The Herb Kelleher Entrepreneurship Center would like to thank the donors of the Forty Acres Founders Program for their generous support of Texas Entrepreneurs. Our donors fund seats in the accelerator in perpetuity, enabling undergraduate founders to launch startups from a position of strength and confidence. The contributions of these donors will support many generations of Texas Entrepreneurs and will have a significant impact on each founder’s success.
Forty Acres Founders Endowed Excellence Funds were created with the mission to support excellence in undergraduate student entrepreneurship at The University of Texas at Austin. The HKEC and it's donors believe that What Starts (Up) Here truly does change the world.
The Herb Kelleher Entrepreneurship Center would like to thank the donors of the Forty Acres Founders Program for their generous support of Texas Entrepreneurs. Our donors fund seats in the accelerator in perpetuity, enabling undergraduate founders to launch startups from a position of strength and confidence. The contributions of these donors will support many generations of Texas Entrepreneurs and will have a significant impact on each founder’s success.
Forty Acres Founders Endowed Excellence Funds were created with the mission to support excellence in undergraduate student entrepreneurship at The University of Texas at Austin. The HKEC and it's donors believe that What Starts (Up) Here truly does change the world.
Gwen and Frank Gordon Forty Acres Founders Endowed Excellence Fund
Stephen Maeker Forty Acres Founders Endowed Excellence Fund
Kim and Michael Tucci Forty Acres Founders Endowed Excellence Fund
Brian Cruver Forty Acres Founders Endowed Excellence Fund
Thomas and Libby Mathai Forty Acres Founders Endowed Excellence Fund
Ed and Connie Easley Forty Acres Founders Endowed Excellence Fund
Mr. Maeker has extensive director/senior director level experience in franchising with franchising industry leaders Mobil Oil, TGIFriday’s, Jack in the Box and Papa Murphy’s Take N Bake Pizza. He is a nationally published & award winning franchise consultant with industry leader FranChoice. He is a co-author of international best seller <i>Franchising Freedom</i>. He and his wife Christy are also top performing multi-unit franchisees in Sola Salon Studios, one of the 160+ franchisors that he represents. Mr. Maeker has two grown children, Sydney and Barnes, and a French Bulldog named Harold. He and Christy are both elders at Grand Lakes Presbyterian Church in Katy, Texas.
After 20 years in retail and merchandising executive leadership, Michael Tucci founded Rebel Capital, a growth investment company, in 2016. His previous roles include CEO and managing partner of Rag & Bone, president of North America Group and North America Retail for Coach, Inc., and executive vice president at Gap. Michael began his career at Macy’s, where he became president of specialty store division, Aeropostale. Michael is an advisor for Allbirds, a direct-to-consumer shoe brand and past director of The Fresh Market. He is the chief of corporate development and a board member of the STEER for Student Athletes, a committee member of Trinity College’s The Future of Athletics Campaign. He lives in Rye, New York with his wife Kim and they have four children, including Ellis Tucci, a finance major in McCombs.
Brian is an entrepreneur, investor, author, and is currently the Founder & Executive Chairman of AlertMedia, a company he started in 2013. AlertMedia is now the world’s leading provider of emergency communication software, used by over 2,500 enterprise companies in 130+ countries to keep employees safe from threats to their health and safety. Before AlertMedia, Brian co-founded Xenex, where he and his team developed a germ-killing robot, now used in over 700 hospitals around the world, preventing infections and saving thousands of lives each year. He is also an investor and adviser to dozens of early stage startups through his investment firm, Marketdriver Ventures. Brian’s focus on starting companies with a positive impact stems, in part, from his experience working at Enron, where he was part of mass layoffs when the energy giant went bankrupt in 2001. He turned his Enron experience and the lessons learned into a best-selling book and later a movie. Brian is a graduate of the University of Southern California and received his MBA from the University of Texas.
Check back soon for more information…
Check back soon for more information…