Matt Phillips: BRA's new Deputy General Manager
Matt Phillips, BRA Deputy General Manager, 2025
Matt Phillips is ready to push Brazos River Authority projects across the finish line.
As Deputy General Manager, a new position within the organization, Phillips plans to help transition the BRA from a planning-focused organization into an action-oriented one.
Whether that's the construction of Allens Creek Reservoir, the Belhouse Drought Preparedness Project, or other major projects aimed at supplying water to the growing areas of the basin, Phillips is ready to see the BRA transition from the world of strategy and embrace an environment of direct action.
“The projects we work toward are complex, difficult and take a great deal of time. Phillips said. “I know that we'll get there because we have an organization full of outstanding people who have a common vision.”
New role
Phillips was promoted to the second-in-command position at the BRA in late 2024 after more than 15 years as the organization's Legislative and Government Affairs Manager.
BRA General Manager/CEO David Collinsworth said the water business is very complex. Every decision from the organization has political ramifications and financial impacts, Collinsworth said.
“We work every day on projects that will be controversial and will take years to complete. Matt's understanding of river authorities, the political universe, and BRA's challenges makes him the perfect leader and mentor for the BRA process,” he said. “Matt learned to work on the back of a tractor, maintaining the Lake Limestone Sterling C. Robertson Dam as a teenager. Now he leads critical parts of the organization to ensure we can develop, manage, and protect a critical water resource.”
One of Phillips' goals in his new role is to help the BRA develop the next sources of water supply in the coming years.
“The idea of having to tell folks that are asking for long-term water that we don't have it, it's hard,” Phillips said. “I say this having worked in the water industry for a long time, knowing that developing long-term water is hard, but we've spent several years in that spot, and I would like to get us soon to a point where we're able to say, 'Yes,' for a little bit.”
Early start
Matt Phillips at Limestone - Matt, Leon Cougar, Ben
The youngest of two boys, Phillips was born in Tomball but spent most of his youth on Lake Limestone, one of the three water supply reservoirs owned and operated by the BRA.
Phillips' family has a long history near the lake located on the upper Navasota River in Limestone, Robertson, and Leon counties. His great-grandfather served as the local school superintendent. His family owned land in the area – some of which eventually became where Lake Limestone's Sterling C. Robertson Dam was built.
In high school, in between playing football, basketball, baseball, and running track, Phillips worked part-time for the BRA at the lake as a maintenance worker. He mowed the property, helped install a waterline for an irrigation system, and cleaned the parks.
“To this day, I can barely be around watermelon,” Phillips said, with a laugh. “I certainly can't eat it. I can't smell it. The amount of rancid watermelon I picked up during those years at the parks after the holidays, like the Fourth of July or Memorial Day, I won't even eat anything watermelon flavored.”
He continued this work over the summers of his first few years of college.
Phillips' high school government teacher, and his head football coach, played a key role in propelling him into his journey with politics.
“I had a lot of respect for him. He was an extremely brilliant guy,” he said. “He had a way of talking about government and politics that was engaging and funny. He made it relatable, even to a high school kid who, at the time, didn't know a whole lot about it. The way he would deliver it and the way he would talk about it made it incredibly interesting to me. Coming out of high school, that just seemed to be what I was most interested in.”
At the Capitol
Matt Phillips and David Collinsworth 2020
Phillips went on to earn a Bachelor of Liberal Arts degree in Government from The University of Texas, during which, and afterward, he held several positions, including spending several years as a legislative aide for former State Senator Steve Ogden. He also served as an assistant clerk for the Senate Finance Committee under the chairmanship of former State Senator Rodney Ellis.
During his work at the Capitol in Austin, he got to know John Hofmann, who was working for the BRA at the time, and is now the Lower Colorado River Authority's Executive Vice President of Water. Through Hofmann, he learned even more about the organization while at the same time working on water policy in Senator Ogden's office.
When an opening emerged at the BRA, he applied.
