Bob Buford
Bob Buford is highly invested in helping to improve the lives of others. He is currently chairman of the board of The Buford Foundation and the Leadership Network. In addition, he is the author of Halftime: Changing Your Game Plan from Success to Significance, a book about finding meaning and fulfillment in the second half of our lives.
The Buford Foundation's mission is to identify and resource people, ideas, and organizations that have the potential to produce improvement for the world around us. This is done primarily through building relationships with churches and ministries in the Greater Houston area in order to transform the city, working to help individuals on their spiritual journey, and encouraging leaders to develop leadership skills using Jesus as their coach.
The Leadership Network serves as a broker that supplies information to and connects leaders of innovative churches. Buford says, "The emerging new paradigm of the 21st century church calls for the development of new tools and resources as well as the equipping of a new type of 21st century church leader, both clergy and laity."
Bob has always taken an active interest in the philanthropy movement and believes in those things dear to a person's heart, whether it be community-related or Christian-based. He began his career in the television industry. His company, Buford Television Inc., started out with a single ABC affiliate in Tyler, Texas, and grew to a network of cable systems across the country. He served as chairman of the board and CEO until he sold his company in 1999. In addition to his best-selling book Halftime, he has written Game Plan: Winning Strategies for the Second Half of Your Life, Stuck in Halftime: Reinventing Your One and Only Life, and his latest book Finishing Well: What People Who REALLY Live Do Differently. He launched a company called FaithWorks (name later changed to Halftime) to equip leaders to achieve maximum leverage and return on the investment of their time and resources measured in changed lives and healthier communities.
Mr. Buford was the co-founder of the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management and serves on the boards of Alpha USA, Just for the Kids, Foundation for Community Empowerment, and The Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations. In 2000, he received the Samaritan Institute Award and in 2005, he received the Christian Management Association Award. He and his wife Linda live in Dallas.