Rich Byrnes

Rich Byrnes is the Chief Port Infrastructure Officer for Port Houston, with responsibility to steward more than $2 billion in physical assets, and a multi-functional organization tasked with a dual value proposition of supporting public transportation and trade needs of the region, enabling an efficient and effective base for port operations. The port’s Infrastructure division’s areas of responsibility include facilities and master planning, strategic asset management, the non-federal role in ship channel management, road and rail freight mobility and environment.

Mr. Byrnes’ career experience spans engineering, operations and consulting across shipbuilding, ports, manufacturing and oil and gas industries, and working with Fortune 100 corporations, state-owned enterprises and governments on every continent. He began his career managing supply chain and wintering over at the South Pole, Antarctica and then as an oil field engineer in the Middle East. Subsequently, he has consulted to ports and shipping companies in the East, West and Gulf Coasts, Latin America and Australia. He worked with upstream, downstream and petrochemicals clients in the Americas, Asia, Europe and Middle East and held executive positions at two global oilfield corporations. He has also been a Clinical Professor of Leadership at Texas A&M’s Mays Business School.

Mr. Byrnes holds two master’s degrees from MIT, one in ocean systems management and another in technology and policy. He has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of California at Santa Barbara, and an associate degree in mathematics from Long Beach City College. In addition, he has completed three leadership programs at Texas A&M’s Center for Executive Development. Mr. Byrnes and his family have lived in the Houston area since 1992, and in his spare time he promotes STEM education in local schools.