Houston pipeline heirs strike it rich as wealthiest family in Texas

AMERICA'S WEALTHIEST FAMILIES

Randa Williams is the high-profile heir of the Duncan family. Photo courtesy of Texas Monthly

Missouri has the Busches. Nebraska has the Buffetts. New York has the Hearsts. These are among the best-known wealthy families in the U.S.

Lesser-known nationally but well-known in Texas is the Duncan family of Houston, identified by FamilyMinded.com as the richest family in Texas. The website, which rounded up a list of the richest family in each state, pegs the family's estimated net worth at $26 billion; Forbes puts it at $25.6 billion.

The Duncan family comprises the four children of the late pipeline mogul Dan Duncan.

The children — Dannine Avara, Scott Duncan, Milane Frantz, and Randa Williams — inherited a tax-free $10 billion share of their father's estate following his death in 2010, when the so-called "death tax" had temporarily been repealed, according to Forbes. Each of them has an estimated net worth of $6.4 billion, Forbes says.

Williams is perhaps the most visible of the four Duncan heirs.

Williams is the only Duncan sibling who's involved in running the family business. She is chairwoman of Houston-based Enterprise Products Partners LP, the pipeline company that her father founded in 1968. Last year, the company posted revenue of $36.5 billion. In June, Williams made a big splash with her purchase of Austin-based Texas Monthly magazine.

While the Duncans are worth close to $26 billion, their wealth doesn't come close to that of Alice Walton of Fort Worth, the richest person in Texas. Forbes estimates her net worth at $52.4 billion.

FamilyMinded.com lists Alice Walton and her fellow heirs to the Walmart fortune as the richest family in Arkansas (where Walmart is based), with an estimated net worth of $163 billion. They're also the richest family in the U.S.

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.

Kendra Scott is one of the five richest self-made women in the state. Photo by Tyler Schmitt, ARF

5 Texas entrepreneurs rank among Forbes' richest self-made women

Must be the money

It's common knowledge Houston Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta and Gulf States Toyota owner Dan Friedkin rank among the wealthiest people in Texas. But did you know that five other entrepreneurs — collectively worth more than $4 billion — stand among the richest self-made women in the country?

Billionaire Thai Lee and millionaires Kendra Scott, Kathleen Hildreth, Whitney Wolfe Herd, and Suzy Batiz appear on Forbes magazine's new list of America's 80 richest self-made women — women who garnered wealth on their own, rather than by inheriting or winning it. And they're in great company, joining the likes of Taylor Swift, Oprah Winfrey, Kylie Jenner, Rihanna, Madonna, Celine Dion, and Beyoncé.

Thai Lee, with an estimated net worth of $3 billion, appears at No. 5 on the Forbes list. She is president and CEO of SHI International Corp., a provider of IT products and services whose more than 17,000 customers include AT&T and Boeing. Revenue at the New Jersey-based company hit $10 billion in 2018; more than 4,000 people work at SHI. Austin is home to SHI's corporate call center and is the hub for its sales division catering to small and midsize businesses.

"In early 2015, we mapped a five-year goal to reach $10 billion in revenue by the end of 2019. Through the hard work of our employees, the strength of our partnerships, and our ability to discern and solve our customers' most pressing IT and business challenges, we reached that goal 12 months early," Lee says in a February release.

At No. 40 on the list, with an estimated net worth of $550 million, is Kendra Scott. She is founder and CEO of Kendra Scott Design Inc. Annual sales at the Austin-based jewelry company hover around $360 million.

In 2017, Boston-based private equity firm Berkshire Partners invested in Scott's company at a valuation of more than $1 billion. Scott started the company in 2002 in the spare bedroom of her home. Today, Scott's business operates 100 jewelry stores, runs massive e-commerce and wholesale units, and employs more than 2,000 people. Last year, the company opened its flagship store on South Congress Avenue.

"There were so many ups and downs through this journey. There were many times that I thought I was going to lose my business. I had no investment capital. I was carrying it all on my shoulders — bootstrapping it, literally," Scott told CNN in 2018.

Kathleen Hildreth, co-founder of aviation-maintenance company M1 Support Services, appears on the list at No. 57, with an estimated net worth of $370 million. She is a West Point graduate and Army veteran who served as a helicopter pilot. Before M1 Support, she worked with defense contractors, including Lockheed Martin and DynCorp. Hildreth calls Aubrey, Texas, in the DFW area, home.

