RICEBUSINESS M A G A Z I N E O F T H E J O N E S G R A D U AT E S C H O O L O F B U S I N E S S AT R I C E U N I V E R S I T Y
LET’S GET PHYSICAL Rice Business Alumni Make Strides In The Fitness Industry
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MBA@Rice in Mexico City Students in the MBA@Rice program went on their first Global Field Experience trip this summer, soaking up the culture, the sights, the business climate — and of course, the wrestling — of Mexico City. It wasn’t all fun and headlocks, however. Students visited a variety of sites and heard from Mexican business leaders about cross-cultural business challenges and common issues that arise when U.S.-based companies work with Mexican companies. “I was very impressed with this group of MBA@Rice students and their adventurous spirit. They were very open to experiencing a new culture, even if they’d never been out of the United States before,” said Professor Janet H. Moore, the director of the communication program at Rice Business.
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Features
Departments
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Second Act More workers are finding fulfillment by switching careers
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Future Fitness How high-end gyms are flexing new muscles
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Admit It Admissions has a brand new blog
8 Rundown 18 Newsfeed 20 TweetSnapPost 22 Impressions 32 Word Watch: A Burger By Any Other Name 36 Rice Business Wisdom: The Da Vinci Routine 50 Hidden Talents: Lifting Each Other Up 52 Around the Water Cooler 55 Peter’s Page
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RICE BUSINESS DEAN Peter Rodriguez EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR MARKETING AND COMMUNICATION Kathleen Harrington Clark EDITOR Jennifer Latson DESIGN DIRECTOR Bill Carson, Bill Carson Design RICE BUSINESS WISDOM Claudia Kolker MARKETING Kateri Benoit Ashley Daniel Tricia Delone Dawn Kinsey Weezie Mackey Eduardo Martinez Keleen McNamara Michael Okullu Kevin Palmer CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Deborah Lynn Blumberg Jennifer Latson Hannah Sawyer
Comments or Questions? We’d love to hear your thoughts about Rice Business. Send an email to Jennifer Latson, editor, at jennifer.latson@rice.edu.
Rice Business is published semiannually for alumni and friends by the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business. Current and back issues of the magazine are available online at business.rice.edu/RB.
Photo above: Golden hour on the south entrance of McNair Hall. Photo: Bill Carson
Change of Address? New Job? Update the online directory with your new contact information at business.rice.edu/alumni.
On the cover: The Preserve, a fitness studio founded by Rice Business alum Molly Carter ’14
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CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Bethany Brewster Bill Carson Susan L. Forsburg Eduardo Martinez Chaz Williams Photography James Zhao ’15 CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATOR Kelcie Johnson PRINTING Chas. P. Young Co.
FROM THE
dean
I
love the start of school. The reasons have changed a bit over the years, but some things never change. Friendly, familiar voices still echo
down the hall. Faces still light up in recognition and excitement. What you did over the summer is still a topic of conversation, laughter and envy.
We’re a long way from elementary
school. (Most days, anyway.) In Robert Fulghum’s tome, “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,” the author and Unitarian Universalist minister pinpoints simple lessons worth repeating around this time of year … for all of us headed back onto campus, and for everyone else, too. Here are a few favorites: 1. Play fair. 2. Clean up your own mess. 3. Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody. 4. Be aware of wonder. 5. Live a balanced life.
Throughout a lifetime of learning,
the simple maxims remain the foundations of happiness, decency and success.
Enjoy our latest magazine, and here’s
to a great school year, — Peter.
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Congrats, Rice Business Partners!
25 152 years
members
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thought leadership events
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roundtables with faculty
name change Congratulations Rice Business Partners‌ formerly Jones Partners.
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A ROUNDUP OF NEWS FROM RICE BUSINESS AND BEYOND
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INVESTITURE
Rice Business celebrated the class of 2019 MBA graduates at our May Investiture ceremony, which formally “invests” graduates with the master’s hood and the authority of their new designation as MBA and Rice alumni.
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One student in each of the four MBA programs received the M.A. “Mike� Wright Award, honoring the student who best models leadership, exemplary service and significant contributions to Rice Business: Sofia Maria Campbell, Brady Charles Gibson, Joanna Christabel Nathan and Elizabeth Mai-Phuong Nguyen. Watch our Investiture video online at business.rice.edu/alumni.
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Getting The Job: Done Full-Time MBA The average salary for this year’s Full-Time MBA graduates rose by more than $10,000 from last year, up to $124,798 from $113,287 in 2018. Just over 92 percent of the Class of 2019 accepted offers within three months of graduation. Their top employers were Capital One, Dell, Deloitte Consulting, CenterPoint Energy, Chevron, ExxonMobil, EY and KPMG. Meanwhile, 100 percent of the Class of 2020 secured internships this summer at companies including Accenture, Alvarez & Marsal, Amazon, Barclays, CBRE, Chevron, Citigroup, Dell, Deloitte Consulting, EY, Google, JP Morgan Chase, McKinsey & Company, Morgan Stanley, Phillips 66, Schlumberger, Scotiabank, Shell, Starbucks, and Whitestone REIT. The vast majority of those opportunities — 87% — came about through school-related activities such as on-campus recruiting, career fairs, student association events, alumni referrals and faculty referrals. “This percentage demonstrates the highly-engaged network of support that students can expect to receive at Rice Business,” said Philip Heavilin, executive director of the Rice Business Career Development Office. Ph.D. Program All the Ph.D. students who graduated this spring lined up jobs as faculty members at top schools, including Texas A&M University, the University of North Carolina, the University of Texas at San Antonio and the University of Chicago. Master of Accounting The third cohort of the Master of Accounting program graduated in May. Of the 27 grads, 26 had a job lined up before graduation — 24 of them with one of the “Big Four” public accounting firms: Deloitte, EY, KPMG, and PWC.
The vast majority of those opportunities — 87% — came about through school-related activities such as on-campus recruiting, career fairs, student association events, alumni referrals and faculty referrals. “This percentage demonstrates the highly-engaged network of support that students can expect to receive at Rice Business,” said Philip Heavilin, executive director of the Rice Business Career Development Office.
