Donor Spotlight: Anthony Bahr ’91

Anthony Bahr ’91 epitomizes what’s possible at the intersection of engineering, business, and entrepreneurism. Throughout his career, the Houston resident cultivated a business mindset that resulted in the creation of multiple successful businesses and recognition as an industry visionary.

The co-founder and CEO of WildFire Energy uses those insights to encourage future generations of Texas A&M University engineers to think bigger — and he’s become a strong advocate for and donor to several Mays Business School’s programs designed specifically to help them do just that.

“My giving is designed to accomplish something, as opposed to giving because I feel like I should,” says Bahr, who serves on Mays’ Dean’s Advisory Board. “I’m a businessman and an investor — and I want to invest my resources in something that will generate a return.”

Bahr’s entrepreneurial tendencies were sparked by his father, a chemical engineer who earned a Harvard MBA, owned his own company, and consulted. The younger Bahr followed suit, selling greeting cards door-to-door at the age of 10 and mowing lawns as a teenager.

That entrepreneurial drive continued into his college years at Texas A&M where he juggled two businesses along with his engineering studies. “I am what some people would kindly call ‘a serial entrepreneur,’” says Bahr, who was named one of EY’s 2025 Gulf South Entrepreneurs of the Year. “Some people may use that as a term of derision, probably including my wonderful wife, but I run 100 miles an hour all the time and just love building and creating new businesses.”

After earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in petroleum engineering, Bahr followed the traditional career route working for a succession of oil and gas companies in California, Louisiana and Texas. Yet his entrepreneurial spirit remained, inspiring him to attend California State University, Bakersfield, where he earned an MBA.

After returning to Houston, Bahr took the leap and joined classmate Jay Graham ’92 in founding WildHorse Resources in 2007. “I’ve always wanted to have my own business and control my own destiny,” says Bahr. “We did that through a series of upstream and
midstream energy companies that were part of a greater transition in the domestic oil and gas industry to independent or private independents and the proliferation of private equity funding capital.”

These winds of change also changed the career trajectory of today’s engineers starting their careers in the energy industry. “Traditionally an engineer might graduate, go to work for Exxon, and then work their way up through the ranks. After 15 years, they might become a manager over a certain geographic location and have some level of profit-loss responsibility before reaching vice president 10 years later, where they’re making more business unit decisions,” says Bahr. “Now engineers are being tasked with more than just traditional engineering decision-making processes earlier in their careers including capital sourcing, allocation and financial risk management.”

That realization led Bahr to advocate for the creation of business coursework specifically for engineers. In 2016, Bahr, Graham, and their wives provided initial financial support for the Petroleum Ventures Program, an unprecedented collaboration between Mays and the College of Engineering’s Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering. In early 2025, he made another generous gift that established the Anthony Bahr ’91 Engineering MBA program, an accelerated MBA program designed for all undergraduate Aggie engineers to gain business expertise immediately after earning their bachelor’s.

He believes these programs will give Aggie engineers a significant leg up professionally. “For better or worse, universities and secondary education in general have been very slow to adapt to the changing world into which their graduates are going,” says Bahr. “These programs will introduce Texas A&M engineering students to key business concepts beyond their engineering coursework to help them prepare and accelerate their transition into this new world.”