Rishi Varma serves as Senior Vice President, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary, and oversees Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s legal department globally. He and his team handle, among other things, HPE’s corporate governance, strategic acquisitions, divestitures and investments, litigation, intellectual property, commercial contracting, sales and supply chain issues, securities law compliance and disclosure, treasury and financing transactions, and certain other corporate transactions and restructurings, bankruptcy, credit and collections matters and employee compensation and retiree benefits. From 2013 – 2017, Rishi served as Deputy General Counsel overseeing HPE’s corporate, securities and M&A practice.

Before joining Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Rishi served as general counsel for two different publicly traded companies from 2005 to 2013 – TPC Group, Inc., a petrochemical company, and Trico Marine Services, Inc., a global subsea service provider. During his time at Trico, he also served in additional management roles including chief operating officer and president. Prior to these companies, Rishi served as securities counsel and director of investor relations for EGL, Inc., a publicly traded global freight forwarder (2002 – 2005), and as a business associate in the New York office of Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison, LP (1998 – 2002).

Rishi has always been a strong believer in advancing the communities in which we live. As such, he serves on the National Board of the Tahirih Justice Center, whose mission is to protect immigrant women and girls from domestic violence and abuse, the Board of the Texas Asia Society, whose mission is to create a bridge between Eastern and Western cultures, the audit committee of Memorial Hermann Hospital, and on the Board of the Greater Houston Partnership.

He holds a Juris Doctor degree from the Georgetown University Law Center and also graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown University with a Bachelor of Science in Political Science. Rishi and his wife, Michelle, have three children.

The Honorable Karen Gren Scholer was sworn in as a United States District Judge for the Northern District of Texas on March 7, 2018, after being confirmed by the United States Senate 95-0. She has the distinct honor of being nominated to be an Article III judge by two different Administrations for two different Districts – by President Trump for the Northern District of Texas (Dallas) and by President Obama for the Eastern District of Texas (Plano). She is the first Asian American federal district judge in Texas and the entire Fifth Circuit.

Before her appointment to the federal bench, Judge Scholer was both a trial lawyer and state trial judge. She was elected as Judge of the 95th District Court for two terms, serving from 2001 to 2008. While on the state court bench, Judge Scholer served as the Presiding Judge of the Dallas County Civil District Judges in 2007 and was appointed by the Governor of the State of Texas to serve as a temporary Justice on the Tenth Court of Appeals.

In private practice, Judge Scholer was a co-managing and named partner at litigation boutique law firm Carter Scholer (2014-2018) and a litigation partner at Jones Day (2009-2013), Andrews & Kurth (1996-2000), and Strasburger & Price (1982-1996). She was repeatedly recognized as one of the top lawyers in Texas, selected for inclusion in Thomson Reuters’ Super Lawyers® (Texas), D Magazine’s Best Lawyers, and Best Lawyers in America. She was identified as one of the Top 50 Women Lawyers in Texas by Thomson Reuters’ Super Lawyers® and earned the rating of AV Preeminent (5.0 out of 5) Peer Review Rating by Martindale-Hubbell. She was honored by the Texas Lawyer as a 2019 Finalist for Attorney of the Year.

Over her long career, Judge Scholer has received numerous other honors for professional excellence and dedication to community service, including the Dallas Bar Foundation’s Fellows Justinian Award, Dallas Women Lawyers Association Louise Raggio Award, the Dallas Asian American Bar Association Lifetime Achievement Award and Judicial Trailblazer Award, the Dallas Fort Worth Asian American Citizens Council Chair’s Award and Civil Servant of the Year Award, the Greater Dallas Asian American Chamber of Commerce Judicial Excellence Award, and the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association Trailblazer Award. Judge Scholer is a former chair and Life Benefactor Fellow of the Dallas Bar Foundation. She has served as co-chair of Attorneys Serving the Community and in leadership positions in the Dallas Bar Association and State Bar of Texas. In demand as a speaker and panelist, she has been honored as the keynote speaker to many audiences.

Judge Scholer is a graduate of Rice University and Cornell University Law School. She has served on the board of directors for the Association of Rice Alumni and the Cornell Law Association Executive Board.

