(Community Matters) Last night, we celebrated the Entrepreneurs Foundation’s 10 year anniversary with friends, board members and other supporters at the Four Seasons.
Super group of attendees including our mayor pro tem, Brewster McCracken as well as several of the EF founders including our board chair Bill Bock, John Thornton and Lynne Skinner. Current board members (AV’s Phil Siegel, vcfo’s Ellen Wood, Allegro Associates, Elizabeth Davis, AV’s Jeff Browning, Vignette COB, Jan Lindelow, Triton’s Scott Collier, Sentinent Venture’s David Lee), advisory board members (Deloitte’s Amy Chronis and SVB’s Doug Mangum), member company CEO’s, close friends & supporters from the venture capital/high tech world including tech rainmaker Pike Powers and our dear friend and community collaborator Dr. Ken Gladish from the Austin Community Foundation.
Bill Bock (EF board chair), Jack McDonald, John Thornton (EF Advisory Board, co-chair)
This year’s EF Community Leadership Awardee was my close friend Jack McDonald, CEO Perficient and rumored CD-10 candidate 🙂 Jack’s been an extraordinary community leader in his leadership roles at the GACC, Tech Alliance, PeopleFund, PeopleTrust, American Youthworks, Kipp School and People’s Community Clinic. Carla McDonald joined us as well. John Thornton presented Jack with the award, discretely mentioning the rumored first official fundraiser at the Thornton’s Old West Austin home on May 7 (rats, since Steven, Suzanne Deal Booth and I driving to Marfa that day). Previous awardees are Joe Aragona, Bill Wood and Bill Bock. Many many thanks to the Four Seasons for taking such great care of us last night. The food was outstanding, drinks more than plentiful and weather exactly what we asked for since so many enjoyed hanging on the terrace taking in the beautiful lake.
There was a beautiful moment last night. We had a looped slide show projecting. One of our bartenders happened to see a slide of EF presenting a $100,000 check to Habitat for Humanity (we’ve granted them $150k in the last year, in additional to $250k from the Chestnut affordable housing fund). She also saw slides of our volunteers working at the Kipp School. She was so excited. She’s owns a home built by Habitat for Humanity and her daughter attends the Kipp School. Like the cherry on top of a sundae, completely made my day.
Community Matters 