What a Disaster Builds When You Let It

June 1 is approaching.

For most people, it's a date on a calendar. For those of us who've been through it, it's something else. We are vigilant. Some of us are on edge. The body remembers what the mind tries to move past.

I remember August 2017. The Addicks and Barker reservoirs. The Army Corps of Engineers releasing the dams with almost no warning. The water didn't rise slowly. It arrived. My daughter Ally was six years old. I carried her out of our home to be rescued by strangers in a boat.

It was traumatizing. But it clarified me.

Harvey was sixty-eight lives lost. $125 billion in damage. A city forced to ask hard questions it had been putting off for a long time.

Principles and Action

Mayor Sylvester Turner and I didn't agree on everything. We came from different worlds, different perspectives, different corners of the conversation. Under normal circumstances, we might never have been in the same room.

Harvey changed that.

I lobbied for a year for him to come to our neighborhood. I believed our community needed to be seen — and the conversation Houston needed to have about its future couldn't wait for the right political moment. When he finally came, a September afternoon a year after the storm, he told me I was persistent.

I took it as a compliment.

He stood on my lawn and held a drawing Ally had made — a thank-you to the people who helped our community. She was six when I carried her out. She drew the boat, the flood, the rescue. She wrote: "The fire. It rained a lot. Water got into the house. A man with a boat got us out. We are safe." Dated September 2, 2017.

We stood there and talked. Not about what divided us. About Houston. About what we both wanted: a more resilient, safer, stronger city. A Houston built to withstand disasters — and built to lead what comes next.

His persistence and mine were the things we had in common. Shared stakes. Shared determination. A willingness to show up for the work, even when the work was hard and the road was long.

Politics don't matter. United, shared action does.

Builders and Backers

Harvey was pushing something to happen. We both felt it.

Houston's future was in innovation — and we needed a catalyst to make it happen. Greentown Labs was building. The Ion was taking shape. The city's ecosystem was assembling itself quietly, from the ground up.

Mayor Turner's vision was clear: he wanted Houston to have something bigger than New York. A gathering where the world came to Houston to invest, to engage, to help shape what comes next. Our industry has been part of the problem. It can also be part of the solution. The place where America will figure that out is Houston.

None of it happens without builders and backers. You need the people willing to do the work — and the people willing to bet on it. A city doesn't become safer, more sound, more innovative on its own. It takes citizens who refuse to accept the status quo, leaders who show up despite their differences, and investors who believe the future is worth funding.

The work started on my lawn. Things don't happen fast. It's a marathon.

Houston Energy & Climate Week became a reality in 2022.

What I Carry

Unity isn't built on agreement. It's built on shared stakes.

When the water comes for everyone — when a disaster doesn't discriminate by zip code or worldview — the artificial divisions start to look like what they are: things we can no longer afford.

I'm a marathon runner. Slow on the track — I'll own that. But I see the finish line before most people see the starting line. I look long. Good miles, bad miles, hellacious miles. You own every one.

The work started on a lawn in Houston. It took years. It's still going.

June 1 is coming. We are vigilant.

And we keep building.