As General Partner at Capital Factory, Lawton sources, negotiates, and directs investments into the most promising technology startups in Texas and those founded by Henry Crown Fellows. Capital Factory is known as the “center of gravity for tech entrepreneurs in Texas” and has been the most active early stage investor in Texas for the past 15 years. Prior to joining Capital Factory, Lawton was Partner at Notley Ventures where she invested across various sectors, including venture, real estate, and private equity and leveraged profits to fund and operate community-driven initiatives.

Prior to entering venture, Lawton practiced law in Manhattan and Austin, taught Commercial Law and Responsible Artificial Intelligence as a tenure track law professor, and served as the CEO of Austin100. A life-long advocate of balanced discourse, Lawton co-founded the American Constitution Society (“ACS”), which now has a chapter on every major law school in the country, and she is proud to perhaps have the singular distinction of having served simultaneously on an ACLU Board of Directors and as a legal analyst for the Fox News Network.

Lawton is a Truman Scholar, holds a B.S. from Tulane University and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center. Lawton is also proud to be a breast cancer survivor, married to her husband of 33 years, who she met via their Truman Fellowships, and the mother of two kind and engaged humans.

Blair Garrou is the co-founder and Managing Partner at Mercury Fund. Prior to co-founding Mercury Fund, Blair was CEO of Intermat, a leader in product information management software (NYSE: IHS). Prior to Intermat, Blair was a Principal of Genesis Park, a Houston-based private equity firm where he focused on software investing. Prior to Genesis Park, Blair helped launch and was the Director of Operations for the Houston Technology Center (HTC), one of the largest tech incubators in the Southwest; and he led the formation of the Houston Angel Network (HAN), one of the most active angel investment organizations in the U.S.

Through Blair’s work in helping to build Houston’s innovation ecosystem, he launched several startup accelerators and investment organizations to help diversify and broaden educational and funding opportunities for entrepreneurs including Houston Exponential (HX), South Loop Ventures, Station Houston (The Ion), and SURGE Accelerator. Blair is also an Adjunct Professor at the Rice Jones School of Business where he teaches a course on entrepreneurial finance. Prior to his entrepreneurial and venture career, Blair was an investment banker with Nesbitt Burns (BMO Capital Markets), a credit analyst with Compass Bank (BBVA Compass), and an auditor with Deloitte & Touche (Deloitte). Blair received his B.S. in Management with special attainments in Commerce from Washington & Lee University, where he currently serves on the Advisory Boards of the Connelly Center for Entrepreneurship, and the Williams School of Commerce, Economics, and Politics.

John C. Goff is an investor based in Fort Worth, Texas. His family office, Goff Capital, invests across multiple sectors including real estate, wellness, aerospace, energy, and entertainment. Among his holdings are Crescent Energy (NYSE: CRGY) and Canyon Ranch, with its acclaimed Michelin-ranked wellness resorts, where he serves as Chairman of both companies. He is also Chairman and principal owner of Crescent Real Estate, which has assets under management, development, and investment capacity of over $10 billion.

Mr. Goff began his investment career in 1987 when he joined famed investor Richard Rainwater. In the early 90’s, he co-founded Crescent Real Estate with Rainwater, designing the strategy and orchestrating the acquisitions leading to its initial public offering in May 1994. Under his leadership, Crescent grew from approximately $500 million at its IPO to $6.5 billion upon its sale to Morgan Stanley in August 2007, providing its shareholders with a 15.4 percent compounded annual return and more than $2.5 billion in cash dividends during its 13 years as a public company. In 2009, he reacquired Crescent in partnership with Barclays Capital, and in 2017 he purchased Barclays’ interest to become the principal owner. An active investor in the oil and gas sector, he merged his company, Contango Oil & Gas, with KKR’s energy business to form Crescent Energy in 2021.

