Doug Foshee

by Twister Marquiss

When Doug Foshee approached a recruiter’s table at a career fair in 1979, he probably figured his future was about to change. But he had no idea how far his path would veer from where he stood that day. 

He had already come a long way to be standing at that recruiting table. 

Foshee was a first-generation college student who had just recently found himself resurfacing bowling alleys. He and a friend had enrolled at the University of Houston, and he had been working full-time while going to school.

After a year of what he calls “sort-of uninspired college work,” he transferred to Southwest Texas State University — now Texas State — in San Marcos to be a criminal justice major.

He says he’ll never forget that recruiter’s table.

“I went to the student center in that first semester for a job fair,” Foshee says. “There was an FBI booth. And I thought that would be a great thing. I went up to the recruiter and said, ‘I’m your man,’ and he asked me what my major was. I said criminal justice, and he said, ‘Well, you’ll never work for the FBI with that degree, we need bilingual accountants.’ I thought, wow, I uprooted my whole life and moved to this place where I think I knew just one person — all on a false pretense.”

He changed his major to accounting in the School of Business Administration, which is today the McCoy College of Business. And while that might have seemed like a huge curve in the road to his future, many turns were still to come.

“So the next semester I took a statistics class,” he says. “The professor came up to me and asked me what I was majoring in, and I told him accounting. He said, ‘Well, you have an aptitude for statistics. You should consider finance. And we have this guy, you should go talk to him. His name is Paul Gowens.”

Gowens would soon become dean of the School of Business Administration, carving a tremendous legacy of his own.

“For no apparent reason, [Gowens] spent an inordinate amount of time with me,” Foshee says. “I took his class, and that was it. I found something I really enjoyed that I was good at.”

Foshee earned a bachelor of business administration degree in finance in 1982.

“When I was graduating, some of the banks interviewed at the business school for their credit training programs,” he says. “One of those was Allied Bank of Texas, which became First Interstate Bank, which became Wells Fargo Bank. So I interviewed with them, and it turns out that they didn’t [typically] interview at Southwest Texas State. I mean, they interviewed at all the Southwest Conference schools, but they had a banker — one banker — who had gone to Southwest, and he said, ‘Hey, I’m going to interview UT and while I’m there, I’m going to do a schedule at Southwest.’ So he came to campus. I interviewed with him. I got brought back, and they offered me $16,000 a year, which I thought was just highway robbery — I couldn’t believe they were going to pay me that much money. The next year, [the banker] got fired, and they never went back, as far as I know. So my travels to and through Southwest Texas were sort of, you know, lucky, I guess.”

Lucky, maybe. But Foshee’s road was never paved for him. Rather, he was creating his own path.

He later earned a master of business administration degree from Rice University in 1992, and since then, he has spent forty-plus years in the finance and energy industries, starting as a business analyst with ARCO International Oil and Gas Company in Plano, Texas. In 1993, he became chief executive officer (CEO) of Torch Energy Advisors, Inc., in Houston, followed by a turn as CEO at Nuevo Energy Company, also in Houston, from 1996 to 2000.

He moved on to Halliburton, one of the largest services companies in the energy industry, first as chief financial officer (CFO) and then as chief operating officer (COO). He then landed at El Paso Corporation, where he was chairman, CEO, and president from 2003 to 2012, the year that El Paso merged with Kinder Morgan, Inc., in one of the energy industry’s largest mergers ever. 

Later in 2012, Foshee founded Sallyport Investments, LLC, which he still owns today. Sallyport Investments provides capital and leadership consulting to companies.

He was named a Texas State University Distinguished Alumnus — the Texas State Alumni Association’s most prestigious award — in 2008.

In 2012, Foshee was inducted into the Texas Business Hall of Fame (TBHF). He currently serves on the TBHF’s Board of Directors, as well as the boards of the Robert A. Welch Foundation, the Coalition for the Homeless of Houston, and Good Reason Houston. He previously served on the Board of Trustees at Rice University and as chair of the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Houston Branch. Foshee is also co-founder / former chair NextOp and currently chairman of Combined Arms, both organizations supporting veterans’ transitions to civilian careers and communities.

“I spend about half my time in the non-profit world today, split between veterans, homelessness, and public education and education reform,” Foshee says.

Doug and his wife, Sarah — who was also a first-generation college student — have contributed financially to Texas State University through scholarship support.

“We’ve always given back to the places that we feel like helped us in our journey,” he says. “And so I have given in the past to Texas State.”

Foshee not only began forging a path for himself at Texas State but also forged lifelong friendships and bonds at Texas State.

“In fall of 2022, I took two of my college roommates and one of my best friends to the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion to see Jeff Beck, Ann Wilson from Heart, and ZZ Top,” he says. “So, you know, the friendships I made there [at Texas State], they’re still among my closest friendships to this day.”

Last year, his generosity — and his path — culminated in a $1 million commitment to the new Student Success Center at the McCoy College of Business, which will open in fall 2023.

“Brian McCoy and the McCoy family are really good friends,” Foshee says. “And, timing is everything.”  Brian called me one day and said, ‘Hey, I have this idea. I want to come talk to you about it.’  Brian McCoy met with Foshee to discuss the Students Success Center. “Brian is so nice and so committed to Texas State — he’s impossible to say no to!”

“It resonated with me because I know what it is to be a first-gen college student who really doesn’t know anything about what you’re supposed to do to adequately prepare yourself to compete in the job market after you get out of college,” Foshee says. “[There is] such a high proportion of first-gen students at Texas State, and some of them don’t even enter the McCoy College of Business physically until their junior year. What I know now with the benefit of having spent four decades in the corporate world, having recruited and evaluated and mentored talent, is, you can’t wait until your junior year in college to start thinking about how you position yourself after college. So the idea that you could create a center that was distinctive and will help students get a leg up early, just resonated with me.”

Foshee’s generosity will greatly benefit hundreds of students each year who will find themselves approaching recruiters’ tables at career fairs. They will probably find that their futures are about to change — and thanks to his gift, they will be ready. ✯