KINGSVILLE (October 17, 2025) — The College of Business Administration (CBA) at Texas A&M University-Kingsville will host its annual Economic Forum from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 29, at the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Center, 1730 W. Corral. Admission to the forum is $12 and includes lunch. Advance registration is required by Oct. 21.
This year’s keynote speaker will be Christopher Williston, president and CEO of the Independent Bankers Association of Texas, the largest state association dedicated exclusively to community bank advocacy. The topic of his presentation is The Importance of Local Banking: Defining Community and a Return to Subsidiarity.
This year’s forum will feature A Comparison of Kleberg County, Calhoun County, and Wilson County: Three South Texas Counties with Similar Bank Conditions, by Dr. Thomas Krueger, J.R. Manning Endowed Professor of Innovation in Business Education and chair of the Department of Accounting and Finance from the College of Business Administration.
To reserve your seat at the economic forum, visit
http://www.tamuk.edu/business/researchoutreach/economic-forum.html or call 361-593-3801.
About Christopher Williston
Christopher Williston is the President and CEO of the Independent Bankers Association of Texas, the largest state association dedicated exclusively to community bank advocacy. Prior to leading IBAT as President and CEO, Williston served the association for nine years in numerous roles, including Chief Operations Officer.
Williston has been recognized for his service to the association industry. He is a past chairman of the Texas Society of Association Executives, an organization that also honored him with its Young Professional Leadership Award and Chairman’s Award.
In service of the community, Christopher and his wife, Michelle, founded The Mary Claire Project. Since 2016, the project has assisted hundreds of families in celebrating the lives of their children lost before birth. Williston also serves on the board of directors of a small, classical school in the Austin area.
He is a proud Horned Frog – a graduate of both TCU and Brite Divinity School at TCU. He and Michelle live in the Austin area and have six children.
About Dr. Thomas Krueger
Dr. Thomas Krueger is the J.R. Manning Endowed Professor of Innovation in Business Education at Texas A&M-Kingsville. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, a master’s degree in business administration from Minnesota State University and a doctorate in business administration in finance from the University of Kentucky.
Since joining Texas A&M-Kingsville in 2011, Krueger has taught a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses.
Krueger has authored over 120 refereed journal articles and has been cited 1,850 times in other articles. Perhaps his most widely read article, titled “Super Bowl Stock Market Predictor,” was published in the top-tier Journal of Finance.
He was chosen for the 2015 Teaching Excellence Award, an acknowledgment as the best instructor in the finance discipline, by the Academy of Finance, an international association of Finance Professionals. From 2014 through 2019, and again in 2023, Krueger was the recipient of the College of Business Administration’s Distinguished Research of the Year awards. He received the first TAMUK Outstanding Faculty Service Award in 2024.
He was the 2002 and 2017 President of the Academy of Finance, 2017-present chair of the accounting and finance department at Texas A&M-Kingsville, and a member of the Graduate Education Advisory Committee of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board from 2016-2019, where he has played a role providing inflation–adjusted information regarding student loan debt and graduate education costs in Texas. He also coordinates the Banking & Business Career Expo, which is in its fifth year of bringing students and employers together.
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