"Anything in the government's [aircraft] inventory, we do work on," Hildreth told Forbes. "You name it." Forbes adds, "The U.S Air Force, U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, and NASA are all clients of M1 Support, which relies entirely on the federal government for business. Most of its revenues come from maintaining military aircraft, including fighter jets such as F15s, F16s, and A10 Thunderbolts."

The fourth Texas entrepreneur on the list is Whitney Wolfe Herd, founder and CEO of Austin-based Bumble Trading Inc., developer of the Bumble dating app for women, and the related Bumble BFF friend-finding app and Bumble Bizz networking app. Herd launched Bumble in 2014 after co-founding dating app Tinder. With an estimated net worth of $290 million, Herd claimed the No. 72 spot on the Forbes list. This is her first year to be ranked.

Bumble counts more than 60 million users in 150 countries. The company's estimated annual revenue totals $175 million, according to Forbes. Russian billionaire Andrey Andreev is the majority owner of Bumble.

"I want to take this sucker around the planet," Herd told Marie Claire last year about the future of Bumble. "Then, who knows, maybe we'll work with [Jeff] Bezos and [Elon] Musk and take it beyond."

At No. 77, with an estimated net worth of $270 million, is Dallas' Suzy Batiz, founder of Poo-Pourri, the before-you-go toilet spray available at major retailers. More than 60 million bottles have sold since the company's founding in 2007; Pou-Pourri is now expanding into shoe and pet odors and a cleaning line.

Asked in 2016 what the riskiest thing was she had ever done professionally, Batiz said not selling her company or taking on investors.

"I had no idea if it was going to work out. It's like being on a game show," she told Forbes. "They hand you the big briefcase and you think, 'You can take this thing of money, or you can gamble and try to stay in the game.' Somehow I knew that my baby, the company, was very similar to a child. It just wasn't ready to be released into the world yet without me."

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This story originally appeared on CultureMap.

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Meet the esteemed judges for the 2026 Houston Innovation Awards

Meet The Judges

Editor's note: Judging is now underway for the 2026 Houston Innovation Awards, and it's time to meet the decision makers.

Our 2026 judging panel comprises past award winners who represent a variety of industries and areas of expertise. They are joined by InnovationMap's interim editor. All are deeply engaged in the Houston innovation ecosystem.

Our judging panel will review all nominee applications submitted across 10 prestigious categories. They will determine the 2026 finalists in all categories, and they will select the winners in all but one category — our people's choice award for Startup of the Year.

The sixth annual Houston Innovation Awards program will be presented in an all-digital format in 2026. We will announce this year's finalists and feature their stories throughout our special editorial series this fall. Then, stay tuned as we reveal the 2026 Houston Innovation Awards winners on InnovationMap.com in mid-November.

Sagar Dalal, Fervo Energy, 2025 Scaleup of the Year

Sagar Dalal serves as chief of staff at Fervo Energy, a company pioneering the commercialization of next-generation geothermal power. In this role, he helps translate the CEO’s vision and priorities into execution, leading cross-functional strategic initiatives that support the company’s growth and operations.

Dalal brings nearly eight years of experience in structural engineering and project management from his time at Thornton Tomasetti and Tesla, where he engineered and built a wide range of infrastructure projects ranging from stadiums to manufacturing facilities. He holds an MBA from Stanford University and an MS in Civil Engineering from Texas A&M University. He is also a licensed professional engineer.

Aaron Fitzgerald, Mars Materials, 2025 Minority-founded Business of the Year

Aaron Fitzgerald is a three-time founder and carbon removal entrepreneur focused on reimagining how we make things. As the CEO of Mars Materials, he leads a team working to commercialize technologies that sequester captured carbon into industrial supply chains.

His vision for a defossilized future is shaped by a unique path through both policy, including a tenure in the United States Senate, and deep carbontech, with fellowships at The Lewis Latimer program, Breakthrough Energy, Prime Coalition, and Carbon 180.

Tatiana Fofanova, Koda Health, 2025 Health Tech Business of the Year

Tatiana Fofanova, PhD, is the co-founder and CEO of Koda Health, an AI-enhanced patient decision support platform designed to make advance care planning (ACP) scalable, accessible, and patient-centered for patients with serious illness.

After earning her PhD in Translational Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, she joined Texas Medical Center (TMC) as a Founder-in-Residence. It was there that she and her co-founders identified one of the most overlooked yet critical gaps in healthcare: the lack of meaningful, accessible advance care planning. Under her leadership, Koda Health now supports over 1 million patients through partnerships with organizations like Cigna, Privia, and Houston Methodist.

