Advertising, Marketing & Public Relations
Buxton promoted Cody Howell to senior vice president. He will lead the account management team at Buxton as well as the city government sales division. Howell joined Buxton in 2011 as an account executive, working as a strategic partner for numerous retail and restaurant clients. He was promoted to vice president of the Community ID division. Prior to joining Buxton, Howell had leadership positions with Home Depot.
Banking & Finance
Liberty Bank promoted Reagan Casey from executive vice president to president of the Hulen branch and Jeff Huffman from branch president to market president of the Camp Bowie branch. Both Casey and Huffman have been with Liberty Bank since 2008.
Origin Bank named Curtis Hamilton as senior vice president, commercial banking manager for the bank’s Fort Worth team. Hamilton has been in the banking industry for 45 years. He started his career in Houston in 1970 and moved to Fort Worth in 1984. He specializes in business development of commercial middle market industries. At Origin Bank, he will manage the commercial lending group and be responsible for the bank’s business development of all available bank products, including deposits, loans, treasury management and wealth management of both existing customers and new prospects.
Boards & Organizations
Tarrant County Assistant Criminal District Attorney Riley Shaw was elected chairman of the Juvenile Law Section of the State Bar of Texas. An attorney since 1994, Riley has been an assistant district attorney for Tarrant County since 1999. He was board-certified in juvenile law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization in 2005 and is a member of the Texas Juvenile Justice Board and chairman of the Juvenile Records Advisory Committee. He is also an advisory board member to the Texas Violent Gang Task Force.
Artes de la Rosa Cultural Center for the Arts elected Tanisia Castillo-Queppet as president of the board, the first woman to hold the position in the organization’s history. She owns Bilingual Notary Services and co-owns Voilà! Events for all Occasions. She is treasurer of the Fort Worth Chapter of the Hispanic Women’s Network. Castillo-Queppet previously worked in banking for Comerica, Sterling, Wachovia and Compass, where she was vice president. Joining her are Vice President Rebecca Castro, Secretary Steve DeLeon and Treasurer William Giron. New board members are Sandy Martinez Russell, a bilingual educator, and retiree Becky Morton. They join board members Jim Lane, Rey Trevino, Robert Figueroa, Jesse Meraz and Daniel Sanchez.
North Texas Leaders and Executives Advocating Diversity (LEAD) has added as board members Kent Scribner, superintendent of the Fort Worth Independent School District; Mike Berry, president of Hillwood Properties and Hillwood Urban; and Frank Marshall, president of MedSynergies Inc. Other directors are: Tim Carter, regional president North Texas Southside Bank; Vistasp Karbhari, president of the University of Texas at Arlington; Sean Donohue, CEO of Dallas Fort Worth International Airport; and Richard Casarez, vice president for Fort Worth customer operations at Oncor Electric Delivery.
Education
The University of Texas at Arlington appointed Jeff Campbell as director of the Shimadzu Institute for Research Technologies. Campbell has more than 20 years of experience in product design and development, engineering and operations management as well as business development and sales. His areas of expertise include semiconductors and optoelectronics, sensors and controls, and networking and wireless communications. His previous positions include leading product development, engineering and business development in Fortune 1000 brands, as regional manager of sales operations for lighting controls company Acuity Brands, vice president of electronic sensors company TT Electronics Optek Technology and vice president of transportation systems company Texas Highway Products. Earlier in his career, Campbell worked as a senior design engineer for Texas Instruments and Infinite Technology.
Honors & Awards
Fort Worth businesswoman, conservationist and philanthropist Marty Leonard is one of four recipients of the 2016 Terry Hershey Women in Conservation Award from Audubon Texas. In 2004, Leonard founded the Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge Conservancy and was president until 2011, when the group merged with the Friends of the Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge Inc., where she is currently president. She is a major benefactor of the Great Plains Restoration Council, The Nature Conservancy and both the National Audubon Society and Audubon Texas. She also was a leading donor for the Dogwood Canyon Audubon Center in Cedar Hill. The Marty Leonard Nature Explore Playground honors her contribution to the Lena Pope Early Learning Center. Leonard is serving her third four-year term on the Tarrant Regional Water District board.
Myron K. “Mike” Jacobson, the founding dean of the College of Pharmacy and professor of pharmaceutical science at the University of North Texas Health Science Center, received the 2016 Research Achievement Award from the American Pharmacists Association Academy of Pharmaceutical Research and Science. Jacobson began his teaching career at the University of North Texas in the 1970s. In 1985, after serving as a visiting professor at the University of Hamburg in Germany, he joined the faculty at UNTHSC and chaired the Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy. He later chaired the Division of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmaceutics at the College of Pharmacy at the University of Kentucky before joining the faculty of the College of Pharmacy at the University of Arizona in 2000. He returned to UNTHSC in 2011.
The National Association of Clinical Nurse Specialists presented its President’s Award to Kathleen Baldwin for work with and commitment to the association, including time she spent directing the CNS Foundation, which closed in 2014. Baldwin is a nurse researcher at Texas Health Harris Methodist Southwest Hospital and a former faculty member at Texas Christian University. She is also a member of the Quality and Research Council of Texas Health Harris Methodist Southwest Hospital and an adult/geriatric nurse practitioner. She is a member of the American College of Nurse Practitioners, the National Council of Geriatric Nurse Practitioners, the American Nurses Association, the Association of Critical Care Nurses, the Emergency Nurses Association, Sigma Theta Tau International and the Alpha Chi honorary scholastic fraternity.
The National Precast Concrete Association named Superior Concrete Products the 2016 first place winner of the Creative Use of Precast Concrete (CUP Award) in the Above Ground Category for the Superior Ranchette, a rustic tiny ranch house designed by the company.
Frost Bank received 29 Greenwich Excellence Awards for its service, advice and performance for to small-business and middle-market banking clients. Frost was the only Texas-based bank to receive national recognition for “Overall Satisfaction” and “Likelihood to Recommend” in both the middle-market and small-business banking categories. Greenwich Associates is a research-based consulting firm serving the financial services industry. Of the 29 awards Frost received, 18 were in the small-business segment and 11 were in the middle-market segment.
Hospitality
Omni Hotels & Resorts appointed Josh Heidenreich as area managing director and general manager for the Omni Fort Worth Hotel. He will manage sales, marketing, food and beverage and operational efforts for the hotel. He will also oversee Omni’s New Orleans properties. Heidenreich has more than 20 years of hospitality experience and has been with Omni for eight years in various leadership positions. He comes to Omni Fort Worth after serving as general manager at Omni Providence Hotel in 2013 and Omni New Haven Hotel in 2011, where he won Omni’s “2012 GM Award for Service.” Prior to that, he was the manager of Mokara Hotel & Spa in San Antonio when the hotel ranked No. 1 in Medallia scores for overall experience, service, accommodations and food and beverage. Prior to joining Omni, Heidenreich was director of operations at Hotel Derek in Houston and worked at the Fairmont Hotel Dallas.
Nonprofit Organizations
Irma Peña has been named the new Head Start/Early Head Start director for Child Care Associates. She has 35 years of Head Start experience and worked for 30 years with the Hidalgo County Head Start and Early Head Start program, which operated 43 centers. Most recently, Peña was an Early Head Start director locally with SER National.
Send newsmakers to Betty Dillard at bdillard@bizpress.net