TPIF Executive Director Ron Guillard

The Texas Pride Impact Funds Board of Directors has named Ron Guillard the foundation’s first executive director, effective Jan. 1. Guillard had served as president since TPIFe launched as an all-volunteer organization in 2015.

The board also elected four executive officers for 2022.

Jody Randall, newly-elected foundation president, said, “The dedication and planning expertise Ron brought to TPIF last year in coordinating our community-based strategic plan, which engaged leaders across Texas in our visioning, has been tremendous for this organization and has demonstrated his leadership capability.”

Guillard has more than two decades of business executive experience and has done extensive work on various non-profit boards. He spent 10 years as chief operating officer at Ignition Inc., a product development firm, and six years leading operations at Identity Architects in Houston, leveraging his passion and understanding of growing professional design service organizations.

Guillard also served as president of Black Tie Dinner, one of the nation’s largest LGBTQ fundraisers, and on Lambda Legal’s National Leadership Council, which is responsible for developing financial resources to support the mission of the LGBTQ-supportive civil rights organization.

“I believe in the clarity and purpose of TPIF’s mission and am passionate about achieving new grantmaking goals and awareness of the organization as we broaden our support for the LGBTQ community in Texas,” Guillard said, adding that his priority will be operationalizing the five-year strategic plan recently adopted for managed growth of the foundation, which is positioned to reach $1 million in annual grantmaking by 2026.

“We have a magnificent opportunity,” he added. “We are blessed with engaged donors and new partnership avenues to achieve that growth.”

Guillard was hired as TPIF’s first executive director to advance TPIF grantmaking and build an operations team. In addition, he will ensure the organization’s objectives are met, with a focus on improving the lives of all LGBTQ Texans, especially in rural and border communities, towns and small cities, and under-resourced areas and neighborhoods in urban areas. One of Guillard’s first major initiatives is to fill TPIF’s open program director position to support the foundation’s grantmaking functions. The program director will work closely with Guillard to design, implement and coordinate TPIF grant programs in conjuction with the board’s Grant Action Group leadership.

In addition to electing Jody Randall, Texas Tech University Health Science Center’s vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion in Lubbock, as president, the board also elected Robert Mosser, agile practice director with MATRIX Resources Central Region in Dallas, as vice president; Anna Sanchez, senior vice president of middle market banking at Texas Capital Bank in Austin, as secretary; and Hector Ruiz, senior staff accountant at McLelland & Russell, PLLC in Brownsville, as treasurer.

For more information, to donate or volunteer, visit Texas Pride Impact Funds online or email info@txpif.org.

— Tammye Nash

TPIF’s new executive committee members are, clockwise from top left, Jody Randall, Robert Mosser, Hector Ruiz and Anna Sanchez.