D CEO December 2024

CEO of the YEAR 2024

IN THE TRENCHES

After leading Caterpillar to record financial highs, CEO Jim Umpleby is unearthing even more growth for the future.

Emerging Leader Alysa Teichman of Ylang 23 and Wildlike

Go Inside the Personal Spaces of Three North Texas Execs CEOS AT HOME 2024

64 Honorees in the Excellence in Healthcare Awards for 2024

LEADING YOUR PRACTICE FORWARD

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Karl Csaky, PhD, MD

Chief Executive and Medical Officer, Retina Foundation of the Southwest T. Boone Pickens Director, Molecular Ophthalmology Laboratory Director, Clinical Center of Innovation for AMD

Dr. Karl Csaky leads the Retina Foundation as an efficient, effective and groundbreaking medical destination that accelerates innovative, patientcentered research to save vision. Patients are never charged. As the foremost global expert in age-related macular degeneration (AMD), he and his team are committed to finding solutions for AMD, inherited retinal diseases and pediatric disorders. He is leading the Retina Foundation in breakthroughs with stem cell research, gene editing and therapy, and started the first ever AMD Sibling Study that will impact the 18 million people with AMD and retina degeneration diseases overall.

Make MyBSWHealth part of your care routine. Being proactive about your health but don’t know where to start? Use our Help Me Decide feature to determine where to go or who to see. Your first stop for

Outstanding Healthcare Practitioner

Dr. Gregory Smith

Texas Health Physicians Group

Outstanding Healthcare Innovator

Kathi Cox

Texas Health Resources

Outstanding Volunteer Mike Stovall

Texas Health Dallas

Achievement in Innovation

Usage of Ambient Technology

Texas Health Physicians Group

Achievement in Wellness Programs Be Healthy Wellness Program

Texas Health Resources

Achievement in Community Outreach THRIVE Initiative

Texas Health Resources

Outstanding Medical Real Estate Project

Texas Health Rockwall

Outstanding Healthcare Collaboration

Health to Home Medical Respite Program

Texas Health Resources and

Austin Street Center

Your leadership, service, and dedication to our communities has not gone unnoticed, and we’re proud to call you part of the Texas Health team.

TexasHealth.org

Teichman cut her

Wildlike with an SBA loan, Alysa her teeth in business at her parents’ 40-year-old jewelry retailer, Ylang 23.

After moving the company’s headquarters from Chicago to Irving, Jim Umpleby led the construction equipment giant to record financial highs.

Ylang 23 exec Alysa Teichman is building a company of her own with Wildlike. She’s aiming to reinvent piercing and bring luxury to the $8 billion industry.

Many of those honored in

Many of those honored in ’s 2024 Excellence in Healthcare Awards go beyond traditional approaches to improve outcomes.

Three North Texas executives open their doors, sharing the personal spaces that reveal the most about themselves.

DOSSIER

19 YOU NEED TO KNOW Ti any Hagge, Citation Capital

22 MEET THE 500 John Stankey, AT&T

22 LOCALLY SOURCED Rob Barney, Stressed Vine Cellars

24 FOOD + BEVERAGE Roland Parrish, Parrish Restaurants

26 CONVERSATION WITH Florencia Velasco Fortner, The Concilio

28 REAL ESTATE

Steve Lieberman and Alan Shor, The Retail Connection

FIELD NOTES

49 LEADING OFF Charles Santos, TITAS/Dance Unbound

50 REAL ESTATE Dallas is among the nation’s leaders in o ce conversion projects. Here’s what it means for the city’s downtown.

52 ON TOPIC

Bret Farrar of Sendero Consulting, Lalit Ahluwalia of DigitalXForce, and Carla Pellegrino of Urban Italia share one thing they would change about the local business environment.

OFF DUTY

55 ART OF STYLE Mimi Sterling, MCS Impact Advisory

56 MUST-READ Executive Book Club

58 SNAPSHOT

Drexell Owusu, The Perot Museum of Nature and Science

58 COMFORT FOOD Dallas C-suiters share their favorite home-cooked meals and family recipes.

60 WELL TRAVELED: GREENOUGH, MONTANA Chef Kent Rathbun

62 ROOTS

Sargon Daniel, Nexus Renewable Power

76 END MARK May Dickson Exall

Meet the ‘Get Sh*t Done Team’

as i write this column, we’re approaching thanksgiving, the start of holiday madness. For D CEO editors, there’s a huge crush of work at the end of the year, which just adds to the chaos. My late mother taught me that sometimes the best way to deal with stress is to turn your thoughts outward and focus on others. This was brought home during our Thanksgiving meals; before we could dig into the turkey, everyone in the family had to go around the table and say what we appreciated about each other.

As I reflect on everything that we’ve accomplished at D CEO this year, I know it would not have been possible without each member of our small but mighty team. Design Director Hamilton Hedrick is the most talented art director I know. He pushes us to think bigger. He has a deep understanding of our audience and mission and an unending supply of creativity. Managing Editor Ben Swanger is one of those rare people who excels at project management, news writing, storytelling, and product development. He’s my backup brain and a terrific human being who never gets rattled.

Senior Editor Will Maddox is a gifted writer who has a knack for seeing humanity in people and unearthing stories that make the world a better place. He has a curious mind and looks beyond the surface. Will also has a lot of Dad jokes. Associate Editor Audrey Henvey is a born journalist. She brings a lot of passion to her work and has a way with words that can make even the dryest business topics seem engaging. Finally, I don’t know how we ever managed without Assistant Editor Layten Praytor. He has the critical job of overseeing fact-checking and getting our D CEO newsletter out the door each week. He’s a terrific writer who is inquisitive and has embraced learning about business. As a bonus, he’s also hilarious. Internally, D CEO has earned a reputation for being the “get sh*t done team.” And it’s true.

I’m grateful to work with such talented, passionate people and wouldn’t want to be in the trenches with anyone else.

Christine Perez Editor

Left to right: Patrick Wallace, Frances Gardner, Robert Gardner, Andrew Gardner

EDITORIAL

EDITOR Christine Perez

MANAGING EDITOR Ben Swanger

SENIOR EDITOR Will Maddox

ASSOCIATE EDITOR Audrey Henvey

ASSISTANT EDITOR Layten Praytor

CONTRIBUTING

WRITERS Richard Alm, W. Michael Cox, Hilary Lau

EDITORIAL INTERN Victor Sanchez

ART

DESIGN DIRECTOR Hamilton Hedrick

STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Elizabeth Lavin

ADVERTISING

SALES MANAGER Rachel Gill

ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Rhett Taylor

SENIOR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Cami Burke, Haley Muse

MANAGING EDITOR OF SPECIAL SECTIONS Jennifer Sander Hayes

DIGITAL SALES COORDINATOR Olivia Booth

CLIENT OPERATIONS COORDINATOR Julianne Emeterio

MARKETING & EVENTS

MARKETING DIRECTOR Madeline Alford

MARKETING MANAGER Tori Carruth

ADVERTISING ART DIRECTOR Katie Garza

ASSOCIATE ADVERTISING ART DIRECTOR Andrea Chavez

EVENTS COORDINATOR Breanna Furrow

SPECIAL PROJECTS ASSISTANT Jordan Radasch

MARKETING INTERN Melody Guerrero

EVENTS INTERNS Randy Collins, Victoria Gonzalez, Kendyl Link

AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT AND BRAND

AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT COORDINATOR Emma Barretto

EDITORIAL PROGRAMS MANAGER Sarah Masquelier Risi

SPECIAL PROGRAMS COORDINATOR Betty Burns

SENIOR GRAPHIC DESIGNER Anita Moti

RETAIL STRATEGY MANAGER Steve Crabb

MERCHANDISER David Truesdell

OPERATIONS ASSISTANT Macey Pieterse

DIGITAL

DIGITAL DIRECTOR Ricky Ferrer

DIGITAL OPERATIONS COORDINATOR Jade Garrett

SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER Melissa Tallo

SOCIAL MEDIA INTERN Cloi Bryan

PRODUCTION

SENIOR PRODUCTION MANAGER Grace John

PHOTO RETOUCHER Jasmine Green

BUSINESS

CONTROLLER Sabrina LaTorre

SENIOR ACCOUNTANT Debbie Travis

SENIOR STAFF ACCOUNTANT Randall Rasor

ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE COORDINATOR Jessica Hernandez

AP SPECIALIST Ron Dewey

EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT DIRECTOR Patricia Martin

IT TECHNICIAN Luan Aliji

OFFICE MANAGER Will Smith

ADMINISTRATIVE COORDINATOR Nikhael Virden

HOW TO REACH US

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Persuasion Skills: Don’t You Tell Me What to Do

ROGGE DUNN, CEO, ROGGE DUNN GROUP

Lead Your Audience, Don’t Tell Them

I have written about how it’s more persuasive to lead people to the conclusion you desire, rather than telling them the conclusion. D CEO April 2022. The simplest example of this is that no one likes being told what to do. It dates back to our childhood days. We all remember exchanges with our parents saying, “You can’t do that,” and we responded with “Why?” Our parents’ typical response was to bark back, “Because I said so,” or “Don’t argue with me; I know what’s best for you.” Not very effective. Even if our parent added a reason such as, “That’s not good for your health,” we weren’t persuaded.

For almost all of us, these “do what I say” exchanges created a deep-seated, subconscious, and instinctive resentment to being told what to do. Indeed, oppositional people often intentionally do the opposite of what they are told not to do out of spite, or to prove their independence and control over the situation. That’s why reverse psychology is often so effective.

Let the Other Person Think It’s Their Decision

Consider another approach: Let the person you’re trying to persuade believe that it is their decision. When I was very young and had just learned how to ride a bike, my dad saw me leaving home for a one-mile ride to my friend’s house. I had a golf club in my hand. My father subtly led me to take the appropriate action. My dear old dad said:

“I know you’re a good bike rider, but you better be careful riding with that golf club. When I was young, I was riding my bike on the sidewalk with one of my friends who had a hockey stick in his hand. The hockey stick got caught up in the bike wheel. He

crashed, tumbled onto the sidewalk, and his head fell over the curb. Before I could help Jimmy up, a speeding 18-wheeler ran over his neck, and his head went rolling down the gutter all the way into the sewer. We never found Jimmy’s head. But you do what you want.”

Needless to say, it made a powerful impression on me—an image I vividly recall to this day. I put the golf club down and never rode my bike with a golf club again. I even removed the baseball cards clipped to the spokes on the bike’s wheels that we all used to make our bikes sound like motorcycles.

The beauty of this approach is that it led me to make the right decision, which I viewed as my own decision. Even as a very young child, my dad’s psychology empowered me to make the right decision without any resentment toward authority, or my dad’s paternalism.

The Takeaway: Don’t tell your audience the answer; find subtle and creative ways to lead them to the conclusion you want.

ROGGE DUNN represents companies, executives, financial advisors, and entrepreneurs in business and employment matters.

Clients include the CEOs of American Airlines, Baker Hughes, Beck Group, Blucora, Crow Holdings, Dave & Busters, Gold’s Gym, FedEx, HKS, Texas Motor Speedway, Texas Capital Bancshares, and Texas Tech University, as well as sports figures like MLB Manager Buck Showalter, NBA executive Donnie Nelson, and NBA Hall of Fame coach Larry Brown. Dunn’s corporate clients include Adecco, Beal Bank, Benihana, Cawley Partners, CUTX, Greystar, Match.com, Rent-A-Center, S2, Trinsic Residential Group, and Outback Steakhouse.

From 2021 to the present Dunn has been named to D CEO Magazine’s Dallas 500 list, recognizing the most influential business leaders in North Texas. He has been named a top 100 attorney in Texas by Texas Monthly (a Thomson Reuters service) and to the D Magazine Best Lawyers Hall of Fame.

TREC FightNight XXXV

on september 19, the real estate Council and TREC Community Investors returned to the Hilton Anatole to host the 35th annual FightNight, which featured an evening of professional boxing, exceptional cuisine, casino gaming, Vegas-style entertainment, and networking with top decision-makers in Dallas-Fort Worth. This year’s theme recognized TREC’s members and community partners for “Standing Strong” and making FightNight one of the region’s largest philanthropic events, raising more than $35 million to support TREC and TREC Community Investors’ efforts to energize neighborhoods, have a lasting impact, and change lives in some of the city’s most underserved communities.

Jason Hanson, Lane Acree, Kaky Gowan, Mary Valker, Brock Jones

Hillwood Team

Steve Aldrich, Jamee Jolly, Summer Loveland, Mike Geisler

Marti DuBuisson, Emily Ronck, Allison Rice, Jessica Garza, Gini Rounsaville

Billy Gannon, Cullen Aderhold

Reegan Busby, Chelby Sanders, Jihane Boury, Sara Terry

Eugene Tremblay, Gary Hasty, Deon Hawkins, Antong Lucky, Pamela Young, CharMary Caruthers, Christopher Lewis, Frances Smith, James Armstrong

Jim Knight, Josh Milsap In the ring

Casino

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Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Symposium

d ceo welcomed more than 300 attendees on September 17 for its sixth annual DEI Symposium at the Frontiers of Flight Museum. Called “The Power of Inclusive Leadership: Driving Innovation,” the half-day event featured panels and keynotes from leaders who shared strategies to foster inclusion and innovation. Topics included psychological safety, AI ethics, and future trends. Thank you to our series sponsor, Makers Mark, whose generous support played a pivotal role in the success of this event, as well as our title sponsors, Bank of Texas, CLA, Haynes Boone, Mind Gym, Samsung, SMU Cox School of Business, and Thomas Reuters, along with premier sponsor, Amazon.

