About Us

Our Initiatives

Internally Driven Work

The majority of our work involves supporting change-makers closest to the problems and empowering them to thrive. On rare occasions, we incubate initiatives internally. Harnessing our ability to convene and collaborate across a wide range of partners, our team develops and launches new social impact concepts from conception to execution.

Founded in 2019, IF/THEN® seeks to further advance women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by empowering current innovators and inspiring the next generation of pioneers. This internally driven initiative is designed to activate a culture shift among young girls to open their eyes to STEM careers. Our team built a robust platform to amplify the voices of women in STEM through creating:

IF/THEN Exhibit

This monumental exhibit of 120 life-size 3-D printed statues celebrates contemporary women innovators in STEM and features the most statues of real women ever assembled together. Experienced by 4 million people since its launch in 2020, the exhibit visited the Smithsonian, Central Park Zoo, Dallas-Love Field Airport, Northpark Center, National Institutes of Health, Kendall Square/MIT Open Space and more.

IF/THEN Collection

The IF/THEN® Collection is the world’s largest, free resource library of photos and videos celebrating diverse, contemporary women in STEM. Dedicated to increasing access to authentic and relatable images of real women in STEM, it is filled with free content for nonprofits, museums, educators, parents, and students. Through distribution arrangements, more than 210 million people experienced Collection content from 2020 – 2023.

Mission Unstoppable

Now in its 5th season, Mission Unstoppable, hosted by Miranda Cosgrove, is the #1 STEM show on TV, airing Saturday mornings on CBS. The show features many AAAS IF/THEN® Ambassadors and women on the cutting edge of science – zoologists, engineers, astronauts, codebreakers, and oceanographers. To ensure we are reaching the girls where they are, Mission Unstoppable has a large social media presence creating exclusive content for TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitch, with over a million followers across all platforms.

Pegasus Park is a 26-acre future-focused campus dedicated to innovative companies and organizations across life sciences and social impact. The campus brings together two legacy-building initiatives for Lyda Hill that were years in the making – catalyzing a more robust life science ecosystem in North Texas and launching a social impact hub to strengthen the local nonprofit sector. Funded by private and philanthropic capital, Pegasus Park is the largest impact investment of its kind in North Texas. The ability to generate profit, along with a strong sense of purpose for the community, sets the project apart from other mixed-use Dallas developments.

Pegasus Park was originally constructed in 1970 as headquarters for Zale Corp and was sold to Mobil Oil Corp in 1981. In 2015, J. Small Investments, a North Texas-focused real estate investment firm, purchased the campus and subsequently teamed up with Montgomery Street Partners and an affiliate of Lyda Hill Philanthropies to redevelop it into Pegasus Park as it stands today, offering state-of-the-art facilities and amenities enabling the daily convergence of entrepreneurs, strategic business partners, social impact organizations, and North Texas’ biotech ecosystem.

Water Cooler

Water Cooler at Pegasus Park is home to 35 best-in-class social impact organizations, sponsored by Lyda Hill Philanthropies and managed by The Dallas Foundation. Water Cooler spans more than 175,000 square feet of physical space and consists of a vibrant community of high-potential agencies working together to improve North Texas and beyond. Its name originates from proverbial water cooler encounters that are known to foster community and improve productivity. The office space at Water Cooler features a mix of full and partial-floor tenants and a co-working suite for smaller organizations.

The mission of Water Cooler is to support organizations in their quest to attract and retain talent, engender collaboration among members, reduce administrative costs, and ultimately, increase collective impact on key social issues.

Biotech+ Hub

Pegasus Park serves as the hub for North Texas’ rapidly expanding biotech sector. The hub is anchored by BioLabs Pegasus Park, a 37,000 square foot lab and office facility that houses more than 20 biotech startups. From shared lab equipment to mentorship and networking opportunities and proximity to other innovators, BioLabs Pegasus Park supplies startups with everything they need to launch into high-growth companies.

Pegasus Park’s office space and amenities offer a unique setting in which higher ed institutions, investors, accelerators, established companies, and ARPA-H’s Customer Experience Hub are able to co-locate and collaborate daily. With its newest lab development, Bridge Labs, Pegasus Park offers the space and resources needed for companies at every stage to scale, while benefiting from Texas’ low cost of doing business and strong talent pipeline.

Looking Back

Select Historical Initiatives

Collaborative for Fresh Produce

In coordination with North Texas Food Bank and Feeding Texas, in 2015, Lyda Hill Philanthropies funded a study that found that Texas generates more than 350 million pounds of secondary market produce annually, but food banks capture less than one-fifth of the opportunity due to an ineffective system to source and distribute. This missed opportunity represents a volume of available fresh produce that is more than enough to close the current meal gap in Texas (225 million meals).
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Lone Star Prize

In 2021, Lyda Hill Philanthropies collaborated with Lever for Change to offer the Lone Star Prize, a statewide competition designed to source a pipeline of philanthropic “big bets” across health, workforce, and the environment and award a $10 million prize to scale a proven, transformative solution that improves the quality of life for Texans. More than 172 proposals were submitted for the Lone Star Prize. After a rigorous expert and peer review process, five finalists collectively received $200,000 to work with a team of technical experts to strengthen, revise, and re-submit their proposed solutions.
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Collaborative for Fresh Produce

Overview

In coordination with North Texas Food Bank and Feeding Texas, in 2015, Lyda Hill Philanthropies funded a study that found that Texas generates more than 350 million pounds of secondary market produce annually, but food banks capture less than one-fifth of the opportunity due to an ineffective system to source and distribute. This missed opportunity represents a volume of available fresh produce that is more than enough to close the current meal gap in Texas (225 million meals).

Intervention

Lyda Hill Philanthropies developed and funded a collaborative effort led by Feeding Texas and other member banks to establish a co-op model that combines a mixing facility, a commodity-agnostic push model and centralized purchasing to reduce the acquisition cost of produce while improving variety and freshness.

Impact

In its pilot year, the new co-op model shipped 55 million pounds of produce to 21 food banks across Texas at reduced landed costs, improved variety per load, and improved speed and freshness. This proof of concept resulted in a new 501c3 entity — Collaborative for Fresh Produce (CFP) — spun out to focus exclusively on scaling the model. In 2019, Feeding America acquired the organization. Together, Feeding America and CFP are developing a national model for our country’s agricultural community and its nationwide network of food banks.




Lone Star Prize

Overview

In 2021, Lyda Hill Philanthropies collaborated with Lever for Change to offer the Lone Star Prize, a statewide competition designed to source a pipeline of philanthropic “big bets” across health, workforce, and the environment and award a $10 million prize to scale a proven, transformative solution that improves the quality of life for Texans. More than 172 proposals were submitted for the Lone Star Prize. After a rigorous expert and peer review process, five finalists collectively received $200,000 to work with a team of technical experts to strengthen, revise, and re-submit their proposed solutions.

Impact

After final deliberations, Lyda Hill Philanthropies and Lever for Change awarded Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute’s “Lone Star Depression Challenge” with the $10 million Lone Star Prize to improve quality of life and mental health care access for communities across the state, particularly for people of color, people with disabilities, and people living in poverty. Additionally, after reviewing the finalist teams’ ideas, Lyda Hill Philanthropies awarded approximately $2 million in additional grants among the four other finalists – JUST, Merit America, Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, and Texas Water Trade, bringing the combined total to approximately $12.75 million to bold solutions in the Lone Star State.