Tony Capecci has joined Haynes and Boone, LLP as Director of Practice Innovation.
Mr. Capecci is an experienced legal technology leader with two decades of experience in legal technology and more than a decade of experience spearheading the procurement, development, and implementation of legal systems in fast-paced environments.
Prior to joining Haynes & Boone, Mr. Capecci was Associate Director, Litigation & Practice Delivery at Kirkland & Ellis. Mr. Capecci received a Bachelor of Arts in Interactive Multimedia from Columbia College Chicago.
“Tony has a deep understanding of the technology needs of a practicing lawyer, coupled with the leadership, intellectual curiosity, and passion for innovation needed to succeed in this role,” saidMitchell.
Haynes and Boone, LLP is a highly respected American Lawyer top 100 law firm, with more than 600 lawyers and 425 non-lawyer employees in 18 domestic and three international offices, and over 40 major practices.
The firm has grown from a two-person firm in 1970 to a global leader through its client-first focus, which informs its decisions and processes, and the collaborative nature of its people, which makes the work environment healthy and pleasant.
The firm’s culture focuses on teamwork, an environment of mutual respect, and a long-term view that supports investing in the future.
This February, we’re delving deeper into the origins of Black History Month and welcoming insights from clients and friends of the firm about ways we can honor the mission and vision Dr. Carter G. Woodson established in 1926.
Dr. Carter G. Woodson was a distinguished Black author, editor, publisher, and historian who founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915 in Chicago, describing its mission as the scientific study of the “neglected aspects of Negro life and history. Black History Month evolved from that idea and celebrates the historic contributions of Black people. The month has been marked every February since 1976.
Woodson’s parents were illiterate former slaves, and his foundational education was spotty at best. Instead of the classroom, he worked in the West Virginia coal mines and on the family farm. He entered high school at 20 and graduated two years later.
Throughout his lifetime, Woodson became a school supervisor in the Philippines and later traveled throughout Europe and Asia after earning a bachelor’s degree in literature from Berea College in Kentucky.
Dr. Woodson also earned a master’s degree from the University of Chicago and became the second Black American, after W.E.B. Du Bois, to obtain a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He joined the faculty of Howard University and eventually served as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
The February timing of Black History Month was intentional by Dr. Woodson, who launched Negro History Week in the second week of February to coincide with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.
More than 100 years later, Black History Month is a significant event, highlighting well-known and less familiar individuals and their accomplishments, innovations and experiences.
The 2025 Black History Month theme of African Americans and Labor focuses on the various and profound ways work and working of all kinds—free and unfree, skilled and unskilled, vocational and voluntary—intersect with Black people’s collective experiences.
As an executive search firm, we understand the importance of work and are privileged to connect our clients with talented leaders across a swath of industries and roles.
We’re honored to have two friends of the firm share what Black History Month means to them and how we can actively participate in the annual event not just in February but every month on the calendar.
As an African American CFO, Black History Month holds special significance for me. It is a time to reflect on the rich history, culture, and contributions of African Americans to our society. This month provides an opportunity to engage in meaningful discourse and gain deeper insights into the struggles and triumphs of our community.
During Black History Month, it is important to remember and honor influential figures such as Martin Luther King Jr., Harriet Tubman, Barack Obama, and Maya Angelou. Their contributions have left an indelible mark on American history and continue to inspire us today.
Growing up, my parents taught me the importance of knowing about Black history year-round. They instilled in me the value of understanding our heritage and its impact on our present and future. Black History Month is a reminder of the resilience, strength, and determination that have been the hallmarks of our journey.
By celebrating our history, we acknowledge our progress and the work that still needs to be done to achieve true equality and justice.
As an African American leader, I believe it is my responsibility to mentor and guide others, helping them to rise and achieve their full potential. One quote that resonates deeply with me is from Booker T. Washington: “If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.” This quote embodies the spirit of Black History Month for me. It is a call to action to support and uplift one another as we strive for success.
