David Gwarda, Kevin Ryan Named to UT Dallas Executive Board

The University of Texas at Dallas has named David Gwarda, assistant vice president in administrative services at State Farm, and Kevin

Ryan, senior vice president and chief financial officer of Merit Energy Co., to its Executive Board. Both join other community and business leaders on the board in supporting the University’s advancement and vision.

Gwarda began his career with State Farm in 1993 as a P&C underwriter in Tempe, Arizona, before assuming an IT leadership role in Bloomington, Illinois, in 1997. He has served in various leadership roles, including enterprise learning and development manager, underwriting section manager and zone administrative services/finance department manager. Prior to his current role, he also worked as an administrative services consultant, P&C underwriting consultant, auto underwriting operations manager and IT director.

Gwarda earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Arizona State University and holds chartered property casualty underwriter, chartered life underwriter and chartered financial consultant designations.

As CFO of Merit, a private oil and gas company in Dallas, Ryan oversees the risk management area (insurance and hedging), in addition to the accounting, tax, treasury and information technology areas. Over the past 19 years at the company, Ryan has also held positions in the business development area (acquisitions/divestitures), as well as spending more than four years running an operations division.

As CFO, Ryan oversees the risk management area (insurance and hedging), in addition to the accounting, tax, treasury and information technology areas.

Ryan received a bachelor of business administration degree in accounting from The University of Texas at Austin and a master of business administration degree from The University of Texas at Dallas. He is a certified public accountant registered in the state of Texas.