Hattie Hill

Keith Davidson, Janet Huber, Robin Ladd

LaTonya Flournoy, NéAndré Broussard

Janet Ahn

Ana Rodriguez, Candice Bledsoe

Anne Chow

Stacia Peters, Glenn Pfenninger, Matt Feyling

Tiffanie Rice, Tatum Zeko, Christy Evans

Sudha Addepalli, Olga Suvorva, Diya Wynn, Cherice Williams

Tracey Wallace, Hannah Christenson

for Business Impact team: Michelle Mai, Nick Marino, Jr.,

Empowering your company to make a lasting impact.

Since 2017, Communities Foundation of Texas has worked with companies of all sizes to grow their impact in North Texas. The Center for Business Impact (formerly CFT for Business) is a one-stop shop, offering strategic giving, employee engagement, and professional development services.

Contact us today to schedule a complementary consultation.

Center

Kymberlaine Banks, and Elizabeth Corley

DOSSIER

NORTH TEXAS NEWSMAKERS

AUDREY HENVEY

Bbefore tiffany hagge kicked off her finance career with CPP Investments, followed by Goldman Sachs and BDT Capital Partners, she could be found on the ice. The co-founder of Dallas-based PE firm Citation Capital played hockey for the Ivy League’s Dartmouth College, then in the National Women’s Hockey League, and for the U.S. Women’s National Hockey Team. One of her favorite memories was playing in front of 17,000 fans at the 2007 IIHF Women’s World Championship against Canada.

“A lot of the qualities of a high-performance athlete translate into my career—team building, grit, perseverance, the willingness to do hard things outside of my comfort zone, and maximizing performance,” Hagge says.

Private equity is not filled with female-founded or led firms. At the end of 2022, according to McKinsey & Co., 48 percent of all entry-level roles in PE were held by women, but just 17 percent of C-level roles. Those stats did not deter Hagge, with an assist from co-founder Lydie B. Hudson, from establishing her middle market control buyout firm in 2023.

The company focuses on founder- and family-led businesses across the services, industrial, and select consumer sectors. Hagge says Citation’s investment strategy is to be the first outside institutional capital to come into the companies. “We look for mature businesses,” she says. “Many of the businesses we invest in are doing things 70 to 80 percent right. It’s that 20 to 30 percent that

we can come in and help them optimize and help them reach their full potential.”

Citation has added a few big wins to its resume this year closing on a deal to acquire a majority interest in smart snack manufacturer Cibo Vita and landing a majority stake in the third-largest residential pest control business on the continent, Aptive Environmental. In March, the company partnered with nonprofit Ownership Works to implement shared ownership programs to build employee engagement and portfolio profitability. This past July, Citation earned an investment of its own from Capital Constellation, a collaboration of the world’s premier institutional investors. Working at major institutions gave Hagge a front-row view of what worked and what didn’t. “I think there’s a real opportunity to invest and bring all the institutional private equity capabilities to investing in founder and family businesses,” Hagge says, “but to do it in a way that’s more culturally accretive and that focuses on helping founders and families and the management teams achieve their visions for their business.”

Hagge and Hudson were introduced through a mutual friend. Hudson’s career includes stops with Lehman Bros. and Boston Consulting Group and a 13-year post as CEO of sustainability, research, and investment solutions with Credit Suisse. “We had quite different jobs, but we realized through our conversations that we had a really strong shared value system, and we also both had a vision of what type of business we want to build and how we would want to do that,” says Hagge, who serves as Citation’s managing partner while Hudson serves as president. The region’s entrepreneurial spirit motivates Hagge, who moved to Dallas from New York City in 2021. She notes the city’s strength in arts, entertainment, and sports—she’s on the board of the Dallas Stars Ownership Advisory Group—as well as the character of its people as pillars of success. “This community is amazing in that everyone wants to grow the pie and wants to see Dallas, and the whole state, grow and be very successful,” Hagge says. “And the amount of smart people doing interesting things here who are also open and willing to share that with one another is unique. I’m proud now to be a Texan and a part of the Dallas community.”

Since its founding in 2023, Citation Capital has poured capital into two key brands.

CIBO VITA

Emre Imamoglu and Ahmet Celik, who came to the U.S. from Turkey, founded Cibo Vita in 2009 to bring a Mediterranean snacking product to the States. The company now features over 1,000 SKUs sold in supermarkets, big box stores, drug chains, specialty retailers, and convenience stores. After connecting with Lydie Hudson just months before, the deal closed in 2024.

APTIVE

ENVIRONMENTAL

Established in 2015 in Utah, Aptive Environmental is one of North America’s largest pest control companies. Co-founder Vess Pearson had known Tiffany Hagge for four years before the deal, so they reached out to Citation following its founding. Hagge says building long-term relationships before a transaction is part of Citation’s investment style. “We like to get to know businesses and their teams and the founders deeply,” Hagge says.

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JOHN STANKEY

it has been about four and a half years since John Stankey took over as AT&T’s CEO. Prior to that, he served as president and COO and played a key role in leading the company through its acquisition of Time Warner in 2016 and DirecTV in 2014. In September, AT&T sold o its 70 percent ownership stake in DirecTV to private equity fi rm TPG for $7.6 billion. It marks a return to its communications roots for AT&T, which has now exited the entertainment business. Stankey is zeroing in on wireless and broadband businesses, with fiber service installations across the country as a main priority. “Over the next year, we’re going to develop great products to simplify and improve our customers’ access to the internet,” Stankey says. “Assets and business models in the industry are about to re-order to meet customer expectations more e ectively for simplicity and performance.”

EDUCATION:

University of California, Los Angeles (MBA), Loyola Marymount University (BBA)

KEY STRATEGIES:

“A strong leader today needs to have a Mary Poppins bag at the ready. You need to develop and maintain a deep bag of tools and tricks (some you may not have ever used before) to call upon as needed.”

DESTINATION OF CHOICE:

“Lake Tahoe is my go-to happy place.”

HOBBIES/PASSIONS:

“I can be content on a peaceful, late afternoon walk on a golf course. I golf because the ease of the game is great for my mental health. I complement it with regular exercise, reading,

and spending as much time with my family as busy schedules and life demands will allow.”

USING AI:

“We use it to answer questions from media outlets (wink, wink!). We also have a developing and carefully architected approach to apply the technology broadly across our operations. Our products will be better and our operations more e ective when we do this right. Our Chief Data O cer Andy Markus and his team have done a very nice job establishing an e ective governance framework and agile architecture.”

LESSON LEARNED:

“Nobody bats 1.000, and a team doesn’t win a World Series if everyone hits for average. I’ve learned to try to be thoughtful and correct on as many of the

fundamental decisions as you can (hit for average), but don’t let it paralyze you in picking your pitches to swing for the fences (hitting for power). Relative to your organization’s size, you need to make a few bigger swings if you ever expect to have a meaningful impact.”

PROUD MOMENT:

“I’m proud of the fantastic job our teams have done to bring AT&T Fiber to more communities in North Texas and around the country. We’ve invested $145 billion over the past five years primarily to enhance and expand our networks, and we now have the nation’s largest consumer fiber network. Locally, AT&T Fiber reaches 72 percent of the city of Dallas, and our reach in Southern Dallas is 80 percent—delivering the world’s best internet technology to neighborhoods where reliable internet access has not always been available.”

HALLOWEEN COSTUME:

“My favorite was dressing as a fire hydrant to complement my grandson’s fire truck and granddaughter’s dalmatian costumes. Although I had to be careful not to stand too long in one spot given the number of dogs in the neighborhood.”

IN THE CELLAR Rob Barney’s wine profiles include rosés, chardonnays, pinot noirs, and cabernet sauvignons.

The Accidental Vintner

Real estate veteran Rob Barney’s quest to find a wine he liked culminated in the launch of Stressed Vine Cellars.

private lender and real estate developer Rob Barney once hated wine. But when a friend encouraged him to go on a journey to find wines that pleased his palate, he learned that he preferred those that were dry farmed or lacked rich soil. Digging in, he worked a wine harvest in Sonoma County and learned from industry vets. Taking it even further, Barney partnered with winemaker Erica Stancli to launch a self-funded wine venture in 2017—Stressed Vines Cellar. Produced in California, the brand’s wines are now carried by more than 25 DFW restaurants, including Al Biernat’s, III Forks, Beverley’s, and Knife. Barney expects close out 2024 having produced 2,800 cases of wine. Growing at 60 to 70 percent a year since its inception, Stressed Vine Cellars has two tasting rooms, one in Richardson and another in Healdsburg, in California’s Napa region. “A wise winery owner gave me this piece of advice: ‘Making wine is the easy part; selling it is the hard part,’” Barney says. “Luckily, it has been fast growth but very controlled.” —Gema Guevara

Fast-food king Roland Parrish matches his McDonald’s stature with outsized philanthropy.

hanging on the wall of roland parrish’s 12 th-story oak cliff tower office is a framed rejection letter from McDonald’s Corp. after he applied to be a franchisee in 1987. Today, he has a new letter from McDonald’s—recognizing him for being in the top percentile of its owners and operators.

story by WILL MADDOX

The CEO of Parrish Restaurants is the second-largest minority franchisee in the McDonald’s empire, with 24 restaurants across the region employing 1,450 people and on track to break $120 million in revenue this year. “To go from a rejection letter to being rated in top percent of McDonald’s is a great achievement,” he says. “It has been an unbelievable run.”

Growing up in Indiana, Parrish was a track star who studied business at Purdue University, winning Big Ten track medals in the 800m dash. After more than a decade with Exxon, he applied to become a McDonald’s franchisee. The company’s rejection did not deter him. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, he called the McDonald’s corporate office in Houston until he talked his way into entering the two-year training program. For the next couple of years, he put in 50 hours at Exxon and 25 more at McDonald’s each week and opened his first McDonald’s on Juneteenth in 1989.

Parrish’s first Dallas location was in Pleasant Grove. From the start, he leaned into McDonald’s tradition of philanthropy. “I can’t take money out of the community,” he says. “I have to put it back in.”

As Parrish’s business has grown, few have matched his generosity. A $2 million gift to Purdue renovated the management and economics library that now bears his name, and a $3 million gift to historically Black Fisk University funded the Career Planning and Development Center now named for him. His foundation has funded state championship football rings for DeSoto and Duncanville High Schools, massive Christmas bike giveaways, internships for the Texas Rangers, and more.

Last fall, Dallas named a 23-acre park in Oak Cliff for him, and in November, he was the 95th recipient of the Linz Award from Communities Foundation of Texas and The Dallas Foundation, one of the most prestigious awards given to a Dallasite.

GIVING BACK

Parrish’s success has helped him quietly become one of Dallas’ most influential philanthropists.

Even though he keeps the rejection letter on his wall, Parrish’s success and generosity aren’t driven by spite or in some attempt to prove others wrong. It stems from his parents, who were community volunteers and set the example for giving back. Beyond that, Parrish says what goes around comes around. “It seems like the more I give, the more blessings are showered on me,” he says.

Outstanding patient outcomes start here.

Methodist Health System is honored to have so many finalists among the 2024 D CEO Excellence in Healthcare Awards nominees.

OUTSTANDING HEALTH SYSTEM EXECUTIVE

Pam Stoyanoff, President and Chief Operating Officer, Methodist Health System

OUTSTANDING HEALTHCARE PRACTITIONER

Shaun Garff, DO, Methodist Health System

OUTSTANDING VOLUNTEER

Mike Koenig, Methodist Mansfield Medical Center

ACHIEVEMENT IN COMMUNITY OUTREACH

Methodist Mansfield Medical Center

OUTSTANDING HEALTHCARE COLLABORATION

Methodist Midlothian Medical Center and Midlothian ISD

OUTSTANDING MEDICAL REAL ESTATE PROJECT

Methodist Celina Medical Center

Congratulations to our entire team on this well-deserved recognition.

Florencia Velasco Fortner Wants to Rewrite the Latino Narrative

The Concilio’s president and CEO is using data-based messaging to build awareness of the demographic’s power and influence.

when florencia velasco fortner was a young girl, she and her family moved from Mexico to California’s San Joaquin Valley. Her parents were migrant workers who impressed upon their children how a quality education could change their lives. It’s a lesson Fortner took to heart. In 2005, seven years after moving to Dallas and working for the Education is Freedom afterschool program, she took the helm of The Concilio, a Dallas nonprofit whose mission is to advance educational and socioeconomic opportunities for Latino families.

In under two decades, she has grown the organization’s annual budget from $400,000 to more than $4 million. Key to her strategy for change is building awareness through messaging based on cold, hard facts. “Our theory for change is that through data, capacity-building, and stakeholder engagement, we will close disparities in health and education for Latinos,” Fortner says. “What we are doing is different because we are leading with data. You can’t argue with data.”

The Concilio recently held its third, invite-only Power of Latinos summit in Dallas, where the organization highlighted results from its research and stats it had pulled together from other sources. It then worked with attendees to craft a storytelling plan around the data.

“It’s pivotal for us because we want to nail down the importance of the Latino story and who we are in the narrative and create ambassadors of truth,” Fortner says. “It also helps instill pride in Latinos and build allies in the non-Hispanic community.”