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87%
Fourteen Consortium Fellows from Rice Business — our second cohort — joined approximately 500 other fellows from 20 member schools to attend the Orientation Program in Houston this June. The Rice fellows had over 50 interviews and coffee chats with companies including Apple, Bain, Dell, Deloitte, Dow, Ecolab, EY, Exxon Mobil, Facebook, General Mills, Google, Johnson & Johnson, JPMC, Proctor and Gamble, PWC, Verizon and Wells Fargo. The Rice Business welcome event invited corporate partners and the Consortium Board of Trustees.
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“The Big Four are excellent places to launch a career, and all four are consistently listed in Fortune Magazine’s ‘100 Best Companies to Work For,’ ” said Benjamin Lansford, director of the MAcc program.
CONSORTIUM FELLOWS
Rice Business Consortium Fellows
internship opportunities through school-related activities
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The 2019 Rice Business Alumni Awards Established by the Jones Graduate School Alumni Association (JGSAA), the Rice Business Alumni Awards annually recognize alumni for outstanding achievements in their professional fields and exemplary leadership. Recipients of these awards embody our four pillars of alumni engagement: community, philanthropy, volunteering and life-long learning. This means that when reviewing nominations, the selection committee took into special consideration those alumni who exemplify and consistently engage in supporting their communities through networking, philanthropy, volunteering and a demonstrated passion for learning. The 2019 Rice Business Alumni Awards were presented on October 4, 2019, at the Cohen House at Rice University. Visit business.rice.edu/rbaa for more information. Winners of the 2019 Rice Business Alumni Awards: Tanu Grewal ’05, Industry Excellence in Consumer Products Award Winner What impact has your experience at Rice Business had on your career / life? Rice gave me a strong foundation to build and propel my career. Rice provided me with a sound education and the confidence to work, build and grow some of the most iconic brands in the US. Robert Gaudette ’01, Industry Excellence in Energy Award Winner Why is it important for alumni to stay engaged with Rice Business? In my experience, being engaged with Rice
Business as an alumnus has had an impact in two ways ... I’ve often said, my learning and “education” did not stop when I received my diploma. Now, in the second phase of my career, continued engagement with Rice Business has enabled me to find talent for my business and also shape the experience of future graduates, and future employees, by working with the faculty and staff. Rob Royall ’84, Industry Excellence in Financial Services Award Winner What impact has your experience at Rice Business had on your career / life?
The Jones School (Rice Business) gave me the accounting education I needed to become licensed, but the full impact was so much more than that. Rice Business always aimed higher and broader. At an early point in my career, I understood the role of the public accountant, both direct and indirect, in maintaining the integrity and efficiency of the capital markets. That foundation formed so early influenced my thinking and behavior when I was in a position later in my career to help shape the interpretation and application of the then new derivatives standard that affected
nearly every large corporation in the U.S. in almost every industry. Sean Ferguson ’01, Industry Excellence in Nonprofit Award Winner Why is it important for alumni to stay engaged with Rice Business? As a relatively young school with a growing alumni base, it is important for alums to engage in deeper and meaningful ways if the Jones School is going to be recognized for the caliber of business school that we all believe it is. Eric Elfman ’95, Industry Excellence in Technology Award Winner
What impact has your experience at Rice Business had on your career / life? Unquestionably, Rice Business has set me up for the wonderful career I have had over the last 24 years since graduation. Robyn O’Brien ’98, Alumni Community Service Award Winner Why is it important for alumni to stay engaged with Rice Business? Business programs around the country are shutting down. The value of a Rice degree is immeasurable and an opportunity that needs to continue to be available to future business leaders.
These six incredible alumni were honored at the Rice Business Alumni Awards on October 4. 11
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Great Gifts
The 2019 Rice Business Faculty Awards Five faculty members were recognized for excellence in teaching during Investiture. Honorees were chosen by Rice MBA alumni as well as by students from the three MBA programs. Prashant Kale, associate professor of strategic management, won the Alumni Award for Teaching Excellence Alan Crane, assistant professor of finance, won the Full-Time MBA Award for Teaching Excellence Brian Rountree, associate professor of accounting, won the MBA for Executives Award for Teaching Excellence Benjamin Lansford, professor in the practice of accounting, won the MBA for Professionals Evening Award for Teaching Excellence James Weston, the Harmon Whittington Professor of Finance, won the MBA for Professionals Weekend Award for Teaching Excellence
Vikas Mittal, the J. Hugh Liedtke Professor of Marketing at Rice Business, received the inaugural Distinguished PhD Alumni Award from the Fox School of Business at Temple University. A paper by strategic management professor Haiyang Li, co-written with Yu Li of China’s University of International Business and Economies, was nominated for the Best Conference Paper Prize at the 2019 Strategic Management Society Annual Conference. The paper, “How Does FDI Affect Domestic Entrepreneurship? Evidence from China,” was published in Academy of Management Proceedings in 2018.
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$6.84
Jing Zhou won the Journal of Management’s Best Paper Award for her paper “Innovation and Creativity in Organizations: A State-of-the-Science Review, Prospective Commentary, and Guiding Framework,” co-authored with Neil Anderson and Kristina Potocnik. Previously, the 2014 paper had received a Citation of Excellence from Emerald Publishing for being one of the most “highly cited and highly influential papers published in 2014” in the areas of business management, finance, accounting, economics and marketing. It also appeared on the Journal of Management’s list of most-read articles. Zhou is the Mary Gibbs Jones Professor of Management at Rice Business.
The Rice Business Fund closed at $916,000 — a new record for the school and an 8 percent increase over last year. Gifts to the Rice Business Fund are invested into nurturing best-of-class faculty, academic resources, alumni programming and campus initiatives that keep the Rice MBA and Master of Accounting degrees unique and vibrant.
million
In August, Poets & Quants named Erik Dane its “Professor of the Week.” Citing his research on “aha” moments and the role of nonconscious thought in decision making, the magazine wrote that Dane, Rice Business’ Distinguished Associate Professor of Management, “attempts to uncover how people understand and utilize their epiphanies.”