To actively participate in Black History Month, consider supporting Black-owned businesses. This helps to promote economic empowerment within the community. Additionally, donating to charities that support Black causes can make a significant impact. Organizations like Black Lives Matter, NAACP, and the ACLU are doing important work that benefits the community. Lastly, participating in local movements and events can provide valuable opportunities to learn and engage with others who are passionate about celebrating Black history and culture.
Black History Month is a time to celebrate our heritage, reflect on our progress, and commit to lifting each other up. It is a reminder that our collective strength lies in our unity and our ability to support one another. Let us continue to honor the legacy of our ancestors and work towards a brighter future for all.
Here are some ways we have honored Black History throughout the year and my 30 years in Human Resources:
Highlighting courses taught by black authors in celebration of Black History Month.
Sharing short, animated clips about Black historical figures with staff.
Encouraging staff to share foods from their diverse backgrounds, including African, Caribbean, and American cuisine.
Sharing short biographies of lesser-known yet impactful Black men and women who have contributed to the formation and elevation of people in America.
At Milken Institute, we honor Black History throughout the year by ensuring diverse speakers and contributors at all our conferences and by fostering a diverse workforce.
Learn More About Black Leaders, Innovators, Educators and Creators:
Chris Copley has joined Sjögren’s Foundation as Vice President of Marketing & Communications.
Mr. Copley is a seasoned marketing expert who drives meaningful impact in the nonprofit sector, specifically in health care, military service, and community organizations. Prior to joining the Sjögren’s Foundation, Mr. Copley was Senior Director Integrated Planning and Marketing at USO. Mr. Copley received a Master of Arts from The University of Georgia and a bachelor’s degree from Truman State University.
This search was conducted and completed by Managing DirectorJohn Mannand Associate Pamela DeLuca.
“Chris has a proven track record of driving engagement, fundraising, and brand awareness. He previously held leadership roles at the USO and the American Kidney Fund, where he led multi-channel marketing initiatives and strategic communications efforts,” said John Mann, Managing Director of The Alexander Group.
The Sjögren’s Foundation is the first and only national non-profit health organization leading the charge to conquer Sjögren’s, a systemic autoimmune disease with symptoms of extensive dryness, fatigue, chronic pain, neuropathies, and other serious complications.
The Foundation’s initiatives, programs, and overall efforts within their mission are started, advanced, and expanded with Sjögren’s patient front and center. Sjögren’s carries a physical, emotional, and financial burden for patients, and the Foundation is laser-focused on building the awareness and support needed to improve the quality of life for current and future patients.
The Alexander Group, recognized as one of the country’s top CEO executive search firms, presents “Five Questions With Extraordinary Leaders,” our interview series with visionary industry leaders. In this installment, Managing Director and Chief Client OfficerAmanda K. Brady interviews Carly Caulfield, Race Director and General Manager of the Houston Marathon Committee, discussing management style, the evolution of the annual event, and the ephemeral nature of creating a marathon.
It’s not a stretch to describe Carly Caulfield’s career as a marathon, not a sprint.
As the longest-tenured Houston Marathon Committee employee on staff, Caulfield started with the organization at 19 years old, and over the next 25 years, the Chevron Houston Marathon grew to one of the nation’s premier multi-race running events.
She serves as Race Director and General Manager of the Houston Marathon Committee, an executive leadership role Caulfield knows from sneakers up.
Her early years with the marathon were lessons in on-the-spot training. She quickly ascended from office clerk to more senior roles and, in 2020, was promoted to her current position.
Caulfield is the marathon’s first female race director and won the Industry Leader Under 40 Award from the National Center for Sports Safety and Security (NCS4) in 2016. She currently serves on the NCS4 Advisory Committee. In June 2019, the world running Association of International Marathons and Distance Races (AIMS) named Caulfield as a founding member of the AIMS Sustainability Commission.
Caulfield earned a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Houston – Downtown and an Executive MBA program at the University of Houston’s Bauer College of Business.
Managing Director and Chief Client Officer Amanda K. Brady immediately knew Caulfield would be a perfect fit for our ongoing series “Five Questions With Extraordinary Leaders” because she’s seen firsthand how Caulfield leads before, during, and after the marathon.