Time is of the essence for The Concilio’s work. According to Pew Research, the most common age of Latinos in the United States is 11 years old. For White Americans, it’s 58 years old. “The data point driving our movement is a sense of urgency,” Fortner says. “What we’re grounding ourselves on is creating a better future for these 11-year-olds. They’re going to be entering the workforce in 10 years. How can we create better systems, better programs, better strategies to ensure they don’t have the same barriers that I had when I was growing up—some of which still exist?”

Through her work, she has come to realize that there are two primary misconceptions people have about Latinos. “The most common is that we take more than we give—that we’re draining the system,” she says. “But when you look at our buying power, it’s in the trillions.”

Nationally, the figure is $3.4 trillion, to be precise. A 2021 report from Texans for Economic Growth found that DFW Latino households earned about $41.2 billion in annual income, with $6.3 billion of that going to federal taxes and $3.6 billion going to state and local taxes.

“Another misconception is about Latinas—females,” Fortner says. “The way we’re portrayed in the media, we’re either a maid or someone’s nanny or we’re the sexy siren.” In reality, Latina small business owners are the fastest-growing segment of entrepreneurs in the U.S. According to the National Women’s Business Council, there are more than 2 million Latina-owned companies, a number that has grown 87 percent since 2007. They’re not taking jobs; they’re creating them.

“There’s so much that we’re contributing,” Fortner says. “Getting the message out there is important, even if you’re not Latino. This movement is important for anyone who loves and cares about Dallas, the region, and Texas. We love Texas and this community. We want to make it better; we’re trying to focus on a future where we all thrive.”

story by CHRISTINE PEREZ illustration by JAKE MEYERS

Announcing

D CEO’s Greater Good Newsletter

The intersection of nonprofits and business in North Texas.

Brought to you by the editors of D CEO,  D Magazine Partners’ award-winning business title, Greater Good covers the region’s robust nonprofit community and the businesses and leaders who support them.

CHRISTINE PEREZ Editor, D CEO

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As it marks 20 years in business, The Retail Connection continues to disrupt commercial real estate.

sometimes, there is magic in random connections. steve lieberman and alan Shor knew of each other when a mutual friend brought them together in 2003. At the time, both were looking to go into business for themselves. “You’re what you both need,” the friend said. “You each bring things to the table that are complementary; you fill gaps for the other.”

story by CHRISTINE PEREZ

Lieberman was already one of the most successful retail real estate brokers in the nation. Shor had worked as a corporate attorney before taking the helm of a national jewelry chain. Despite their starkly different strengths, styles, and personalities, the two bonded over a shared vision for the kind of company they wanted to build. They launched The Retail Connection in January 2004 with a simple premise: They’d grow by helping their clients grow. Within the first year, they had 60 retail chains as clients. Today, they have about 300. “We’ve always had tremendous clients,” Lieberman says. “It gives us a lot of valuable perspective and influence in the market.”

The duo kicked things off with brokerage, advisory, and investment but quickly took a disruptive approach and added services that, at the time, were unusual for a brokerage firm, including development, financing, and more. Some peers and competitors questioned the firm for straying outside traditional lanes. “But not once in 20 years have we ever had a conflict issue because we’ve been so transparent on the front end,” Shor says.

Given his private equity background, he and Lieberman also began making investments in retail-related businesses. Six have either gone public or sold, including Teavana, which sold to Starbucks, and Diamonds Direct, which sold to Signet.

The firm’s most visible success has been in development. Its latest project is the high-profile Knox Street Dallas, a four-acre project next to the Katy Trail that includes The Knox Hotel and Residences, office, restaurant, and retail space, multifamily residential, and a park.

Beyond its Dallas home base, The Retail Connection has added offices in Austin, Houston, and San Antonio. And though it is marking its 20th anniversary this year, Lieberman has an interesting response when people ask him how long the firm has been in business. “I tell them the business we’re in today is about five years old, and in five years, it’s going to change again,” he says. “One of the things I’m most proud of is how we’ve been able to see opportunities and evolve. You’ve got to embrace change.”

“We are so fortunate,” Shor adds. “We’ve got a great team, and we’re in the right part of the country for our team to execute. That’s a powerful combination.”

BIG WINNER The Knox Street Dallas project won Deal of the Year in D CEO’s 2024 Commercial Real Estate Awards.

Children’s HealthSM congratulates all the D CEO Magazine Excellence in Healthcare finalists. Thank you for accomplishing the incredible for kids across North Texas and beyond.

OUTSTANDING VOLUNTEER

Karissa Beauvais Volunteer | Children’s Health

OUTSTANDING MEDICAL REAL ESTATE PROJECT

Children’s Health Plano Campus Expansion

Visit childrens.com/watchusgrow to learn more about our Plano expansion.

Cancer is a Long Game: What’s Your Strategy?

How does cancer impact employers?

The impact of cancer costs affects most employers no matter their size, as working-age adults represent more than seven in 10 cancer diagnoses in the U.S., according to the nonprofit Cancer and Careers. In Lockton’s data, cancer is the No. 2 diagnosis category driving overall plan spend, but the No. 1 category for high-cost claimants (HCC>$100K). As almost half of the U.S. population receives employer-sponsored health insurance, the challenge for employers is implementing a comprehensive strategy that provides access to high-value cancer care, mitigates financial risks, and improves outcomes for their employees today and evolves into the future.

What should a cancer strategy entail?

A cancer journey can span years, so an effective strategy entails a holistic approach--one that requires close monitoring of the care spend, strategic partnerships with paths to care navigation and expert medical opinion services, utilization management, and employee education on cost-effective care options. For self-funded employers, stop loss policies can protect the underlying health plan, at least temporarily, by transferring the risk of high-cost claimants. Most employers understand the real-world implications of cancer on their employees’ ability to work, their families and their quality of life, as well as their mental health and wellbeing. That’s why a strategy that bridges to support components is critical.

How can employers support their employees?

More Americans are surviving cancer and want to continue working. Most employers we talk to say it’s about more than just health plan costs when it comes to cancer. It’s also about how cancer affects their people’s lives, how to prevent and detect cancer early, and how to support employees who have survived cancer. So, assisting employees with care

navigation and emotional and behavioral health services is important—as are channels and resources to facilitate access to Centers of Excellence for complex cases. The angst of a cancer diagnosis could lead to feelings of job vulnerability for impacted employees, so it’s vital that employers provide support and flexible scheduling around treatment plans and recovery periods. A leave of absence strategy that includes options, such as paid time off, sick leave, continuous or intermittent Family Medical Leave (FMLA), and short-term disability, is essential. Supporting employees as they transition into remission and manage long-term survivorship should also be a focus to assist employees in returning to work post-treatment.

ABOUT THE EXPERT:

As a broker/consultant, how does Lockton help employers with their employee benefit strategy, including cancer?

Employers are looking to implement engaging solutions and practical ways to connect the dots across their benefits and health plan to provide a supportive, seamless experience for employees navigating a cancer journey. Lockton is a partner that employers depend on to guide them to the best decisions for their employees. That means utilizing the right tools, people, resources, and experience to help build a decision-conducive environment to assist our employer partners to improve their employees’ health and wellbeing while also meeting business objectives. In today’s rapidly changing employee benefits environment, data is key for providing our clients with nuanced insights that inform critical decision-making when it comes to managing their employees’ benefits, including cancer costs. Integrating deep data analytics with strategic foresight helps employers to deploy the right strategies for their business and people. We use data to give employers the ability to identify an early trend or cost control to manage complex claims and accurately cost benefits.

Dr. Shealynn Buck is chief SVP, medical o cer, and clinical strategy & informatics practice leader of Lockton People Solutions, serving as a health and welfare strategic consultant for U.S. employer clients and specializing in clinical data analysis to inform actionable cost and risk mitigation solutions. She serves as the co-chair of Lockton Dunning Benefits Clinical Advisory Practice, an interdisciplinary thought leadership team composed of population health, pharmacy, and complex clinical consulting leaders. She also served as the clinical leader of Lockton’s Coronavirus Advisory Practice and guided a multidisciplinary team of 22 clinical experts providing timely and practical clinical advice to 13,000-plus U.S. employers and Lockton Associates. She received her M.D. from Emory University School of Medicine, completing her residency and fellowship training in clinical pathology.

DR. SHEALYNN BUCK, SVP CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER, LOCKTON

What matters to you, matters to us.

You value your employees — so do we.

Jim Umpleby has spent his entire career at Caterpillar, or a subsidiary of the now Irvingbased manufacturer. He took over as the CEO in 2017, and in 2022 the board waived the company’s age policy to ensure he retained the role even longer.

story by BEN SWANGER

CATERPILLAR METAMORPHOSIS

In 2023, a year after moving the global construction equipment giant’s headquarters from Illinois to North Texas, CEO Jim Umpleby led the company to record financial highs. This year, operating margins climbed even higher.

EIGHTEEN MONTHS AFTER CATERPILLAR moved its global headquarters from the Chicago area to North Texas, Jim Umpleby, CEO of the world’s largest construction and mining equipment manufacturer, was staring at some numbers in front of him. Analysts and shareholders saw the figures, too: $67.1 billion and 19.3 percent. The first was record-setting annual revenue for Caterpillar, generated in 2023. The second was its operating margin. Umpleby had orchestrated, by far, the most efficient year in history for Caterpillar, which was founded in 1925. It came in its first full year as an Irving-based operation. This year, revenue has stabilized but operating margins are still climbing—now north of 20 percent. It’s a far cry from the $38.5 billion revenue Umpleby inherited when he took the helm in 2017. The stock price has also skyrocketed, up from $192.64 a share to $381.37 a share (at the time of writing) since the company announced its relocation. The performance earned him a unanimous choice among D CEO editors as the publication’s 2024 CEO of the Year.

portraits by SEAN BERRY

SO,

WHAT PROMPTS A FORtune 500 company—No. 59 on the list, to be exact—to uproot its headquarters from a state it has called home for nearly a century? The 2022 relocation was preceded by a stark warning a decade earlier. In 2012, Umpleby’s predecessor, Doug Oberhelman, penned a message distributed by the State Journal-Register, sounding the alarm on the state’s improperly balanced budgets, high workers’ compensation costs, and high taxes. The total cost of living in the Chicago metro—Caterpillar’s former home was in Deerfield, about 30 miles north of the city—is 12 percent higher than it is in North Texas. At the time of Caterpillar’s decision to move, Illinoisans were burdened with the nation’s highest combined state and local tax rates; it never improved in the decade since Oberhelman’s warning. And according to the National Academy of Social

Insurance, workers comp costs in Illinois are nearly double those in Texas.

Caterpillar has had operations in Texas since the 1960s with manufacturing plants in Seguin, Houston, and Victoria. Its first corporate play in DFW came when it relocated its Electric Power Division to Irving-Las Colinas in 2021. The business behind Caterpillar’s data center operation shifted hundreds of jobs from California, Arizona, and Illinois to DFW. A year later, Irving won the headquarters prize.

“Obviously, this place is booming,” Umpleby says. “People want to be here. Employees want to be here. We wanted to be here. The diverse talent pool is just so wide and deep; that really was the driving factor.”

With 113,200 global employees—including 7,070 in Texas—Caterpillar is most known for its commercial construction and mining equipment. It has more than 2 million construction machines in action across the globe—and hundreds of thousands of children’s construction toys in sandboxes and backyards. The company also makes off-highway diesel and natural gas engines, diesel-electric locomotives, and industrial gas turbines. To date, it has built 30 million engines. Most recently, Caterpillar is exploring opportunities in automated vehicles and data centers. With large manufacturing operations in Mexico, China, Japan, Brazil, the U.K., Germany, and India, the largest concentration of Caterpillar jobs is still in America—a company characteristic that Umpleby has no desire to see change.

“We’re an international company,” says Debra Reed-Klages, a director on Caterpillar’s board and former CEO of the multibillion-dollar Sempra Energy. “Traveling globally out of Dallas is easy, so that was a huge criterion. But also, we needed a location where people wanted to live or relocate to. People are moving out of Illinois, not moving into Illinois. But Texas, this is really a prime location for talent.”

Following Umpleby to North Texas were some 120 corporate employees on top of the employees in the Electric Power Division who were already here. “Our favorable tax structure and access to a skilled workforce always play a role in helping attract companies to Irving-Las Colinas,” says Irving Mayor Rick Stopfer. “I believe Caterpillar’s move reflects Jim’s leadership style—he was focused on locating Caterpillar in a city where it can be profitable.”

Revenue for 2023 was up 13 percent compared to 2022’s $59.4 billion. Until then, 2012 was the last time Caterpillar broke $65 billion, but that year’s profit margin was 13 percent. Through nine months in 2024, the margin was up to 20.9 percent. “We’re not just trying to cut expenses to increase margins,”

CEO Jim Umpleby’s favorite thing to do is visit his company’s job sites. “I’m jetlagged all the time,” he says with a laugh.

With 113,200 workers, Caterpillar boasts more than 2 million active construction machines across nearly 200 countries.

Umpleby says. “We’re not trying to increase the top line without increasing the bottom line. A lot of companies do one or the other; doing both is hard.”