Alumni and friends gave back to Rice Business in a big way during the 2019 fiscal year. Overall cash giving totaled $6.84 million — an eight-year high and the second-highest since the school started keeping records in 2006. Overall alumni participation was 18 percent, reflecting a 7 percent increase in the number of alumni who gave. The amount of the average gift was up 10 percent.
ICYMI THE INDEX
Want to understand the science behind scandals or the economics of live performance? You might have an “aha” moment when you listen to our new podcast, The Index. Born out of a collaboration between Texas Monthly and Rice Business at the 2019 South by Southwest music and technology festival, the podcast is hosted by journalist Saul Elbein, a contributor to the New York Times Magazine and the NPR radio show “This American Life,” among other outlets. It’s the latest way Rice Business is making its professors’ research accessible outside the halls of academia, in the hope that their science-backed, peer-reviewed insights will spark innovation and solve real-world problems. Subscribe and listen on Soundcloud, Spotify, Google Play or Google Podcasts, or visit business.rice.edu/podcasts.
Welcome to The Index, a new podcast by Rice Business Wisdom.
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Rice Business embarked on a major renovation of McNair Hall in 2018, with the goal of remodeling existing spaces as well as creating new common spaces where students, faculty and staff can convene. By January, threefourths of the first floor will have been remodeled. Here’s the latest: •
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The Executive Education and Student Program Office staff moved into new suites, with a new reception area, over the summer. A community commons area, two multipurpose rooms, and new student mailboxes were completed at the end of September. The coffeehouse — yet to be officially named — is scheduled to open in November. It will be run by Greenway Coffee. Demolition of the old SPO suite, student commons, and rooms 107A and 107B is underway. Once demolition is done, construction will begin for Rice Alliance’s new home in the former SPO and student commons area.
A new student commons area is also under construction, with a flexible design that provides the option of being completely open or closing the wall to have a small conference room within the space. The space will also include a kitchenette. The Rice Alliance and new student commons spaces are scheduled for completion in late November.
2019 Investiture of Graduates Honors, Prizes and Awards Jones Citizenship Awards David Benjamin Barron Christopher Theodore Bucher Mary Carson Coffman Scott Andrew Gale Brady Charles Gibson Hiram Gonzalez Sabrina M Khemani Taher Mansoor Lokhandwala Adrienne Aguirre Mangual Joseph Cole Miller Barrett Moorhouse Joanna Christabel Nathan Elizabeth Mai-Phuong Nguyen Thomas William Riner Mitchel Aris Robertson Ryan Cooper Roller Manoj Somasundaram Jenna Nicole Thomas Celestine Shauching Tung M.A. “Mike” Wright Awards Sofia Maria Campbell Brady Charles Gibson Joanna Christabel Nathan Elizabeth Mai-Phuong Nguyen Lorane T. Philips Award for Excellence in Writing Christopher Theodore Bucher Heather Lee Mellinger Robert E. Philips Award for Excellence in Presentation Ashley M. Arciero John Blake
Jones Scholar Awards Ashley M. Arciero Bryan V. Arciero Timothy W. Barnhill Daniel I. Berman John Blake Thomas G. Brisson David S. Butler Clayton J. Campbell Mohamed H. Chouat Jason L. Cox Mark J. Fernandes Andres F. Gonzalez Benjamin C. Graham Christopher I. Guthrie Gregoire M. Jacob Ramarajesh R. Katamreddy Amrita B. Koushik Yifan Liu Panpim Lohachala Taher M. Lokhandwala Gulam Murtuza A. Marfani Mustafa Ahmed Mohammed Phillip J. Negron Alison R. Nelson Christian A. Okolski Alexander J. Poulos Michael L. Raspino Vinod Ravi Ryan C. Roller Katherine E. Samson Lauren N. Skoog Justin W. Smith Manoj Somasundaram Aric W. Stocks
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Balram Suman Naveen S. Thowfeek Levent Tosun Celestine S. Tung Robin W. Winkle Matthew D. Wishall Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business Alumni Award for Excellence in Teaching Prashant Kale MBA for Executives Award for Teaching Excellence Brian Rountree Full-Time MBA Award for Teaching Excellence Alan Crane MBA for Professionals Evening Award for Teaching Excellence Benjamin Lansford MBA for Professionals Weekend Award for Teaching Excellence James Weston
Executive Education Customer Focus Professor Vikas Mittal’s new Executive Education course “B2B Marketing Strategy: A Customer-Centric Approach” was introduced via a series of four live webinars that each drew more than 100 registered viewers. The four-day course launches Oct. 29. “Most of the participants are practitioners, so these are all people who have many years of experience,” says Mittal, the J. Hugh Liedtke Professor of Management. “The way we address it is: First of all, teach them a few frameworks in terms of how to think about customer centricity, how to be more customer-focused, how to measure it, and then they will apply their learning to their own company.” Custom Programs Over the summer, Rice Business professors were busy teaching customized programs they’d developed for corporate clients — including some as far afield as Alaska. Topics included: • Digital marketing, in a course designed and delivered by Vikas Mittal, the J. Hugh Liedtke Professor of Management, for the Shell lubricants business unit • Process improvement, designed and delivered by adjunct professor Ian Wedgewood for Bellatorum Resources • Data-based decision making, designed and delivered by James Weston, the Harmon Whittington Professor of Finance, for ConocoPhillips, first as a pilot program here in Houston and then on location in Alaska • Strategy formulation and execution, designed and delivered by associate professor of strategic management Balaji Koka and management professor Brent Smith, senior associate dean of Executive Education, for Southwestern Energy
James Weston on location in Alaska
Building Blocks of Leadership The Leadership Accelerator — a new course designed to give managers a comprehensive but concise overview of the state of the science in leadership — debuted on campus in June with 30 participants, exceeding enrollment goals. The immersive, four-day course is designed for mid-level managers and executives who want to have a greater impact in their leadership roles. Taught by Professor Brent Smith, senior associate dean of Executive Education, the course uses case studies, exercises, simulations, and extensive discussion to build the four foundations of leadership: leading oneself, leading others, leading the team, and leading the enterprise. “With an understanding of those four building blocks, any leader can address any adaptive challenge that they might face,” Smith said. The course debuts in The Woodlands October 7. For more information, visit business.rice.edu/rice-business-executive-education. 15
