Alexander Holmes, Dennis McLaughlin and Paul Bell

Dennis McLaughlin

Dennis McLaughlin is a classic American business success story. A 1992 University of Oklahoma graduate with a bachelor’s degree in economics, he was presented with the OU Regents Outstanding Alumni Award in 1999. He is recognized widely for his entrepreneurial successes, even though he has yet to hit his 40th birthday. Mr. McLaughlin worked in the oil and gas industry from the age of 15 when he started in the oil fields as a roughneck. He worked his way up through various positions before eventually starting his own natural gas company in 1993 with a $77,000 investment. That company grew and spawned several entities involved with everything from exploration and production to oil and gas technologies.

Mr. McLaughlin won “Fastest Growing Small Business of the Year” from Entrepreneur Magazine in 1995 and has more than 11 years experience as a CEO. During this time, he founded and guided a total of four different companies to reach a combined value of over $100 million. In January 2002, he formed MAC Partners, LP, a technology merchant bank established to provide restructurings, mergers, acquisitions and access to capital for small, high-tech companies. In 2003, he became CEO and Chairman of Ocean Resources, Inc., a U.S. public company engaged in deep-ocean salvage of commodity metals. He redirected the focus of the company as an industrial operation, took the balance sheet from negative $700,000 to positive $4.3 million, and increased the shareholder base with drastically increased trading volumes. In June of 2004, Mr. McLaughlin became CEO and Chairman of Blue Wireless and Data, Inc., a U.S. public company specializing in high-speed wireless broadband internet services.

On February 1 and 2, Mr. McLaughlin served as the first “T.W. Adams Professor for a Day” in the College of Arts and Sciences, an endowed lecture program that brings accomplished alumni back to the college.