“If you’re overspending to get the production, and you’re not getting a return on it, that’s not a good, sustainable business,” Reed-Klages says. “Jim has totally refocused this organization.” The growth coincides with the meteoric rise of the construction industry, which is now a $2.1 trillion market—a 6 percent increase from 2023. Through three quarters in 2024, Caterpillar reported revenues of $48.6 billion—pacing for around $64.8 billion in 2024.

A SAFETY STRATEGY REFRESH

The CEO shoulders a lot of weight. Ultimately, the world’s infrastructure relies on his decisions and the equipment Caterpillar distributes globally. “We’re in business to make our customers successful,” Reed-Klages says. “Our customers do things like put in place the infrastructure that the world

‘IN THE SAME WAY I DIDN’T THINK ABOUT BEING A CENTER IN THE NBA… I DIDN’T EVER THINK ABOUT BEING THE CEO OF CATERPILLAR.’

needs. They help regions that don’t have electricity get electricity. They put roads in areas where people don’t have the ability to cross the terrain. They do really good things to provide better lives for people.”

Performance and competition are always top of mind, but safety is what keeps him up at night, Umpleby says. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1,069 construction professionals died while working in 2022—equivalent to one death every 8.2 hours. At Caterpillar’s Mapleton, Illinois,

JIM UMPLEBY

CATERPILLAR’S FINANCIAL TURNAROUND UNDER JIM UMPLEBY

A look at how the company’s annual revenue has  evolved under his guidance.

foundry, six deaths have occurred since December 2021. Since 2017, OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) has fined Caterpillar, or a subsidiary, 20 times for workplace safety or health violations—the highest penalty being $145,027. Fortune 500 companies with more fines in that period include Amazon, Walmart, Tesla, UPS, and FedEx.

The OSHA investigations into the Mapleton accidents found that the “foundry routinely exposed employees to unprotected fall hazards as they worked within four feet of deep ceramic containers of su-

per-heated molten iron.” Umpleby knows something needs to change. “We’re going through a refresh of our safety strategy right now to ensure we do everything we can to prevent serious injuries,” he says. “We’re working on new technologies to aid with safety, but most of the time, it’s simple: Do you wear a seat belt when you’re in a dozer or an excavator?

“We’re working on our vehicles being able to detect a person,” he adds. “Our equipment often works in tight spaces, particularly in a complicated job site or an urban setting, and we’re trying to utilize AI to tell the difference between a human and a post. Our cars can beep at us when we’re backing up and tell us if something’s back there, but it doesn’t identify if it’s a human. We’re working on that human detection technology.

“When I retire, and it’s 10 years from now, and I’m looking back at my career,” Umpleby continues, “I won’t remember what our earnings were in 2024, but I’ll remember if someone was seriously injured or lost their lives in one of our facilities.”

PERSISTENCE PAYS OFF

Umpleby’s winding career did not begin in an office. The CEO knows first-hand what it’s like to be on the ground—he still spends much of his time visiting Caterpillar’s construction sites and manufacturing facilities. “I’m jet-lagged all the time,” he jokes. Growing up alongside his sister in northwest Indiana, just a few miles from Chicago and Lake Michigan, his mother was a homemaker while his father was a foreman in a steel mill. Umpleby had a knack for math and science as a kid and followed his father’s advice to pursue a degree in mechanical engineering. He attended the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, a private university in Terre Haute, and spent his summers working at Inland Steel Co. in Chicago, where his dad worked, too.

When he was 21 years old, the summer before his senior year in college, the company needed a foreman at a coke plant. The young Umpleby was given a chance to take the job managing a dozen people who ranged in age from about 30 to 65. After graduating and serving as his school’s student body president, Umpleby was offered an opportunity to return to Inland, but he saw an opportunity to go elsewhere.

“The bulletin board in the student union had job opportunities posted all over it,” Umpleby recalls. “There was a piece of paper with all these companies coming to campus to conduct interviews. Generally, you could get an interview with almost any company that was coming if you woke up early enough

Jim Umpleby’s first full year as CEO of Caterpillar.

to put your name on the sign-up sheet two weeks out. In the wintertime, companies in California or Florida were a bit tougher to land an interview with.

“I didn’t get up early enough on the sign-up day to get one with Solar Turbines [a California-based, wholly owned subsidiary of Caterpillar],” Umpleby continues. “So, on the day of the interviews, I put on the only suit I owned, waited around, and stuck my head in the interview room, hoping there would be a no-show. But the interviewer didn’t have any. At the end of the day, I walked in, shook the interviewer’s hand, and said, ‘You know, I really wanted to interview for your company. I’m very interested. Can I give you my resume?’ He looked at his watch and said, ‘I have to leave for the airport in 20 minutes—but sit down. You have that much time.’”

That interview yielded his first post-college job and a 45-year career with Caterpillar. “I’m really glad I walked into that room,” Umpleby says.

In his first year with Solar Turbines, a low-volume custom manufacturer of industrial gas turbines, he held four different positions, learning about various departments in the organization. He stayed in the project application engineering group for a year and then, at 23, moved to London for a temporary role. By 26, he was considering leaving to pursue an MBA. Instead, a sales engineering job in Singapore came up, and he applied. Despite not having experience in the realm he scored the job. It was supposed to be a three-year stint, but he accepted another sales engineer position in Malaysia after his time in Singapore and spent six years in South East Asia. “My territory was India, Thailand, Malaysia, Brunei, and Singapore,” he says. “I negotiated very, very large deals—contracts worth millions of dollars.”

At the end of those six years, Umpleby returned to the States, landing in San Diego. In 1990, he earned his first real leadership role. “I led an engineering group,” he says. “I then had the opportunities to be a plant manager in a factory, to run an engineering group, to run a service group, to run a marketing group, and then I ran a series of higher-level P&Ls.”

A SIMPLE SOLUTION

Two decades passed as Umpleby was at the helm of those various divisions across Caterpillar. In 2010, he was named president of Solar Turbines, and after three years, his boss retired. He was promoted to group president of Caterpillar’s energy and transportation division—one of its highest-grossing segments. He moved to Peoria and ran the division for four years. But Caterpillar’s financial performance

Caterpillar’s Impact on Irving

“Our pipeline is incredibly strong,” says Irving Mayor Rick Stopfer. In the past fiscal year alone, the Irving Economic Development Partnership team recruited and retained 57 corporate wins that created $190 million in capital investment, 4,700 new and retained jobs, over 2.2 million square feet in commercial space, and 17 corporate headquarters. Several months after Caterpillar announced its relocation, Wells Fargo planted its flag in the region with an 850,000-squarefoot campus spread across two buildings. Representing a $455 million investment in the region, 650 new jobs will be brought to the area once it opens in 2025. Thousands of direct and indirect construction jobs have been created, too. Additionally, in the past year, KDFW FOX 4 announced its relocation to Irving, and Cacique Foods moved its HQ from California to the city, too. “Caterpillar’s relocation reflects that Irving-Las Colinas is the ‘headquarters of headquarters’ in Texas,” Stopfer says. “The company’s move sent a strong signal to other businesses considering a relocation that our city offers everything a company needs to suit high-level executives and employees at all levels.”

was in a tailspin. From its record high in 2012 to the close of 2016, revenue had plummeted to $38.54 billion. The mining market was in a downturn at the time, creating a nearly $30 billion dip in revenue over three years.

“The company was structured in a way that if there were down cycles, it would have a very big impact on us,” Reed-Klages says. The board thought Umpleby was the ideal leader who would not only stabilize the business but also take it to new heights. “Jim was very focused on OPACC [operating profit after capital charges] to ensure that investments were efficient. He wanted to ensure that we didn’t overinvest in plants, that we get more production out of existing facilities, how we could return more to shareholders, and how we could meet some of the peaks and valleys that occur naturally in the business.”

The career Caterpillar man was named CEO in 2017. “If you would have asked me when I was 50 years old if I thought I would be the CEO of Caterpillar, I would have told you, ‘No chance, no way,’” the now 66-year-old Umpleby says. “In the same way, I didn’t think about being a center in the NBA—especially at my height [5-foot-7], it would be a real challenge—I didn’t think about ever being the CEO of Caterpillar.”

The turnaround wasn’t easy—after all, there was more at play than just market volatility. “There were several years where mining increased, and part of that was associated with the increase of economic activity in China,” Umpleby says. “But that drove a bit of a bubble that burst in 2012. We also made a couple of acquisitions around 2010 and 2011 that didn’t work out.”

In 2011, six years before he took the helm, Caterpillar bought the world’s No. 1 maker of mining equipment, Bucyrus, for $8.6 billion. Later that year, Caterpillar shelled out an additional $886 million in a reverse merger with ERA Mining Machinery, a Chinese manufacturer of roof supports for mines, and subsidiary Siwei Mechanical & Electrical Manufacturing Co. Some outlets speculate that the Bucyrus deal cost Oberhelman his job. (He officially exited the company via retirement.) Several years later, headlines in the ilk of ‘How Caterpillar Ruined Bucyrus’ made the rounds.

Caterpillar’s second deal in 2011 was also a swingand-miss. It somehow managed to overlook intentional accounting fraud within Siwei to the tune of half a billion dollars. As a result, Caterpillar took an impairment charge of $580 million. Come 2016, the company had sunk by an average of 10 percent each year since its record-breaking 2012. Getting the house in order involved more than righting

‘CATERPILLAR’S MOVE REFLECTS JIM’S LEADERSHIP STYLE—HE WAS FOCUSED ON LOCATING CATERPILLAR IN A CITY WHERE IT CAN BE PROFITABLE.’

RICK STOPFER

financials. “Jim’s priority was conducting business with a strong ethical core,” Reed-Klages says. “At the end of the day, we’re in business to make our customers successful, and he prioritized what actions we could take to make them successful.”

Umpleby says he knew when he became CEO that things would have to change. “Starting in October 2016, before I even was on the job, I put together a team that met every day for several weeks and laid out a strategy for how we were going to lead the business,” he says. “One thing we decided to do was try to make the business as simple as we could—at least at a macro level—and have that strategy on one piece of paper so everybody in the company at least has some idea of what it is that we were trying to accomplish.”

Much of that strategy encompassed growing its digital capabilities and services business—services

encompass everything Caterpillar does for a customer after the initial purchase of equipment. Umpleby wanted to double the vertical’s revenue from $14 billion in 2016 to $28 billion in 2026. Currently, Caterpillar has reached $23 billion in services revenue. “I think the focus for too long had been too much on selling new equipment and not enough on the services,” Reed-Klages says. “Having a strong services business allows for more stability through peaks and valleys. If people aren’t buying new equipment, they must replace parts and get services on equipment they’re trying to use for longer periods. So, you reallyneed both components in your business.”

OPPORTUNITIES AHEAD

It extends beyond services. Umpleby is trying to establish Caterpillar as a world leader across all its segments. The 59th richest company in the world on a per-year revenue basis, with a market cap north of $184 billion, is known for its signature massive, million-dollar machinery and is already entrenched as a construction behemoth. In all, commercial construction accounts for about 75 percent of Caterpillar’s business, and according to several analytics databases, the company holds about 16 percent of the market share. Its biggest competitors include John Deere, JCB, Volvo’s construction equipment department, and Komatsu.

The biggest opportunity Umpleby foresees is in the data center boom—an operation based in North Texas alongside its corporate team. “It has become a very strong part of our business,” the CEO says. “Many companies across the globe use our generator sets as backups for their data centers. We’re expanding our capability to manufacture more engines and more parts to satisfy that demand.

“Those data centers, of course, require a lot of power,” he continues. “Electricity demand in the United States from 2007 to 2022 was relatively flat. Now, of course, it’s starting to go up. Some say 2x CAGR [compound annual growth rate] per year or 3x CAGR per year. In these data centers, generative AI takes a tremendous amount of power.”

“At the same time, there has been an under-investment in traditional power generation sources to supply data centers in the U.S., Umpleby says. “Some of the big legacy power plants have been taken out of service, and there are a lot more renewables, wind turbines, and solar panels,” he says. “Those are intermittent energy sources, so you still need backup. We’re very excited about what we call distributed generation—an opportunity to

Umpleby got his start with Caterpillar at Solar Turbines. To date, the division has sold 16,000 turbine engines.

sell both our gas turbines and reciprocating engines and distributed applications throughout the grid. We’re starting to win some of that business.”

Umpleby is also pushing in on autonomous trucking and electric vehicles. Over the last decade, Caterpillar has deployed more than 600 mining trucks the size of a two-story house that are fully automated. (A typical human-operated mining truck can cost upwards of $6 million—the tires alone cost $42,500.) “Electric vehicles require a lot of commodities, such as copper, and our mining business benefits from that,” he says. “On the autonomous side, it’s amazing how much more productive they’ve made our customers. There are typically 50 mining trucks at a site, now we’re talking about 10 to 15 trucks. And we’ve had zero reportable injuries with those autonomous vehicles since we started this.”

Reed-Klages believes no other company is better poised to benefit from the future of the energy landscape. “Caterpillar produces all the necessary equipment to support electric reliability, which gives us a real competitive advantage as this transition goes along,” she says. “There’s no company better positioned.”

A ROADMAP FOR THE FUTURE

Even as the latest big player in Dallas-Fort Worth’s growing economy forges ahead, the U.S. construction industry is projected to slow by around 3 to 5 percent annually over the next five years, according to FMI Corp.’s 2024 North American Engineering and Construction Outlook. However, unlike Caterpillar’s last drudge through a market downturn in 2016, Umpleby has not put all the company’s eggs in one basket. “Yes, some of our business lines are depressed,” he says. “Construction is struggling, our locomotive business is quite slow, but oil and gas are healthy, and our Solar Turbines business and power generation are strong, too.”