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Janice Kennedy joined Rice Business as executive director of Recruiting and Admissions in June. With nearly 30 years of sales and sales management experience at companies including Procter & Gamble, Bausch & Lomb, and Xerox, she served most recently as director of business development at McKesson. We caught up with her at the start of the semester and asked about the path that led her here. Q. What made you decide to transition to higher education? And why Rice Business specifically? A. My last role was in the pharmaceutical industry, in a specialty division bringing critical medical therapeutics to market — drugs for ALS, MS and Crohn’s disease, for example. While being a part of that commercial process was rewarding, the intensity of the patients’ suffering and the current political challenges within the pharmaceutical industry were weighty at times. I found myself at a career crossroads, looking for work with purpose and an opportunity to help people and create positive outcomes. Exploring my LinkedIn network and researching industries and roles that were a good fit for my experience and skills led me to a conversation with George Andrews, associate dean of MBA programs at Rice Business. I know what an MBA can do for a person’s career — and for a company. I found myself very attracted to working with candidates, students, alumni and staff in such a positive endeavor. Q. What are some of the challenges of finding and recruiting good students? How are those challenges similar to what you faced at places like Procter & Gamble and Xerox, and how are they different? A. The decision process for an expenditure (and commitment) this large takes time and engagement. What I find similar are the assumptions made on the part of the “buyer” — in this case the prospective student — that can drive a self-disqualification decision. For example, “I can’t afford that,” “I won’t be accepted,” or “I have heard…” The difference is that there’s a more mutual nature to the decision when you apply to a graduate program. My experience in consumer packaged goods was driving a one-way decision on the part of the buyer. In the pharmaceutical business, for example, there were multiple “buyers” who impacted the decision, including insurance companies and physicians, along with the patient — but very little in terms of approval on the “seller’s” side. Q. What are some of your non work-related interests? What would surprise us about you? A. I enjoy visual arts, interior design, volunteering at church and spending time with family and my new granddaughter! What might surprise you is that I flipped several homes before it was cool — and prevalent on HGTV.
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1st Pitch Entrepreneurship Event
Reunion: More than 600 Rice Business alums and their guests returned to campus for reunion weekend in May, where they brushed up on their knowledge with a “lunch and learn” on Houston’s innovation scene and Executive Education sessions on pricing and corporate governance. And, most importantly, reconnected with old classmates and friends.
Entrepreneurial-minded Rice students gathered outside Valhalla at the start of the semester to share their business ideas at the 1st Pitch entrepreneurship event, a way to help students develop their business concepts, find co-founders and team members, leverage mentors, network, and gain insight into all things innovation at Rice. The highlight of the event was a fast pitch contest, where selected students gave 60-second pitches of their startup, business idea, or research concept. Cheered on by a raucous crowd, the top pitchers were awarded prizes for the best business opportunities.
Hosted by the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship and The Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Lilie), the Sept. 4 event spotlighted entrepreneurship in all corners of campus and the resources available to help students turn ideas into startups. A number of campus partners collaborated on the event, including Rice Business, the Brown School of Engineering and the Global Medical Innovation Program. Rice students can further refine their pitching skills in the school’s two major entrepreneurial competitions: the Rice Business Plan Competition, the world’s largest and richest student venture competition, held every spring at Rice Business; and the Napier Rice Launch Challenge, dedicated to progressing, mentoring, and growing the campus’ best technological and social innovations.
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RICE BUSINESS IN THE NEWS
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Rice University’s Rodriguez on Mexico Tariffs, China
Bloomberg Markets Balance of Power May 31st, 2019, 3:54 PM CDT
Peter Rodriguez, dean of Rice University Jones Graduate School of Business, discusses U.S.-China trade and President Trump’s proposed tariffs on Mexican goods on “Balance of Power.”
Austin jobless rate slips to 3% as area economy stays hot “Broadly speaking, it’s clear that a flattening of growth has arrived around the nation — but it has not arrived in Austin,” said Peter Rodriguez, dean of Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business. “Austin does not look like the rest of the country.” A national slowdown would take some of the shine off the Texas and Austin economies. But Rodriguez said the Fed’s interest rate decision this week could delay that eventuality — or help prevent it entirely if the U.S. economy gets back on track. The Fed’s move “gives longer legs to the growth period in Austin than if they raised (interest) rates,” he said. “I think that is going to mean that Austin is going to continue its boom” for the foreseeable future.
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Rice University Business Professor Vikas Mittal said oilfield service companies cannot only rely on higher oil prices alone. “Developing technology is too expensive and requires research and development,” Mittal said. “They should be focused on what a customer wants. Instead they’re too focused on their products.” Whether or not the bankruptcy succeeds, Mittal said, Weatherford has additional challenges to overcome. In a recent survey of 1,000 exploration and production companies, Mittal said Weatherford ranked last of seven service companies in terms of customer satisfaction. “It’s clear that if customers are not satisfied,” Mittal said, “your cash flow will go down.”
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Both Amazon’s and Birchbox’s models have been widely copied, and their success underscores the appeal of subscriptions to businesses and consumers alike, according to Utpal Dholakia, a marketing professor at Rice University. “The pain of payment and the friction of how a person is going to pay is totally gone,” he says. Consumers receive things they need or want without having to make any decisions, and that creates more stable and predictable revenue streams for the businesses they patronize.
