About

Kenneth A. Hersh

Founder & Chairman

Since 2016, Ken Hersh has served as president and chief executive officer of the George W. Bush Presidential Center, a nonpartisan institution housing the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum and the George W. Bush Institute. The Bush Center’s mission is to promote policy solutions and public engagement that ensure opportunity for all, strengthen democracy, and advance free societies.

He is the co-founder and former CEO of NGP Energy Capital Management, one of the nation’s largest natural resources private equity investment firm with assets over $20 billion. Under his leadership from 1988 until 2016, NGP achieved a 27-year annualized rate of return of 30% on cumulative assets in excess of $12 billion. Mr. Hersh also manages his family investment office that invests in sectors across the economy.

Mr. Hersh sits on the boards of the Texas Rangers Baseball Club and numerous private companies, serves on the Board of Overseers of the Hoover Institution, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the National Council of the American Enterprise Institute. In the national and local nonprofit arena, he leads the efforts of the Hersh Foundation, serving on the boards of the Global War on Terrorism Memorial Foundation, the Dallas Citizens Council, the Southwestern Medical Foundation, and the Baylor Scott & White Dallas Foundation. He also serves on the Advisory Council of The Asian American Foundation.

In 2023, he received the Arbuckle Award, the highest honor presented annually by Stanford’s Graduate School of Business to recognize excellence in the field of management leadership. Also in 2023, the Oil and Gas Investor magazine inducted Ken into its Hart Energy Hall of Fame as one of the top 50 “pioneering men and women who have shaped energy over the last half century.” Among other lifetime achievement recognitions, he received the L. Frank Pitts Energy Leadership Award from the SMU Cox School of Business in 2020 and the Oil & Gas Council’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017. Mr. Hersh received the 2019 Henry Cohn Humanitarian Award from the Texoma region of the Anti-Defamation League for his work in advancing the cause of human rights, dignity, and equal opportunity.

Mr. Hersh is a frequent writer and speaker on topics ranging from economics and geopolitics to the energy industry and financial markets. In 2023, he released his book, The Fastest Tortoise: Winning in Industries I Knew Nothing About, which chronicles his life’s lessons evolving from his many business and personal experiences.

He was born and raised in Dallas, Texas and is a graduate of St. Mark’s School of Texas, where, in 2015, he was recognized with its Distinguished Alumnus Award. Mr. Hersh served on the board of St. Mark’s for 18 years and was its president from 2010-2012.

He graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University with a degree in politics and earned his MBA from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, where he graduated as an Arjay Miller Scholar.