For the newly minted North Texan, retirement is on the horizon. In 2022, the board waived its age limit policy of 65 years old to ensure Umpleby could stay on board a little longer. “When he turned 65, he had only been the CEO for a brief period relative to the norm,” Reed-Klages says. “So, success was the first criterion in determining whether to waive that—and Jim’s been successful. Next was making sure the succession plan was done correctly.”

Reed-Klages is confident the foundation that Umpleby has put in place will stand the test of market volatility. “We’re going to go through cycles, but Jim has built the company to where we will still have good margins and good sales, even in a down cycle,” she says.

“I have no doubt,” Umpleby says, “that this company will continue to grow over the next 10 to 20 years—and DFW is a great environment to do that.”

No successor has been named, and exactly when Umpleby will retire is still up in the air. But one thing is for sure: he is looking forward to hitting the slopes once he hangs it up. “I’d like to take more than a three-day vacation and ski more than three days a year while I still can,” he says with a chuckle. “I’ve been very, very fortunate to have a career that has been an adventure in and of itself.”

Umpleby’s impressive performance at Caterpillar has led the editors of D CEO to name him our 2024 CEO of the Year.

story by HILARY LAU

ALONG WITH RUNNING YLANG 23 , HER FAMILY’S 40-YEAR-OLD JEWELRY BUSINESS, ALYSA TEICHMAN IS REINVENTING PIERCING WITH HER LUXURY STUDIO, WILDLIKE . THE MULTIMILLION-DOLLAR ENTERPRISE AIMS TO BRING SOPHISTICATION TO THE $8 BILLION INDUSTRY.

portrait by KATHY TRAN

AFTER TESTING LUXURY PIERCING EXperiences at her family’s high-end jewelry store, Ylang 23, Alysa Teichman saw an opportunity to merge the tattoo culture with designer jewelry and create a company of her own. Today, that market gap is no more. Across the street from Dallas’ iconic Al Biernat’s steakhouse at the longstanding Shops of Highland Park, Teichman’s body piercing studio, Wildlike, has been a success from the start. Designed by local firm Swoon, The Studio, it emits a luxurious yet comfortable ethos with pops of bright, modern glitz and shining gemstones—it’s what sets it apart from other players, especially traditional tattoo parlors.

“People were using piercings to mark a moment in time that was important to them—a birthday, an anniversary, a cancer-versary, a breakup, a divorce,” Teichman says. “I saw that there needed to be a physical space devoted to this.”

She launched the company in 2021 with a $530,000 SBA loan. In its first full year, Wildlike brought in $3 million in sales. Two years later, she secured a second $1 million SBA loan to continue building the brand. Recent success led Teichman to replicate her Dallas store with a second Wildlike studio in New York last year. There’s plenty of room for growth. According to Verified Market Research, the body piercing jewelry market is valued at more than $8 billion and is projected to approach $11 billion by 2031.

A FAMILY AFFAIR

Teichman’s father, Charles, paved the way for Wildlike when he emigrated from France to the United States in 1979, decades after his parents and brothers survived the Holocaust. Charles worked as a consultant for a costume jewelry company called Ylang-Ylang (pronounced e-long e-long). The company was one of two top jewelers in its class—the other being Zoe Coste—operating in what would grow into a $2.3 billion-per-year industry by the late 1980s. Made from inexpensive materials rather than precious metals and gemstones, costume pieces are designed to mimic the look of fine jewelry while providing a more a ordable price tag.

Charles met his soon-to-be wife, Joanne, shortly after moving to New York. The two married in 1980 and five years later relocated to the Lone Star State after Charles took control of the Texas territory of the Ylang-Ylang business.

Joanne quit her advertising job and began working with Charles in YlangYlang’s store in Dallas; the couple also oversaw the Houston store. The local shop opened in 1985 at Galleria Dallas, three years after the mall made its debut with anchor tenants Marshall Field’s, Gump’s, and Saks Fifth Avenue. “A lot of people very lovingly remember the kiosk in the Galleria—that was the first iteration of my parents’ company,” Teichman says. “This kind of ‘freestanding store’—my dad hates when people call it a kiosk, which is really endearing—is where they first sold costume jewelry.” In 1988, the couple traded their shares in Ylang-Ylang’s Houston store for partner shares in the Dallas store.

About a decade later, the company moved away from costume jewlery to focus on a higher-end mix that included pieces by well-known designers Jennifer Meyer, Irene Neuwirth, and Cathy Waterman—whose bracelet was worn by Gwyneth Paltrow as she accepted her 1999 Academy Award for Best Actress in Shakespeare in Love. The brand was also an early adopter of online retail; its website went live in 2000 and, by 2003, had launched an e-commerce platform that took the Teichmans’ fine jewelry sales business international. At its peak, the website was doing several million dollars in online sales per year. In 2025, Ylang 23 expects to do $10 million in sales.

business development in 2016 during its landmark 30th year of business.

Three decades of Ylang 23 was also deemed an occasion for another epic party. In typical overthe-top Teichman fashion, the family dreamed up an Andy Warhol-themed soiree called “The Next Now” and flew in 20 of the famed artist’s works from Christie’s and The Andy Warhol Foundation for guests to admire. A Beatles cover band serenaded guests as they took in the art.

In her first 12 months in her new role, Teichman developed buying, inventory, and financial systems that had never been in place. She also re-platformed the company’s website.

“I consider myself to be a lifelong learner,” she says. “My curiosity about the world has been a north star for me in running my business. I’ve done a million different things to continue learning how to be the best leader and operator of small businesses I can be.” In 2020, Teichman again expanded her role in the family business, this time becoming a minority partner. Since then, Teichman has helped lead Ylang 23 alongside her parents, who still run the company’s day-to-day operations.

and

couple married

In 2004, Ylang-Ylang moved from its kiosk into a new store at the Galleria between Cartier and Louis Vuitton. Charles and Joanne, along with their kids Jake and Alysa— who then were 10 and 17 years old, respectively—marked the occasion with go-go dancers and a ribbon cutting. After all, the Teichmans had been dubbed “the queen and king of throwing parties” by Paper City. In 2005, the couple renamed the business to Ylang 23 and three years later, for its 23rd anniversary, threw a 1980s-themed bash nodding to its origin. (See sidebar on the significance of the number 23.)

After 28 years at the Dallas Galleria, Ylang 23 moved in 2013 into a nearly 2,000-square-foot store at the Plaza at Preston Center. Charles and Joanne also hired Alysa, who had recently graduated from Northwestern University with a journalism degree. She worked as a full-time salesperson at Ylang 23 briefly in 2009 and, after completing Fossil’s executive development program and spending three years in New York working for women’s accessories brand Jack Rogers, was hired back on as Ylang 23’s director of e-commerce in 2013. She wasn’t yet back for good, though; after being accepted into NYU’s Stern School of Business, Teichman returned to New York to complete an MBA, striving to learn more about entrepreneurship, strategy, corporate finance, and marketing. Ready to scale new heights, she moved back to Dallas afterward and took the role of Ylang 23’s vice president of

RUNNING WILD

A pillar of the family business strategy has been to keep a finger on the pulse of current trends, something that’s crucial in an ever-changing industry like jewelry or fashion. In the 1980s and 1990s, the trend was costume jewelry. Later, the family noticed just how important it was to have luxury pieces to appeal to wealthier consumers. “I think the common thread with all of us, which I think I really inherited from my parents, is that they always knew what was cutting edge,” Teichman says. “More lately, piercings and body modification have become cutting edge in the jewelry business, so I jumped all over that.”

In addition to her work for Ylang 23, much of her time is dedicated to building Wildlike. Beyond her parents, she leans on a network of colleagues, trusted friends, and mentors for gut checks and welcomed advice.

“Her legacy of business acumen and value is deeply rooted in her parents’ remarkable success, combined with her own fervor and affection for

the jewelry industry,” says Marnese Barksdale Elder, CEO and founder of consulting firm Mecca Management Solutions and one of Teichman’s mentors. “The apple has certainly not fallen far from the tree.”

Wildlike offers various services for individuals and groups, with appointments ranging from $50 to $150. Jewelry is purchased separately—the shop has an eponymous in-house piercing jewelry line with 14-karat gold pieces adorned with diamonds, topaz, sapphires, and other gemstones that range in price from $75 to more than $1,500. Wildlike also features designers who specialize in piercing jewelry. Its current roster includes BVLA, Ember Body Jewelry, Tawapa, Lizzie Mandler, Pamela Love, and Maria Tash. Piercing professionals at Wildlike can provide jewelry changeouts, deep cleanings, size changes, and consultation around placement and styles. Common piercings include ears (up to four piercings per client appointment), nose, navel, septum (the cartilage wall in the center of the nose separating the nostrils), and nipples (one or both).

“We use internally threaded labrets with flat backs, which basically optimizes for healing and swelling and comfort,” Teichman says, explaining two-part earring studs with a tubelike post and a front piece that screws off and on. “We’ll have a piercer and stylist take a look at the client’s anatomy and figure out the best placement for the piercings they want, and then go from there on jewelry.”

Once jewelry is chosen and purchased, it is sterilized in the shop’s STATIM sterilizer—the same technology used to sterilize endoscopic and cataract equipment—in a process that takes about six minutes.

Designed by Dallasbased Swoon, The Studio to evoke both comfort and luxury, Wildlike’s Highland Park venue opened earlier this year.

After early success, Alysa Teichman expanded Wildlike and opened a second piercing studio in America’s fashion capital, New York.

SISTER BRANDS

In 2024, after more than a decade at Preston Center, Ylang 23 moved into a neighboring unit of Wildlike at The Shops of Highland Park. Of course, the Teichmans threw a party to mark the milestone.

“Many people have pivoted to focus on the online world; despite the fact that Ylang was very digitally native pretty early, we have redirected our focus to the physical store,” Teichman says. “At Wildlike, people can talk about what they’re getting pierced and why. It’s a business that grew so much from word of mouth, which is the purest interaction we can have with our customers and community.”

Although the two shops are now close in proximity, Ylang 23 and Wildlike will always maintain their own independent identities, Teichman says. “They’re both very different, and they both have very different challenges,” she says. “At the end of the day, the cool thing is that there are a lot of synergies between the two businesses. We exist to create vehicles for people to experience joy.”

Much of 2024 was focused on Ylang 23’s move into The Shops of Highland Park and filling a new retail space that is 60 percent larger than its previous venue at Preston Center. Teichman says a full rebrand and overhaul of the sales organization are planned for the year ahead. The synergies between Ylang 23 and Wildlike are deepening, too.

“I had a vision for having the businesses close to each other so that we can expose our client subsets to each other as sister brands,” Teichman says. “My favorite thing to do at the Dallas stores is walk people back and forth. They’re such different experiences and feel so different, but you can tell they’re related.”

What’s In a Name?

Pronounced e-long e-long, this tropical flowering tree is native to Indonesia, Malaysia, New Guinea, the Philippines, the Solomon Islands, Australia, and parts of Thailand and Vietnam. The essential oil extracted from its flowers has a strong smell, is described as heavy and sweet, and is one of the most prevalent  natural ingredients in the perfume industry. YlangYlang is also the name of a European thoroughbred racehorse that placed 11th at the 2024 Prix De l’Opera in Paris, France, after winning the Fillies’ Mile G1 race at Newmarket in Suffolk, England.

YLANG–YLANG

As the healthcare industry continues to shift to value, leaders are focusing on treating the whole patient. Many of those honored in D CEO’s 2024 Excellence in Healthcare Awards incorporate elements outside of traditional approaches to improve results.

story by WILL MADDOX

THE REGION’S OAK STREET HEALTH

clinics see around 14,000 patients a year, mostly in healthcare deserts in Dallas and Fort Worth. For many of these individuals, factors outside of what happens in a medical facility will determine their health.

“I tell providers when we hire them that they are going to be one of the best medical professionals in primary care in all of Dallas in about a year or two,” says Dr. Christopher Berry, Oak Street Health’s senior medical director. “They’re going to face some of the most challenging things they’ve ever seen, both clinically in terms of the diseases they’ll be treating as well as the social struggles.”

Research by the Centers for Disease Control found that social determinants of health can decide up to 50 percent of health outcomes. Even the best physicians in the most advanced facilities struggle to make a dent in health outcomes for patients who lack access to quality housing, adequate income, healthy food, reliable transportation, social and educational engagement, and other factors.

Hospitals and clinics are responding by employing social workers and mental health professionals to address these issues and other challenges. Supporting organizations, including Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation, helping to guide how resources can be deployed by healthcare providers.

This year’s D CEO Excellence in Healthcare Awards recognizes providers and organizations for their outstanding work. Many of them now treat elements outside of traditional healthcare to improve patient outcomes. For this feature, we spoke with three finalists about their work. Along with Oak Street Health, they include August’s Artists and a unique partnership between JPS Health Network and NRP Group.

Beyond the greater good, there are fiscal motivators behind treating social determinents of health. The healthcare industry is shifting to a value-based system where payers like Medicare require providers to care for patients in an efficient way and cap the amount they receive per patient.

If a provider treats a patient with care that exceeds their allotted funds, they must eat the cost. So, it literally pays to address social determinants of health.