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“ I decided to pursue my MBA because I want to bring the knowledge and skills I attain in business school back to the fight as a strategic leader in the Army.” Casey Sherrod ’21 Full-Time MBA
Casey Sherrod was only 12 on Sept. 11, 2001, but she remembers seeing soldiers enlist to fight in the War on Terror and feeling reassured that they would make the world safe again. “In my eyes, soldiers were real-life superheroes, and I wanted to be just like them,” she says. That’s why she joined the Army ROTC at the University of Houston, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in human development and family studies. A year after graduating, she deployed to Afghanistan as a platoon leader. Now a captain, Sherrod has spent the past two years as commander of the largest Army recruiting company on the West Coast. But she’s always wanted to come back home to Houston — and now she has the opportunity to study at Rice Business while still on active duty; the Army is covering her tuition. “It’s part of a program the Army offers officers in order to educate and retain their leaders. When I graduate, I will return to the operational Army as a strategic leader in either human resources, acquisitions or recruiting. My goal is to ultimately retire from the Army and return to Houston as a leader in the business community.” 22 RICE BUSINESS
“ What drew me to Rice was the small, tight-knit community and the entrepreneurship program. My lifelong dream is to start my own company one day, and I knew that Rice Business could help me do that.” Doug Fiefia ’20 Full-Time MBA
For Doug Fiefia, whose parents immigrated from Tonga in the 1970s, the diverse community at Rice Business is one of its best features. His family agrees. In fact, when he told his mother about the school’s International Partio, she flew to Houston from Utah — along with Fiefia’s grandmother, brother, sister, brother-in-law and nephew — to cook up authentic Tongan cuisine and perform a traditional song. “In the Tongan culture, family is everything,” Fiefia says. His Rice Business family has been supportive as well. He credits the school with helping him secure a coveted position as an intern this summer at Google’s headquarters, where he helped the Google Ads team develop a new sales strategy. It was a great opportunity for Fiefia, who hopes to work at one of the big tech firms after earning his MBA, and it came about in part because Rice Business is a member of The Consortium, a nonprofit alliance of businesses and business schools dedicated to helping minorities become a part of business education and corporate leadership. “I first met with Google at the Consortium orientation program, and through networking and successful interviews I was lucky enough to receive an offer,” he says. 23
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2
nd
act
B y D e b o r a h Ly n n B l u m b e r g
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F. Scott Fitzgerald was wrong. There are second acts in American lives — and third and fourth acts, too. Increasing numbers of workers are bowing out of Act I to pursue careers that offer more fulfillment and a greater sense of well-being.
I
n her role as a senior financial analyst at a large retail company, LaTisha Cotto MBA ’14 would crunch numbers from sunrise to sunset. She ate lunch at her desk, usually fast food. Work often spilled over into the weekends, but she didn’t complain. After all, she was taking home a six-figure salary and she liked the prestige of her role. Once, when Cotto ran herself ragged and came down with bronchitis, she still went in to work. It was end of quarter and, her boss said, “all hands on deck.” Then, Cotto started having serious stomach pains and feeling more exhausted than usual. Her doctor gave her the news. She’d developed ulcerative colitis, an autoimmune disorder affecting the gastrointestinal system. It’s a condition that’s exacerbated by a poor diet and stress. “That really made me stop and say ‘What am I doing to myself?’” says Cotto, who’s now a life coach and motivational speaker. “I was so busy with work that I couldn’t nourish myself properly.” Cotto started to reevaluate her career goals. “I realized I wasn’t feeling a sense of deep fulfillment,” she says. Cotto, who years earlier had worked as a career development coach, quit her corporate job in 2016 to become a full-time life coach. She took a sizable pay cut, but now she’s in her element, creating podcasts and helping her clients have “aha moments” about their own life goals. “This is where my heart is,” she says, “helping people.” The Rice alumna isn’t alone in reconsidering a high-paying but high-stress job. More and more workers, and especially millennials,
are choosing jobs that are less lucrative, but more personally fulfilling and conducive to their wellbeing. The more meaningful and more flexible work also gives people more time with family and friends. It’s a trend that’s evolved along with the explosion of the gig economy, and as millennials continue to push for jobs that do good and offer a more optimal work-life balance. The ability to choose By the end of July 2018, an unusually high 2.4 percent of working Americans had voluntarily quit their jobs, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The voluntary quit rate was last that
“That really made me stop and say ‘What am I doing to myself?’” says Cotto, who’s now a life coach and motivational speaker.
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high in April 2001. And it’s only ticked down slightly in 2019, to 2.3 percent recently. The higher people climb on the corporate ladder, the more that number increases. Jing Zhou, a management professor at Rice Business, found in a recent study that 30 percent of top corporate employees leave their firms within one year. Meanwhile, a Deloitte survey showed that 43 percent of millennials planned to quit their job within two years. One contributing factor? As the global wellness industry has exploded, more people are recognizing the ways their lifestyle choices — including their choice of career — impact their health. Yet workplace stress still runs rampant. The consulting firm Korn Ferry found that around two-thirds of professionals say their stress levels at work are greater than they were five years ago. For 76 percent, stress has had a negative impact on their personal relationships. Chronic stress has been linked to health issues including depression, digestive issues and heart disease, while new research has increasingly linked high stress to compromised gut health, which can lead to mental and physical illnesses. Cotto is happier since leaving her high-stress job, she says, and her ulcerative colitis has gone into remission. Her new job has also given her more time to spend with her daughter. “When you’re working for a company, you don’t really have lot of wiggle room to say, ‘You know, I really don’t want to work on this project,’” she says. “There’s something to be said about having the ability to choose.”
Zhou agrees; the research backs this up. “In general, when people have autonomy and they do what they love, they’re happier,” she says. Autonomous workers are allowed to make their own decisions: they contribute ideas and work with limited supervision. They feel trusted. And this freedom, along with the ability to shape one’s environment, helps workers perform at their highest level. Researchers from the University of Birmingham recently studied data on 20,000 workers and determined that the higher an employee’s autonomy, the greater their job satisfaction and well-being. Women appreciated autonomy more when it related to scheduling and their work location, while men liked autonomy related to the pace of their work and how they allocated tasks. Playing the long game One reason workers are feeling emboldened to quit unfulfilling jobs is that, unlike our parents’ generation, companies no longer offer lifetime, secure employment. “The traditional ‘company man’ model no longer works. It’s been a gradual shift,” Zhou says. Now, instead of thinking about what skills their next company will want, “people are saying, I’ll just start my own,” she says. That was certainly the case for Alex Porter, MBA ’18, who left a career in oil and gas to get his MBA at Rice Business, then started a brewery with his family. He’s now the managing owner of Southern Yankee Beer Company in Spring, which opened last fall. Porter spent eight years in oil and gas construction, traveling the world to far-flung destinations
like Singapore and Australia and overseeing billion-dollar jobs. Although he enjoyed the work, ultimately he became frustrated with the way his company was managed. “The corporate culture was really poisonous,” Porter says. “There was a lack of independence. I needed to make a change.” As a child, Porter had watched his father homebrew in their garage. Eventually, Porter pitched in, and he loved it. Around the time he started to feel disillusioned with his job, his sister, Sydney Porter, was graduating from college. “We sent her to brew school,” Porter says. Then, he enrolled at Rice Business with the goal of learning how to run a small business. During his second year in
“I thought to myself, ‘I can go recruit into some consulting job and save money for a brewery, or I can bootstrap it right now.’” He chose the latter.
