The Honorable Mike Conaway
Board of Advocates
Mike Conaway served eight terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, representing 29 counties in Texas’ 11th Congressional District, including the cities of Midland, Odessa, and San Angelo.
Mike ultimately served as Chairman of both the House Agriculture Committee and the House Ethics Committee. In the 111th Congress, he was selected by then-House Speaker John Boehner to serve on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HSPCI), a role he continued for 12 years. In the 110th Congress, then-Majority Whip Eric Cantor selected Mike to serve as a deputy Republican Whip, a position he held the remainder of his tenure with proceeding Whips Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise. In 2017 Speaker Paul Ryan tasked Mike with chairing the HSPCI investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential elections. Mike also held various leadership positions in the House Committee on Armed Services serving as the Chairman of the Panel on Defense Financial Management and Auditability Reform and the Ranking Member of the Armed Service Committee’s Panel on Defense Acquisition Reform. He was also appointed to the Board of Visitors of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point serving from 2012 to his retirement from Congress in 2021.
A native Texan, he grew up in Odessa and graduated from Odessa Permian High School in 1966 after playing on Permian’s first state championship football team. He earned a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in accounting from Texas A&M University-Commerce in 1970.
After serving in the Army at Fort Hood from 1970-1972, he rejoined Price Waterhouse & Co. in Dallas and became a Certified Public Accountant. He moved to Midland, Texas in 1979 with Price Waterhouse. After leaving Price Waterhouse he worked with George W. Bush as the chief financial officer for Bush Exploration. Soon after Bush was elected governor of Texas, he appointed Mike to the Texas State Board of Public Accountancy, where he served as chairman for five of his seven years on the board. Mike also spent six years in banking.