaders across the state by celebrating and telling their stories. The organization also runs the Future Legends Scholar & Veteran Award Program that grants forty $15,000 awards to scholars and veterans who demonstrate entrepreneurship and innovation at 24 universities throughout the Lone Star State. Both the scholars and the six honorees will celebrated this fall.

“The selection process, combined with the organization’s emphasis on both economic and social impact makes this one of the most prestigious business honors in the state,” says TBHF Legend and the 2022 Master of Ceremonies, Richard Fisher.

Here's more information on this year's other honorees:

Whitney Wolfe Herd is the founder and CEO of Austin-based Bumble Inc., the parent company that operates Badoo, Fruitz, and Bumble, three of the world’s fastest growing dating apps worldwide. She led Bumble’s IPO in 2021 as the youngest women CEO to ever take a company public. Now, she is the youngest person ever to be inducted into the Texas Business Hall of Fame.

Former Dallas Stars and Dallas Rangers, owner Thomas O. Hicks, is the chairman, founder and partner of Hicks Holdings LLC, a family office that owns and manages real estate, corporate assets and investments, including a private equity firm.

Houstonian John Arnold is the founder of Centaurus Capital LP, an energy-focused, family office investment fund. He also created Arnold Ventures, a philanthropic investment firm focused on health care, education, criminal justice, and public finance.

Houston-based Camden Property Trust CEO Ric Campo has also sat on the board of directors of several Houston organizations, including Central Houston, Inc., Greater Houston Partnership, Baker Ripley, and The Coalition for the Homeless, and more.

Jeffery D. Hildebrand, is the executive chairman and founder of Houston-based Hilcorp Energy Company, Harvest Midstream Company, and JDH Capital. He serves on the boards of Central Houston, Inc., the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, Houston Police Foundation, Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, Chairman of The University of Texas Investment Management Company, and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission.

Houstonian Paul W. Hobby is a founding partner of Genesis Park and GP Capital. He's served as the chairman of the Texas Ethics Commission, the Greater Houston Partnership, the Houston Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas ,and the Texas General Services Commission.

The awards dinner, presented by Texas Capital Bank, will be hosted in Houston at Hilton Americas on November 3. The dinner is preceded by a private awards luncheon, sponsored by Deloitte, for the Hall of Fame's 40 2022 Scholar & Veteran Award recipients.

Last year's dinner honored six Texans in November 2021.

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A version of this article originally appeared on our sister site InnovationMap.

bests awards

Health for All

San Antonio among 7 cities to earn gold medal for public health policy

Photo by Matthew LeJune on Unsplash

San Antonio's safer streets earned recognition in the annual report.

Health has many facets, but there's only so much individuals can do. Much depends on their surrounding environment, and San Antonians are in good hands, according to CityHealth, an initiative of the public health-focused de Beaumont Foundation and nonprofit healthcare provider Kaiser Permanente. In early December, it awarded the Alamo City a gold medal for its public health policies.

Only seven cities received gold medals in CityHealth's 2024 assessment, which compared 75 major US cities across 12 policy metrics that impact public health on a large scale: things like protected access to healthy food, green spaces, and fair housing.

A gold medal overall means the city received five or more gold medals within the specific categories. San Antonio was the only Texas city to receive an overall gold medal.

Each city has an interactive list that's easy to browse, because it breaks down each medal earned into an itemized list of policy choices. Copper means it fills some of the criteria, followed by silver and gold as the policies become more advanced. San Antonio earned individual gold medals in the following categories:

Affordable Housing Trusts: The city has a trust fund for maintaining and expanding affordable housing.
Complete Streets: People can safely move around the city as pedestrians, bikers, drivers, and more.
Greenspace: Families from different socioeconomic backgrounds can all access parks.
Healthy Food Purchasing: The city has nutrition-based food procurement standards for venues on its property, or by city agencies or contractors.
High-Quality, Accessible Pre-K: Pre-K quality meets benchmarks by the National Institute for Early Education Research.
Smoke Free Indoor Air: Smoking or vaping is banned in certain public venues.

The assessment points out that CityHealth has been working with San Antonio since 2020 on implementing its Complete Streets ordinance. "The city updated the ordinance this year after a long process of soliciting community input, consulting with experts, and strengthening the policy to ensure the ordinance was equitable and sustainable — earning the city an individual gold policy medal," it says. Local respondents' top concern according to the city website was adding bike lanes.

San Antonio earned one bronze medal for Eco-Friendly Purchasing, because the city requires annual reporting on its policy to purchase non-toxic products. However, the policy did not meet the report's higher standards.

That leaves five categories in which San Antonio did not win any medals, meaning it either did not have policies in place or the policies it did have not meet the report's base criteria. San Antonio lacked the following:

Earned Sick Leave: The city has a law mandating that employees can accrue paid time off for medical situations impacting themselves or family members.
Flavored Tobacco Restrictions: The city has bans in place on flavored tobacco products.
Healthy Rental Housing: Rental properties of a certain size must undergo periodic inspections for detecting things like bad plumbing or mold.
Legal Support for Renters: Renters are able to access legal protections even if they can't afford to hire representation directly.
Safer Alcohol Sales: The city has alcohol sales laws and can close retailers that do not comply.

Elsewhere in Texas, Fort Worth, Dallas, and Houston all received overall bronze medals. Austin did not receive any overall medal, although it did receive a few individual medals including gold in Greenspace.

This is the second year in a row San Antonio has earned an overall gold medal. In 2022, only two cities received overall gold medals, and San Antonio received bronze. Before then, San Antonio had received gold more than once before.

Other overall gold cities across the country were Boston, Massachusetts; Denver, Colorado; Minneapolis, Minnesota; New Orleans, Louisiana; Portland, Oregon; and St. Louis, Missouri.

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