Sam Acho on annual visit to Nigeria with Living Hope Christian Ministries
McCombs School of Business
Texas Athletes
Alum and Family Build Hospital in Nigeria
Years before Longhorn football star Sam Acho (BBA ’10) became an NFL player, philanthropist, author, public speaker, and sports analyst, his family’s annual Christmas trips to his parents’ village in Nigeria broadened his perspective.
Acho’s parents returned to Nigeria every summer to work alongside area doctors and nurses, treating thousands of desperate people who lined up outside their makeshift hospital. Dr. Sonny Acho, Sam’s father and the founder of Living Hope Christian Ministries, envisioned building a permanent hospital to meet the overwhelming demand.
With his eyes opened by these service-work trips, Acho enrolled in 2007 at UT’s McCombs School of Business, entering the honors program and later gaining traction in college football with a starting role on Texas’ 2009 squad. Four years later, he departed as one of the University’s most-decorated Longhorns, both as a student and an athlete.
Acho’s subsequent NFL Draft selection was followed by a successful nine-year professional football career in Arizona, Chicago, and Tampa. In 2022, honoring his extensive résumé and global impact, Acho was inducted into Texas Athletics’ prestigious Hall of Honor.
Meanwhile, after working for years in an abandoned building-turned-hospital, Acho’s father began implementing his plan to build the permanent medical facility that would provide the community year-round medical care and create jobs for Nigerian medical professionals.
As Acho’s pro football career progressed, he continued making annual trips to Nigeria, bringing his coaches and fellow players to see his family’s work. Support came from teammates, the National Football League, and the UT Austin community; former Texas football head coach Mack Brown even spoke at charity events to raise money for the foundation.
“My teammates from Texas and the NFL would come on these trips and say, ‘I want to help. How can I help?’ ” recalled Acho.
“It’s just been amazing to see. You talk about UT Austin’s slogan, What starts here changes the world? Well, one person’s dream — or one person’s faith, or one person’s belief and action — can, in fact, change not only your community, but the entire world.”
— Sam Acho (BBA, '10), McCombs School of Business
In 2016, just after his family took a leap of faith and started building, Acho received the NFL Walter Payton Man of the Year Award, which recognizes a player for civic and on-field achievement, bestowing an award of $50,000. A year later, Acho earned the award again, totaling $100,000 in donations toward the hospital’s construction.
In 2017, the Acho family again returned to Nigeria, this time not only to provide care but also to celebrate the completion of the Living Hope Medical Center. The facility remains open year-round, allowing health care workers to accommodate the community’s needs while sharing knowledge, building relationships, and bringing to life what was once just a dream. Read More
McCombs School of Business
Alum’s Acumen Transforms Lives
Alum Connie Duckworth’s focus on women’s economic empowerment came from a career at financial giant Goldman Sachs, where she shattered barriers in the Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York offices. Named the first woman sales and trading partner in the firm’s history, she ultimately retired as partner and managing director after a groundbreaking 20-year run.
Upon her retirement, a friend nominated Duckworth (B.A. ’76) as business representative for the U.S. Afghan Women’s Council, which was formed in 2002 after the fall of the Taliban to support Afghan women’s and girls’ education, health care, and economic empowerment.
“Our goal is to support UT’s mission, reputation, and global impact: to mobilize and amplify alumni engagement, to partner with businesses for greater opportunity and impact on the education front, and to pursue leading-edge research through scholarship.”
— Connie Duckworth (B.A. ’76), Chair, International Board of Advisors, UT Austin
Despite knowing little about Afghanistan, Duckworth accepted the post. In 2003, she boarded a military plane for a flight to Kabul, then an active war zone. The stark scenes she saw upon arrival drove home the country’s desperate need for infrastructure, stability, work, and income. She needed to somehow make change happen for women — a daunting proposition, given traditional strictures on women’s activities in Afghanistan.
The answer was ARZU, Inc., which Duckworth founded to offer sustainable work, education access, and social support to women rug weavers in Afghanistan. The nonprofit operated in rural villages where English was nonexistent, and its work was based upon an innovative social contract containing three tenets, to which each entire family was required to agree:
First, all women in a participating household must be released daily to attend literacy classes nearby. Second, children must be enrolled full-time in government-funded schools. And third, families must allow Arzu staff to transport pregnant women to regular medical checkups. “At that time, Afghanistan had the highest maternal death rate in the world,” said Duckworth. “But we did not lose a single mother or baby in childbirth once we started the maternal health program, and that was over an 8- or 9-year period.”
Arzu paid weavers the standard local rate, covering production costs and adding a 50 percent incentive bonus for high-quality rugs woven to international standards. Participating weavers came to earn about two-thirds more than Afghanistan’s average national per capita income.
“I believe that when a woman can earn a living, it changes the power relationship in the household,” Duckworth said.
Duckworth now uses her resourceful, global perspective and veteran private-sector skills to guide the UT International Board of Advisors (IBA) in leveraging the University’s significant power, mobilizing alumni engagement internationally, and cultivating business partnerships to support leading-edge research. Read More
Cockrell School of Engineering
Alum’s Path Leads to Impact Entrepreneurship
Nadia Laabs (B.S. ’08) had lived in 10 countries when she landed in Texas at age 13. For college, she chose UT over an Ivy League school, knowing that it ranked among the nation’s top engineering universities.
The Cockrell School’s recruiting program helped Procter & Gamble hire Laabs upon graduation. There, she worked on entrepreneurial projects focusing on sustainability, eventually redirecting her efforts toward “impact entrepreneurship.”
