Scruggs
The Houston A&M Club honored longtime entrepreneur Richard Scruggs ’77 with its annual Outstanding Houston Aggie award this summer.
Scruggs has long been the kind of man who recognizes opportunity, and helps others learn how to find it. As director of the Center for New Ventures and Entrepreneurship at Mays, the Aggie MBA graduate has driven efforts to cultivate initiative and risk-taking among students, form partnerships with business, and recognize former students who have taken risks and found reward in their own businesses.
Scruggs is also a principal with business management and consulting firm Winston Sage Partners in Houston.
He rarely makes it through the halls of Mays without meeting a student under his mentorship or sharing conversation about critical business issues with faculty and staff. And that’s precisely what the Outstanding Houston Aggie award recognizes: graduates who exemplify love of and service to Texas A&M and their communities, and who contribute to their professions and industries.
“The Outstanding Houston Aggie is vital to our mission and we feel strongly to continue recognizing these Aggies,” said Harry McMahan ’94, president of the Houston A&M Club.
Chief among Scruggs’ roles at the Center for New Ventures and Entrepreneurship has been aiding the startup of three companies based on Texas A&M technologies. He also helped craft the Aggie 100 program to recognize and celebrate the success of the 100 fastest-growing Aggie-led companies in the world, and to put those graduates in touch with today’s student population.
His professional history showcases an accumulation of insight into building and sustaining new ventures. He worked with Andersen Consulting, BSG Alliance/IT and Perot Systems before founding Align Solutions—recognized in 1999 as the fastest growing private company in the Houston area. After Align was purchased by Luminant Worldwide Corporation in September 1999, Scruggs helped take the company public and served as vice-chairman and executive vice president.
— Sommer Hamilton