the MBA program, he was laid off. “I thought to myself, ‘I can go recruit into some consulting job and save money for a brewery, or I can bootstrap it right now.’” He chose the latter. Porter’s father invested in the brewery and works on strategic planning, while Sydney is brew master. The brewery broke even in its first month, Porter says, and became profitable shortly thereafter. Since then, they’ve added food service and additional employees, and they’re considering a second location. Porter works more hours now as an entrepreneur, and his take-home pay has shrunk, but he doesn’t mind. “I’m making way less money, but I’m happier,” he says. “Working with family is great and getting to drink beer at work is nice.” A corporate job might offer safety, Porter adds, but “with safety comes complacency.” He’s confident that in a few years he’ll have a pay scale similar to what he once had. “But it will all be from my own company,” Porter says. “I’m playing the long game.” A more fulfilling career For alumna Susan Brown Snook ’85, leaving behind a career as a CPA to become an Episcopalian minister was less about parting with a stressful work environment and more about following her calling. She grew up in the Episcopal Church and was active in her local church throughout high school. In college, she studied English. At the time, she didn’t realize that becoming a minister was a career option, she says. Her CPA career spanned a decade. “I worked hard and I
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was promoted early,” she says. “I was successful. But, I became conscious of not being happy. I wasn’t all that interested in what I was doing.” Having her first child was a wake-up call. “It made me aware of a whole side of myself, my life, my hopes for my future that I had been neglecting when I was concentrating too hard on just being successful in my career,” says Snook. So she started volunteering at her church, and then returned to school to get her Master of Divinity degree. She was ordained as a priest, and recently became the first woman to be elected Episcopal Bishop of San Diego. “I get to call people together around a vision of transforming the world with God’s love, and that’s the meaning of life to me and what I love to do,” Snook says. “I’m still a successful, professional woman. I just moved into a field that’s more fulfilling to me.” Smart business decisions Alumni say their move to more personally fulfilling careers hasn’t come without some bumps in the road. They’ve had to shift their mindset and make lifestyle changes and sacrifices. Cotto gave up frequent Door Dash orders from her favorite Peruvian restaurant and started preparing more meals at home. She parted ways with the Starbucks barista who knew her daily order by heart. As a solopreneur, Cotto is in charge of every aspect of her business, from marketing to sales to invoicing, which can be tiring. “Entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart,” she says. “It’s been an adjustment.” Lessons learned at Rice Business have helped with that adjustment. For Cotto, it was the
entrepreneurial classes she took. It’s been the same for Snook, who says an understanding of finance and accounting has been extremely useful for the work she’s done in the church. Cotto adds that for entrepreneurs pursuing their passion, it’s key to always treat the endeavor like a business. Zhou says that many people start their own business with good intentions as they seek out greater flexibility and autonomy. But they also need to make sure they’re making smart business decisions, she says. “You need to identify customer needs, create value for customers that other existing businesses cannot provide them with, and then you fill in the holes and create a profit,” Zhou says. “If a business is not successful, it’s even more stressful working for yourself. You still need to work hard.” Lessons for employers For employers, there are important lessons to learn from workers leaving corporate America. More companies must respect and nurture employee creativity, Zhou says, and realize that doing so will require a certain amount of risk taking.
“In general, workplaces are set up to be efficient,” Zhou says, “and they don’t encourage employees to express creativity. Companies need to adjust their expectations.” A worker’s immediate supervisor plays a huge role. If he or she is inspiring and embraces creativity, that will trickle down to employees. If not, these leaders should be taught how to foster creativity, says Zhou. These lessons haven’t been lost on corporate America. Companies like Google have started to embrace autonomy, giving employees time to pitch and work on their own projects. Zappos introduced a new self-management system, Holacracy, while Southwest Airlines encourages its employees to express themselves creatively. One video of a flight attendant rapping the plane’s safety information went viral. Cotto says she’s hearing more and more of her clients, millennials especially, ask questions like “Am I happy at work? What is it that I really want?” and, “Is this job really helping me make a mark?” A lot of people simply stay where they are, unhappy, because they’re unaware of the options available to them, Cotto says. She asks clients to create a Pinterest board, pinning images that appeal to them, then looking for patterns and themes. “I hear a lot of ‘shoulds’ with my clients,” she says. “People create an entire career on what their mom told them they should do because it’s a safe and secure job. Or, they don’t act on longings they’ve had.” For many, clues abound about what they really want to be doing — but those hints go unheeded. “Most of the time you’re just too busy to pay attention,” Cotto says. u Deborah Lynn Blumberg is a Houston-based freelance writer specializing in health and wellness and business and finance.
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MBA@Rice’s Global Field Experience to Mexico City in June included a stop at the Soumaya Museum, pictured, which houses the art collection
The Global Field Experience
of Mexican business magnate Carlos Slim. There, the students tackled a real-world problem: how to help the nonprofit increase public engagement. Kendra Jalbert ’20 explains:
“ The Museo Soumaya consulting experience was the highlight of our
Global Field Experience in Mexico City. It was an honor to help the museum in their mission to make art accessible to everyone. We gained an appreciation for their view that art can provide a window through which to view the world differently, to ask questions about our purpose and to ultimately seek ways to improve quality of life. They challenged us to identify high-potential initiatives that would increase engagement with the underprivileged without collecting personal data from visitors. With this in mind, we strategized in teams and ultimately suggested that they share art curricula with local schools, use virtual reality technology to cross language barriers and capture anonymized visitor statistics with an interactive map at the entrance.”
