David Hood – ABC Auto Parts

For David Hood, information technology has never been just a job. It is a calling that stretches back to childhood, when he first started tinkering with computers and competing in team sports. Those two worlds — technology and teamwork — became the twin engines that would drive his career forward, eventually landing him in the role of IT director at ABC Auto Parts, a Texas-based company where he has spent more than a decade helping a family-owned business find its footing in the digital age. What makes Hood stand out is not simply his technical knowledge, but the way he has learned to translate that knowledge into language and outcomes that resonate with business leaders and frontline employees alike.

David Hood | ABC Auto Parts | IT Director

ABC Auto Parts has been a fixture in the automotive parts world since its founding in 1968. With more than 30 neighborhood locations across Texas and Louisiana, the company serves do-it-yourself customers and professional technicians alike, offering quality car and truck parts, as well as heavy-duty equipment sales and service. Built on a motto of “Parts and People You Can Trust,” the company has long drawn its strength from community ties and friendly service. Even as consumer expectations have shifted and manufacturers increasingly push repairs toward dealerships and larger vendors, ABC Auto Parts has remained committed to serving the local shops and independent mechanics that form the backbone of its customer base.

When Hood joined the company in 2014, it was a business that understood it needed to evolve but had not yet charted a clear path forward. He had interviewed directly with both the CEO and the owner, whose father had started the company decades earlier

“A family-owned business that prioritized growth by leaning into technology — even when it was new territory,” Hood says.

His mandate was clear: help bring the company into the 21st century without disrupting the core values that had made it successful. The challenge was not simply installing new systems but earning the confidence of leaders who had spent years building a company without them.

Earning trust through results

That transition did not happen overnight. Hood spent his early years at ABC Auto Parts methodically building credibility, demonstrating the value of each investment before asking for the next. He did the legwork himself, researching options, modeling costs, and presenting the business case in terms that leadership could act on. By his third or fourth year, the dynamic had shifted noticeably.

“To our leadership’s credit, they have been responsive, and they trust me to know the difference between ‘cool’ and necessary,” he says.

Hood does the groundwork — researching, testing, presenting — and leadership typically responds with confidence. It is a relationship built on results, not promises.

That philosophy has delivered measurable outcomes. Hood has overseen a network infrastructure overhaul that has kept downtime below 1% across all branches, a remarkable figure in an industry where a system outage can halt sales entirely. He has also navigated the cybersecurity landscape with particular care, knowing that the threat environment grows more complex each year. The company does not store customer credit card data internally; any sensitive payment information is handled by third-party processors. Multiple security measures run simultaneously, and employee training is an ongoing effort rather than a one-time event.

Cybersecurity as a mindset

Hood is candid about the difficulty of maintaining strong security practices across a distributed organization.

“In today’s landscape, you have to have that mentality that you’re at some point going to be compromised,” he explains.

Rather than waiting for a breach, his team operates with layers of defense. Convenience and security rarely align, and Hood openly acknowledges the tension. The human element remains the most unpredictable variable in any security strategy, and his team works proactively to address it.

“Modern threats don’t just attack your network; they target your people,” he says.

To address that, Hood and his team work to make training sessions engaging rather than rote — varying the format and keeping employees genuinely involved, rather than having them sit through the same presentation month after month.

The COVID-19 pandemic tested those systems in new ways. With employees scattered outside the office and field sales representatives operating entirely in the wild, Hood had to extend security protocols well beyond the company’s physical walls. Some of those measures made sense before the pandemic. All of them became essential afterward. The experience reinforced a broader truth: good IT infrastructure is not a snapshot; it is a living system that must adapt alongside the business it serves.

Disaster recovery reflects a similar philosophy. Hood has partnered with an outside firm to handle cloud-based backups, ensuring business continuity without the expense and complexity of maintaining a fully redundant offsite data center. Refresh cycles vary by hardware and software type, and the company’s point-of-sale system relies on a proven third-party platform. The goal is always to balance what is genuinely needed against what is simply new.

People-first technology

Hood’s approach to leadership mirrors his approach to technology: start with people, build from there. He manages a hand-selected team and holds them to a high standard of autonomy and professionalism. His staff interacts daily with both employees and customers, which means technical skill alone is not enough.

“I tell my team all the time that IT is a customer service position,” he says.

Hood looks for people who are naturally personable — a quality he believes cannot be fully taught. He sees value in people at every career stage, mentoring recent graduates into skilled professionals while honoring the expertise of his experienced team members, but the culture he expects them to fit is already firmly in place. He leads by example and avoids micromanagement entirely. The philosophy has produced a cohesive unit that he says he could not operate without.

Hood, a proud member of MENSA, earned a degree in Management Information Systems from Sam Houston State University, a program specifically designed to produce professionals who can operate at the intersection of business and technology. That dual foundation is evident in the way he leads, connecting technical strategy to business outcomes in a way that resonates with executives and technical teams alike. His IT career, which began in 1997, reads like a tour of American industry. From the early frontier of online retail at Sportan United Industries to the legal halls of Weitinger and Dressler in Houston, the floors of Fortune 500 poultry giant Pilgrim’s Pride, and the healthcare corridors of Dermatology Associates of Tyler, Texas, he has brought technology leadership to virtually every corner of the business world. Each setting came with its own regulatory requirements and operational rhythms, yet his perspective has always remained grounded in fundamentals. A server is a server. A database is a database. What changes is the context, and Hood has always been a quick study. That same commitment to developing others extends beyond the office. He has served on the board of a local college, investing in the next generation of technology professionals in his own community.

Outside of work, Hood serves as commissioner of a golf league he helped organize — complete with a website he built himself, featuring a live scoreboard, league handicaps, points standings, and an event calendar. It is a small but telling detail: even in leisure, he finds a way to make technology serve the people around him. That instinct, more than any credential or career milestone, defines how David Hood approaches his work — and why, more than three decades in, it continues to thrive.