Judge Sean Jordan is a federal district judge for the Eastern District of Texas, Sherman Division. Prior to taking the bench, Judge Jordan worked on complex civil litigation and appellate cases for twenty-five years in both government service and private practice. He has managed the appellate sections of two large law firms and also previously served as Principal Deputy Solicitor General in the Office of the Solicitor General of Texas. In that role, he represented the State of Texas, its agencies and officials in numerous appeals and led a team of appellate lawyers handling federal and state court appeals.

Judge Jordan received his B.A., summa cum laude, from the University of Texas at Austin and his J.D., with honors, from the University of Texas School of Law.

Armando E. Colombo began his tenure as president and chief executive officer at The Menninger Clinic on September 16, 2019.
In 2021, he was named to the Houston Business Journal’s Most Admired CEOs List.

Colombo has spent the majority of his career in health care management. Prior to joining Menninger, he had most recently been executive vice president and chief operating officer at Sheppard Pratt Health System, the nation’s largest private, nonprofit provider of mental health, substance use, developmental disability and social services.

Before joining Sheppard Pratt in 2017, he served as chief executive officer of Vanderbilt Stallworth Rehabilitation Hospital and interim chief executive officer of Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Colombo also has experience in other specialty hospitals, health insurance and professional services.

He earned his bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from St. Louis University.

Chris Wood is Co-Founder and Co-President of Moonshot Compost, a Houston-based startup that collects and consolidates food waste for composting in Houston and Austin. Moonshot has helped its subscribers divert over 2 million pounds of food waste from the landfill and is currently fundraising to expand its footprint and service offerings.

Before retiring from the practice of law, Chris served as a corporate attorney in Houston, Texas, with a focus on securities law, M&A, and corporate governance. In 2002, Chris began his legal career as an associate at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld. From 2008 to 2011, Chris served as senior counsel at ConocoPhillips, where he was primary securities counsel and served as secretary to the Board for its audit and public policy committees. In 2011, Chris resumed a law firm practice at the newly established Latham & Watkins Houston office, where he focused primarily on initial public offerings, debt financings, and M&A. In 2014, Chris resumed serving as in-house counsel, first as senior counsel at Southwestern Energy Company and finishing his legal career as general counsel at Rosehill Resources in 2019.

Chris is a native Houstonian, with brief stints away for college at the University of Virginia (B.A. in Political & Social Thought, Class of 1998) and the University of Texas School of Law (J.D. 2002). At UVA, Chris was a Jefferson and Echols Scholar. Chris was briefly a teacher of American History, Computer, and Religion at the Covenant School in Charlottesville, Virginia, for the 1998 – 1999 school year.

Chris and his wife Debbie Yee, a partner with Kirkland & Ellis, have two children, Harper (5) and Sawyer (3). They enjoy traveling with their kids, as often as humanly possible. Prior to having children, Chris also enjoyed running, playing basketball, reading for pleasure, live music, and many other interesting activities.

Bryan Daniel serves as Chairman of the Texas Workforce Commission where he works to promote and support the growth of Texas’ world class employers and talented workforce. To champion that goal, he advances innovative workforce and economic development strategies in collaboration with TWC’s education partners, local officials, and industry leaders to establish Texas’ competitive edge as the best place to work in the world.
Prior to joining TWC, Bryan served for four and half years on Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s senior staff where he led the Office of Economic Development and Tourism – which included the Texas Enterprise Fund, Events Trust Fund, Governor’s University Research Initiative, Texas Tourism Office, Texas Music Office, Texas Film Commission, Texas Workforce Investment Council, the Economic Development Bank, the Texas Military Preparedness Commission and the State of Texas Mexico Office.

Bryan’s tenure as the Texas State Director for Rural Development for President George W. Bush and as Chief Administrator for Trade and Business Development at the Texas Department of Agriculture, along with his private sector experiences as a marketing executive and member of the board of directors, have provided him with valuable insights on economic development and workforce issues.

Bryan is a graduate of Texas Tech University with both a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree. In 2019, Texas Tech’s College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources recognized Bryan as a Distinguished Alumnus.