MAKING THE BUSINESS CASE

Employers stand to benefit from paying attention to social determinants of health, too. They subsidize their workers’ healthcare and have a vested interest in keeping employees healthy and managing expenses. Healthcare costs growing at an unsustainable rate and nearing one-fifth of the country’s GDP. Although the U.S. far outspends other nations in per capita healthcare spending, the country’s outcomes lag its peers—primarily because the U.S. does a poor job of addressing social determinants of health.

The state, via tax dollars, is going to pay for care one way or another for the half of the country that is uninsured or gets coverage from the government. In Texas, which has long led the nation in uninsured residents, taking care of upstream needs for these individuals can have a dramatic impact on state spending.

“The value-based care concept is transformational for this work because we get the full amount for the anticipated cost of a patient up front, and we are able to pay for the kinds of interventions that we think are going to make a difference,” says Berry of Oak Street Health.

That can involve connecting with social workers to put patients in touch with nonprofits and government programs to meet housing and transportation needs or with an insurance expert to help patients access their full complement of health benefits. Each week, the Oak Street Health team has multidisciplinary meetings with physicians, nurses, therapists, community health workers, and others to build holistic patient plans.

Rethinking the system is both more rewarding and efficient, Berry says. “A hospital provider is going to do a fantastic job in the hospital, but as soon as you leave, they’re done, and that’s how it works throughout our system. At Oak Street, we don’t have that luxury. We have to be thinking about everything.”

THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX

Although some healthcare providers and employers connect patients and employees with resources to address social determinants of health, others strive to meet those needs directly. JPS Health Network formed a partnership with NRP Group, a Cleveland-based housing development and property management firm to do just that. JPS leases land it owns near the hospital to NRP, which is building a 67-unit residential development on the site near the medical district.

Called Thrive on Crawford, the $21.8 million complex will include 60 affordable units and seven market-rate units. The goal is to provide affordable housing as an option for hospital employees and patients. Although government-subsidized affordable housing is nothing new, few healthcare entities have moved directly into the space.

NRP will also organize after-school programs, homework help, tutoring, adult education support, financial literacy programs, first-time homebuyer support, job readiness preparation, ESL assistance, and annual healthcare screenings. JPS Chief Legal Officer Daphne Walker, who began her career as a nurse, has seen how social determinants of health can impact outcomes. She helped guide the partnership with NRP across the finish line after more than four years of negotiations that culminated in September.

Walker says the partnership began with three primary goals: put to use some of the land that JPS owned, explore public-private partnership opportunities, and diversify revenue streams. What pushed NRP to the top of the list of partners was the company’s commitment to JPS’ greater mission of transforming healthcare delivery. “We’ve got to focus on the whole patient, so the fact that this would squarely hit on some of those social determinants of health made this transaction attractive,” Walker says.

Increasing healthcare costs and slumping outcomes are forcing organizations to be more creative in how they care for patients, and this deal breaks new ground for both organizations. NRP has developed similar properties with other government entities, but never with a hospital district.

JPS has sold land to a nonprofit that built a food pantry but has never been a residential landowner. The partners broke ground on the apartment building earlier this year; it’s expected to be finished by the end of 2025.

“Now we’ve got something for the community that can potentially address housing needs near other growing businesses,” Walker says. “We’re covering potential financial needs and offering something for members of the community.”

MIND, BODY, AND SOUL

Housing and support services offer a straightforward benefit to healthcare outcomes; other organizations work on individuals’ social and emotional well-being. Erica Olenski is the mother of a three-time cancer and stroke survivor who has managed every aspect of her son’s complex care. Multiple surgeries and the long arc of recovery took its toll on Olenski. She responded by creating a nonprofit to support others going through a similar journey.

August’s Artists provides families with creative outlets to process their experience in the hospital through artistic expression. “It was very interesting in hindsight to reflect on the trauma I experienced in that caregiver function,” Olenski says. “The recovery and healing from that trauma became little nuggets of wisdom that later inspired the formation of August’s Artists and the work that we’re doing there.”

It is common for children and families to decorate the windows of hospital doors with crayons, and Olenski had an epiphany while working on some art of her own. “At 3 a.m., it occurred to me as I was thinking about the mortality of the situation—that if we survive, how do we give back to the community? Or how do we honor his legacy as we go forward?”

The nonprofit provides art supplies to patients, caregivers, and staff and creates digital versions of the artwork to help with trauma recovery. The digital images can be put on a t-shirt or poster and used to process, fundraise, or remember time spent in the hospital. What began at Children’s Medical Center in Dallas has expanded around Dallas-Fort

Winners

Finalists

Worth, Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in Florida, and Boston Children’s. Artist and professor Nick Cave explained to the Guggenheim Museum how art can be a healing force in the face of tragedy. “It brings this sort of mourning sense of loss in a critical time, but it stands with hope and optimism,” he says.

It is Olenski’s hope that artwork created via her organization can provide the same sense of hope to patients like her son August and be more than a distraction from what the patients are experiencing. With research continuing to show how trauma can have lasting physical health implications, Olenski sees increasing value placed on organizations like August’s Artists.

“As the healthcare industry moves towards a model of care that’s value-based and not transactional, it focuses on longterm outcomes,” she says. “Our program is intended to be a functional tool for trauma recovery,” she says.

Just as housing, access to healthy food, and transportation are essential to lasting and efficient healing, social and emotional health are increasingly important factors in healthcare outcomes and healthcare costs. Leaders like Berry, Walker, and Olenski are taking different approaches to doing the same thing: improving healthcare delivery by meeting needs outside the exam room.

“Trauma is stored in our body in a lot of ways,” Olenski says. “There’s increasing research and evidence to suggest that if you help heal the trauma, you also can heal the physical body more effectively. That’s inherently what we’re trying to do—support the clinical delivery of care.”

INDIVIDUALS

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

Robert Walker, Scottish Rite for Children

HEALTHCARE ADVOCATE

Erica Olenski, August’s Artists Finalists: Januari Fox, Prism Health North Texas; Dr. DeLancey Johnson, Parkland Health; Dr. Amy McIntosh, Scottish Rite for Children

HEALTHCARE EXECUTIVE

Freda Mowad, Quality Rehab Management Finalists: Michael Adams, 7-Eleven; Mark Hebard, Spine Team Texas; Luke Hejl, TimelyCare; Brian Tyler, McKesson Corp.; John Zutter, Lantern

HEALTH SYSTEM EXECUTIVE

Michael Horne, Parkland Health

Finalists: Allen Harrison, Medical City Healthcare; Pete McCanna, Baylor Scott & White Health; Pam Stoyanoff, Methodist Health System

HEALTHCARE INNOVATOR

Kathi Cox, Texas Health Resources Finalists: Dr. Karl Csaky, Retina Foundation of the Southwest; Scott Hurst, Patient Physician Network/Libertatem Holdings; Raji Kumar, Crescent Regional Hospital; Alfonso Montiel, SilverStone Health

HEALTHCARE PRACTITIONER

Dr. Christopher Berry, Oak Street Health Finalists: Dr. Shaun Garff, Methodist Mansfield Medical Center; Dr. Alan Podawiltz, JPS Health Network; Dr. Gregory Smith, Texas Health Physicians Group; Dr. Robert Smith, Baylor Scott & White Health

VOLUNTEER

Mike Koenig, Methodist Mansfield Medical Center

Finalists: Karissa Beauvais, Children’s Health; Orise Kopnak, Baylor Scott & White Health; Mike Stovall, Texas Health Resources/Texas Health Dallas

ORGANIZATIONS

COMMUNITY OUTREACH

JPS Health Network

Finalists: Methodist Mansfield

Medical Center; Prism Health North Texas; Texas Health Resources

INNOVATION

Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation

Finalists: Health Wildcatters; Texas Health Physicians Group; Transworld Systems, Verily

MEDICAL RESEARCH

Scottish Rite for Children

Finalists: Alpha Cognition; UT Southwestern Medical Center; UNT Health Science Center at Fort Worth

WELLNESS PROGRAMS

Texas Health Resources

Finalists: JPS Health Network; Salience Health; Whitley Penn

HEALTH SYSTEM

Baylor Scott & White Health

Finalists: Medical City Healthcare; UT Southwestern Medical Center; CHRISTUS Health Network

HEALTHCARE COLLABORATION

Baylor Scott & White Health and Uplift Education

Finalists: JPS Health Network and Hear Fort Worth; Methodist Midlothian Medical Center and Midlothian ISD; Parkland Health and Childhood Poverty

Action Lab; Texas Health Resources and Austin Street Center

MEDICAL REAL ESTATE PROJECT

JPS Health Network’s Thrive on Crawford

Finalists: Baylor Scott & White Health’s new Frisco campus; Children’s Health’s Plano campus expansion; Methodist Health System’s Celina Medical Center; Texas Health Resources’ Rockwall expansion

MERGER OR ACQUISITION

Medical City Healthcare acquires Wise Health System

Finalists: Baylor Scott & White Health acquires NextCare, Platinum Dermatology Partners acquires Skin & Cancer Associates, Addus HomeCare acquires Tennessee Quality Care

THE HOLIDAYS ARE HERE.

From intimate social gatherings to large-scale corporate celebrations, Vestals Catering is your trusted catering partner this holiday season.

FIELD NOTES

NORTH TEXAS BUSINESS ADVICE, ANALYSIS, and COMMENTARY

TOUGHEST CHALLENGE

Dancing Into the Great Unknown

Charles Santos, Executive Director TITAS/DANCE UNBOUND

“titas was in severe financial distress when i first took over in 2001 . it took years to make the turnaround a reality. The biggest challenge in the process was staying true to the idea that we could maintain the artistic product. In the end, we made it through the turnaround, retired all the debt, and established a healthy surplus for the company’s stability. Fifteen years ago, we also entered a special co-producing relationship with AT&T Performing Arts Center. As part of the turnaround, this required checking my ego as a free-standing presenter and producer and exploring a new business model for TITAS. It was a critical decision. I had to convince my board of the idea that the landscape was changing and that we had to evolve. This was a complete change in our business model. It was tough in the first few years, but the partnership has become a national model of how shared resources, while remaining separate companies, can be a real success story.” —as told to Layten Praytor

The Highest and Best Use

Dallas is among the nation’s leaders in office conversion projects. Here’s what it means for the city’s downtown.

story by AUDREY HENVEY

Taffordability, growth, and economic diversity continue to lure new residents and businesses to North Texas. Given the region’s size and strong demographics, the market is attracting more than its share of commercial real estate investors, too. It’s a trend that’s expected to continue; ULI and PwC just named Dallas the nation’s top market to watch for 2025 in their influential Emerging Trends in Real Estate report.

One area for investment that’s gaining steam in Dallas is office conversions. With more than 5 million square feet of vacant space either being transformed or in the planning stages, it’s one of the most active markets in the country. The projects are concentrated downtown, says Blake Shipley, managing director for JLL.

Jennifer Scripps, president and CEO of Downtown Dallas Inc., says the city has been a

pioneer; by the time other cities were looking at conversions to adjust to post-pandemic changes in office space demand, Dallas had already seen close to 40 conversions. The story began two decades ago, she says, when just a few hundred people lived downtown. “We had a lot of buildings in the early 2000s that were prime candidates for conversion,” Scripps says. “They were architecturally beautiful buildings but had become functionally obsolete as office buildings.”

A handful of developers took advantage of historic tax credits and other incentives to tackle conversion products. Early pioneers transformed the Dallas Power and Light building and the Magnolia building into residential and hotel uses. Among the biggest recent projects is The National—formerly the First National Bank Tower—which reopened during the pandemic after being shuttered since 2010. Anchored by the Thompson Hotel, the 52-story, 1.5 millionsquare-foot building is now a vertical mixed-use project that includes luxury apartments, restaurants, retail, and office. It was redeveloped by Todd Interests, a leader in the adaptive reuse and conversion space. (See sidebar.)

The pandemic’s impact on office demand and a need for affordable housing put a spotlight on office conversions, even inspiring a federal initiative designed to accelerate such projects. “Covid drew more awareness to the question of whether office was the highest and best use,” says Cribb Altman, managing director of JLL’s office tenant rep group in Dallas.

Another project that stands as an example of a successful conversion is Santander Tower (formerly Thanksgiving Tower). Multifamily expert Katy Slade got to know the ins and outs of the building, owned by Jonas Woods, when her firm, Mintwood, converted the top two floors of the building into hotel space, now part of Mint House, which has properties across the country. Working with WDG Architecture, Slade and her team created furnished units designed for corporate use, long-term stays, and group events.

The project’s success served as a prelude to a new multifamily project within Santander Tower called Peridot. Once again, WDG served as the architect; Dallas-based Swoon, the Studio oversaw branding and interior design. Floors 18-25, 32-34, and 37-39 now house apartment units

with floorplans up to 1,557 square feet. Amenities include a fitness center, Pilates studio, saunas, the city’s first indoor pickleball court, game lounge, pool and deck, resident lounge, and more.

Santander Tower’s proximity to a bounty of restaurants and stores in Dallas’ Main Street District helped, as did significant upgrades that Woods’ Pacific Elm Properties had already made to the building, Slade says. “The lobbies and the building operate as a Class A office building,” she says. “Without that, it would have been hard to make the project viable.”

Both Peridot and The Sinclair—a luxury apartment and office from Todd Interests a block away in what formerly was Energy Plaza— are prime conversion success stories.

