People We Got To Know in August 2026

There is a line Lisa Prusak uses that says a lot about how she sees the world: most business problems are actually people problems in disguise.

Steady, perceptive, and deeply committed to the people around her, Lisa has carried that belief through over twenty-five years of leadership, and it is the reason people who have worked alongside her tend to describe her not by what she has built, but by what she helped them see in themselves. One person who worked closely with her said Lisa has a talent for understanding the intricate dynamics of an organization and how to position individuals for success. Another described her as someone who blends strategic insight with genuine care, the kind of leader whose impact is both practical and inspiring. She pays attention to what is actually happening inside a team, not just what the numbers say, and she stays with people through the work of making things better.

That instinct runs through everything Lisa does, and it runs especially deep at Maxari Energy Solutions, the company she co-founded and now leads as CEO. Maxari is a minority-owned clean energy EPC integrator, providing turnkey solutions for EV charging infrastructure, solar, wind, and battery storage systems. Her career before Maxari crossed chemical manufacturing, insurance consulting, business development, and disability services, and the thread connecting all of it was always people. How to understand them, how to build teams around them, how to help them do their best work. At Maxari, that approach helped the company secure a national installation contract spanning seven states and grow into a firm with over seven hundred completed projects across more than fifteen states.

But the work, as varied as it has been, only tells part of the story. She served for years on the board of the Family-to-Family Network, a Houston nonprofit that spent thirty-five years helping families of children and adults with disabilities before closing in 2025. She held a board position with National Charity League, a mother-daughter philanthropic organization. And her background in industrial and organizational psychology shows up not as a line on a resume but in how she reads a room and builds a culture. Lisa once wrote that great businesses are built with people who know their value and trust their leaders enough to give their best. Spend a few minutes with her and you realize that is not just something she believes. It is how she has led from the beginning.

Jen Halpern is the kind of person who seems to measure success not by the number of deals closed, but by whether the people she coaches started trusting themselves somewhere along the way. "She is a kind, considerate, no bs person that sees the best in people often before they do themselves, influenced by her mother, grandfather and other role models in her life the question that came to mind was: is this DNA or nurture? Either way she's a natural." Charles J de Guara

Steady, confident, and genuinely dependable, Jen carries a quiet authority that does not come from volume or pressure. It comes from listening. From asking the kind of questions that make a sales leader stop and rethink not just their strategy, but themselves. One VP of business development who worked with her said Jen has a unique way of asking the right questions that force you to reflect deeply, giving you a fresh perspective on challenges. That is not someone describing a consultant. That is someone describing a person who changed the way they think.

She spent twenty-two years in software sales and sales leadership across technology and manufacturing before founding Soft Sell Coaching, building a business around a conviction most people in sales talk around but rarely address head-on: trust. Not trust as a buzzword, but as the structural foundation of a team that performs. Her proprietary T.R.U.S.T. coaching system is built on a simple premise she puts bluntly: when your sales team trusts their leader, when they believe you really have their back, they perform better.

What sets Jen apart is that she practices what she teaches. She works with a coach herself, and she is open about the fact that there was a time when she was stuck, playing small, sitting in her own way with a fixed mindset that kept her from taking her business where she knew it could go. She does not hide that part of the story. She leads with it. There is a quote written on the whiteboard in her office, the first thing she sees every morning: the best work for me is to continue focusing on my self-awareness, which will give me the power to play and do whatever I want to do. She says it multiple times a day. Ask her how she feels about where she is headed and she will not give you a careful answer. She will tell you she is unstoppable.

Doug Ryan is the kind of person who seems to measure success not by the size of the deal, but by what the people around him were able to build because he was in the room.

Steady, positive, and naturally inclined toward solving problems rather than dwelling on them, Doug carries a quiet confidence that puts people at ease during the moments when business feels the most uncertain. Someone who worked with him once described him as "the total CFO package," noting not just his credentials and analytical ability but his personable approach and polished presence. That combination, the ability to be both sharp and warm, is what sets Doug apart. He does not simply show up with answers. He shows up with patience, a willingness to explain, and a genuine interest in helping others understand what he already sees clearly.

