Board of Directors

Michael L. Klein is engaged in independent oil and gas exploration and production in Midland. He graduated from The University of Texas at Austin with a BS in petroleum engineering in 1958 and an LLB in 1963. While attending law school, he worked summers as a petroleum engineer with Continental Oil Company and later served as an attorney for the company. He divides his time between Houston, Austin, and Santa Fe. He serves as chair of the Blanton Museum of Art National Leadership Board and the University of Texas Press Advisory Council. He is a member of the Longhorn Foundation and is on the development board of The University of Texas at Austin and the board of trustees of The Contemporary Austin. He has previously served on the SITE Santa Fe board of directors, as a member on the board of trustees for the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, DC); the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Chinati Foundation (Marfa); the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York City); the Cate School (Carpinteria, California); and as the chair of the board at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston.

A graduate of The University of Texas at Austin and Rice University, Leslie Dyess Blanton serves on the advisory councils of the Children’s Museum of Houston, Career and Recovery Resources, Inc., and the College of Liberal Arts at The University of Texas at Austin, as well as the boards of The Park People, Inc., Young Audiences of Houston, the Center for Reform of School Systems, the Harris County Hospital District Foundation, and the regional board of Teach For America. She is scholarship vice president of Phi Beta Kappa Alumni Association of Greater Houston, a Texas Cultural Trust member, and an active participant on committees at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Carlos Kevin Blanton is a professor of history and Chicano/Latino studies at Texas A&M University. Prior to moving to College Station in 2001, he taught at Portland State University. He is the author of The Strange Career of Bilingual Education in Texas, 1836–1981 (TAMU, 2004) and George I. Sánchez: The Long Fight for Mexican American Integration (Yale, 2014) and he has recently edited A Promising Problem: The New Chicana/o History (University of Texas Press, 2016). Blanton’s work has been honored with the Coral Horton Tullis Memorial Prize for Best Book on Texas History (2005), the Bolton Cutter Award for Best Article on Borderlands History (2010), and the National Association of Chicana-Chicano Studies Best Book Award (2016). He has also published in the Journal of Southern History, Pacific Historical Review, Western Historical Quarterly, Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Teachers College Record, and in other history and interdisciplinary journals. Blanton received his PhD from Rice University in history under Dr. John Boles.

Lorenzo F. Candelaria is a historian and professor of Western European and American music history and literature at The University of Texas at El Paso. His research focuses on Catholic music cultures in Spain, Mexico, and in the American Southwest. He is also engaged in projects that explore intersections between music and the physical sciences. Prior to arriving at The University of Texas at El Paso in 2013, Candelaria served on the musicology faculty of The University of Texas at Austin for twelve years and was a visiting faculty member in ethnomusicology at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. His book, The Rosary Cantoral (2010), received the American Musicological Society’s Robert M. Stevenson Award for its outstanding contribution to music scholarship. Prestigious awards, including grants and fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, Mellon Foundation, Social Science Research Council, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, have supported his research. Candelaria received a Bachelor of Music from Oberlin College in 1995 and completed his PhD at Yale University in 2001.

Carolina Castillo Crimm is a retired professor of history from Sam Houston State University. She was born and brought up in Mexico City, Mexico, and came to the United States in 1963, finishing her BA at the University of Miami and her MA at Texas Tech University before earning her PhD from The University of Texas at Austin in Latin American History with Dr. Nettie Lee Benson. She taught at the high school level before starting at Sam Houston State University in 1992, where she won both local and statewide teaching awards, including the prestigious Piper Award as one of the best teachers in Texas. She has published De León: A Tejano Family History (University of Texas Press, 2004); The Hoffman Collection: San Diego at the Turn of the Century with Sara R. Massey (University of Texas Press, 2003); and Cabin Fever: The Roberts-Farris Cabin, A Campus, A Cabin, A Community, (as editor, Texas Review Press, 2002). She has also published numerous introductions and chapters on Texas women, blacks, and Hispanics. As a retiree she is working on historical novels that deal with Spanish and Mexican Texas during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Sean P. Cunningham is associate professor and chair of the Department of History at Texas Tech University. He teaches broadly in twentieth-century U.S. history while specializing in the history of post-1945 American political culture. His geographic emphasis is on the American Sunbelt, Texas in particular. Cunningham received his BA, MA, and MEd from Texas Tech University and his PhD from the University of Florida. His first book, Cowboy Conservatism: Texas and the Rise of the Modern Right, was published by the University Press of Kentucky in 2010 and won the Texas Tech University President’s Book Award in 2012. His second book American Politics in the Postwar Sunbelt: Conservative Growth in a Battleground Region was published by Cambridge University Press in 2014.