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While in Lima, Peru, for a Global Field Experience earlier this year, MBA students from the Class of 2020 worked with the leaders of a Peruvian nonprofit helping to reinvent the historic port town of Callao, which has struggled with crime and economic hardship. The nonprofit, Monumental Callao, supports the work of street artists to create a vibrant culture that will engage the community and draw visitors. Rice Business students spent a day learning from community leaders about their efforts to revive the area and worked with Monumental Callao to come up with ways to address some of the challenges the organization faces.
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word watch
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A Burger By Any Other Name Who gets to decide what we call a patty-shaped thing between buns? By Jennifer Latson
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I
f it looks like a burger, smells like a burger, and tastes like a burger, is it safe to call it a burger? Or must a patty be made of meat — and not meatless
meat — to merit the label?
The linguistics of mealtime have gotten complicated
lately, thanks in part to the rise of plant-based alternatives to the foods we normally associate with animals. Dunkin’ now sells a Beyond Meat sausage breakfast sandwich; Burger King is bringing the plant-based Impossible Whopper to the masses.
Stocks are soaring for the two leading non-meat mak-
ers, Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods — and analysts predict the market for so-called alternative proteins could climb as high as $140 billion by 2029. On menus and packaging, they’re being described in meaty terms: as burgers, sausage, bacon and the like. (In a fishy twist, Tyson Foods, the meat-industry behemoth, recently announced its plans to debut plant-based shrimp early next year.)
But ranchers have a beef. Last year, the U.S. Cat-
tlemen’s Association petitioned the federal government to prohibit “products not derived directly from animals raised and slaughtered” from being marketed as meat. The trade association invoked the federal truth-in-advertising law, arguing that “current labeling practices may cause consumer confusion.”
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“ An Impossible Burger isn’t the culinary equivalent of a fake Rolex, Chung explains: its purpose isn’t to confuse people into buying a poor-quality imitation of the original, but to deliberately choose a new product that meets different needs.”
Is unwitting vegetarianism really a problem? Probably not, analysts say. Few, if any, consumers who buy plantbased meat do so accidentally, even if the label says “burger,” observes Jaeyeon Chung, a marketing professor at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business. “They’re doing so out of a conscious decision not to consume real meat, and they are putting effort into searching for an alternative,” Chung says. “This isn’t a traditional marketing scam where counterfeiters try to deceive consumers by selling products similar to what people really want to purchase.” An Impossible Burger isn’t the culinary equivalent of a fake Rolex, she explains: its purpose isn’t to confuse people into buying a poor-quality imitation of the original, but to deliberately choose a new product that meets different needs. Plant-Based Pushback The U.S. Department of Agriculture hasn’t yet ruled on the ranchers’ petition. In the meantime, however, several states — including Arkansas, Missouri and Mississippi — have passed their own laws restricting the terms used to describe plant-based products. The companies that make those products are pushing back. In July, Tofurky joined forces with the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups to file a lawsuit challenging the Arkansas law, which makes it illegal to call veggie burgers “burgers” or tofu dogs “dogs.” Tofurky and the ACLU argue that the law — which also takes issue with cauliflower “rice” and almond “milk” — violates the First Amendment’s protection of free speech. “It’s absurdly patronizing that the government of Arkansas is asserting that the people of Arkansas can’t tell a ‘veggie burger’ from a ‘hamburger,’ or a ‘tofu dog’ from a ‘hot dog,’” said ACLU attorney Brian Hauss. “The government should focus on genuine consumer protection problems instead of playing word games to benefit special interests at the First Amendment’s expense.” The beef industry association is not the first food group to wage a war of words against its competitors. In Texas, for example, pickle purveyors made the case that the word “pickle” should apply only to cucumbers (and not, say, okra or peppers). Persuaded by their lobbying efforts, Texas lawmakers codified that definition in 2014, making it illegal for
small-time farmers to sell a jar of brined beets. The law was rewritten this year, freeing home picklers from the tyranny of the cucumber. In fact, the “truth in advertising” argument has been trotted out throughout the history of food marketing whenever an upstart veers too close to an established product’s market share. In 1881, Wisconsin lawmakers passed a law requiring margarine to be clearly labeled as a non-butter product, with the stated goal of dispelling consumer confusion. In 1895, it passed another law prohibiting margarine from being dyed a buttery yellow color, again to avoid “misleading customers” in a state dominated by dairy interests. Mainstream Appeal But veggie burgers have been going by the “burger” label for a while now. So why the sudden drive to beef up burger labeling laws? Because while meatless meat was once an acquired taste, largely relegated to the vegan fringe, it’s now going mainstream — and potentially poses a real threat to the real thing. When it comes to the damage plant-based alternatives can inflict, some see the dairy industry as a cautionary tale. Dairy lobbyists first petitioned the FDA in 2010 to ban words like “milk” and “cheese” from products that don’t trace their origins to the inside of a barn. Since then, the industry’s outlook has soured, with decreasing demand and lower milk prices — largely unrelated to competition from plant-based milks. Lately, however, lobbyists have renewed their push to legislate labeling. But it’ll be tough to make a convincing case that consumers might be misled into thinking almond milk or soy milk comes from a cow, as Bruce Friedrich, of the nonprofit Good Food Institute, told The New Republic. “There is no consumer confusion, but requiring any sort of change would certainly confuse consumers, who have been buying almond milk and soy milk for decades,” Friedrich said. Chung agrees. But she thinks that may be where dairyless dairy and meatless meat diverge. “I don’t think almond milk was such a big deal because it clearly tastes very different from real milk, and people who love milk would not easily switch,” Chung says. “The latest plant-based meat, however, is the outcome of many
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years of many companies’ efforts to mimic the taste of meat, and they’ve finally succeeded. Now, since it really tastes like meat, the ranchers seem to feel that they are under threat.” Even if meatless meat does pose a genuine financial threat to ranchers, of course, it doesn’t necessarily follow that lawmakers should regulate the language used to describe it. That would be unfair to the makers of plant-based products, who have the right to market their products effectively, Chung says. “Its current labeling, as a plant-based meat, will likely
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draw both vegans and current meat eaters who are more health-conscious,” she says. The alternative — labeling it as a plant product with, say, “meaty qualities” — would be less appealing all around. After all, without the familiar shorthand of terms like “meat” and “butter,” marketers are forced to cobble together ungainly descriptors like “texturized vegetable protein” and “cultured nut product.” Word salads like these will entice only the most diehard of health-food fanatics. u This story originally appeared in the Houston Chronicle’s Gray Matters.
