Texas A&M Law dean, FWISD manager helped grow Fort Worth. Now he’s leaving for New York
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A chief operating officer helping develop a university campus in downtown Fort Worth. A board member shaping Fort Worth ISD’s future. A partner to local business leaders.
In less than a decade in Cowtown, Bobby Ahdieh has helped connect Fort Worth and Tarrant County’s ambitions for education and economic growth.
But his time as a Texan is ending.
Ahdieh is leaving for New York, where he will become Pace University’s ninth president starting Jan. 1, 2027. His departure will bring leadership changes to A&M’s law school and academic programs as the downtown campus expands. It will also leave a vacancy on Fort Worth ISD’s state-appointed board of managers as the district’s overhaul continues. Ahdieh expects to remain in his A&M roles and on the FWISD board of managers through December, he told the Fort Worth Report. Asked why he chose to leave now, Ahdieh pointed to the law school’s trajectory, the university’s commitment to expanding graduate education and the A&M System’s support for Fort Worth.
“Some of my work here is done,” he said.
Robert Sands, chairman of the Pace board of trustees, said in a news release that Ahdieh is the exact type of leader that the university needs and deserves.
“He is a bold institution-builder who has demonstrated time and again the rare ability to elevate academic quality, expand access, and drive transformational growth,” Sands said. “He shares our deep belief that education is a powerful engine of social mobility and life-changing opportunity.”
Ahdieh said he was drawn to Pace’s focus on educational access, professional success and community partnerships.
“The opportunity to present this now was kind of too good an offer to refuse,” he said.
Texas A&M will announce interim leadership appointments in the coming week, Jerry Strawser, the university’s interim provost and executive vice president, wrote in a message to faculty and staff.
Ahdieh arrived in Fort Worth in 2018 as dean of A&M Law, then ranked No. 83 nationally. It’s now No. 22 in the U.S. News & World Report’s Best Law Schools rankings.
Enrollment across the school’s programs grew from 458 to more than 2,000 during Ahdieh’s tenure. That growth extends beyond training lawyers as A&M developed graduate legal education programs for professionals in fields such as healthcare, energy and finance.
Texas A&M Law’s next steps extend beyond rankings, Ahdieh said. He wants it to become nationally known for bringing people with different backgrounds, experiences and politics into conversation.
“This is a place where you come to speak, to be heard and to learn from one another,” Ahdieh said. “I think we are well on our way to that, but I’d like to see that continue to advance.”
The law school’s rise also helped create an opening for the Texas A&M-Fort Worth campus in downtown.
Its first building — the eight story, 228,000-square-foot Law & Education Building housing law, engineering, health science and business — opened Aug. 5. Construction is underway on a research building, scheduled for completion in 2029.
Only one person could have done this, former Mayor Betsy Price said.
“I don’t believe we’d have had that without the energy and vision that Bobby’s had,” said Price, who served as mayor from 2011 to 2021. “Just to see that transition in an area that had languished for so long and to see the growth of A&M and the law school is great for Fort Worth.”
Ahdieh became Texas A&M University’s vice president for professional schools and programs in 2022, then Texas A&M-Fort Worth’s chief operating officer in 2023. His responsibilities included helping determine which academic programs the university would offer in Fort Worth, said Yolanda Schufford, the campus’s executive director of marketing and communications.
“Bobby has played an instrumental role in the development of Texas A&M-Fort Worth, particularly in fundraising and building relationships with the community and industry partners,” Schufford said in an email.
Oversight of the broader downtown campus’s operations and development will continue to rest with Kim McCuistion, associate vice chancellor of Texas A&M University System and director of Texas A&M-Fort Worth. McCuistion reports to system leadership, Schufford said.
The campus brings together Texas A&M University, Tarleton State University, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi and six other state agencies.
In a statement, McCuistion thanked Ahdieh for helping develop the campus and said existing facilities and project teams will continue the work.
“We are focused on moving the campus forward as planned,” she said.
Ahdieh’s vision grew through relationships he built with local business leaders.
John Goff, chairman and CEO of Crescent Real Estate, remembers receiving a cold call from Ahdieh before the pandemic. The dean wanted to introduce himself and discuss the law school, including A&M’s downtown land.