Edwin Dorn teaches defense policy and courses about the relationship between race and immigration policy at The University of Texas at Austin LBJ School of Public Affairs. He was dean of the LBJ School from 1997 to 2005. Prior to that, he spent twenty years in Washington, DC working on civil rights and education policy in the Carter administration and serving as Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness in the Clinton administration. Dorn was a Fulbright Scholar at the Centre for West African Studies at the University of Birmingham, England. After serving as an officer in the U.S. Army, he completed his PhD in political science at Yale University. Dorn’s major publications include Rules and Racial Equality (1979, Yale University Press) and “What We Have Learned About Race,” which he wrote for the Austin-American Statesman in 2009. He is chairman of the board of the Kettering Foundation and serves on the boards of the Institute for Defense Analyses and the Seton Family of Hospitals.

Julius Glickman is a Houston civic leader and attorney. A native of Big Spring, he earned his BA in Plan II and his LLB at The University of Texas at Austin. He was student body president, an Outstanding Student, and a member of the Tejas Club, Silver Spurs, and Friars. An active alumnus, he has chaired the Development Board and the Chancellor’s Council and is the chair of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) Development Board. He has also served on the Commission of 125 and is the chair for the College of Liberal Arts Advisory Council. In 2012, he was a recipient of the University’s Distinguished Alumnus Award, the highest award given by the Texas Exes. He was also a founding member of the Blanton Museum Council. He has served as chair of the board of Humanities Texas and has chaired the board of Houston Public Radio. He is a member of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers and a recipient of the Pro Bene Meritis Award from the College of Liberal Arts in 2008.

Sibyl Avery Jackson is an executive producer, screenwriter, and member of the Writers Guild of America, West. She has vast experience as a writer, editor, researcher, and public and media relations specialist in the corporate and private sectors, as well as in public television and radio. Her background also includes being a researcher and editor at the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, and a spokesperson for one of the largest wireless service providers where, in addition to public and media relations, she also developed and managed government relations and corporate giving. The latter experience inspired her to write an award-winning suspense/thriller novel, Degree of Caution. Most recently, she is an executive producer of the award-winning feature film The Retrieval. She has been active for many years in securing funding for various projects and has served on several boards, including the Be An Angel Fund and the Houston Museum of African American Culture. She has a BA in English from Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, and currently lives in Houston with her husband, Alfred, a University of Texas graduate and managing partner in a private equity firm.

Jay Moore is a classroom teacher, author, speaker, and public historian from Abilene, Texas. Since 1992, he has taught at Abilene High School where he serves as chairman of the social studies department. In 2013, Moore was selected as a Humanities Texas Outstanding Teaching Award winner. He earned both his BBS in political science and history and his MA in history from Hardin-Simmons University. He is the creator of History In Plain Sight, a DVD series documenting the history of Abilene, and has authored books about the city, including Abilene History In Plain Sight (ACU Press). He is the producer and presenter of Our American Past, a lecture series aimed at reacquainting adult audiences with American history. Jay and his wife Laura have three daughters.

Dr. Nolan Perez is the CEO of Gastroenterology Consultants of South Texas in Harlingen. Dr. Perez grew up in the Rio Grande Valley and graduated from Port Isabel High School. He earned a bachelor of arts from The University of Texas at Austin and a medical doctorate from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. After medical school, he served in the US Navy as a Medical Corps Officer and received the Navy Commendation and Navy Achievement Medals. He is board certified in gastroenterology and is a fellow of the American College of Physicians and fellow of the American College of Gastroenterology. He is a clinical associate professor at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley School of Medicine. Dr. Perez has a passion for mentoring, education, and community service. He created RGV Mentors to inspire high school students and help them transition into post-secondary education, and he mentors many students himself. Since 2010 he has been serving as a trustee for Harlingen Consolidated ISD and is past-president of the board. He was appointed by Governor Greg Abbott in 2015 to the Texas Woman’s University Board of Regents and is currently vice-chair. He serves on many other local and statewide boards, including The University of Texas Foundation Board, Texas Lyceum, UT System Chancellor’s Council Executive Committee, Educate Texas Advisory Board, and Senator John Cornyn’s Service Academy Nominations Board. He is married to Sandy Perez, and they have two children.