Lawson Gow, Greentown Labs, 2025 Incubator/Accelerator of the Year

Lawson Gow currently serves as chief strategy officer for Greentown Labs, which was named Incubator/Accelerator of the Year in the 2025 Houston Innovation Awards. Prior to joining Greentown Labs as Head of Houston in 2025, Gow was as a managing partner at Helium Capital, an investment and advisory firm that aims to support founders across the entire lifecycle of entrepreneurship.

He is also the founder of The Cannon, an innovation-infrastructure provider that operates a growing network of innovation hubs for its community of startups, entrepreneurs, investors, and corporate innovators.

Sarah Hein, March Biosciences, 2025 Female-founded Business of the Year

Sarah Hein is the founding CEO of March Biosciences, a clinical-stage cell-therapy company targeting challenging malignancies. Prior to cofounding March Biosciences, she was the founding Entrepreneur in Residence for the Texas Medical Center Innovation Accelerator for Cancer Therapeutics (TMCi ACT).

Formerly, she was a cofounder and the vice president of operations at Courier Therapeutics, a cancer immunotherapy startup acquired by Valo Health. She was also director of research at Resonant Therapeutics, an antibody therapeutics platform technology company. She began at Mercury Fund as a Venture Fellow directly after graduating with her PhD in Molecular Biology from Baylor College of Medicine.

Tanu Jain, FlowCare, 2025 Startup of the Year

Tanu Jain is a product executive, entrepreneur, founder and CEO of FlowCare, and registered nurse with a track record of building products from zero to global scale. She previously led product at BioIQ before founding FlowCare, a Houston-based period care infrastructure platform making period care a standard in every restroom. In under 16 months, FlowCare has signed deployed across four enterprise customers and impacted more than 1.5 million women.

FlowCare was named Startup of the Year at the 2025 Houston Innovation Awards, and Jain has been recognized with additional honors including the SDG Super Changemaker – Pewter — at the Global Sustainability Awards 2026.

Prabhdeep "Prab" Sekhon, Eclipse Energy, 2025 Energy Transition Business of the Year

Prabhdeep Singh Sekhon is CEO of Eclipse Energy, an energy technology company transforming depleted oil fields into low-cost, sustainable hydrogen resources through subsurface biotechnology. He brings nearly two decades of global energy experience spanning climate technology, venture capital, private equity, and multi-billion-dollar energy projects across five continents.

Previously, he held leadership roles at NextEra Energy Resources and Hess Corporation. He is also a founder and managing director of GreenLite Resources and a founding member of Cotogna Sports Group. He holds an MBA from Wharton, a Masters in Engineering from Texas A&M, and a BS from the University of Calgary.

Wade Pinder, Product Houston, 2025 Trailblazer Award Winner

Wade Pinder thinks of himself as an "ecosystem wayseeker," helping founders and builders in and around Houston find their footing, understand the landscape, and move through uncertainty with more clarity. Through Product Houston, he works at the intersection of product strategy, founder support, ecosystem mapping, and community-building, with a particular focus on helping people show up in the right rooms before they feel fully ready.

His background includes years in product management at Blinds.com and Home Depot, along with founding and leading the Houston Product Community for six years. He was recognized by as Mentor of the Year in the 2023 Houston Innovation Awards and received the Trailblazer Award in 2025.

Laura Furr Mericas, Interim Editor, InnovationMap

Laura Furr Mericas is interim editor for InnovatonMap.com and EnergyCapitalHTX.com. She is a longtime contributor to both sites and has reported on Houston's innovation ecosystem for InnovationMap since 2020. Previously, she served as web editor and data reporter for Houston Business Journal.

Report: Income for top 1 percent earners in Texas has surged in 2026

money matters

In a state where local billionaires are wealthier than they've ever been, high-earning Texans need to make $73,000 more than they did a year ago if they want to be among the top 1 percent of earners, a new report has revealed.

SmartAsset's study analyzed income thresholds for the top 1, 5, and 10 percent of earners in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, using 2022 IRS data for individual tax return filers (the most recent year available), adjusted to 2026 dollars.

Texas has the 11th highest income threshold, with residents needing to make a minimum of $817,158 to be considered among the top 1 percent of earners statewide. In 2025, Texans needed to make about $744,000 to be among the top 1 percent.

