October 5, 2014
Alumnus Hy Hetherington (B.F.A. 1996) was a proud recipient of an endowed presidential scholarship while training in the Department of Theatre and Dance. Recently, Hetherington and his wife Amy made a gift to establish the Hy and Amy Hetherington Endowed Presidential Scholarship. The scholarship will support B.F.A. acting students, forever honoring Hetherington’s own experience in the department.
While at The University of Texas at Austin, Hetherington felt blessed to study under Professors Jim Hancock, Charlotte Canning and Lee Abraham, among others. He credits much of his artistic training for his success in business. After college, his professional journey included education, hotel management and finally in the arena of litigation support and IP finance, advising clients throughout every aspect of the litigation lifecycle. Hetherington is the C.E.O. and managing partner of HLP Integration LLC, which he created in 2007. HLP has offices on three continents and supports clients throughout the world. Throughout his career, Hetherington has had the opportunity to work on some of the highest profile and largest legal matters in the United States. In 2012, he established 1624 LLC, an IP finance organization that provides capital to businesses with strong and vetted intellectual property. The capital allows small to mid-size businesses as well as individual inventors to grow and flourish utilizing their creativity and enforcing their legal protections through their patents.
Hetherington is passionate about creating opportunities for Theatre and Dance students to learn about entrepreneurship. He firmly believes that the education one gets while pursuing the arts is applicable in many other ways to the world and business. While regurgitation of facts and information in order to keep up with the new global economy has been a strong governmental focus, he believes that creativity and innovation are the backbone of what makes America great and different. The ability to think creatively and independently is the hallmark of our country’s economy and no other person is more equipped than the artist to succeed in this new world. He believes that one key skill an actor learns is the ability to quickly assess and creatively respond to another person and their perspective. This makes for great salespeople, thoughtful leaders, intuitive creators and successful business people.
Hetherington is currently working with Dr. Brant Pope, Chair of The University of Texas at Austin Department of Theatre and Dance, to organize a diverse group of business leaders, including himself, who will teach undergraduate actors essential entrepreneurial skills and thus, setting them up for success after graduation. The goal of this two-day workshop will be to provide students the tools to find creative solutions in a business environment and open their minds to how their artistic training may benefit them in any arena. Performing arts students should understand how valuable their training is, embrace it and know that our country needs more creativity to stay on top of the world’s stage.
He shared advice for recent graduates, “Intelligence is not just test scores or knowledge of facts and information. Being in the moment in any business transaction, having the intuition to change course midstream in a negotiation, perception to understand why someone is responding or acting the way they are in order to finalize a deal, truly listening to an employee and their feelings, focusing on the objective of the overall task are all skills that makes one successful in business. These are all traits and talents I learned from the arts rather than business.”
Hetherington wants every young person leaving the undergraduate program in the arts at the university to leave empowered, emboldened and passionate, whether pursuing their life in the arts or any other avenue that life’s journey takes them.