Hunter Carpenter plays in an Ole Miss basketball game at Tad Smith Coliseum in the 1990s. Photo courtesy Ole Miss Athletics Media Relations
Hunter Carpenter gives back to alma mater
A four-year letterman in basketball at the University of Mississippi, Hunter Carpenter, of Dallas, knows how updated facilities and equipment can give student-athletes a competitive edge, enabling the Rebels to score wins at the highest levels.
Carpenter and his wife, Megan, have made a $1 million gift to support CHAMPIONS. NOW., the Ole Miss Athletics Foundation‘s fundraising campaign to improve facilities for student-athletes. In response, the university named the men’s practice court at the Tuohy Basketball Center in honor of the family.
“Having been around the Ole Miss ecosystem for nearly 30 years, I’ve never seen the university have as much momentum as it has now,” Carpenter said. “The national brand is at a place where it’s never been in terms of how people view Ole Miss.
“With the current leadership making bold decisions and being determined to be competitive and win championships, I’ve never been more excited about where Ole Miss is both academically and athletically.”
Supported by gifts like the Carpenters’, the newly expanded Olivia and Archie Manning Athletics Performance Center features the 10,710-square-foot Ririe Family Weight Room, the Van Devender Family Foundation Locker Room, the Roland and Sheryl Burns Team Meeting Room and numerous amenities for student-athletes in various sports.
“From my many meetings with Hunter in Dallas and Oxford, it became clear that he believed in what we were doing at Ole Miss athletics and wanted to support Rebel student-athletes through our capital campaign, CHAMPIONS. NOW.,” said William Fisher, OMAF director of development.
“Generous gifts, like the one we received from Megan and Hunter Carpenter, allow us to provide world-class facilities and an excellent education to our athletes, and for that, we’re extremely grateful.”
Part of the Carpenters’ gift is cash, while another portion is a transfer of securities.
“Any time you can give highly appreciated securities in a tax-advantaged way, you can give more to your interests versus giving pure cash,” said Carpenter, who chairs the UM Foundation’s Joint Committee on University Investments.
“We had some things that had highly appreciated, and we had sold some things and taken public securities and those had continued to appreciate. It was a very tax-advantaged way for us to give.”
Carpenter is a partner of Arete Energy, where he is responsible for finding and executing new deals, monitoring and growing the portfolio, and helping to manage the firm’s strategic and investment objectives.
He has invested in energy private equity for over two decades, most recently at RedBird Capital Partners, where he led the energy team and the deployment of more than $1.5 billion of capital. Before joining Redbird in 2014, the UM accountancy graduate spent most of his career working for The Stephens Group, a private equity firm in Arkansas.
Carpenter, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees and a Juris Doctor at Ole Miss in 1999, 2000 and 2003 respectively, credits his UM education for much of his success.
“Ole Miss is so important to me because of where it took me in life, from being very humbly raised in Arkansas with two loving parents, but with really no sense of the broader world, to working with people who went to the Ivy League schools,” Carpenter said. “Because of my time at Ole Miss, people appreciate how I do business in a very relational way and that’s benefited me greatly over time.”
Besides competing as a student-athlete, Carpenter was earned a Taylor Medal, was inducted into Phi Kappa Phi, and was an active member of Sigma Nu fraternity, Mississippi Law Journal, and Moot Court Board.
Carpenter said he valued his undergraduate years not only because Ole Miss gave him a chance to play on a high level in the Southeastern Conference but also because of the faculty and staff who rallied around him.
“All these guys were behind the scenes pushing me toward things that I didn’t even know were possible for me,” said Carpenter, specifically acknowledging then-head coach Rob Evans, professors Jimmy Davis, Vaughn Grisham, Morris Stocks, Mark Wilder, and Chancellor Emeritus Robert Khayat.
In 2017, Carpenter was named the university’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship Distinguished Entrepreneur and, in 2015, he received the Outstanding Young Alumni Award from the Ole Miss Alumni Association.
He and his wife, Megan, a 2000 UM graduate from the Dublin community in Coahoma County, met at Ole Miss, where she was president of Chi Omega sorority.
“Everything I said about Ole Miss, Megan would say the same,” Carpenter said. “For her, being someone from a very small town in Mississippi, her Chi O experience with her advisers and people pushing her to go to Washington, D.C., to work … just like Ole Miss opened up a world of possibilities for me, it did the same for her.”
By Bill Dabney
