Problem solver, risk taker, rainmaker
One of the most valuable lessons Dennis Jaggi, ME’70, learned at Missouri S&T was to take a tenacious, sometimes relentless approach to problem solving. Early in his oil career, Jaggi met a challenge head on when his boss decided he wasn’t up to the task of preparing a presentation. Jaggi reached across his boss’s desk, grabbed the stack of papers and got to work understanding what he needed to do to bring the content to life.
“If I’d given up, that would have been the end of me,” says Jaggi, recalling the exchange as if it were last month. “But in Rolla I’d learned to look at a problem I knew nothing about, concentrate, and slowly break it down into parts I could understand and work with.”
His insistence on figuring things out guided him through three decades in the petroleum industry. He advanced from operations engineering into executive management at Delhi Gas Pipeline Co., a subsidiary of Texas Oil and Gas Corp. In 1997 he joined Enogex, a subsidiary of OGE Energy Corp., as vice president and chief operating officer. Two years later, Enogex had quadrupled in size with the acquisition of Transok and other pipelines through a complex integration of operations — a project Jaggi oversaw.
Jaggi’s ultimate destination was EnCap Flatrock Midstream (EFM), a mergers and acquisitions consultancy in which he was a founder and managing partner; EFM raised more than $9.5 billion in capital to invest in high-performing midstream companies, which transport oil and gas from wellheads to processing facilities.
It was at EFM that he got in the habit of using technology to complement his gut instincts. “I spent a lot of time working with spreadsheets to calculate the impact of different variables,” he says. “Changing one variable would change everything. I’d work those models and be up half the night.”
“In Rolla I’d learned to look at a problem I knew nothing about, concentrate, and slowly break it down into parts I could understand and work with.”
Jaggi is a member of the Missouri S&T Academy of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. He and his wife, Janet, have supported S&T’s summer STEM camps and have been members of the Order of the Golden Shillelagh for nearly 30 years. In 2025, driven by the desire to empower S&T students to follow their entrepreneurial dreams, they made a transformational gift to establish the Dennis and Janet Jaggi School of Business.
The gift reflects that they consider S&T a family affair. Dennis’ sister, Susan Jaggi Winscher, Psyc’72, and her late husband, Barry Winscher, ME’71, earned S&T degrees, as did Dennis and Janet’s son, Ryan Jaggi, ME’01, and daughter-in-law, Cindy Rabbit Jaggi, ChE’01. Their son, Greg Jaggi, is a retired police officer who, with his wife, Christie, lives in Edmond, Oklahoma, where Dennis and Janet reside. Between grandchildren, nieces and nephews, Jaggi says there could be more Miners in the future.
Jaggi’s desire to provide S&T students with the skills they’ll need to succeed as entrepreneurs earlier in their careers also inspired the Jaggi School of Business. “I wish that when I was starting out, I’d understood that the risks of entrepreneurship are well worth the reward,” he says. “If it turns out that it’s not for you, you will have learned a lot of skills that will be valuable no matter what you decide to do next.”