Brady serves as Sector 4 Captain, enlisting and working with volunteers while coordinating with the Houston Police Department to keep runners, volunteers, and spectators safe throughout the race.
Read on to learn more about Caulfield, her mentors and how collaboration is key to achieving successful outcomes.
Q: You have been with the Houston Marathon for 25 years. How did you get into the marathon industry?
A: By accident. I was a 19-year-old kid. I was introduced to a board member of the Houston Marathon when they were looking for an office clerk; the job paid more than I was making at the time.
I don’t recall wanting to pursue a specific career as a child, like a firefighter or a veterinarian. Around age 10 or 12, I read a book about a family with a lot of kids – I’m the oldest of six – and the parents were efficiency managers, and they practiced efficiency in their family. I read that book and thought, “That is what I want to be when I grow up, an efficiency manager.” I’m incredibly lucky to have fallen into this job, because every day I get to be the efficiency manager I dreamed of when I was a kid, and I love it.
Q: How did you learn how to manage people? Were you trained, or did it come naturally? Has your management style changed over the last decade as the organization grew?
A: I wasn’t trained to manage people, and I don’t think it comes naturally, but I have learned a lot through experience and through making mistakes. I’m lucky in that when I was hired, we only had two employees. We used to be almost entirely volunteer-managed, with one employee to sell sponsorships and someone else – me – to answer the phone and man the fax machine. As volunteers stepped down or retired, I thought, “Oh, my gosh, I could do that.”
First was registration, then volunteer coordinator, then charity coordinator. Eventually, it got to be too much. There’s only so many things you can do. I was 22 years old. I didn’t know you were allowed to ask for help, but I finally did. That is how the staff has grown over the years. I kept taking on a new job, and we kept hiring someone else to do the job I used to do.
I’m incredibly lucky that no one has ever had my job before. So, no one ever says to me, “Well, Amanda used to do it that way.” No one’s ever done it before, and that’s an incredible source of freedom and power. I never had anyone to train me, but that also meant I had to learn many lessons the hard way. Maybe the first five or eight years, when we had emergencies – we still do –I got to swoop in and be a hero for those emergencies, and it felt great.
Eventually, I matured or grew up enough to realize that was a ridiculous way to manage things. My greatest aspiration as the Race Director of the Houston Marathon is not to be needed, and it is what I ask of my team. “You guys develop your teams enough so that if something happens to you, you get sick, get hit by a truck, you don’t need to be there,” that is my goal every year. I have a great team, and I’m proud that everyone on the OPS team has been around for more than five years. Many of them six or seven.
My management style has certainly developed over the last 25 years. I believe in getting great people, giving them what they need, and then getting out of the way. That is my entire philosophy of management. And that comes from the fact that no one was in my way. I was making my own way.
But I should add that the marathon community is an amazing community. There is no one I know in this industry that I can’t call and ask, “How do you deal with this? Will you loan me that? Can you send me this document?” It is amazingly collaborative.
Q: You also manage a large group of volunteers. What are the challenges of managing such a large volunteer group, and how is that different from managing employees?
A: First, we couldn’t put on this event without our 5,000-plus volunteers. Volunteers have very different motivations from staff members. I love this event, but I also work to pay my mortgage. That’s not why our volunteers are part of the event, and I think volunteers, especially our Marathon Committee leadership, want to make a difference in the community. They want to solve problems. They want to feel valued. And it’s my and my team’s job to give volunteers the tools they need to feel that way.
I don’t personally manage volunteers anymore. It is still my job to connect with our volunteers and make sure they have what they need to succeed in the important roles they play in the marathon’s success every year.
From Left to Right: Carly Caulfield, with her mom Mitzie Caulfield and sisters Bonnie and Betsy Caulfield, at the start of the Houston Marathon.
Q: Who are your mentors and guide stars? Why them?
