DISE Launch Event Opening?Remarks

I could spend the few minutes I have up here doing nothing but thanking people; however, I’m not sure that would be the most fun for all of you.

But I do need to start there.

I’d like to thank the one-and-only Carla Rosenberg and her team for volunteering their time to put on this fantastic event. And alongside her, the team at Tony Fay Public Relations, who also donated their time and expertise to support us.

None of this is possible without Britton Banowsky’s vision for the Heart of Dallas Bowl. And that vision doesn’t come to life without the support of Mayor Mike Rawlings, Monica Paul of the Dallas Sports Commission, and people like Daniel Huerta with Fair Park. So thank you. And we are honoring Britton tonight by naming him chairman emeritus of our new organization.

Britton and I were fortunate to have the support of our teams to volunteer our services for the first Heart of Dallas Bowl back in 2013. But for us and our staff at Conference USA and The Richards Group at the time, while it was super fun to be responsible for a New Year’s Day Bowl Game between Big 12 and Big 10 schools, it didn’t make for the most festive of holiday seasons for us and our families.

So in stepped ESPN to first, maybe just save us from ourselves (!), and second, to plug the game into their impressive portfolio of bowl games. And it was that partnership that launched the Heart of Dallas Young Professionals organization and all of its blind faith (or maybe blissful ignorance!) to get us where we are today. Pete Derzis, Clint Overby, Scott Pomeroy (who’s here tonight), Brant Ringler, and others at ESPN — thank you for your financial support the past four years and we look forward to many more.

These Young Professionals have an impressive list of accomplishments over the last three years; they’ve:

• Assembled over 100 members
• Given $532,500 to 28 local nonprofits
• Honored Dirk Nowitzki, Jamie Benn, and Pat and Emmitt Smith for their charitable contributions

I’d like to thank our amazing board of young professionals and specifically Mallory Martin (then of the Dallas Stars), Kyle Tapply (of the Dallas Mavericks) and Whitney DeMecurio (of The Marketing Arm) for their past leadership, and Blake Paul (of UBS) and Lauren Halsey (of FC Dallas) for the current leadership.

And I’m here tonight to announce the exciting next phase of this organization, which will now be called Dallas Influencers in Sports and Entertainment, or “DISE” for short. DISE will focus on:

1. Connecting and developing the sports and entertainment industry professionals in our home of North Texas.
2. Using the funding generated from these efforts to make our home a better place, by giving to our local nonprofits who work so hard to fuel bold social change — they are the true heroes here, and you will hear from one of them, Chad Houser of Café Momentum, here shortly.

We will do this by developing content and programming — both through events and digital/social platforms — that are relevant to our industry to make us even bigger and better, and hopefully support opportunities and initiatives of our industry — including the terrific work the Dallas Sports Commission does to attract valuable events to our area.

We also hope to provide valuable mentorship and learning opportunities in an effort to create a more inclusive and diverse environment for those wanting to enter or grow in the industry. And we have an already impressive advisory board who have enthusiastically signed up to support this, and I’d like to recognize a few of these people in the audience tonight:

• Brad Alberts, Dallas Stars
• Andy Allman, Southwest Airlines
• John Alper, Frisco RoughRiders
• Britton Banowsky, College Football Playoff Foundation
• Aaron Brinkman, Activision
• Tony Fay, Tony Fay Public Relations
• Jason Howarth, Panini America
• George Killebrew, Dallas Mavericks
• David Kozack, HKS
• Ryan Luckey, AT&T
• Geoff Moore, Team Envy
• Monica Paul, Dallas Sports Commission
• Nick Vanderlinden, Red Bull
• Joshua Watts, AdvoCare
• Jordan Woy, Willis & Woy Sports Group
• And last but not least, Claudia DeMoss with The Dallas Foundation, who has been so instrumental in steering our charitable efforts and making sure our money is spent to make the maximum community impact

So why a Pegasus for the logo? Well, after quickly realizing that it would be impossible to design a logo that represented “Dallas,” “Influencers,” “Sports,” and “Entertainment,” we stumbled on this quote from an article in the Dallas Morning News about our city’s famous Pegasus: “What better symbol for a city that flies above all expectations than a winged horse dancing in the skyline?”

As a volunteer-driven organization, our goal is to fly above all expectations for our hometown, and hope we can count on the support of people like you to grow our membership and corporate support base.

We are over halfway to our first goal of giving $1,000,000 back to our community, and you can help us make our dream a reality.