On March 24, Michael Holthouse will be honored with the Conn Family Entrepreneurial Leadership Award by the Center for New Ventures and Entrepreneurship at Texas A&M University’s Mays Business School.

Given in honor of C.W. and Dorothy Conn of Conn’s Appliances, this annual award is presented to a nationally recognized business leader instrumental in the establishment and growth of a successful new venture.

The event is designed not only to recognize Holthouse but also to allow the Texas A&M community to interact with Holthouse and draw from his experiences. Holthouse will lecture after the award presentation and speak with students and faculty.

Holthouse is best known in the business world as founder and President of Paranet, Inc., a computer network services company. As an Inc. Magazine Entrepreneur of the Year and a two-time “Inc. 500 Fastest Growing Company” winner, Holthouse grew Paranet in 6 years to 27 offices, 1600 employees and revenues in excess of $100 million and ultimately sold the company to Sprint in 1997.

Since then he has focused on philanthropy, investments and a variety of business interests. Community involvement is an enormous part of Holthouse’s life, and he has served on a variety of children’s and civic boards.

His philanthropic venture is called Prepared 4 Life which prepares middle school youth for life through fun, proactive and experiential after-school programs infused with life skills, character education and entrepreneurship. His newest venture is Lemonade Day, which is a community-wide education event teaching youth how to start, own and operate their own lemonade business.