Susan Combs

Susan Combs is a successful, experienced executive at both the state and federal level.  She has 16 years of statewide leadership in Texas, providing strategic and innovative management, as well as nearly three years at the U.S. Department of the Interior in executive management. At Interior, she was the Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management and Budget , and Chief Financial Officer. Most recently she served as the Chair of the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commission, which was created by Congress, to celebrate the 19th Amendment centennial nationally in August 2020.  She is a board member, and Treasurer, for the Women’s Suffrage Monument Foundation.

In Texas she served in elected positions: as the Comptroller/ Treasurer; the first woman Agriculture commissioner; and was also a state legislator with a history of writing and passing landmark legislation. She was particularly interested in issues surrounding water, conservation, and streamflow. As head of two state agencies, she streamlined operations, ensuring more efficient and cost-effective programs, and received national recognition.

While serving as Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Combs worked with the Environmental Defense Fund to protect the golden-cheeked warbler through partnerships with Texas A&M University, ranchers, and others.   They created the Recovery Credit System, the nation’s most innovative program bringing landowners, ranches, and military at Fort Hood together with other stakeholders to protect the economy, as well as the nation’s defense mission, while complying with the Endangered Species Act. 

At the December 2, 2014 meeting of the Texas Interagency Task Force on Economic Growth and Endangered Species established by Combs, Dr.Benjamin Tuggle, of the U.S.Fish and Wildlife Servi, presented her with a plaque in recognition of her efforts to promote conservation in the state of Texas and the Southwest Region.  He praised Combs for her ability to bring together diverse stakeholder groups to tackle difficult issues surrounding conservation.  In particular he noted her work on the dunes sagebrush lizard, the lesser prairie-chicken and the golden-cheeked warbler. 

She is the manager and owner of a more than 140 year old family ranching, hunting and grazing management operation in West Texas for over forty years.