Bill Herrington was heading to his downtown Houston office in 2016 when he came upon a disturbing demonstration against the Dakota Access Pipeline. 

It was personal for Bill. Forty years earlier, he was introduced on a summer pipeline job to an American-made industry and the hardy men who built it. He saw the pipeline construction business from the inside out, and it left an indelible respect for the work ethic of pipeliners and for the necessity of the industry. 

From that humble start, Bill graduated from Louisiana State University and began a 35-year career in corporate banking, which included a focus on the energy service industry in south Louisiana and Texas. He completed the Harvard Business School general manager program and became a private equity and private credit investor based in Houston, Texas. He is also the author of the award-winning memoir, Contraflow.

But Bill never forgot his work as a laborer on a pipeline forty years earlier. He appreciated the pipeline industry as a solid backbone of the United States, ensuring the necessary energy for our modern way of life, providing national security, supporting our strong economy, and providing stable careers for countless Americans and their families.