Cappy McGarr

Cappy McGarr is president of MCM Interests and managing partner of United States Renewal Energy Group.

Cappy serves on the boards of The Foundation for the National Archives and The Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He serves on The Better Angels Board of Directors, filmmaker Ken Burns’ advisory board.

Cappy was appointed by President Barack Obama to the board of trustees of The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 2011, and was previously appointed to the same post by President Bill Clinton, serving from 1996 to 2002. He is an executive producer and creator of The Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize, the nation’s highest honor for humor, which has been awarded to Billy Crystal, Will Ferrell, Steve Martin, and Richard Pryor, among others. He also is an executive producer and creator of The Library of Congress George Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, the nation’s highest honor for popular song that is held each year, in the East Room of the White House which has been awarded to Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, and in 2013 Carole King. McGarr was nominated for a 2008-2009 Prime Time Emmy for The Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize Honoring George Carlin and nominated for a 2010 NAACP Image Award for The Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize Honoring Bill Cosby.

Cappy is the founder of The Sports Journalism Program in the College of Communications at The University of Texas at Austin and the annual McGarr Symposium in Sports Journalism. He is also a co-chair of The Texas Program in Sports and Media. He was a recipient of one of the College of Communication’s highest award, the DeWitt Carter Reddick Award. He is a past chairman of the development board of The University of Texas. Cappy is co-chair of the Advisory Council for the Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life. Additionally, he was the School of Undergraduate Studies’ Advisory Council’s inaugural chair from 2010-2012. Cappy served on the university’s Commission of 125 as the Undergraduate Experience Committee Chair.

Cappy received his undergraduate degrees and MBA from the University of Texas at Austin and currently resides in Dallas with his wife Janie, a UT alumna. The couple has two daughters: Elizabeth, also a UT alumna (‘04, Plan II and Journalism) and Kathryn, a Stanford graduate.