Owl Have You Know

After many years in the mortgage industry, Todd Jones ’23 took a leap into entrepreneurship with a mission shaped by his own experience as a veteran and homeowner. Now the founder and CEO of Salute Mortgage, he’s working to help veterans make the most of their VA loan benefits and make the homebuying process easier for everyone. In this episode of Owl Have You Know, Todd joins his cousin and co-ho...

Michael Pariser ’12 was a Wall Street banker at Lehman Brothers when the 2008 financial crisis pulled the rug out from under him. But after buying a one-way ticket to Southeast Asia and exploring the world, he stumbled into the work that would reshape his career: finding clean energy solutions.  That experience led Mike straight to Rice Business and into a career that has taken him from selling ut...

Stephen Cassell, principal at Architecture Research Office and lead architect of Asha and Farid Virani Hall, joins Maya Pomroy ’22 for a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Rice Business’ incredible new 112,000-square-foot home. Stephen shares the decisions, constraints and unexpected opportunities that shaped Virani Hall — from protecting the artistic vision behind James Turrell’s “Twilight E...

With over 15 years of experience at Chevron Phillips Chemical Company, Stuart Bell ’23 is leaving his mark on the sustainability world through his mission-driven and service-oriented mindset – a mindset that, he says, Rice Business helped him unlock.  Beginning as a process engineer, Stuart has held a multitude of positions across the Chevron Phillips ecosystem and is now the senior manager of sus...

If you told a young Javier Simons that he would one day own his own talent agency and hold an MBA from Rice Business, he would have been in disbelief. Growing up in Panama, Javier’s path into the music industry was anything but conventional, he says. After years of waiting tables, Javier taught himself the business of entertainment from backstage, and fell in love with the in’s and out’s of talent...

It’s one of the most feared moments in anyone’s career – finding out you’ve just lost your job. After a layoff or an unexpected career transition, it can be hard to know where to start when it comes to finding your next opportunity, especially in the age of AI tracking systems and applicant pools of hundreds or even thousands of job candidates. So what can you do to stand out from the crowd?  On t...

Henry Richardson, a former national champion diver, has built a career centered around health, wellbeing, and community. After earning his MBA at Rice Business, Henry founded the fitness studio chain, DEFINE body & mind, a nod to a professor’s words about defining your role in this world.  Henry’s work with DEFINE has since evolved into Define Living, apartment communities with health and well...

For Alecia Harris ’23, art is as essential as breathing, and it’s something everyone deserves to have access to. So she’s turned that belief into a career that sits at the intersection of art and business, with a mission focused on making art accessible. After years working in arts programming and visitor engagement at Rice University’s Moody Center for the Arts, she earned her Professional MBA fr...

After building a career in enterprise risk management and rising to senior leadership in banking, Kenzel Fallen ’12 and her husband Tio turned a shared passion for specialty coffee into Three Keys Coffee — a roastery and cafe focused on sustainability, creativity and music. What started as a side project during COVID has since landed on the shelves of Trader Joe's and been named Food & Wine's...

Two Rice alums are shaking up the renewable energy world with Tierra Climate, an AI-powered energy storage platform that’s quietly reshaping how the power grid works. Co-founded by Jacob Mansfield (BA ’16) and Emma Konet (PMBA ’24), Tierra Climate is driven by a shared belief that the transition to clean power needs to happen faster. Both have been passionate about the energy space since early in...

When Pablo Coello began his medical training, he noticed a persistent gap in healthcare: clinicians and administrators often weren’t speaking the same language, and the result was inefficiency that directly affected patient care. That realization ultimately led him to pursue a dual MD/MBA through Baylor College of Medicine and Rice Business. Now an orthopedic surgery resident at UC Health, Pablo b...

Professor Jonathan Miles’ path to teaching organizational behavior at Rice Business is anything but conventional. Before entering academia, he earned a degree in computer science, worked in IT and even launched a comic book store — experiences that shaped his perspective on leadership, influence and human behavior. Today, Miles is known for challenging students to think differently about power, wo...