In 2015, Laabs and partners in London co- founded the Impact Collective, working to sustainably solve problems with businesses and communities. She has advised industries from commercial fishing to soil control and climate stability.
Remaining connected with the University, she’s served on recruiting committees and joined London’s UT alumni association. She hopes to expand her network with other Longhorn alumni in her industry.
“There [are] really smart people and a lot of great efforts happening now in impact entrepreneurship within UT,” said Laabs. Read More
“I was fortunate with the fact that I went to UT and did engineering, which opened many doors for me in terms of opportunities and jobs. I actually had the luxury of choosing where I wanted to work.”
— Nadia Laabs (B.S. ’08), Cockrell School of Engineering
Cockrell School of Engineering
Engineering Alum Bridges Universities in Mexico and U.S.
Sergio Alcocer planned to work in hydraulics. But in 1985, while he pursued an engineering degree at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), an 8.1-magnitude earthquake destroyed and damaged thousands of buildings in Mexico City.
After seeing his professors respond by devising safety improvements, Alcocer switched to structural engineering. Soon, he was offered an opportunity to study at UT Austin in a program facilitating common research among Mexican and American scholars.
“The earthquake changed my professional life,” Alcocer said. “Because of the earthquake, I had the chance to go to UT.”
Alcocer obtained his Ph.D. at UT’s Cockrell School of Engineering in 1991, then built a career spanning the fields of engineering, public policy, and international education. The uniting factor, he explained, is an understanding that although countries are shaped by different elements, they face the same essential challenges and hold similar goals for their citizens’ quality of life.
Alcocer’s efforts have borne out his collaborative perspective, whether at UNAM’s Institute of Engineering, on the advisory board for UT Austin’s Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies, or in multiple positions in Mexico’s federal government. Alcocer also found government service an ideal position from which to advocate for global education.
“Since I had studied at UT, it was obvious that I should partner with other universities around the world,” said Alcocer.
As Mexico’s undersecretary for North America, he sent students to U.S. universities for the summer to learn English. Each time students came back, he said, they returned as different people.
“They all wanted to go back to the States because, they told us, ‘We want to learn more. [In the U.S.] they have great libraries. We know we can bring that knowledge back to our communities to improve the quality of life.’ ” Read More
“I’d like to reiterate the importance of working together as two countries, and I think our universities are uniquely well positioned to make significant change through educating people who eventually will implement public policy in that direction. We need to bring our societies much closer together.”
— Sergio Alcocer (Ph.D. ’91), Cockrell School of Engineering
Undergraduate College
Schwarzman Scholar Studies in Beijing
“I believe international exchanges are so valuable to making the world a more connected, safer place. I hope my story can inspire prospective and current UT students to pursue international education opportunities.”
— Sebastian De Beurs (B.A. ’19), Government
Alum Sebastian De Beurs (B.A. ’19) is earning a master’s degree in global affairs, thanks to a prestigious yearlong graduate fellowship fully funded by the Schwarzman Scholars program at Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University in Beijing, China.
Chosen from a pool of more than 4,000 applicants, the 2024 cohort of Schwarzman Scholars encompasses 150 students from 43 countries and 114 universities worldwide.
“UT sparked my American dream,” said De Beurs, a Plan II honors graduate from the Netherlands. “I found a warm entrepreneurial community at UT. Above all, the Forty Acres taught me that we can shape our future. I’m excited to take that with me to China as a Schwarzman Scholar.”
The program offers cultural immersion and expansive learning opportunities across China, and De Beurs — who founded a neurotherapeutics company after graduating — plans to use his further experiences as a scholar to bring a greater global perspective to the development of medicine. Read More
McCombs School of Business
Lights, Camera, Advocacy: A Journey from Texas to Seoul
Sam Chi (BBA ’91, MPA ’93) has spent decades carving out his legacy in Seoul and Hollywood as a notable producer of K-pop groups, TV dramas, and successful films. Yet the Longhorn for Life still finds ways to honor his alma mater.
As a leader of the UT Austin Korean Alumni Association, Chi tirelessly advocates for the benefits that attending UT can offer to Koreans, as well as the innumerable ways that Korean students enhance the Forty Acres.
“UT alumni association members are among the most diverse, most successful people in the world, who give back to the community,” Chi said, noting that he believes deeply in the University’s impressive global graduates and legacy of international education.
Chi originally chose UT for its stellar academics, exceptional athletics, and large Korean community, which helped him contextualize his heritage globally and envision the possibilities for his future.
“I spent a lot of my time at UT learning about Texas — and learning about the Korean community, as well,” he said. “They really opened my eyes in terms of what I could do.”
“It’s important to use your position to give back. When I got to be older, I always wanted to ... help other people, if I can, in different places of the world.”
— Sam Chi (BBA ‘91, MPA ‘93), McCombs School of Business
With more than 3,000 Longhorns, the alumni community in Seoul comprises the largest collection of UT graduates outside the U.S., also uniting Longhorns of Korean heritage living all over the world. Renewed collaborations with Texas Global are yielding promising results for connecting Korean alumni with prospective and current students, University personnel, and each other.
Seoul now serves as one of three host locations worldwide for UT Austin’s new first-semester-abroad program, Take the World by the Horns. And the alumni association is working toward opening a formal Texas Exes chapter in Korea.
Thirty years after his graduation, Chi is pleased with the vibrant international community at UT, proclaiming, “The diversity at the school is quite unique. That’s something we’re very, very proud of.” Read More