That instinct runs through much of Doug's life and work. He spent his career serving as Chief Financial Officer for startups and middle-market companies going through the kinds of changes that test everyone involved, expansions, stabilizations, acquisitions, moments when the numbers matter most and someone steady needs to be reading them. But what kept drawing him back was never the transactions themselves. It was the business owner who built something from nothing and needed someone to help tell that story to investors. It was the CFO learning half the job without a roadmap because nobody teaches you the rest before you sit down in the chair. Doug saw those people again and again, and eventually, the impulse to help them became something he could not set aside.

In 2022, he started 5thGenCFO to do exactly that, building a team of people who share his belief that good financial leadership is not about gatekeeping knowledge but about handing it over. Outside of work, Doug trains for and rides in the Texas MS150 every year, a 150-plus mile fundraising bike ride for the National MS Society, and serves as Vice Chairman of the Industrial Craft Competition Committee for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, where he helps high school students discover futures in skilled trades. Doug once said his career passion is business and he enjoys the sense of accomplishment that comes from helping clients realize their goals. But spend a few minutes with him and you realize the passion was never really about business. It was always about people. He just found a way to take care of them through spreadsheets, strategy, and showing up when it counts.

Savannah Becerril is the kind of person who makes the people around her feel like they can do more than they thought they could. Warm, driven, and genuinely invested in other people's growth, Savannah has always been someone friends felt comfortable coming to with their ideas, their dreams, and their next big thing. She listens, she is transparent, and she finds a way to offer something useful even when she is still figuring it out herself. She has said that even as a young girl, she always wanted to grow, learn more, do more, go beyond expectations, and open her life to new possibilities. That same energy, the desire to help others move forward, is what eventually became Go Savvy, her experiential marketing firm that helps businesses and nonprofits design events that do not just look good but actually perform. She does not simply plan a room; she wants her clients to know who their audience is, how to reach them on their level, and how to make sure no one forgets who hosted the experience. The follow-through matters just as much as the night itself, and that is baked into everything Go Savvy does.

That instinct for care and purpose runs through much of Savannah's life. She is a native Houstonian who grew up as a musician, singer, and athlete, someone who took the words "you can't because you're a girl" as a challenge and never really stopped. She spent over thirteen years running sound and production for everything from car launches to corporate conferences to live concerts, earned a certification in audio engineering, and later graduated from the University of Houston with a double major in Entrepreneurship and Marketing after arguing her way into the Wolff Center for Entrepreneurship, a program that only accepts thirty-five students each spring. A committed Christian, Savannah built Go Savvy on principles of integrity, service, and stewardship, values that are not just words on a page but show up in how she treats her clients, her vendors, and the relationships she protects long after an event wraps. When COVID shut down live events for nearly a year, she pivoted to editing podcasts, rewrote her contracts, and came back sharper.

Outside of work, she is a runner who completed her first marathon on an injured leg in under four hours and posted afterward that she was blessed, exhausted, and not planning to leave her couch anytime soon. Since recovering, she has felt called to use her running for something bigger than herself, sharing scripture alongside her training posts instead of just clips for attention. It is a small window into who Savannah is at her core: someone who takes whatever she has, whether it is a stage, a business plan, or a pair of running shoes, and finds a way to pour purpose into it.

Ray Lopez is the kind of person who seems to measure a good deal not by its size, but by whether the people who trusted him ended up exactly where they needed to be.

Steady, hardworking, and known among his peers for his integrity, Ray has carried those qualities through nearly two decades in commercial real estate, and it is the reason clients tend to describe him not by the deals he closed, but by how he made them feel while he closed them. They talk about someone who knows Houston's markets inside and out, who picks up the phone when they call, and who gives people the room to make their decision with confidence. One client called him 'a professional in every sense of the word,' someone who 'does what is right' and looks for 'ways to find the yes.' Another needed just three words: 'He gets it.'

That instinct explains a lot about how Ray works. He learned the business from every angle early on, managing buildings, marketing them, filling them, and that well-rounded foundation led him to the work he loves most: advising tenants and occupiers, walking alongside companies as they make some of the biggest decisions their business will face. His clients range from family-owned Houston businesses to global corporations, and he has guided them through everything from build-to-suit projects to intricate lease structures with confidence and care. Within his first two years back at Colliers he was named a Rising Star, though anyone who knows Ray would tell you the recognition simply caught up with the way he had always worked.

