When Tim Maiden ’00 (MLA ’02) was a student at Carter High School in Dallas, he remembers how classmates’ conversations about their futures revolved around athletics and entertainment. Not school. Like most high school students, he said, his world was smaller and less contextualized. “We really didn’t understand some of the socioeconomic disparities in our communities.”

Football scholarships to TCU for Tim and twin brother Terrence ’00 revealed an untapped world of possibilities. Both made the most of the opportunities, with Terrence now leading a real estate revival in southern Dallas and Tim working his way up in the banking business to his current position as senior vice president of Simmons Bank.

In 2005, the brothers launched the Two Wins Foundation, which offered community-based events and sports programs to kids in their old Dallas stomping grounds.

They established the Maiden Foundation in 2020. “We realized funding and impact investment are essential to systemic and sustainable change,” Tim Maiden said. “We wanted to leverage our relationships and network with other professionals to identify some of the social and economic challenges that disadvantaged communities face. And to provide funding, strategic funding, in institutions that are really making a sustainable impact.”

“We wanted to leverage our relationships and network with other professionals to identify some of the social and economic challenges that disadvantaged communities face.”
Tim Maiden

To that end, they have partnered with the University of North Texas at Dallas to create the Elevate Male Leadership Academy. Over five activity-packed days, high school students — 153 to date — learn soft skills and speed interviewing and get professional headshots so they will be set up for career or postsecondary success.

The young people also visit colleges for a glimpse into what higher ed life is like. “Then they think,” Terrence Maiden said, “ ‘OK, I can do this.’ ”

Role modeling comes naturally to Terrence Maiden, said Robert Lewis ’17, also a former TCU Football player. “He showed me that I can be 100 percent myself, unapologetically, but still be successful,” said Lewis, who is also pursuing a path in commercial real estate with mentorship from Maiden.

As the brothers will attest, education can lead to limitless possibilities.

In spring 2019, the Maiden Foundation joined forces with the Dallas County Community College District and Cedar Valley College to launch Rising Sons. This program, too, teaches college readiness and career exploration to young men from underserved communities.

After spurring kids to envision everything they can become by embracing higher education, Tim Maiden said, “You can see the sparkle in their eyes, the potential of what could be.”

In the wake of recent expanded awareness of racial inequality and stacked disadvantages to societal success, he said, “You can look at it as a challenge, or you can look at it as an opportunity, and so we have taken a position to look at this opportunity and to change and influence and impact the next generation.”