Mr. Goff remains closely involved with his alma mater, The University of Texas at Austin, where he established the Goff Real Estate Investment Fund, which provides students with the opportunity to manage capital in both public and private real estate investments. He is a member of The University of Texas Distinguished Alumni and the McCombs School of Business Hall of Fame, an EY Entrepreneur of the Year, and a recipient of the Fort Worth Trailblazer and Golden Deeds Awards. John and his wife, Cami, are proud Founding Donors of the National Medal of Honor Museum and, through the Goff Family Foundation, are dedicated to advancing education in their local community.

John Hagel has spent over 40 years in Silicon Valley as a management consultant, author, speaker, and entrepreneur. After retiring as a partner from Deloitte, he launched two ventures: Beyond Our Edge, LLC in 2020, where he continues to advise organizations as a strategic consultant, and the Center for Growth in 2025, which offers programs based on his recent book, The Journey Beyond Fear. Together, these companies extend his lifelong work in transformation, growth, and leadership.

Throughout his career, Mr. Hagel has collaborated with leaders of major institutions worldwide. At Deloitte, he founded and chaired the global Deloitte Center for the Edge. Before that, he was a Principal at McKinsey & Company, where he helped lead the Strategy Practice and played a key role in opening the firm’s Silicon Valley office. He also served as Senior Vice President of Strategy at Atari, Inc., and later founded two Silicon Valley startups. Mr. Hagel teaches at Singularity University and serves on the Board of Trustees of the Santa Fe Institute, a leading center for research on complex adaptive systems.

In addition to his most recent book, Mr. Hagel has published seven others, including the best-selling business titles The Power of Pull, Net Gain, Net Worth, Out of the Box, and The Only Sustainable Edge. His work has been widely published and quoted in major business outlets such as The Economist, Fortune, Forbes, BusinessWeek, Financial Times, and The Wall Street Journal, as well as general media including The New York Times, NBC, and BBC. He has received two awards from Harvard Business Review for best articles and has been recognized as an industry thought leader by numerous organizations, including the World Economic Forum and BusinessWeek. Mr. Hagel received a B.A. from Wesleyan University, a B.Phil. from Oxford University, and both a J.D. and an M.B.A. from Harvard University.

Britt Harris is the Founder and CEO of On Eagles Wings Investment Advisors and the only investor in the world to have served as CIO of a top-five investment fund in four major investment categories: endowments, public funds, private funds, and hedge funds. He recently served as acting CIO of the Texas Permanent School Fund, the sovereign wealth fund of Texas and the nation’s largest endowment for K-12 public education.

Prior to his current position, Mr. Harris was the CEO/CIO of UTIMCO, the nation’s largest endowment for public college education, and led the investment team of the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, providing for Texas teachers and other employees in the Texas public school system. Before his move into public service, he served as CEO of Bridgewater Associates and Verizon Investment Management, among several other funds.

Mr. Harris has received many awards for his special contributions to the industry and his service to millions of Americans, major corporations, central banks and governments, including a lifetime achievement award, service on the President’s Council on Financial Markets, and as an advisor to the New York Stock Exchange. He has been rated a top three global investor for both pension systems and endowments. He is also a professor at both Texas A&M and The University of Texas, teaching a widely acclaimed course titled Titans. Mr. Harris has been married for more than forty years and has four children and seven grandchildren.

Rayyan Islam is an industrial investor and company builder focused on expanding America’s energy and industrial capacity at sovereign scale. He is the Co-Founder and General Partner of 8090 Industries, a multi-billion dollar investment firm for industrial technology, and most recently co-founded and serves as Executive Chairman of Sentinel, a fully distributed, modular power and compute utility.

In 2025, Mr. Islam co-founded American Intelligence & Power Corporation (AIPCorp), where he and his team developed Monarch, America’s largest power and AI data center campus, targeting 8 gigawatts of capacity in West Virginia. The company was acquired in March 2026 by Nscale, the world’s market-leading neocloud with compute capacity sold to Microsoft. He was the largest investor in nuclear company Oklo (NYSE: OKLO) prior to its public listing and backs platforms across modular fusion, deep geothermal, edge compute, robotics, critical mineral refining, and American shipbuilding, with portfolio companies collectively exceeding $40 billion in market value.

