D CEO

This month marks 14 years since I joined D Magazine Partners and six since I took the helm of D CEO. I’m grateful for the opportunity to share the stories of C-Suite leaders in this dynamic market and proud that our team’s work has been recognized— with D CEO being named the nation’s best regional business magazine for the last four years in a row. North Texas business professionals: I invite you to join us on the journey! Sign up for a complimentary subscription to D CEO at this link, and engage with us as we continue to innovate and grow! https://lnkd.in/gwt3cFzm

Meet the Dallas 500: Chris Crosby, Compass Datacenters Former digital realty trust exec Chris Crosby launched Compass Datacenters in 2011, aiming to leverage his tech and real estate expertise. Today, the company designs and constructs data centers for some of the world’s largest hyperscalers and cloud providers. It was named one of the fastest-growing businesses for 2023 by Inc. magazine, and in recent months completed a $5.7 billion recapitalization. Crosby says Compass has grown 100 times over during the past five years. It’s currently at work on two data centers in Red Oak totaling 500,000 square feet; they’re expected to be delivered in 2025. Compass is also redeveloping Sears’ former headquarters in Chicago into a five-building, $10 billion data center mega campus. Crosby has served as vice chair of SMU’s masters of data center systems engineering program since 2014.

Big 12 Conference Commissioner Brett Yormark stops short of calling himself a disruptor. But his peers consider him just that. The seasoned businessman, who previously spent time in the C-Suite with Jay-Z’s RocNation and the Brooklyn Nets, wants to take the first conference-level private equity investment, he’s considering renaming the conference, and he’s eyeing opportunities for expansion. What else does Yormark have up his sleeve? Read more from Ben Swanger at the link below.

Meet the Dallas 500: Sylvia Trent-Adams, UNT Health Science Center at Fort Worth Sylvia Trent-Adams assumed her role in 2022 after serving as UNT’s chief strategy officer. A trained nurse who joined the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, she was later named acting US Surgeon General under President Donald Trump in 2017. Her healthcare career has taken to the front lines of the AIDS epidemic in the United States as well as the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. In leadership with the Commissioned Corps of the US Public Health Service, she was the first commanding officer on the ground in Monrovia, Liberia, in her role as commanding officer for the Commission Corp Ebola response. In 2023, UNTHSC was awarded a $150 million grant to research Alzheimer’s disease, the largest grant in the UNT system’s history. This year, its Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine maintained its status as a Tier 1 medical school for primary care in US News and World Report’s annual ranking. Read on to learn more about her first ride, her love for Mary J. Blige, and what she would do if she weren’t leading a health system.

Introducing D CEO's September 2024 issue, which details how legal experts believe that antiquated immigration regulations are preventing corporations from bringing in the talent it needs. Written by Will Maddox, the package pulls expertise from Jeremy Fudge, Karen-Lee Pollak, and Kathleen Martinez, local thought leaders who practice immigration law. The issue also provides an in depth look inside the mind of Big 12 Conference Commissioner Brett Yormark. Penned by Ben Swanger, the feature chronicles Yormark's desire to shake up college athletics with private equity, naming rights deals, and more realignment. The September edition also features the Healthcare Annual, which details trends like PE in healthcare, the business of nutrition, and what to watch in the world of healthcare real estate. Additionally, you can read about the City of Dallas' bet on women's sports, how Dallasites101 came to fame, and meet Chris Dharod, the man taking Corner Bakery into the future. Get the latest news, information, and insights on Dallas-Fort Worth business delivered right to your mailbox with a complimentary subscription to D CEO here: https://lnkd.in/gSypGYDZ

He was a political science major at Texas Christian University, but Michael O. Browning Jr. could not shake the entrepreneurial bug. Fascinated by data trends, he launched healthcare consulting firm Phoebos in 2005. Two years later, he sold it to former Microsoft exec Rowland Hanson. He switched his focus in 2010, founding Urban Air Adventure Parks which now has 230 locations open or under development. After 11 years at the helm, Browning created holding company Unleashed Brands to expand his focus on more youth-targeted enterprises. Emerging from the pandemic, he was motivated to help families regain a sense of normalcy. “Parents want to give their kids a chance to escape the real world for just a little bit,” Browning says. “We started to develop our investment thesis around that.” Today, Unleashed Brands has seven companies, including Urban Air Adventure Parks, youth gymnastics center The Little Gym International, and tutoring service Sylvan Learning. Among all brands, it has 1,200 locations across the country, serves 25 million children a year, and generates $1.1 billion in annual revenue. A key strategy in driving growth has been keeping the focus on the end users, Browning says. “Understanding who the consumer is and knowing that when the consumer wins, our businesses win, has made it easier to make these acquisitions and have a positive impact on them,” he says. For Unleashed Brands, the youth of America are at the forefront of all of the companies within the portfolio, but, for Browning, the consumer side of the company is based around the parents. Along with trying to discern what children are most interested in and how to connect them to those interests, Unleashed Brands has to go to parents to see what they want for their children. “All parents want their kids to learn the basics of science, technology, engineering, and math so that they can go on and have a productive career,” Browning says. “They want to help their kids identify and grow in the skills and the hobbies they’ve been blessed with. We have to be in tune with what our consumers, our parents are telling us their kids need. So, pre-Sylvan we had a ton of parents asking us, ‘Hey, we trust you, because we’re involved in all of your other brands, where can I take my kids to get math and reading help or homework help?’ That put afterschool enrichment on our radar. So it was after school enrichment, swimming lessons, music, and traditional sports. Those were some pillars of focus.” Read more on how Michael Browning built a billion-dollar enterprise around youth-focused brands by Layten Praytor at the link below.

