fort-worth
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Frost Prioleau and the value of thinking small
From a family foundry to Simpli.fi, Frost Prioleau kept returning to customers other people overlooked. His next chapter includes a planned CEO handover and a seat on Fort Worth’s school district board.
Mark Stadler took the other road
His brothers joined the family trucking business. Mark Stadler went to college, then spent a career building teams and businesses. At AccessHope, the founding CEO’s next assignment was growth.
Scott Parker and the art of keeping time on the internet
He studied classical percussion, found his way into advertising, and became CEO of Social Factor. Now Scott Parker’s work turns on a familiar problem: getting people, tools, and timing to work together.
David Dixon
David Dixon is the Chief Executive Officer of Conner Industries, a Fort Worth, Texas-based industrial packaging and wood products company. Since taking the helm in 2017, he has led the transformation of a financially challenged industrial lumber business into a diversified, integrated packaging platform operating roughly 19 manufacturing locations across 14 states with revenues approaching $200 million. A CPA and Six Sigma Black Belt with deep experience in private equity-backed turnarounds, Dixon spent earlier chapters of his career at Price Waterhouse, Cummins, Goodyear, Eaton, John Zink, and The Crosby Group before bringing that operational discipline to Conner.
Todd Graetz
Todd Graetz is the co-founder and CEO of Aerolane, a Texas aviation startup building autonomous towed cargo gliders called Aerocarts, which let ordinary planes tow extra payload for only a marginal increase in fuel burn. Before Aerolane he spent his career at BNSF Railway, where he co-founded the railroad's uncrewed aircraft systems program and helped launch some of the first long-range beyond-visual-line-of-sight commercial drone flights in the U.S. under the FAA Pathfinder program. He is an active private pilot, an AUVSI board member, and a veteran of multiple FAA advisory and rulemaking committees.
Tom James
Tom James is a Certified Franchise Consultant and the founder of Prophecy Consulting, a Fort Worth, Texas advisory practice that helps corporate executives and military veterans decide whether to buy a franchise, and if so which one. A FranServe affiliate and member of the International Franchise Association, he matches candidates across 700-plus franchise brands through a free, structured coaching process. His approach is shaped by having owned a franchise himself, a SpeedPro large-format printing operation in the Los Angeles area, and by a corporate career spanning HR, IT, operations, project management, finance, and sales and marketing.
Cali Tran
Cali Tran is CEO of Simpli.fi, a programmatic advertising platform backed by Blackstone and GTCR that runs 140,000+ ad campaigns monthly for 40,000 advertisers. Born in a Vietnamese refugee camp at Camp Pendleton and raised as the youngest of six in a family restaurant, he built a career spanning investment banking, venture capital, startup co-founding, and C-suite leadership at Ancestry, Valassis, Centerfield, Brandwatch, and Cision. At Valassis, he engineered a 5x expansion of digital revenue for a $2 billion company. He is an advisor at SignalFire, a board member of OneVietnamNetwork, and a Bowdoin College alumni council member who graduated cum laude in History before earning his MBA from Harvard Business School.