Mr. Islam is also part of the development group behind Prototown, a groundbreaking 3,500-acre industrial and manufacturing campus in central Texas designed to concentrate energy, infrastructure, and advanced production capacity and innovation without permits. He advises government leaders and institutions on energy and industrial policy and has been recognized among Business Insider’s top early-stage investors and Fortune’s leading energy and climate technology investors. Mr. Islam lives in Dallas, Texas, with his wife, two sons, and daughter.

Alex is the President of Group RMC, a private partnership co-investment group investing in commercial real estate debt and equity, as well as select specialty real estate investments. Prior to co-founding Group RMC, Alex was an analyst in the global secondaries investment team at AXA Private Equity (now Ardian). Alex graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics with a concentration in Finance from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Drew McKnight is Co-Chief Executive Officer and a Managing Partner of Fortress Investment Group, based in Dallas. He serves on the firm’s Board of Directors and Leadership Committee, and is a member of several investment committees.

Prior to joining Fortress in February 2005, Mr. McKnight worked at Fir Tree Partners, where he was responsible for analyzing and trading high yield and convertible bonds, bank debt, derivatives, and equities for the value-based hedge fund. Prior to Fir Tree, he worked at Goldman, Sachs & Co. in Leveraged Finance and the Distressed Bank Debt trading group.

Mr. McKnight serves on the Board of Trustees for the American Enterprise Institute and the Board of Overseers at the Hoover Institution. He is a member of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas’s Financial Sector Advisory Council; the Board of Advisors at UVA’s Center for Politics and SMU’s Cox School of Business Alternative Asset Management Center; and the UT Southwestern Medical Center President’s Advisory Board. In addition, Mr. McKnight is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He received a B.A. in Economics from the University of Virginia.

Drew Oetting is co-founder & President of 8VC which incubates and makes early stage investments into the top entrepreneurs building technology to solve problems in our economy’s most important industries. Drew began his career as chief of staff to Joe Lonsdale. Together they have co-founded and invested in hundreds of companies including Palantir, Anduril, Guardant Health, Ramp, X.ai, Cognition, Saronic, Quince, Epirus, Addepar, Resilience Bio, Deliverr and Chaos Industries.

Outside of work, Drew serves as a Trustee for The Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and The Optimist Fellowship at his alma mater Claremont McKenna College. He also serves as a principal sponsor of The Andy Roddick Foundation, Iowa Healthy Kids, The Cicero Institute and The University of Austin (UATX).

Drew studied math and economics at Claremont McKenna College. He lives in Austin, Texas with his wife Sarah and is originally from Iowa City, Iowa.

Tagg Romney is Managing Partner of Solamere Capital, which he co-founded in 2008 with Spencer Zwick and Eric Scheuermann. He has helped build Solamere into a private equity firm with more than 200 family office clients and over $5 billion in assets under management. Based in Boston and New York, the firm operates several middle-market LBO funds.

Prior to co-founding Solamere, Mr. Romney served as Chief Marketing Officer for the Los Angeles Dodgers and as head of strategic planning for Reebok International. He serves on the board of directors of several companies, as well as for the non-profit organizations of Belmont Hill School, The Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Disease, and BYU Pathway.

Mr. Romney graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in Economics from Brigham Young University and holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. He and his wife, Jen, have six children and two grandchildren and live outside of Boston, Massachusetts.

Marc J. Sharpe is an experienced investment executive and board member with a distinguished career spanning family office management, private equity, venture capital, and investment banking. Known for his strategic insight, deep expertise in family office governance, and ability to foster innovation and value creation, Mr. Sharpe has built and led investment platforms that deliver sustainable growth while navigating complex financial and operational challenges. His leadership style emphasizes integrity, continuous improvement, and long-term partnerships that generate significant stakeholder value.