A: First is my mom. My mom is a bad***. She is a go-getter. I’m not a runner. But I understood running when my mom started running. She had never run a marathon, but she started training so she could go run “Carly’s Marathon.” She would talk to me every day about her training and that’s when I started to understand what it meant for people to train—putting in the miles, trying to avoid an injury, the nutrition, and just getting to the finish line. This is not a football game. You don’t buy a ticket to the marathon and attend it. It’s not about what you paid for your registration. It is about what you have paid in your life to get to this place. I didn’t understand that until my mom started running. But once she did, I understood that every marathoner and participant who called with a problem needed our attention. It was like solving problems for my mom. If my mom had a problem, I would go to the end of the earth to fix it. And we still do that. That is our guiding philosophy. We have rules. We can’t accommodate everything, but if we have made a mistake, we will fix it for you. I care so deeply about the participant experience because when I think about it, it’s my mom’s marathon. My family is out there running and volunteering. I hope that we treat every runner just like I would treat my family.
The other person I would mention is Eric Berger with Space City Weather. He keeps us calm during weather emergencies. Their tagline is “no hype.” Just, “Here’s what’s happening. Here’s what we know. Here’s what we don’t know.” When I’m planning a marathon, I need to know what to expect, and Eric does that for me and many others across Houston.
Q: What is the hardest part about serving as Race Director and General Manager of the Houston Marathon. Does any year stand out as particularly challenging, and if so, why?
A: We are setting up for an event out of nothing in a few hours. You go to a football game in a stadium, you go to a show in the theater. Those are permanent venues. I think what’s unique about endurance sports is that we are building an entire event site out of thin air for just a moment. And then it goes away. So, every year has its unique challenges. Regardless of the challenges, our runners are investing their life in completing this event and we need to honor what these runners have invested in.
As for a year that sticks out, I would mention two. The one that just happened in January 2025. I’m still really tired. There was a lot of stress and a lot of extra planning because of what happened in New Orleans on New Year’s Eve.
Another was the Olympic trials in 2012. That definitely was a challenging year. Very proud of doing it. It was the first time the men and women had ever been hosted at the same time in the same place, and we went for it. We wanted to do something new and good for the sport and the city, and we did it.
It was on Saturday morning before the marathon the next day. None of our signage was the same as the marathon signage. Everything had to be the Olympics and NBC and USATF. We set up the event, held the trials, and then we had to tear down that entire event across the city and, the next morning, stand up our normal marathon event with all those sponsors and that special signage. It was nuts. But it put Houston on the map for Elite Racing. “We had two American records here just this past January, and a history of record-breaking performances for many years. Our race is watched nationally and internationally, and that just wasn’t the case in 2000 when I started. We were just a local event with 7,000 runners, and now we are on the international stage with more than 35,000 runners.
Tony Dorazio has joined Aither Systems as Chief Executive Officer.
Aither Systems is a growing company commercializing Energy as a Service solutions for the telecom sector. The company designs, builds, operates, and monitors microgrids, control software and related infrastructure, which optimize asset resiliency and reduce carbon emissions. Aither recently received an investment from EnCap’s Energy Transition Fund.
Mr. Dorazio is a seasoned power industry executive with more than 20 years of global experience in companies with scales ranging from utilities to distributed generation to microgrids, and he has built and led organizations focusing on solar, wind, and battery energy storage technologies. Mr. Dorazio received an MBA from Long Island University and a Bachelor of Science in Electromechanical Engineering Technology from State University of New York.
Director Leah Salinas and Managing Director Jonathan Verlander conducted and completed this search.
“Tony is a highly experienced leader who brings a unique blend of experiences to this role. The Aither and EnCap teams are excited to see the impact he will have as Chief Executive of the company,” Leah Salinas, Director, The Alexander Group. “We were very pleased to partner again with EnCap’s Energy Transition team on this search, and we look forward to continuing to support them in the future.”
Aither Systems is a growing company that is commercializing Energy as a Service solutions (focused on behind-the-meter energy capture, storage, and management) for the telecom sector.
The company designs, builds, operates, and monitors microgrids, control software and related infrastructure, which optimize asset resiliency and reduce carbon emissions. The company has developed multiple promising product lines and is in the initial stages of commercialization with a major telecom provider.