For comparison, residents living in the nation's capital must make at least $1.16 million to qualify as top 1 percent earners. The District of Columbia led the nation with the highest income threshold to be a top earner.

To be considered among the top 5 percent of earners in Texas, a resident would need to make $312,671. The income threshold to be considered among the top 10 percent is $210,609.

SmartAsset additionally found that 128,130 Texas residents qualified as top 1 percent earners in 2022. Nationally, the report estimated that fewer than 2 million households earn enough to be considered among the top 1 percent of earners nationwide, but 23 million households rank among the top 10 percent.

"In some places, households can enter the top 1 percent at income levels that fall well below the threshold elsewhere, reflecting an uneven landscape of wages and wealth," the report said.

A separate SmartAsset study that tracked the upper and lower thresholds for middle class households found Houston residents need to make anywhere from $42,907 to $128,722 to maintain their middle class status.

The top 10 states with the highest thresholds to be considered in the top 1 percent of earners in the U.S. are:

No. 1 – District of Columbia ($1,156,664)
No. 2 – Connecticut ($1,147,898)
No. 3 – Massachusetts ($1,006,921)
No. 4 – California ($987,325)
No. 5– New Jersey ($969,976)
No. 6 – New York ($959,562)
No. 7 – Florida ($956,449)
No. 8 – Washington ($903,303)
No. 9 – Colorado ($828,772)
No. 10 – Wyoming ($819,014)

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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

Here’s where wages grew the most in Houston since 2021, according to new report

pay raise

Bolstered by a thriving manufacturing sector, Waller County—the country’s second-fastest-growing county—leads all Houston-area counties for the growth of pay from 2021 to 2026, according to a new study.

The study, conducted by personal finance website SmartAsset, found average pay in Waller County rose 48 percent from 2021 to 2026. The county’s average weekly pay climbed from $891 to $1,323 during that period.

Manufacturing ranks as the No. 1 employment sector in Waller County, accounting for about 4,500 workers, according to Executive Pulse. Those workers earn an average pay of $77,442 per year.

Waller County powers up its manufacturing hub

Waller County’s manufacturing economy keeps expanding, almost certainly contributing to the 48 percent spike in average pay from 2021 to 2026.

Grundfos, the world’s largest producer of water pumps, broke ground in June on a manufacturing plant at its Brookshire campus. The Danish company’s U.S. headquarters is in Brookshire. In conjunction with the groundbreaking, Grundfos opened the Grundfos Academy Americas training center.

The new 143,000-square-foot facility will make pump systems and water technology, primarily for water utilities and commercial real estate landlords.

Grundfos expects construction to be completed by Q3 2027, with the first production lines planned to start in Q4 of next year.

“Our growing presence in Brookshire reflects both our confidence in the U.S. market and our long‑term commitment to investing where our customers and partners need us most,” Grundfos CEO Poul Due Jensen said in a release.

Another manufacturer, TMEIC Corporation America, recently opened its third U.S. plant at Twinwood Business Park in Brookshire. The 280,000-square-foot facility, which eventually might employ 500 people, makes uninterruptible power supply units and medium-voltage power drives. The $65 million plant includes a customer training center and tech development labs.

The Twinwood facility is the largest of TMEIC’s 13 factories around the world.

TMEIC’s two other U.S. manufacturing plants are in the Houston area. The company’s North American headquarters is in the Houston Energy Corridor.

Perhaps the biggest recent manufacturing prize for Waller County: Austin-based electric vehicle maker Tesla’s new 1.65 million-square-foot factory at Brookshire’s Empire West Industrial Park. The $200 million plant, expected to employ up to 1,500 people by 2028, produces utility-scale batteries for energy storage.

Other major manufacturers in Waller County include Daikin North America and Igloo.

Pay growth around the region

Here’s a rundown of 2021-26 pay growth in the Houston metro’s eight other counties, according to SmartAsset.

Austin County — 42 percent
Chambers County — 37 percent
Harris County — 33 percent
Liberty County — 31 percent
Montgomery County — 29 percent
Fort Bend County — 28 percent
Galveston County — 26 percent
Brazoria County — 23 percent

Statewide, Dickens County, outside of Lubbock, saw the most significant growth in wages. According to the study, wages grew by 212 percent over the five years, from $707 per week in 2021 to $2,204 per week in 2026.

Among all Texas counties, Waller was ranked No. 44 on the report.

Small counties in the High Plains and West Texas regions saw the largest percent changes in average weekly wage, according to the report. See the full findings here.

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