As the BRA's Legislative and Government Affairs Manager, Phillips continued working at the Capitol, making sure bills that were a priority to the BRA were passed by the Texas Legislature, developing relationships with elected leaders throughout the Brazos River Basin, and overseeing the organization's public information office.
During that time, Phillips said he worked to make the organization more transparent. Any time an agency got crossways with the public or elected officials, the argument would default to, “You just hide everything. You're not transparent.” The BRA moved to put everything on its website and began live-streaming Board meetings for the public. Phillips said even if someone didn't like what the company was doing, they couldn't say we were hiding things.
Restructuring
Phillips said he became close to the then-General Manager/CEO Lt. Gen. Phillip J. Ford, whom the BRA's Central Office in Waco is now named after. Ford served from 2001 to 2018. He said he was fortunate that Ford and now Collinsworth allowed him to be a close advisor on many issues and a sounding board on the direction of the organization. That aspect was a role he always enjoyed. So, when Collinsworth initiated a restructuring of the organization in 2024 and created the Deputy General Manager position, he chose Phillips for the role.
“My interest in it was also because of my fondness for the organization and how big a role the BRA has played in my life,” Phillips said.
Phillips has served as both the Deputy General Manager and the Legislative and Government Affairs Manager for the past six months or so. The restructuring came right before the start of the legislative session, leaving no time to bring in someone new to fill the role. With the session drawing to a close, Phillips said, he looks forward to fully dedicating himself to his new position.
The management and departments within the BRA were largely organized around the upper, central, and lower portions of the Brazos River Basin. This was a good structure that served the organization well for a long time, and one Ford implemented as GM/CEO, Phillips said.
When Collinsworth took the reins, he had a vision for a more efficient structure to meet the current and future needs of the BRA, he said.
“We had different basins, each basin had different project managers for different projects within the basin,” Phillips said. “Then we also had tech services that worked with the different project managers in the basins. It seemed disjointed. But the question is, would that structure continue to work once we started taking on bigger projects and more ambitious endeavors, especially some of these massive construction projects that we're about to undertake? Within the individual basins, you also had operations mixed with project manager tasks, and do those make sense to be combined? I think that was the question. So that's why David looked at separating operations from project delivery. That works because operations have their role, theirs is day-to-day managing the lakes and treatment plants, whereas you've got projects over here and their role is much more visionary, long-term planning of projects, and then eventually implementing the projects.”
Honesty and bluntness
Phillips said he knows it sounds cheesy, but his core values are honesty and bluntness.
“I've always tried to be straightforward and not withhold things and be as direct as I can in terms of what needs to be done and how things need to go so folks know what their role is,” he said. “I've always done my best to understand and know other folks' talents and their abilities and not get in their way. I've always seen that as the best way to work, particularly in a group environment. It's amazing what can be accomplished when no one cares who gets the credit.”
Phillips said he'll feel successful in his new role if he can help the organization maintain its status as a leader in the industry.
“I also see success as the BRA bringing those new water supply development projects to fruition in getting them across the goal line and being able to provide additional water,” he said.
Meanwhile, there's one thing he wishes more people understood about the Brazos River Authority.
“I wish people understood how hard our people work and how much they actually care about their job and what they do for the organization, which in turn means what they do for the citizens of the basin and the state. We have a lot of very dedicated people who genuinely care about this organization and truly enjoy coming to work every day and doing their job. Everybody has to earn a salary and pay a mortgage, but we have many people who clearly enjoy their job because they appreciate the organization's mission. I don't think every organization can say that. An organization like ours takes a lot of arrows from the public and others about, you know, just being a bunch of nameless, faceless bureaucrats that don't care about what they do, and that couldn't be further from the truth,” Phillips said.
When he's not working, Phillips, who lives in Liberty Hill, said he enjoys spending time with his amazing wife and three beautiful children. Up by 4 a.m. almost every morning to work out, he follows the rest of the day running the kids to different sporting events. Phillips even coaches his son's baseball team and built a playing field in his backyard for the team to have a place to practice.
“We all still really enjoy each other,” he said. “Which, of course, the kids aren't teenagers yet. But they still like being around us right now.”