Mr. Sharpe is the Founder and Chairman of The Family Office Association, a premier global peer network of single-family offices. Since 2007, he has cultivated a community of senior family office executives and principals representing some of the world’s wealthiest families, promoting education, shared-best practices, and co-investment opportunities. Under his leadership, TFOA has become a trusted forum for collaboration, market insight, and proprietary investment deal flow on a global scale. He is currently an Operating Partner with Satori Capital, LLC, a multi-strategy investment firm founded upon the principles of conscious capitalism. Marc also teaches an MBA class on “The Entrepreneurial Family Office” as an Adjunct Professor at Rice University and Southern Methodist University. Mr. Sharpe holds an M.A. from Cambridge University, an M.Phil. from Oxford University, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

John Sheputis is a prominent data center executive, entrepreneur, and real estate investor with over 20 years of experience in digital infrastructure. John’s commercial and technical contributions include helping establish several major US data center markets, implementation of sustainable construction and operation, and early adoption of renewable energy and environmental accountability.

John is a Partner and Co-Founder at Primary Digital Infrastructure, an independent data center investment and advisory platform. John co-leads Primary Digital’s Investments Team and is responsible for overseeing day-to-day operations of the firm, including portfolio management activities and is a member of the Investment Committee.

Prior to co-founding Primary Digital, John was a Managing Director at GI Partners from 2019-2023 where he led the firm’s technology real estate acquisitions and developments. During his tenure at GI Partners, he completed and oversaw the acquisition of 30 properties totaling more than 5.4 million square feet. Prior to GI Partners, John was President of Infomart Data Centers from 2014-2018 where his portfolio included the Infomart in Dallas, one of the most valuable and interconnected carrier hotels in the world. Infomart Data Centers was sold in 2018, with Equinix acquiring the Dallas Infomart and IPI acquiring the data centers and management company in Silicon Valley CA, Hillsboro OR, and Northern VA. These properties and staff now operate as STACK Infrastructure. Prior to Infomart, John was founder and CEO of Fortune Data Centers from 2006-2014.

John earned his BSEE from The Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin and an MS Industrial Engineering from the McCormick School of Engineering and his MBA from the JL Kellogg School of Management, both at Northwestern University.

John has served on the Advisory Committee for the Kellogg School and the Silicon Valley Leadership Council for the UT Engineering. John contributes to the Cockrell School Scholarship funds, aiding 12 low- and middle-income students with tuition. John also served on his local Little League Board for 11 years, and managed 20+ teams over many seasons. John currently serves on the Board of the Silicon Valley Urban Debate League, which helps low- and middle-income students achieve their full professional potential.

Bradley R. Staats is the dean of the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. He is also a professor in the Department of Information, Risk, and Operations Management and holds the John T. Stuart III Centennial Chair in Business, the Centennial Chair in Business Education Leadership, and the Lois and Richard Folger Dean’s Leadership Chair.

A UT alumnus, Staats is the former senior associate dean for strategy and academics at the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School. He began his appointment as McCombs dean on July 1, 2026. At North Carolina, Staats oversaw academic strategy and program excellence in the undergraduate business, Master of Accounting, Master of Science in Management, and MBA programs. Before serving as senior associate dean, he was associate dean of MBA programs, where he helped lead curricular and programmatic transformation and expanded industry partnerships. He also founded the UNC Center for the Business of Health.

An educator and scholar in operations management and organizational learning, Staats studies how and under what conditions individuals, teams, and organizations can perform their best. His research bridges operations, analytics, and behavioral science, with applications in the healthcare, technology, and service industries. He has published frequently in both leading academic journals and practitioner-focused journals and is the author of the award-winning book Never Stop Learning: Stay Relevant, Reinvent Yourself, and Thrive.

Before academia, he worked for Goldman Sachs and a venture capital firm. Staats earned a B.S. in electrical engineering and a B.A. in Plan II and Spanish from UT. He went on to obtain both an MBA and a doctorate in technology and operations management from Harvard Business School.

