About

About Community Matters: This is my personal blog.  I launched it in about 2000 (it was carried by the Austin American Statesman for its first few years), moved to Blogger, then to WP Engine in 2008. Was not intended to reflect the views of any organization with which I’m affiliated – there were a lot of them. Some of my postings were quite serious, others are completely silly, most are somewhere in between.

Today, Sunday January 21, 2024, I am relaunching Community Matters. I’ll likely be just as irreverent, and hopefully maturity & wisdom will sometimes survive.

I serve as CEO of Culturati, an advisor to & investor in Capital Factory, and a mentor & advisor to many business, social & political entrepreneurs. Lots of history teaching at the University of Texas, helping grow & run a successful start up semiconductor company, as a tech banker, serving on literally tens and tens of nonprofit, for profit, foundation & advisory boards, as a Senior Advisor to Austin Mayor Steve Adler (and his campaign treasurer), chairing the Austin Airport Advisory Board, and as Pres Barack Obama’s co-chair for his LGBTQ Leadership Council, now as a Texas co-chair of his presidential foundation, the Obama Foundation.

We once spent a great deal of time in West Texas where we owned a home and where I served as Pres & CEO of Marfa Public Radio and on the Board of Visitors for the McDonald Observatory. We now spend our time in Austin and Cat Spring, the latter where we own a piece of land, a weekend retreat, with my brother & sister. I’m married to the Rev. Dr. Steven Tomlinson. We adore our 7 nieces & nephews and 13 godchildren (nearly all the time).