T. Boone Pickens, Oil Tycoon and Philanthropist, Passes Away at 91

Iconic oilman T. Boone Pickens passed away on Wednesday. He was 91 years old.

Pickens was far from a man who simply struck oil and made it big. The founder of Mesa Energy rewrote the rules of oil and gas with his corporate raider mentality.

Born in Holdenville, Oklahoma in 1928, Pickens moved to Amarillo, Texas soon after. He lived in the Texas panhandle late into his life on the 66,000-acre Mesa Vista Ranch.

The business tycoon attempted numerous hostile takeovers of large oil companies, and while he failed several times, he was still able to make multimillion-dollar profits through his efforts.

Pickens was an ardent supporter of shareholder rights, founding the United Shareholders Association in 1986. This idea pressured corporate executives to listen to their shareholders, something not taken seriously before Pickens’ movement.

“I was a disrupter before disrupters were cool,” he said in a Forbes column in 2017.

After selling Mesa in 1996 at the age of 68, Pickens sought out on a new business venture. He started BP Capital Management, an energy-centric hedge fund. Pickens also became a major proponent of American energy independence. He launched the ‘Pickens Plan’ in 2007, which included increased investment in renewable energy sources like wind.

During the past two decades, Pickens ran the firm until closing it last year due to declining health. In this time he also gave back more than $1 billion in philanthropic causes, including $500 million to his alma mater, Oklahoma State. While he amassed billions in his business career, Pickens’ net worth stood under the billion-dollar mark at the time of his death because of his substantial donations.

Follow us on social media for the latest updates in B2B!

Image

Latest

AI Infrastructure
Execution at Scale: The Real Challenge of Building AI Infrastructure
July 17, 2025

AI infrastructure is evolving at breakneck speed, and the real challenge is no longer just designing next-generation data centers—it’s executing them at scale. As demand for AI-ready facilities grows, operators must adapt to immense increases in power density, new cooling technologies, and unconventional deployment locations. Power density requirements for AI workloads are pushing the…

Read More
workplace visibility
Workplace Visibility Builds Careers and Communities Through Trust, Recognition, and Shared Growth
July 17, 2025

What if the most powerful way to grow your career isn’t by perfecting your pitch, but by telling your story? In this episode of Professional Quotient: Conversations that Build Equity, host Jason Winningham welcomes Hunter Lopatin, the Director of MarketScale, to explore the real value of visibility and voice in the workplace. The discussion…

Read More
Marketplace Inclusion
How TEKsystems Uses Marketplace Inclusion to Drive Equitable AI Adoption
July 16, 2025

As organizations race to integrate AI into every corner of business, an equally urgent conversation is emerging: How do we ensure this adoption doesn’t widen existing equity gaps? AI is both a disruptive force and an opportunity engine, as recent data shows that AI adoption among HR professionals jumped to 72 percent in 2025, up…

Read More
storytelling
The Secret to Brand Loyalty: Why Storytelling Is the Best Way to Be Heard in a Crowded Market
July 16, 2025

In today’s fast-evolving digital marketplace, attention is scarce, and trust even more so. In an era of remote work, AI-driven marketing, and constant digital noise, storytelling has emerged as one of the most powerful tools to cut through the clutter. In fact, research shows that people who used storytelling techniques to remember information recalled seven…

Read More