“These buildings are doing well, and they also help us,” says Scripps of DDI. “We’re a city that’s attracting people from both coasts, and so the idea of not driving to every single place you go doesn’t surprise a lot of people, depending on where they’re coming from.”

Downtown is one of Dallas’ fastest-growing residential neighborhoods, she adds. “We see this [trend] as a good thing. Rather than people moving farther and farther out, having longer and longer commute times, infill population growth is a good thing for the Dallas when we’re thinking about our competition versus the suburbs. I believe the more talented people who choose to live downtown, the more businesses want to be here.”

Altman of JLL calls office conversion in the CBD an experiment. “The main reason it could work, or will work, is because of the density that exists down there,” he says.

The final outcome of the experiment is to be determined. But for those who choose to play a part in it, Slade says, flexibility is key. “Be aware of the mindset of the entire team, from the financing partner to the construction team and everybody involved,” she says, “Be open to the complexity that it requires, and be willing to be making decisions as you go. That’s critical. The Peridot project couldn’t have happened without Pacific Elm and the vision that they had, and their willingness to be constructive as the project went on.”

THE PIONEER

Proof in the Practice

Todd Interests has led the way in giving underperforming office buildings new life.

Todd Interests is no stranger to the art of adaptive reuse. It converted a historic U.S. Post office along the DART line into luxury residential units and event space. It gave The National a $450 million transformation. Revamping the former Energy Plaza Tower into The Sinclair cost $300 million. All told, Todd Interests has converted more than 4 million square feet of office space into hotel, residential, or mixed-use space. “We’ve seen you can have nicer finishes,” Todd says, pointing out custom light fixtures on display at The Sinclair. “You wouldn’t be able to afford to do that in a ground-up project.”

A SENSE OF PLACE

Designed by Caroline Todd Interiors, amenity spaces at The Sinclair are intended to feel like a private club for residents.

What is one thing about the North Texas business environment that you would change?

edited by LAYTEN PRAYTOR

BRET FARRAR

Founder and CEO SENDERO CONSULTING

illustrations by JAKE MEYERS

Founder and CEO DIGITALXFORCE

“I think North Texas is a fantastic business environment overall, but if I could change one thing, it would be to improve our mass transit options. The region is so spread out, with key business hubs in areas like downtown Dallas, downtown Fort Worth, Legacy West, Las Colinas, Irving, and many more. A more efficient mass transit system connecting these important areas would greatly benefit the North Texas business community.”

“Although the funding landscape in Dallas has come a long way in attracting highprofile ventures, it’s still not on par with Silicon Valley or New York. Especially for companies working on high-tech innovation, it’s still not easy to find investors who understand this space and are willing to make investments to promote them. Unlike other investment hubs, the avenues for pitching ideas to raise funds are not well established.”

“The restaurant industry has declined since the pandemic, but Dallas is thriving. The culinary scene is rapidly expanding, which is exciting for a chef. That said, I’d like to see people more eager to go out and enjoy nightlife. I think the habit of staying in during the pandemic made us more introspective and accustomed to staying home. It feels like the perfect moment for Dallas though, and I hope Texans continue to develop more interest in exploring new restaurants.”

CARLA PELLEGRINO

Executive Chef and Partner

URBAN ITALIA

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OFF DUTY

WHAT I DO:

“I’m the founder of MCS Impact Advisory, a purpose-driven consultancy providing services around communications, brand development, special events, public relations, strategy, culture, and more.”

STYLE ICON:

“I admire the graceful elegance of Kate Middleton and the bold and timeless Diane von Furstenberg, but fashion executive Linda Fargo has always been my top style icon.”

ON THE JOB:

“I’ve always thought about the message I want to convey through dress and remained true to myself.”

FASHION INSPIRATION:

“I find inspiration from travel and di erent cultures, whether it be colorful patterns, stacks of bangles, or new and di erent color palettes.”

STYLE DEFINED:

“Happy, colorful, and comfortable”

FASHION ESSENTIALS:

“NARS bronzer, blush, mascara, and lip gloss”

GO-TO LOOK:

“In spring, summer, and fall—a day dress, flats, and colorful clip earrings. In winter, a great pair of boots, my favorite Lafayette 148 peacock cashmere coat, and a black turtleneck dress.”

HOW I ACCESSORIZE:

“A custom stack on my wrist and my Hermès Apple Watch, along with cute shoes.”

WEEKEND LOOK:

“I throw on a pair of Birkenstocks for working from home and on the weekends.”

FAVORITE STORES:

“I love everything from Farm Rio or Oscar de la Renta to Alemais or Target. In Dallas, you’ll find me at Neimans, J. Crew, Zara, and online at The RealReal and Boden.” continued from page

MUST-READ

Executive Book Club

Area leaders tell us the one book they think everyone should read—and why.

“Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand is one of my favorites. Although it’s a true story, it reads like fiction, capturing an amazing journey of hardship, grit, resilience, and heroism. It made me eternally grateful for the many gifts I’ve been given and changed my perspective, making it hard to ever feel sorry for myself again. I hope everyone feels similarly a rmed about the miracle of being alive and free. I believe in servant leadership. At its best, it’s a sacrificial role where we embrace risk, responsibility, and mentorship.”

OSSA FISHER | Aurora

“Who Not How by Dan Sullivan has been transformative as the chamber has grown. I have learned a better way to delegate, which allows me to find the best ‘who’ for any task or project. The ‘who’ worries about the ‘how.’”

“An absolute must-read is The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey. I have given away many copies of this book to young people who I have mentored. It’s a pretty simple concept: stay out of debt and spend less than you make.”

“Prophet Song by Paul Lynch was a challenging and upsetting read. I think it would be beneficial for everyone to read and contemplate what the world could look like if we considered everyone as part of our global family.”

“I highly recommend reading The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need by Andrew Tobias. Our education system does not do an adequate job teaching our children about how to manage and invest their money.”

“The Great Railway

By

Asia

is

story of an epic journey by rail through Asia. In it, the author describes the many fascinating places, cultures, and people he encounters.”

Bazaar:

Train Through

by Paul Theroux

the

“Erik Larson’s The Demon of Unrest is on the divisions over slavery prior to Lincoln’s election and the start of the Civil War. History can repeat when divisive forces obliterate rational thinking among people and elected leaders.”

RICK PERDUE Rosewood Property Co.

HARRISON BLAIR Dallas Black Chamber of Commerce

TAYLOR WILSON Haynes Boone

JIM NEIL Dallas Trinity FC

LINDSAY CLARK State Fair of Texas

MARIANNE FAZEN DFW Business Group on Health

Drexell Owusu’s All-American Leap

The Perot Museum’s chief learning officer applies lessons learned as a track and field star at Rice University to his business and nonprofit career.

growing up in the panhandle of texas, Drexell Owusu’s life revolved around sports. He played soccer and basketball as a youngster in Big Spring, was the kicker on his high school football team, and participated in track, where he was a two-time triple jump state champ. Athleticism ran in the family. His father was a NAIA track and field champion at Angelo State University who finished fourth place in the long jump during the

1972 Olympics in Germany, and his grandfather competed in the 1952 games in Helsinki. Owusu’s springy athletic genes helped him become a two-time All-American triple jumper at Rice.

“My dad would always go to the track after work to try to stay in shape,” Owusu recalls. “I would go with him because what else will you do when you’re 5 and your dad wants to play outside? It turned out I had at least a little bit of natural speed at the time.”

Owusu realized that although track and field differed from sports such as basketball or football from a team perspective, he learned to balance and measure his success against those of his teammates competing in other events.

“It’s an individual sport that’s part of a team collective,” Owusu says. “What I like about track is that I get to do the thing I’m good at, but I also know I’m part of a bigger universe of people who I want to see me succeed.” That mindset has helped the former Blockbuster and Civitas executive transition to the nonprofit sector. He served as chief impact officer for The Dallas Foundation before assuming the chief learning role with the Perot Museum this past April.

COMFORT FOOD

Dallas C-suiters share their favorite home-cooked meals and family recipes.

“My sweet potato pies are famous. The recipe is in a cookbook, but I can’t tell you which one because family members were not happy that I shared the recipe. I was taught to make them by my late mother-in-law.”

CYNT MARSHALL

CEO

Dallas Mavericks

“I enjoy all sorts of spices, but one favorite is Zereshk polo, a classic Persian dish with spicy chicken, barberries, saffron, and rice. I love the version served at Shiraz Mediterranean Restaurant.”

DYLAN RAFATY

President and CEO

North Texas Disability Chamber

“Ever since I was a kid, we have made a chocolate chip cake for every birthday in the family. My mom and her best friend still banter over whether to use yellow or chocolate cake mix, but it will always be better with yellow cake.”

KATY SLADE

Founder and Principal Mintwood Real Estate

“There’s nothing better than the ajiaco my mom made. This comforting Colombian soup with chicken and potato was one of my favorite dishes of hers, and anytime I have it, I think of her.”

President Coca-Cola Southwest Beverages RECORD-SETTER

“As a businessperson, it was formative to help me understand how I could survive or succeed,” he says of his track experience. “I could work hard and be great at completing my task. When I’m part of a team, it’s not just about me doing a great job but making sure that my friends do a great job, too, so our team wins. Similarly, business is an individual sport where you’re also part of a bigger team.”—Layten Praytor

JEAN CLAUDE TISSOT

has the fifthlongest long jump and second-longest triple jump in Rice University’s history.

JPS Health Network has been a cornerstone of Tarrant County of nearly 150 years. We are always ready to provide exceptional care for any patient that walks through our doors.

Visit jpshealthnet.org for more information about JPS and the services we provide.

ONE OF A KIND No two of the 21-and-over Green O cabins, tucked far away from the

WELL TRAVELED

Greenough, Montana

A favorite summer getaway for celebrity chef Kent Rathbun, The Resort at Paws Up is where wilderness intersects with luxury.

story by BEN SWANGER

FLOATING ALONG Whitewater rafters take on the rapids on the Clearwater River. The Blackfoot River is for the more leisurely float.

ON THE RANGE

The resort offers an authentic cattle drive where you guide along 800-pound Corriente cattle.

TABLETOP FARE

At Social Haus, guests are given the chance to cook their own Wagyu steaks on a

COZY CORNERS Six Meadow Homes arranged in a mini neighborhood make for an ideal family getaway while maintaining privacy.

resort’s central

steaming stone.

EXPANSIVE VIEW

From lookout point, where you can sometimes catch a

Mmy wife and i revved our atv s then climbed to the highest point of the 37,000 acres surrounding The Resort at Paws Up. The exhilarating tour starts pasture-side, then winds through the pines, along the Blackfoot River, and peaks at the lookout point. There, we took in one of the most unique views that Big Sky Country has to offer. But our day wasn’t done yet. After lunch, we traded in our engines for some real horsepower.

The resort in Greenough, Montana, about 35 miles northeast of Missoula, is a fully operational dude ranch and houses hundreds of cattle, including North America’s largest land mammal, Tyrone the beefalo—he’s an eight-foot long, 2,500-pound blend of bison and cow. Paws Up is named after dogs that lived on the resort in its earliest days and would greet visitors by putting their paws up in the air while their tails thumped the floor.

At the stables, my wife and I were paired with horses by the property’s equestrian manager— my wife climbed on Reba’s saddle, and I was matched with Rooster, named for Miles Teller’s character in Top Gun: Maverick. For this Texan, it was my first time to saddle up. Rooster was aptly named as he led from the front. Reba moved at a slower pace, just like my wife.

On our summer getaway from the Dallas heat, the weather was brisk in the mornings and evenings, and midday topped out in the 70s—ideal

conditions for riding the rapids. A full day can be spent whitewater rafting on the Clearwater River; or a half-day spent on a laid back Blackfoot River float. We opted for the latter and meandered down the stream with our guide, who shared details about the history of the land. On his way home from the famed Lewis and Clark expedition, Meriwether Lewis followed the Blackfoot River through what would one day become Paws Up. We stayed in a Meadow Home. Recently renovated, the two-bedroom cabin is ideal for couples and small families. With a hot tub on the back porch, we cracked open a bottle of wine and watched the constellations light up the night sky. The most luxurious homes are in the “Green O.” A 21-and-up community, the small neighborhood has 12 gorgeous cabins. Many homes come equipped with a Lexus to explore the resort’s expansive landscape. A sunset drive with the windows down became routine for us; play “Montana Sky” by the Jonas Brothers for the full effect—trust me.

Staying in the Green O also provides exclusive access to The Social Haus. The six-course meal—with an amuse-bouche and an interlude—rotates daily. Other dining options include Shed, Pomp, Trough, and Tank. At Shed, try the shaved Wagyu sandwich paired with the chilled corn salad; at Tank, my wife and I twice split the fried chicken sandwich and double smash burger. Pomp’s rotating dinner menu features dishes like tagliatelle ala vodka, Redband trout, and various cuts of steak.

In between the wild rides, don’t miss out on some R&R—a respite from the hurry of DFW isn’t complete without it. The resort’s Spa Town is a colony of private luxurious white tents, each opening with a view of the landscape. Each time we gazed at the breathtaking terrain, my wife and I would ask each other, “Are we sure we’re still beach over mountains?” Paws Up may have changed that.

