{"id":340469,"date":"2026-06-17T23:04:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T23:04:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/340469\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T23:04:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T23:04:18","slug":"economic-club-of-dallas-appoints-former-smu-tower-center-chief-as-executive-director-dallas-innovates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/340469\/","title":{"rendered":"Economic Club of Dallas Appoints Former SMU Tower Center Chief as Executive Director \u00bb Dallas Innovates"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Luisa del Rosal joins the Economic Club of Dallas from SMU’s Tower Center for Public Policy and International Affairs. [Composite image: Photo, SMU; Svetlana Kychanova\/istockphoto; DI Studio]<\/p>\n

The Economic Club of Dallas (ECD) has appointed Luisa del Rosal as its new executive director. A dynamic leader with 20 years of experience that includes public policy, international affairs, nonprofit leadership, higher education, and government, del Rosal brings both strategic vision and operational excellence to a prestigious regional forum for global business leadership, ECD said.<\/p>\n

Michael Levy, president of the ECD and CEO of Crow Holdings, called del Rosal \u201ca proven leader with the vision, relationships, and execution capabilities to elevate the Economic Club of Dallas to its next chapter.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHer extraordinary record of institution-building, fundraising, and forging high-level partnerships\u2014both locally and internationally\u2014makes her ideally suited to advance our mission of connecting and empowering the global business leaders shaping the future of the Texas Triangle,\u201d Levy added in a statement.<\/p>\n

Wide-ranging expertise across higher ed, government, business, and nonprofits<\/p>\n

Del Rosal joins ECD from Southern Methodist University\u2019s Tower Center for Public Policy and International Affairs, where she served as the Colin Powell Teaching Fellow, chief of staff, and special advisor. While on the SMU faculty, she served as founding executive director of both the Tower Center and the Mission Foods Texas\u2013Mexico Center, raising over $4 million in philanthropic support and building nationally recognized research and programming institutions.<\/p>\n

She also served as a chief of staff in the U.S. House of Representatives and founded a successful franchise business serving major Texas clients.<\/p>\n

With extensive involvement in the Dallas\u2013Fort Worth civic, philanthropic, and business communities, del Rosal is a Texas Governor\u2019s appointee to the Texas Medical Board, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Fellow of the British American Project, and the current board chair for Communities in Schools, Dallas Region. She has been recognized as a Dallas Business Journal\u00a040 Under 40 honoree, among other leadership distinctions.<\/p>\n

\u201cDallas is increasingly at the center of global economic discourse, and Luisa\u2019s relationships, her track record with major institutions, and her genuine passion for this region make her the perfect person to help ECD lead that conversation,\u201d said Lucy Billingsley, vice president of the Economic Club of Dallas and co-founder of Billingsley Company.<\/p>\n

\u2018A city on the rise\u2019<\/p>\n

In her new role, del Rosal will guide ECD\u2019s strategic direction, membership growth, programming, and external relations, and concentrate on boosting the organization as a \u201cpremier convening platform for CEOs, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and global leaders,\u201d ECD said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m honored to join an organization that can serve as a convening space where CEOs, business leaders, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and others can engage meaningfully across industries and perspectives,\u201d said del Rosal. \u201cDallas is a city on the rise\u2014a magnet for capital, talent, and ideas. I look forward to working with the oabrd, our members, and partners to amplify ECD\u2019s role as a premier forum for the conversations that will define our economic future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Del Rosal has begun a transition period before assuming the full-time position in September.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t miss what\u2019s next. Subscribe\u00a0to\u00a0Dallas\u00a0Innovates.<\/p>\n

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\tR E A D\u00a0\u00a0 N E X T\t<\/p>\n

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PCCI has spent more than a decade designing, developing, implementing, and “rigorously monitoring” AI in the complex clinical environment of Dallas’ Parkland Health. Now it’s partnering with North Carolina-based Vega Health to make five of PCCI\u2019s clinically validated AI models available to health systems nationwide.<\/p>\n

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Using a digital twin of Parkland Memorial Hospital for its blocky hospital, UTD’s MCAT prep course playbook was designed by IvyBee, a Plano-based startup founded and led by Dr. Walter Voit, founder of UTD’s Center for Engineering Innovation.<\/p>\n

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The nearly $5 billion startup ranked No. 28 on CNBC\u2019s 2026 list alongside AI giants Anthropic, OpenAI and Databricks\u2014making it the highest-ranked Texas company and the only Dallas-Fort Worth company in this year\u2019s lineup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Luisa del Rosal joins the Economic Club of Dallas from SMU’s Tower Center for Public Policy and International…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340470,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,121428,121429,89977,121430,121431,121432,9533,121433],"class_list":["post-340469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-ecd","tag-economic-club-of-dallas","tag-lucy-billingsley","tag-luisa-del-rosal","tag-michael-levy","tag-smu-tower-center","tag-southern-methodist-university","tag-southern-methodist-universitys-tower-center-for-public-policy-and-international-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}