Five Under 40: The 2014 Outstanding Young Texas Exes

This year’s Outstanding Young Texas Exes have two things in common—a long list of accomplishments and service to the university.

The Outstanding Young Texas Ex Award is presented annually to University of Texas alumni under 40 who have already made names for themselves. Since 1980, OYTEX winners have included athletes, scientists, filmmakers, politicians, entrepreneurs, and federal judges. This year’s recipients are again scattered across all walks of life. There’s the man who couldn’t decide between criminal justice and medicine, so he chose both; the former baseball player turned financial whiz turned geopolitical intelligence firm executive; the Longhorn softball legend and Olympic gold medalist; the former federal prosecutor now with the California Attorney General’s office; and the philanthropist, venture capitalist, and health care finance lawyer. These five individuals have—apart from virtually no free time, it would seem—accomplished more in their young lives than most would hope to in a stack of lifetimes.

HOME BASE: San Francisco

CASE FILE: Special assistant attorney general with the Office of California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris [pullquote]“I made a promise a long time ago that I would make a commitment to the university if the university made a commitment to me. I feel like it has paid me in full many times over.”[/pullquote]

THE LOWDOWN: Phonies, forgers, and crooked officials of the world beware if Jeffrey Tsai is on your case. Though he’s practiced a few different types of law, he has a storied history in financial fraud and anti-corruption law. Tsai has worked all across the country since leaving the Forty Acres—as a federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C. and Miami, and now for the state of California in San Francisco—but he still feels a connection to UT even from afar, as an at-large member of the Texas Exes Board of Directors, and makes it a point to visit Texas “five or six times a year.” In his current role, he is a principal advisor to the Attorney General, overseeing criminal law policy in California.

Photography by Matt Wright-Steel