Celebrating 26 years of empowering women in business! The Dallas Regional Chamber’s Women’s Business Conference returns with top-tier speakers, a dynamic marketplace of women-owned businesses, and unparalleled networking opportunities. Join hundreds of DFW’s leading professional women as we embrace every era of our journey together. Secure your spot today: https://lnkd.in/e2n3Ui9 #sponsored

This week in personnel moves: Partners Real Estate names Kyle Knox, MAI, AI-GRS new Managing Director; JLL adds Jayme Schutt, RID, LEED GA as Senior Vice President of Workplace Strategy, Mike Allen as Vice President, and Maggie Georgieva MRICS as Senior General Manager; Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP elevates Yelena Archiyan and Jessica Schauwecker; Turtle Creek Chorale finds a new executive director; and more at the link below. #DCEO #personnelmoves

Nick Oberheiden wasn’t allowed to bring anything in or out of the bunker where he met with his client—no water, no phone, no notes. The enclosed area, called a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF), wasn’t much bigger than a shipping container. Military, national security, and intelligence officials use them to process sensitive and classified information. For six long hours, Oberheiden met with officials in a secret location as they laid out the case the government had built against his client, a defense department employee under espionage investigation for allegedly disclosing classified information. For a matter of this magnitude, Oberheiden says he met with the FBI, Justice Department, Secret Service, and a special unit of the Pentagon to discuss a resolution. The government kept the notes he took during the meeting afterward. To do his job, Oberheiden is one of the few civilian lawyers who can look at the classified information his client had allegedly disclosed. His security clearance is so high he cannot even tell others what it’s called. All discussions about that classified information had to be done in the presence of the feds. In cases such as these, private conversations between a typical client and his or her lawyer don’t exist. “It’s not a fun room,” Oberheiden says. “There is no privacy component.” When he meets with his client outside the bunker, conversations are done in hypotheticals. The client isn’t able to say which agency they work for or even that they disclosed certain documents. Discussing the matter with their lawyer without an FBI agent present is itself a crime. Read how ‘Unicorn’ Dr. Nick Oberheiden built his federal legal empire in Dallas from Will Maddox at the link below.

Few industries have changed as drastically and rapidly as the landscape of college athletics over the last year, let alone the last decade. From major conference realignment and the dissolving of the century-old Pac-12 to the omnipresent transfer portal and the formal introduction of NIL, Judy MacLeod, the commissioner of Conference USA—which offices out of Dallas—has been tasked with navigating every twist and turn since stepping in to lead the Group of Five conference in 2015. MacLeod is the first female commissioner of an FBS conference. She joined C-USA in 2005 and was elevated to executive associate commissioner and COO just a year later. Her stint with the conference was predated by a decade-long tenure as the athletic director at the The University of Tulsa. At Tulsa, she oversaw massive expansions and renovations of numerous athletic facilities and the transition from the Western Athletic Conference to Conference USA, adding women’s basketball, rowing, and softball in the process. Amidst industry wide disruption, MacLeod’s league is performing as good as it ever has on the playing surface. In 2023, the conference saw its first school earn an invitation to a New Year’s Day Six Bowl Game when Liberty University played the University of Oregon in the Fiesta Bowl. Florida Atlantic University went on a Cinderella run to the NCAA Division I Men’s Final Four that same year. Just two years prior, Conference USA nabbed its first men’s soccer national title when Marshall University hoisted the trophy. Vying for ever-important media exposure, especially as a non-power five conference, in 2022 MacLeod negotiated a five-year media rights deal that runs through the 2027-2028 season with ESPN and CBS Sports Network on linear television and streaming platforms. As a result, all C-USA football games during October shifted to weeknights to avoid competing with the largest schools on Saturdays—an initiative fellow G5 conference, the Mid-American Conference, has had recent success doing. According to the Sports Business Journal, that media deal nets schools $750,000 per year. That same year however, C-USA was not immune to realignment as the American Athletic Conference—headquartered in Irving—poached six C-USA members after the Big 12 poached a handful of AAC institutions. As a result of the trickle down, MacLeod was forced to find new schools to keep the conference afloat. New additions included Liberty University, Jacksonville State University, New Mexico State University, and Sam Houston State University, with Kennesaw State University joining this year. D CEO's Layten Praytor recently sat down with Judy MacLeod at Conference USA Media Day held at PGA of America in Frisco to discuss the dramatic changes to the college athletics landscape, what the future might look like for C-USA, and more.