Q1 2020 Texas CEO Magazine

Tintype of Chief Hank Whitman and Mike Ramirez
by Brigham and Jenna Mayfield.
Read Ramirez’s story starting on page 14.
I would make each of my executive
team members take over in each weekly
executive meeting. I wanted to watch how
they made decisions. In this manner, I
was able to build a succession plan and
they got to know how I operate. One
thing they noticed was that I didn’t talk
a lot. I listened. A lot of CEOs need to
do more of that, especially when they
have good experts. Sometimes they
would even forget I was sitting there.
Did it help that your leaders at DFPS
were presumably drawn to the work of
helping these kids and families? Yes. We
were all affected by that. On any given
day, the state of Texas has 30,000 kids
in our conservatorship. Thirty thousand.
It was horrifying for me to even see
10 Texas CEO Magazine Q1 2020
those numbers. It was also tough and
heartbreaking to see kids who age out of
foster care without being adopted. Our
biggest push was to get them into college
or vocational school. Every foster child
in the state of Texas can go to any state
college or vocational school tuition free. No
school loans to worry about. Unfortunately,
fewer than 7 percent take advantage of it.
Wow. We’ve raised that number now. They
often don’t take advantage of it because
they’re mad and don’t trust the system. We
as a community, not just DFPS, weren’t
doing a good job of mentoring those kids.
Because that’s all they need—someone
to be there for them. These kids have
never lived a normal life, and we want
them to have that life of normalcy.
It made my job as chief of the Rangers
seem like a cakewalk. The normal
life expectancy in the position of
commissioner is 18 months, so I
surpassed that, with three years and
two grueling legislative sessions.
There was one commissioner who
completed four years, but it’s not a
position people hold for a long time.
What did you tell your successor on
your way out? What did you learn? As I
told the governor’s staff when I decided
to retire, “I want the next person to
do ten times better than what we did.”
And they’re going to want the next
person to do that. I’m confident that
will happen. When I retired, I got a lot
of good feedback on the changes we