TRAVEL TIPS

It’s Where Adventure Awaits

Whether working as a guest chef for Paws Up or taking the family to Montana for adventure, Kent Rathbun says, “It’s such a stunningly beautiful place. Fly fishing, four-wheelers, horseback riding—c’mon.” The longtime Dallas chef says his most memorable moment was an evening when he and his family were gathered around the fire pit. A “s’moreologist” was on hand to treat visitors to unique flights of the campfire treats. “The guy was pretty much a sommelier for s’mores,” Rahtbun says. The chef recommends ATV riding and archery, but his ultimate experiences involve the water. “Fly fishing and whitewater rafting were our favorites,” Rathbun says. “Anything on the river is pretty awesome.”

glimpse of the cattle drive, visitors can rappel 170 feet down to the riverside.

SARGON DANIEL

NEXUS RENEWABLE POWER

after moving from new york City to Dallas with his family in the 1980s, Sargon Daniel became curious about his parents’ immigration journey from Iraq in the 1970s. His father, Donald, grew up near the “hyper-dangerous” city of Fallujah in a British military camp. His mother, Khana, lived in Baghdad and immigrated to Greece, escaping religious persecution, before making it to America. Due to safety concerns in Baghdad, she couldn’t leave the house without a family member. The youngest two of their three sons became doctors. Sargon, the eldest, became the first in his family to earn an undergraduate degree. After graduating from Georgetown University, he earned a law degree from Columbia University. He then spent nearly six years in the legal field before launching Nexus Renewable Power in 2016. Here, Daniel details how the les-

sons instilled by his parents guide his journey.

“My parents tried their best to build this life for us,” he says. “They made many decisions that prioritized us, their siblings, and their parents over themselves. I think it is a noble thing they have done, and I don’t feel weighed down by guilt. I know my parents tried their hardest and they expected the same from us. Life, to me, is about execution and tenacity. You don’t have to be the smartest person in the room, but if there is anything my parents ingrained in us, it was that we would try our hardest. My brothers and I like to give them grief and tell them how hard they were on us; they just roll their eyes.”

story by LAYTEN PRAYTOR

illustration by JAKE MEYERS

THE ROAD BACK Daniel hopes to soon return to his roots to see where his parents grew up and truly get a sense of the difficult journey they endured.

ENGLISH LESSONS

The Daniel family spoke Syriac, a variation of Aramaic. As he grew older, Daniel helped his parents learn English.

ROLE MODEL Growing up, Daniel was inspired by his father’s entrepreneurial zest, even through the ups and downs.

TOP PRIORITY

Sargon Daniel (center) and his brothers, Michael and Edward, were taught that nothing was more important than their education.

EXECUTIVES AT HOME

C-SUITE LIVES

Three North Texas executives open their doors, sharing the personal spaces that reveal the most about themselves.

story by JESSICA OTTE

photography by ELIZABETH LAVIN

OUR HOMES ARE INHERENTLY PERSONAL. They are the spaces into which we welcome friends and family, where we retreat for a respite after a long workday, and the places where we can most be ourselves. How we decorate and live in them offers a glimpse into who we are and what we hold most dear—our truest selves as told through statement art pieces, a beautifully set table, throw pillows, or even a messy kitchen that’s complete with tiny handprints dotting a stainless steel refrigerator. We recently asked three Dallas business leaders to show us the spaces they feel are most reflective of them. From a memento-filled dining room and multipurpose home office to a luxe lounge, these spaces provide intimate insights into their owners’ lives beyond the boardroom.

#2

IN DALLAS

According

#9

IN TEXAS

According to RealTrends National Rankings 2023

susan.baldwin@alliebeth.com

Annika Cail knows first-hand the importance of investing. As an executive director and banker at JP Morgan Private Bank, she helps business owners and high-net-worth individuals grow their wealth through proven strategies and platforms.

BUT BEYOND DOLLARS AND CENTS, CAIL has long understood—at work and in life—that you get more back than you put in. It’s why, in addition to her nine-to-five duties, she volunteers her time chairing fundraisers and supporting various nonprofits. “One thing I was taught was, ‘To whom much is given, much is expected,’” says Cail, who is currently on the board at the AT&T Performing Arts Center and on UT Southwestern’s Presidents Advisory Board.

Of course, nowhere does she invest more time and energy than at home, which she shares with her entrepreneur husband Dennis and sons Nile Henry, 14, and Beaux, 11. Her weeks consist of school drop-offs, shuttling her boys to soccer and football, and helping with homework, all while fielding work calls and client meetings. She wouldn’t have it any other way. “Every day is a work-life balance,” she admits.

After hours, Cail can often be found in the dining room, whether she’s sharing a casual dinner with her family or hosting friends for game night. Cail takes great pride in crafting events that engage her guests from the moment they walk in the door. From setting the mood with music (Motown or R&B are her go-tos) to eliciting conversation through questions printed on place cards, Cail leaves no detail unconsidered.

It’s here that her work and home life often merge, as Cail is also known to invite

clients over. “I know everything about them and their family, and I think it’s important for them to see me and my family,” she says. “There’s no better way to get to know someone in a really intimate way than hosting them at your home.”

A native of Lafayette, Louisiana, Cail finds comfort in cooking, particularly the Creole dishes she grew up eating. (Ask her about her étouffée!) She typically treats her guests to a homemade meal, making the experience even more personal. Beyond the menu, Cail has designed her dining space with pieces that offer insight into her family, from their love of travel to matters closer to their heart. A painting of a horse, for example, was a piece Annika won at the Cattle Barron’s Ball auction the year she chaired the silent auction, while a painting by Jammie Holmes depicts a military veteran—a cause Dennis, a third-generation Navy veteran, is passionate about.

Through Cail’s love of hosting, her sons have picked up valuable skills; they know how to polish silver, she proudly shares, and are well-versed in the arts of communication and service. Inviting people to their table also impresses upon them the importance of sharing our time with others—something Cail doesn’t take lightly.

“Time is the one thing we don’t have a lot of,” she says. “You can’t buy it, you can’t borrow it, you can’t earn it. It’s really an honor when people take the time to come and spend some time with me.”

Cail’s investment of time with family, friends, and clients is one she knows will pay dividends far beyond what a bank can hold.

PIECES OF ME

Annika Cail has carefully curated a dining room that, through the use of personally revealing art and serving pieces, will spark conversation with her guests.

For Niven Morgan, the lines between work and pleasure are often blurred. After all, the entire basis of his business— an eponymous line of candles, soap, and other luxury bath products—is rooted in providing customers with private moments of enjoyment and self-care.

WHEN IT COMES TO FORMULATING NEW scents, Morgan’s main method of R&D is traveling, be it back to the farm in Louisiana where he grew up or to a far-off locale overseas. He recently took a two-week solo excursion through Zambia, Africa, in search of inspiration—a business trip far more pleasurable than peddling potassium chloride, which was Morgan’s gig for 11 years prior to starting his own company.

So it may come as no surprise that Morgan’s office in the Volk Estates home he shares with husband Shelby Wagner also doubles as a relaxation and entertaining space. The couple first espied the house in 2018, when Wagner, an interior designer, was touring it with a client. When the client went in a different direction, professional pursuits turned personal once again, and the couple jumped on it for themselves.

Wagner outfitted this second-story office to Morgan’s specifications. “I wanted a modern-day Elvis Presley lounge-type room with lots of color and design and a velvet sofa,” Morgan remembers. Beyond being comfortably equipped, the room also contains lots of personal effects that make the space extra sentimental. Framed family photos and stacks of travel books from the couple’s favorite destinations fill the built-ins. Mementos from trips—like the backgammon set Morgan picked up in the Hamptons—hold happy memories. A treasured art piece by

late Louisiana artist Bill Hemmerling depicting a scene at New Orleans’ famous Café Du Monde hangs over the sofa. “Most of the paintings and other artwork in the room hold special meaning,” Morgan notes.

The multipurpose room is one of Morgan’s most-used spaces in the house. He starts his mornings here, collecting his thoughts over a cup of coffee. Once 8 a.m. rolls around, things shift to business. Despite marking the company’s 25th anniversary this year, Morgan continues to be exceptionally hands-on. His knack for translating places and experiences into scent is why his brand is beloved by celebrities and carried in high-end stores and spas nationwide.

Once the workday is done, the room transforms again. Outfitted with a top-notch sound system, the space is well set up for watching a show with his beloved rescue pup, Harlow, at his side. When Morgan and Wagner invite friends over, it’s also not uncommon for the gathering to migrate here. “It doubles as a cool lounge many a night,” Morgan says.

Regardless of the time of day, Morgan says the one thing you can “always” count on finding is a candle from his own line burning; “Pepper, Sage, and Cedar” is the fragrance he’s been reaching for most often these days. In fact, he says, “I use most all of my products daily.” Is it field research or a small act of self-care? It doesn’t much matter, from where Morgan sits—that is, comfortably in a place where work and pleasure are able to peacefully co-exist.

The search for the perfect house isn’t dissimilar from the search for the perfect mate. It can be long and arduous; at times, it’s downright depressing, and you may get to a point when you feel like maybe your ideal match just isn’t out there.

BUT ALL IT TAKES IS FINDING “THE ONE” to change your perspective. Professional matchmaker Jennifer Donnelly had a long list of nonnegotiables she was looking for in a home. A sport court was a must, as was a salon. And it needed to have a lounge area in which she could entertain friends and family comfortably.

The CEO of Dallas-based The Ultimate Matchmaker ultimately found a home that had everything on her wish list and then some. The style of the home was modern—which suited Donnelly just fine—but her husband prefers more traditional architecture. So the couple worked with Houston-based designer Nina Magon to tailor the interiors to something they could both agree on. “I think a lot of contemporary homes often feel cold, and it was really important to me to create an environment—especially having children and family—that they felt like they could be comfortable in,” Donnelly says.

Donnelly and her husband differed in terms of decor, too. “I don’t lean toward a lot of color,” Donnelly explains. “I’m more about textures. And my husband was definitely on the side of wanting color.” To help them meet in the middle, Magon used supple fabrics in neutral tones and achieved visual interest through natural stone, metallic glints, and eye-catching wall and floor treatments.

The lounge is indicative of this yinand-yang approach.

The space manages to

be simultaneously soothing and sexy, thanks to the use of unobtrusive colors mixed with heavily patterned natural stone and shapely furniture. A curvaceous couch upholstered in taupe velvet creates a cozy spot for conversation, while a stocked bar stands at the ready to serve guests.

The space has become a favorite hangout for friends, whom Donnelly hosts several times a month, as well as family, who visit weekly. “We have so many other rooms that have a lot more space, and people are like, ‘Can I go back to the lounge?’” Donnelly shares. “They love it.”

Donnelly and her husband have three other homes—two ranches in East Texas and a mountain home in Utah. All three were designed with relaxation in mind, with the latter being so remote that the lack of cell reception forces the busy executive to disconnect and decompress. Their Dallas house, then, is very much about spending time with people the couple loves most. Donnelly takes pleasure in finding ways to keep gatherings fresh and fun, like hiring a mixologist to give lessons or even treating friends to pedicures in the salon.

That genuine care for others shines through not only in her home life, but through her work helping high-net-worth individuals find love. Donnelly has always had a calling to help people connect, and being able to make a successful career out of that instinct is the ultimate reward.

“It’s such a gift to wake up every day and truly love my career,” she says. “I love the purpose behind it and that I know I’m truly making a difference in each person’s life.”

Dallas’ Literary Pioneer

Aug.

As dallas grew through the end of the 19th century, few women left a mark as lasting on local literary arts as May Dickson Exall. The McKinney native attended Vassar and lived in Galveston and Clarksville before settling in Dallas in 1883. Three years later, she founded one of the state’s first women’s clubs, the Dallas Shakespeare Club. The following year, she married businessman and agriculturist Henry Exall, with whom she had one son. In 1898, she spearheaded the creation of The Dallas Federation of Women’s Clubs, an organization that blended five women’s groups with the goal of establishing the Dallas Public Library. She personally wrote to industry titan Andrew Carnegie and secured a $50,000 grant—worth

an estimated $1.8 million today. Exall became president of the Dallas Library Association, supporting what opened as the Carnegie Library in 1901. She was a charter member of the YWCA in Dallas and was the third president of the Dallas Woman’s Club, which she helped form in 1922. Exall was also responsible for creating the Dallas Art Association, which held its first meeting in the Art Room of the library Exall established. That organization evolved to eventually form the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts and the Dallas Museum of Art. Exall Park in Highland Park bears her and her husband’s name, and the public library honors her with the May Dickson Exall Award, presented to those who have gone the extra mile in helping Dallas’ public library system.

POSTMASTER SEND ADDRESS CHANGES TO D, 750 NORTH ST. PAUL STREET, SUITE 2100, DALLAS, TX 75201. D CEO (ISSN2688-4852), IS PUBLISHED MONTHLY WITH THE EXCEPTION OF COMBINED ISSUES IN JANUARY/ FEBRUARY AND JUNE/JULY BY D MAGAZINE PARTNERS, 750 NORTH ST. PAUL STREET, SUITE 2100, DALLAS, TX 75201. APPLICATION TO MAIL AT PERIODICALS POSTAGE IS PENDING AT DALLAS, TX.

A WAY WITH WORDS May Dickson Exall helped secure a $50,000 grant from Andrew Carnegie to fund what’s now the Dallas Public Library.

MAY DICKSON EXALL

14, 1859–Sept. 28, 1936

Story by VICTOR SANCHEZ