Following an upbringing as an expat in Jakarta, Indonesia, today’s guest is applying his unique worldview to the management consulting industry and helping clients solve complex business challenges with digital solutions.  David Aldrich, a Rice Business alum from the Professional MBA Class of 2015, serves on the Rice Business Alumni Association Board and is a practice lead at EPAM Systems, a manag...

Yan "Anthea" Zhang, the Fayez Sarofim Vanguard Chair of Strategic Management at Rice Business, has spent more than two decades researching the decisions that make or break organizations: CEO succession, corporate governance, and the gender dynamics shaping who rises to the top. On this special live episode, Zhang joins host Maya Pomroy '22 to share what her research reveals about the leap from fun...

When Professor Yael Hochberg made the decision to come to Rice, she had a vision for building an entrepreneurship program like no other — it would be one for the modern era that would set the pace for entrepreneurship education going forward.  Now, more than a decade later, Rice consistently ranks number one in the country for entrepreneurship and is leading the way in world-changing innovation th...

Bob Dittmar has big goals for the Virani Undergraduate School of Business. As the school’s associate dean and Houston Endowment Professor of Finance, he aims to increase Rice Business’ national footprint, making it a household name for top-tier business education from coast to coast.  Dittmar came to Rice in 2022 after teaching for nearly 20 years at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Bus...

Most companies think they're customer-focused. Many are wrong. Vikas Mittal, the J. Hugh Liedtke Professor of Marketing at Rice Business and faculty director of the Center for Customer-Based Execution and Strategy, has spent his career helping CEOs, MBA students and others learn the difference between truly serving customers and simply appeasing them.  In this episode, Vikas joins host Brian Jacks...

Over the past decade, Rice Business has scaled with intention. MBA enrollment has doubled. Faculty ranks have grown. New MBA formats have launched. The Virani Undergraduate School of Business was established. And a new building will open soon, designed to further fuel collaboration, research and innovation. In this conversation, former dean Peter Rodriguez reflects on the strategy behind that mome...

Leveling up your game just got so much easier, thanks to the new cutting-edge technology from BeONE Sports — a startup that uses mobile motion-capture and AI to enhance athletic performance, prevent injuries, and support coaches and athletes at every level. Co-founded by former Division I athlete Scott Deans ’22, the idea for BeONE started right here at Rice Business. Scott has loved sports since...

Not every job will feel like the perfect fit, but for David Verbitsky ’10, every new position is an important stepping stone in your career, and an opportunity to learn and grow.  When David wanted to pivot his career from engineering to finance, the path led him straight to an MBA at Rice Business. His experience at Rice spring boarded him into a career in investment banking with a special focus...

When it comes to working in military intelligence, strong leadership skills and the ability to make quick decisions under pressure are key. Just as important to a mission’s success is being a good team player. Those were the lessons and skills Chris Stillwell ’24 carried into his two career pivots after his time working as a military intelligence officer for the U.S. Army. His first pivot landed h...

As a first-generation American from Saudi Arabia, Rzan Yunus ’17 learned from an early age what ambition and perseverance can lead to.  She credits her immigrant father’s determination to build a successful career and life for his family in the U.S. as inspiration for her own strong work ethic and drive. It was that drive that led her first to a career in insurance at American International Group...

Liam Morris ’23 manages one of the most complex corners of United Airlines — airport operations quality control across more than 80 stations spanning Latin America, Central America and the Southwest U.S. In this conversation, he shares how early travel experiences opened the door to a career in aviation, the path that led him from loading bags in El Paso to overseeing global safety audits, and wha...

As the youngest founder in her Rice MBA cohort, Allison Knight ’10 knows a thing or two about blazing a trail.  At just 24 years old, she co-founded Rebellion Photonics, which used cutting-edge technology to identify and quantify gas leaks on oil rigs, preventing catastrophic explosions. Knight went on to sell Rebellion Photonics to Honeywell in 2019, and is now codifying blue collar genius throug...

How does something as simple as a five-star rating system reveal subtle biases? When she’s not teaching MBA and undergraduate students at Rice Business, Sora Jun, Assistant Professor of Management – Organizational Behavior, studies the hidden forces that shape how we see and treat one another. Her work explores how our minds process inequality and how even small design choices, like switching from...