The Bold Leadership Download series features inspiring leaders of industry who share their pathway to success with UT students, faculty and alumni. Themes of this event include entrepreneurship, engineering, leadership, successes and failures.
Keynote lectures will be followed by a moderated Q&A led by student leaders from the Cockrell School of Engineering.
The Bold Leadership Download: A Conversation with David Baldwin
Thursday, April 17th, 2025
5:30PM - 7:30PM
Room 5.104
Gary L. Thomas Energy Engineering Building
210 E 24th St, Austin, TX 78712
About the Speaker
David Baldwin
Partner, SCF Partners and Co-Founder, OpenMinds, Inc.
David Baldwin joined SCF Partners, a leading energy private equity firm, and is currently leading its energy transition initiatives. He helped build multiple public companies such as National Oilwell Varco, Oil States International, Complete Production Services and Forum Energy Technologies. Earlier in his career, he helped develop and commercialize the horizontal drilling techniques that led to the U.S. shale revolution with Union Pacific Resources. He holds a B.S. in petroleum engineering and an MBA from UT Austin. He also played baseball at UT and was a 1983 National Championship Team member. Baldwin is also deeply involved in philanthropy. He co-founded OpenMinds and TexE and supports Greentown Labs, The Center for Pursuit and Baylor College of Medicine. In 2018, he received the Hoover Medal of Honor in recognition of his 30 years of advocacy for people with disabilities. His wife, Maire, is also a dual degree holder from UT Austin and worked for shale pioneer EOG Resources before retiring in 2016.
Past Events
The Bold Leadership Download: A Conversation with Jeannie Leavitt and Tim Crain
Timothy Crain
Senior Vice President, Chief Growth Officer and Co-Founder, Intuitive Machines
Tim Crain received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in aerospace engineering at The University of Texas where he was a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow. He was a civil servant at the NASA Johnson Space Center from 2000-2013, where he worked on advanced mission design and technology development for entry, descent and landing (EDL), precision landing and hazard avoidance (PLHA) and automated rendezvous. In 2013, Crain founded Intuitive Machines with Steve Altemus and Kam Ghaffarian as a think tank to apply NASA engineering approaches to intractable problems across aerospace, energy and medicine. Intuitive Machines narrowed its focus to cislunar and adjacent products and services in 2019, and in 2024 successfully landed the first American lunar lander on the moon since 1972. Intuitive Machines has two more launches planned for 2025.
Jeannie Leavitt
Brigadier General, Commander of the Air Force Recruiting Service, U.S. Air Force
Major General Jeannie M. Leavitt (ret.) served as the Air Force and Space Force Chief of Safety. She entered the Air Force in 1992 after earning her bachelor’s degree (summa cum laude) in aerospace engineering from The University of Texas and her master’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford University. She later earned an MBA from Auburn University, as well as master’s degrees from Air University and National Defense University. General Leavitt has commanded at the flight, squadron and wing level. She is a graduate and former instructor of the U.S. Air Force Weapons School and is a command pilot with more than 3,000 hours, including more than 300 hours in combat.
The Bold Leadership Download: A Conversation with Scott Sheffield
Scott Sheffield
Founder, Pioneer Natural Resources Company
With more than 40 years of energy experience, Scott Sheffield is widely recognized as an industry thought leader and an expert on oil and natural gas exploration and production. After graduating from The University of Texas in 1975 with a bachelor of science in petroleum engineering, he began his career as a reservoir engineer with Amoco Production Company. In 1979, he became the fifth employee of Parker & Parsley Petroleum Company in Midland, where he was the sole staff engineer. By 1991, he was chairman and CEO, and in 1997 he oversaw the company’s merger with MESA Inc. to form Pioneer Natural Resources Company. He retired as CEO of Pioneer Natural Resources Company in 2023.