The drive goes back a long way. Ray was named district MVP as a ballplayer at Spring Woods High School and kept playing through San Jacinto College and Houston Baptist University, where he earned his degree in finance. These days the competitive energy shows up before sunrise with F3 Fort Bend, a men's fitness and leadership community where he took on the job of keeping everyone connected, and in the Maximized Manhood group at his church, Lakewood.

But the clearest picture of Ray comes from how he gives his time. He has served meals at Houston's Loaves & Fishes soup kitchen for more than a decade, volunteered at the Houston Food Bank nearly as long, leads a team for Cherish Our Children, and served as president of the Fort Bend Society of Commercial Realtors, helping raise the standard of professionalism in the community he calls home. A client once summed him up with 'He gets it.' And what Ray gets, more than anything, is people.

Daniel Vaczi believes that people pay attention when you sound like yourself, and he has spent the better part of two decades helping businesses do exactly that. Creative, curious, and attuned to the people in front of him, Daniel has carried those qualities through every chapter of his career, and it is the reason people who have worked with him tend to describe him not by what he sold them, but by what he helped them see in their own company. That instinct showed up early. Fresh out of the University of Houston, he became a partner in a startup HVAC company, and the business grew every year he was there. When he sold his ownership, he was asked to stay on and help guide the transition, which says as much about Daniel as any title ever could. He then joined a young print shop as a managing partner, and under his watch the business kept finding new ways to serve its clients until it had grown right past its own name, rebranding as Adhere Creative, the Houston agency where he would spend more than thirteen years helping companies build their brands. Today, at Anthem Content, Daniel helps B2B companies tell their stories through video. Ask him what makes a great one and he will likely point you away from the camera and toward the conversation. The best executive videos, he says, are not performances. They happen when leaders stop worrying about how they sound and simply share what they know. His team's approach is simple: ask better questions, listen longer, and give people the space to be themselves. People who have worked with him talk about someone creative, professional, detail-oriented, and attuned to what they actually need. When his agency donated a logo redesign to a community nonprofit, Daniel and one of his teammates visited their center in person and walked their board through what their brand could become. Someone who worked with him needed only two words to describe him: "aggressively creative." When Daniel talks about his work, he keeps coming back to the same idea: when people sound like themselves, others pay attention. It is how he sells, and by every account, it is simply how he is.

Bryan Burkholder is the kind of person who walks into a room full of uncertainty and somehow makes everyone feel like they are going to be okay. Steady, relational, and genuinely invested in the people around him, Bryan has a way of earning trust that goes beyond credentials, rooted in how he shows up. He listens before he speaks. He asks about what is actually happening, not just what the reports say. And when things get hard, when a company is in the middle of a merger or a system overhaul and the stress is real, he is the person who reminds everyone to pause and celebrate what they have already accomplished together. He talks about "laying track" for organizations, helping them find their "North Star" for long-term growth and then building the path to get there. It is a fitting image for someone who thinks in decades, not quarters. That instinct for care and connection runs through everything Bryan does, not just the work. He and his wife Becky are raising four kids, two girls and two boys, and it is clear from the way Bryan shows up for his family that fatherhood is at the center of his life. He is the kind of dad who fills his feed with family travel photos that radiate warmth, the kind where you can tell he genuinely lights up around his kids, who wants to be present for the small moments and the big ones, and who measures a good week by whether his family felt supported and loved through it. He has also poured time into church life, at one point overseeing all Sunday morning volunteers and leaders, coordinating teams and operations behind the scenes the way he does in a boardroom. And he serves as a director with the North Houston Children's Choir, giving his energy to an organization dedicated to young singers in the greater Houston area. They tell you where someone's heart is when no one is writing them a check for it. Professionally, Bryan has spent over 25 years helping organizations navigate complex change, from ERP adoptions and M&A integrations to leadership transitions. He founded Cadence Consulting Enterprises in 2021 and built a team around a simple idea: change should feel like something a company does together, not something that happens to people. His firm's own language says it plainly: they want to "foster an environment of care, connection, and development." The range of companies he has worked with, from rubber manufacturing and commercial food equipment to healthcare systems handling multi-billion dollar acquisitions, says something about the kind of consultant he is. He is not someone who only knows one industry. He is someone who knows people, and that translates everywhere. But the work, as impressive as it is, sits inside the portrait of who Bryan is, not the other way around. He is a person who believes that the closer you are to the people you lead, the better the outcome for everyone. And he lives that out, at the office, at home, and in every room he walks into.