Houston A+ Challenge Names New Executive Board, Welcomes Three New Trustees

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Date: Oct. 20, 2008
Contact: Melissa Milios Davis, Director of Public Affairs, 713-658-1881

Houston A+ Challenge, an independent nonprofit supporting public school improvement and education leadership development in the Houston area since 1997, has elected community volunteer Ann Friedman, Ph.D., as its new Board Chairman, Victory Packaging Founder J. Victor Samuels as President, and Thomas L. Elsenbrook, Managing Director of Alvarez & Marsal Business Consulting, LLC, as Secretary.

The Board of Trustees also welcomed three new members to the board: Shawn Gross, President of SAJG Investments, Inc., Gasper Mir, III, Founding Principal of Mir, Fox & Rodriguez, PC, and Bobby Tudor, Chief Executive Officer of Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co.

Outgoing Houston A+ Challenge Chairman Joe B. Foster, Founder of Newfield Exploration Company, has been a member since 1999 and remains on the Board.

Outgoing President Michael Dee, a private investment banker, has been named to Houston A+ Challenge's newly formed Advisory Board, joined by former Houston A+ Trustees Leonel Castillo, retired from the City of Houston's Office of the Mayor, H. Devon Graham, Jr., President of R. E. Smith Interests, Inc., and Jenard M. Gross, President and Owner of Gross Investments.

Executive Board and New Trustee Biographies

Ann Friedman, Ph.D., has been a member of the Houston A+ Challenge board since 1998, and is its immediate past President. Dr. Friedman is a community volunteer, a licensed psychologist and a former Adjunct Professor in the Department of Counseling Psychology at the University of Houston. She sits on the Texas Advisory Board for the Childrens Defense Fund and is a past Chairman of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Houston. She has previously served on the Boards of the Serve Houston Youth Corps, the Houston Holocaust Museum, The Forum Club of Houston, Houston Proud, and Avondale House for Autistic Children.

J. Victor "Vic" Samuels founded Victory Packaging, a moving-and-storage supply operation, in 1976 and served as its Chairman and CEO until retiring in June 2007. Mr. Samuels has served on the Houston A+ Challenge Board of Trustees since 1998. He has served as past Chairman of the Board for Serve Houston Youth Corps, a Director of the United Way of the Texas Gulf Coast, past President and Director of the Jewish Community Center of Greater Houston, among other memberships.

Thomas L. Elsenbrook, Managing Director for Alvarez & Marsal Business Consulting LLC, works with the company's top management to design and execute corporate and business unit strategies.  Mr. Elsenbrook has worked with corporations in a variety of industries, including energy, commercial services, and construction in the alignment of organizational structures and developing and implementing growth strategies.

Shawn Gross is President of SAJG Investments, Inc., a real estate development firm he formed in 1997, and President of Gross Management Corp., his family's real estate mangagement company. He has worked on the development, construction, and management of thousands of apartment units throughout Texas and the surrounding states. He is a board member of Independence Bank, N.A., Collaborative for Children, Expectation Graduation, Houston Wilderness, and KIPP Houston. Mr. Gross holds an MBA from Rice University’s Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management, where he now serves as an adjunct professor. He was a 2003 Americas Project Fellow with the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy and the Organization of American States and is a 2007 graduate of the Center for Houston’s Future Leadership Forum. 

Gasper Mir, III, Founding Principal of Mir, Fox & Rodriguez, PC, has more than 35 years of public accounting and executive leadership experience at firms including KPMG Peat Marwick and MFR.  After serving as Managing Principal of MFR for 15 years, Mr. Mir took a sabbatical from MFR and served the Houston Independent School District as its Executive General Manager of Strategic Partnerships through the end of 2007. He currently serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Luby’s, Inc., and serves on the Boards of the Memorial Hermann Healthcare System, the Houston Technology Center, the Sam Houston Area Council of the Boy Scouts, and the Greater Houston Community Foundation. 

Bobby Tudor is CEO of Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co., a boutique energy investment and merchant banking firm. Tudor was previously a partner with Goldman Sachs & Co.  During his nearly 20-year career with Goldman Sachs & Co., Tudor worked in the New York, London and Houston offices, in varying capacities including Head of Southwest Region and Head of European Industrial & Natural Resources Group. He currently serves as President of the Board of Directors for the Society for the Performing Arts, a Director for the Houston Public Library, a Board Member for the United Way of the Texas Gulf Coast and a Trustee for Rice University, among other philanthropic memberships.


Editors Note: For photographs, please contact Melissa Milios Davis at mmdavis@houstonaplus.org.

Trustees' ZIP codes are as follows: Dr. Friedman: 77024.  Mr. Samuels: 77005. Mr. Elsenbrook: 77042.  Mr. Shawn Gross: 77056. Mr. Mir: 77056. Mr. Tudor: 77006. Mr. Foster: 77024. Mr. Dee: Singapore. Mr. Castillo: 77021. Mr. Graham: 77007. Mr. Jenard Gross: 77019.

About Houston A+ Challenge
Houston A+ Challenge is an independent nonprofit that has supported public school improvement and education leadership development in the Houston area since 1997. Since then, the organization has raised nearly $90 million to invest in local schools.  Major donors have included The Annenberg Foundation, The Brown Foundation, Houston Endowment, Carnegie Corporation of New York and the ExxonMobil Foundation. On the web at: www.houstonaplus.org.

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