After Goff was tapped to help guide Fort Worth’s economic recovery, the two climbed onto the law school’s roof and surveyed the surrounding land.
“It’s like a blank canvas,” Goff recalled thinking.
They helped develop a proposal and took it to then-A&M System Chancellor John Sharp in College Station. With other campus planners, Goff and Ahdieh also studied the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania, looking for models that brought research, businesses and development together.
That ambition now extends to the Switchyard Innovation District, where the A&M’s campus will anchor a broader mix of businesses, research and housing. Developers and companies are responding to what the area could become over the next two decades, Goff said.
Cameron Cushman, executive director of the Fort Worth-Tarrant County Innovation Partnership, which is leading the development of the Switchyard Innovation District in partnership with Texas A&M-Fort Worth, has seen the impact Adhieh’s vision has had on the city’s economic development first hand.
“I just stepped out of a meeting with a company from the U.K. that is considering locating major U.S. operations here,” Cushman said. “People like that don’t show up unless you have something that they see as part of their future. That’s what Bobby’s brought to Fort Worth.”
Ahdieh estimates the campus will ultimately cost more than $1 billion. A measure of its success, he said, will be the employers it attracts.
“I want to see the steady stream of companies coming to downtown Fort Worth,” he said.
Goff has already begun discussing next steps with A&M, he said. He expects the project’s momentum to outlast Ahdieh, whom he calls his collaborator and friend.
“I will tell you: He made his permanent marks,” Goff said. “And when he comes back here in 10 years, he’s going to be proud of what we have.”
Ahdieh’s vision for downtown Fort Worth went well beyond education, said Robert Allen, president and CEO of the Fort Worth Economic Development Partnership, the privately funded nonprofit charged with business development for the city.
“He’s going to leave massive shoes to fill, but I think the city of Fort Worth and certainly Texas A&M-Fort Worth is in a much, much, much better position because of Bobby Ahdieh,” Allen said.
Mayor Mattie Parker said that Ahdieh has shaped Fort Worth’s future for the better. She appreciates his commitment to quality education and improving outcomes for all students and is grateful for their friendship.
“Fort Worth will miss Bobby,” Parker said in an email statement. “I will miss Bobby, but his impact will last for generations.”
Ahdieh also expects to leave a newer civic role: helping govern Fort Worth’s public schools.
Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath named Ahdieh to the nine-person board March 24 after the state intervened over academic underperformance. The managers replaced FWISD’s elected trustees and oversee Superintendent Peter Licata, the district’s finances and efforts to improve student achievement.
“Bobby’s just got such a passion for the community,” Price said. “For him to step up and serve on the board of managers for Fort Worth ISD this past year has been a really big deal too.”
Since assuming his seat, Ahdieh has participated in listening sessions where parents, teachers and residents have raised concerns about classroom instruction, testing and the district’s direction. The input has guided the development of academic goals and limits on Licata.
Ahdieh’s final board meeting is expected to be Dec. 8. Progress in the district will require adjustments along the way, Ahdieh said.
“We get some things right. We get some things wrong. We hopefully correct ourselves when we get things wrong,” he said. “In many ways, the work that we’re doing is massive at this stage. But it will also be the case that there will be tremendous work yet to be done.”
He considers the district’s work among the most consequential responsibilities he has taken on in Fort Worth — and among the least finished out of his list.
“The overwhelming bulk of the work lies ahead,” Ahdieh said.
Jake Kobersky, a spokesperson for the Texas Education Agency, said Ahdieh’s replacement will share the managers’ focus on improving student outcomes.
Ahdieh sees another opportunity to connect an institution with its surrounding community at Pace, a private university with campuses in New York City and Westchester County.
The move also carries a family connection. His parents came from Iran to pursue educational opportunities in New York. The return offers a chance to create for other students the same opportunities that his parents received. Those foundations built him.
Still, leaving Fort Worth will be difficult.
The community has welcomed him as an Iranian New Yorker and child of immigrants, Ahdieh said, meeting his missteps with humor and warmth.
His attempts at riding a horse.
His cowboy hat worn backward.
Or his incompetent dancing and country music skills.
“I will miss the community more than anything else,” he said.