Haynes Strader’s experience stretches over twelve years in the data center sector, both domestically and internationally. Mr. Strader leads site selection, capital management, and customer management for Skybox Datacenters. His work with clients and capital partners across the industry has led to some of the largest data center transactions in the US. He has represented tenants, buyers, and sellers on more than 210 data center transactions totaling more than $5 billion in total value and is well renowned for his mission-critical market expertise.

Mr. Strader previously served as Vice President in the CBRE Data Center Solutions platform. He is a graduate of Southern Methodist University and serves on the SMU Dedman College Executive Board, 21st Century Council, and the SMU Folsom Institute Board.

Tyson is Founder & CEO of Circuit, an Austin-based AI company building a trusted, AI-driven knowledge network for industrial and manufacturing organizations that helps teams capture, share, and scale expertise across operations, partners, and supply chains. For more than three decades, Tyson has been instrumental in shaping the technology industry through his strategic foresight and deep technical expertise. As a pioneer in purpose-driven innovation, his career is defined by an unwavering dedication to doing the right thing and a commitment to building a more connected world.

Tyson’s relationship with AI began nearly 30 years ago through his graduate research at UCLA, where he designed neural network accelerator chips and published his work at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC). He completed the coursework for a PhD but concluded the technology could not yet scale. Eager to build products and learn the business, he left academia with a master’s degree and turned his focus to communications and RF technologies, spending the next three decades at the infrastructure layer of wave after wave of connectivity — from mass storage and Ethernet to PC modems and mobile handsets, broadcast radio and TV, and ultimately the Internet of Things. Now, with AI finally operating at a scale that was impossible decades ago, he has come full circle at Circuit.

Over 25 years Tyson helped build Silicon Labs, an Austin-headquartered semiconductor company, into a global leader in chips for the Internet of Things, scaling it past $1 billion in annual revenue. He retired as CEO in 2022, the year after Silicon Labs sold its infrastructure and automotive business to Skyworks Solutions for $2.75 billion; in 2026, well after his tenure, Texas Instruments agreed to acquire the company in an $8 billion deal. A longtime advocate for the U.S. semiconductor industry, he chaired the CEO Council of the Global Semiconductor Alliance and served on the board of the Semiconductor Industry Association, where he helped advance passage of the federal CHIPS Act.

An engineer at heart, Tyson received a BS degree from Johns Hopkins University and an MS degree from UCLA, both in electrical engineering, and holds more than 80 patents in RF and mixed-signal integrated circuit design. Tyson’s impact extends well beyond the corporate world. He currently serves on the boards of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, the Texas Stock Exchange (TXSE), SigmaSense, and the Johns Hopkins University Whiting School of Engineering. In May 2026, he was inducted into the Austin Technology Council Hall of Fame.

Joseph Vincent is the Founder and CEO of Vinco Infrastructure Partners. He began laying the foundation for the firm in 2015, building from the ground up into a data center strategy firm spanning the entire lifecycle of development.

Vinco represents landlords and capital partners across the powered land, neo-cloud, and hyperscaler ecosystems, providing full-lifecycle execution from site sourcing and engineering design through capital introduction and offtake/lease structuring. The firm has exceeded $8B in transaction volume on over 500 engagements and has led active engagements with four of the five global hyperscalers and the majority of the active neo-cloud operators. Vinco has completed two successful private equity cycles.

Alongside the strategy practice, Joe is the Managing Partner of a data center development platform focused on building middle market (<150MW) data centers. The platform sits at the intersection of powered land supply and accelerating AI compute demand, specifically the deals that cannot wait for greenfield timelines. The platform launched in 2026.

Joe began his career at Colovore, one of Silicon Valley’s first high-density colocation operators, where he developed an early operator’s view of power-dense compute. Since then, this perspective has anchored every chapter of his career.

He lives in the Bay Area with his wife and two daughters.