Hector Retta is the CEO and vice chairman of Capital Bank and has been in this role since July 2010 when he relocated to El Paso from Orange County, California. He is the former executive vice president and regional president of Wells Fargo Orange County and previously served as the Wells Fargo regional president for border banking. Prior to his association with Wells Fargo, he was a managing director with JP Morgan. Currently, he serves on the board of directors for the Paso del Norte Health Foundation in El Paso and the El Paso Museum of Art Foundation and has previously served on the board of the Greater Dallas Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the El Paso Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and the California State University Foundation. He is a native of Dallas and earned a bachelor of business administration and an MS in economics from Baylor University. He is married to the former Lorez Curlin of El Paso.

Ricardo Romo was the fifth president of The University of Texas at San Antonio. He graduated from Fox Technical High School and is a native of San Antonio’s West Side. He attended The University of Texas at Austin on a track scholarship and holds a master’s degree in history from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and a PhD in history from the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1980, he returned to The University of Texas at Austin to teach history before becoming vice provost for undergraduate education. From 1987 to 1993, he directed the Texas office of the Tomás Rivera Center, housed at Trinity University, where he evaluated the impact of governmental policies on Latinos. In 1993, he became vice provost for undergraduate education at UT Austin before becoming president of UTSA in 1999. In 2002, President Bush appointed him to the President’s Board of Advisers on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. He has also been appointed to the Federal Reserve Bank Board of Directors and to the Board of Commissioners to UNESCO. A nationally respected urban historian, he is the author of East Los Angeles: History of a Barrio, which is now in its ninth printing. His photographs have been the subject of several regional art exhibitions, including Havana, a collection of images taken in Cuba. He and his wife, Dr. Harriett Romo, a UTSA professor of sociology, director of the UTSA Mexico Center, and director of the Bank of America Child & Adolescent Policy Research Institute (CAPRI), are avid art collectors, focusing on works by Latino artists. They also share a passion for foreign travel, particularly to Mexico and other countries in Latin America.

Susie Shields had the opportunity to teach in the Texas public school system for thirteen years at both the middle school and elementary school levels. A graduate of Texas A&M University with a degree in agricultural economics, she came to teaching through a non-traditional route and spent her career in the classroom focusing on the subjects of mathematics and social studies. To her, education was not just a career choice; it was also a chance to be fully engaged in one of the most substantive issues of our day—the schooling of our children during their most formative years. As such, she amplified her experience in the classroom to the greater Austin and state communities by serving as a presenter at multiple local and statewide educational workshops and as a member of several curriculum development and textbook selection committees. Although she now works with a wide variety of private and public sector clients to provide advocacy services before the Texas Legislature, her foundation as a teacher is the driving force behind her enthusiasm to champion Humanities Texas and its invaluable role in advancing our heritage and culture. She currently serves on the board of visitors for The University of Texas McDonald Observatory and Department of Astronomy and on the Visualize Graduation Society at University of Texas Elementary School in Austin. The daughter of a career Army officer, she spent her early childhood moving frequently from post to post before her family settled in Central Texas. She and her husband Chris call Austin home and are parents of four children and grandparents of one.

Chase Untermeyer is chairman of the Qatar-America Institute, which aims to increase understanding of the important Qatari-American relationship in security, education, and energy. He was born in New Jersey but came to Houston at the age of two. He is a 1968 graduate of Harvard College with honors in government. During the Vietnam War, he served as an officer in the U.S. Navy aboard a Pacific Fleet destroyer and as aide to the commander of U.S. naval forces in the Philippines. Returning to Houston, Untermeyer was a political reporter for the Houston Chronicle and executive assistant to the county judge (chief executive) of Harris County, Texas. In 1976, he was elected as a Republican to the first of two terms as a member of the Texas House of Representatives from a district on the west side of Houston.

He resigned his seat to go to Washington in 1981 as executive assistant to then-Vice President Bush. In 1984, President Ronald Reagan appointed him Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Manpower and Reserve Affairs. During the first Bush Administration, he was assistant to the President for presidential personnel and director of the Voice of America. From 2004 to 2007, he served as United States ambassador to the State of Qatar, on appointment of President George W. Bush. He is currently chairman of the Houston Committee on Foreign Relations and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Untermeyer is the author of three volumes of diary-based memoirs of the Reagan-Bush era, When Things Went Right, Inside Reagan’s Navy, and Zenith: In the White House with George H. W. Bush. He has also published How Important People Act: Behaving Yourself in Public.