Austin Baker
President, HRO Partners
Austin Baker is an entrepreneur, investor, speaker, Eagle Scout, and community leader focused on building organizations and leaders that create long-term, sustainable impact.
He has a legacy as a founding partner of several healthcare, insurance, and technology companies with successful exits over the past 25+ years. During this tenure of leadership, he has helped develop innovative workforce and mentoring programs as well as pioneered employee benefits strategies that have collectively served more than twenty thousand organizations across the country.
Austin is born out of hospitality. He served as a busboy and Chief Restroom Officer (CRO) at his family restaurant Owen Brennan’s, where so many families have come together for more than 35 years.
Through his work advising founders and business owners, Austin is actively engaged in lower- and middle-market mergers and acquisitions, helping companies grow, transition ownership, create value multiples, control costs, and most of all, honor and preserve entrepreneurial legacies.
Alongside his business work, Austin has made significant investments in mentorship programs, leadership development, and education. He co-founded the Memphis Institute for Leadership Education (MILE) and the Fogelman College of Business at the University of Memphis. MILE has supported the mentorship of thousands of emerging leaders. The University of Memphis named the program in his honor, and he is proud to continue to support the program.
In his education transformation work, Austin has helped form and advise across many education systems comprising more than 150,000 students and 275 schools. Austin is passionate about infusing mentorship education in our community. The impact of these programs has helped to create, empower, equip, and inspire more than 10,000 mentors as the center of his life work—with the ultimate goal of one million mentors.
Seeding Success, Goodwill Excel Center, and Cradle to Career TN are a few of the organizations for which he has proudly served on the founding boards, acting as an advisor and advocate for their teams’ incredible work in education.
Austin’s work across education, entrepreneurship, and civic initiatives reflects a lifelong commitment to mentoring the next generation—equipping young leaders with the relationships, skills, and values needed to strengthen their communities and build enduring institutions.
Austin is also the father of two boys who are eating him out of house and home as they advance through high school.