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W O R K P L A C E C R E AT I V I T Y
THE DA VINCI ROUTINE
How Companies Can Foster Creativity In Routines Based on research by Scott Sonenshein • Scholars have long regarded creativity and routines as
opposites. • New research shows that the relationship between
creativity and routines is more complementary than previously imagined. • Employers who encourage workers to put a piece of
themselves into routine tasks can yield creative results.
Think of a routine: your morning workout, walking the dog, making your bed. It’s hard to imagine these as creative pursuits. After all, Leonardo da Vinci may have made his bed every morning, but it’s probably not what inspired him to paint the Mona Lisa. So it’s no surprise that workplace analysts have long considered routines to be the antithesis of creativity. But it turns out that the relationship between the two is more complementary than previously believed. Scott Sonenshein, a management professor at Rice Business, studied just how this relationship works. What Sonenshein wanted to know was, how can an organization achieve creative outcomes through routine? For the answer, think of da Vinci again. Certain repetitive aspects of style make his work recognizably his. It’s how we can instantly see that The Last Supper, St. John the Baptist and the Mona Lisa are all the work of his hand. In that sense, they are both repeated patterns and feats of genius. For Sonenshein, some retailers are, in a sense, the da Vincis of suburban America. Sonenshein examined data from a fast-growing retailer that operates a chain of roughly 400 clothing, jewelry, accessory and gift stores across the U.S., and was fascinated to see how it could surprise its customers each season while maintaining a brand image that makes the retailer easily identifiable. Sonenshein realized that the retailer was effectively routinizing creativity.
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When he interviewed corporate managers and store employees at the retailer he calls “BoutiqueCo,” a pattern emerged. Sonenshein discovered something he calls “familiar novelty” in the way the retailer designs its stores. While most stores use a rigid floor plan for the display of merchandise, BoutiqueCo instead adopts a set of flexible guidelines. These rules of the road are explicit enough to ensure that each store is readily identifiable as a BoutiqueCo outlet. But because the display rules afford a great deal of flexibility, they allow space for creative employees to come up with their own ideas. If merchandising were a musical score, Sonenshein observed a dynamic that is less like marching band music and more like jazz. Employees are encouraged to riff off of the main themes of the chain to regularly create something unexpected. Of course, creating novel effects doesn’t come naturally to everyone. It takes a certain kind of individual to achieve it, especially in the highly visual area of merchandising. Store managers told Sonenshein that they actively look for employees who are willing to take visual risks and engage creatively while still keeping to the rules of the company road. Finally, creativity is routinized in the stores’ feedback systems. This takes place both among employees, who frequently discuss and even debate their work with each other, and in the more formal setting of managerial feedback. 37
Managers actively encourage creativity, urging employees to put their personalities into the work of the store, to the point where brand identity and individual identity intermingle. So what does the experience of one outlet tell us about the relationship between creativity and routines? Sonenshein suggests that there is a strong role for personalization of routine tasks in the creative workplace. When employees bring their own preferences to routine performances, it can elevate them from mundane to novel. Of course, it’s unlikely that a window dresser will create the next Mona Lisa while promoting the spring line. Genius like da Vinci’s may only come along once in a millennium. But if we put a little soul into our work under the guidance of managers who allow us to riff off of the corporate sheet music, remarkable things become possible. u
See business.rice.edu/wisdom for more. Scott Sonenshein is the Henry Gardiner Symonds Professor of Management at Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University. To learn more, please see: Sonenshein, S. (2016). Routines and creativity: From dualism to duality. Organization Science, 27(3), 739–758.
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38 RICE BUSINESS
Mount Cook — also called Aoraki, which means “cloud piercer” in Mori — is the highest mountain in New Zealand, and the drive to this national park is mind-blowingly beautiful. You’ll get a sense of the vastness and majesty of the Southern Alps as you drive along the turquoise blue waters of Lake Pukaki towards the mountains. This is by far one of the most memorable places we’ve visited in New Zealand. — Photo by James Zhao ’15
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FutureFitness As the fitness market flexes new muscle, gyms are adapting to offer not just a workout, but a full-body wellness experience.
I
n a trendy Houston neighborhood, people in workout wear hurry past a restaurant serving locally sourced food, up the stairs of a boutique shopping center and into one of the city’s many high-end fitness studios. They are carrying babies. Breezing past the front desk of DEFINE Body & Mind, they enter a group workout room that feels more like a sanctum than a gym. Other parents with babies strapped to their chests are already there, hoisting weights and flexing resistance bands. “DEFINEbaby” is a class for moms and dads who want to break a sweat with their newborns. It’s also a testament to how deeply fitness has become ingrained into our lives. Workout classes have become so ubiquitous that children are now attending before they can even walk. In 2019, the fitness industry is projected to hit a new high of roughly $36.5 billion in revenue, according to the market research group IBISWorld. This peak represents more than a decade of solid growth in fitness club memberships, which have risen by more than 33 percent since 2008. Some analysts have speculated that the sustained expansion is due to rising health consciousness among younger
By Hannah Sawyer
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Rice Business alum Henry Richardson, PMBA ’09, founded DEFINE Body & Mind on the premise that physical fitness and overall well-being are inextricably linked.
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people who were growing up as diagnoses of obesity, diabetes, and other health issues skyrocketed. But Rice Business alum Henry Richardson, PMBA ’09, the founder of DEFINE, says the story is more complicated than that. As he and other fitness entrepreneurs have noted, the entire culture of exercising has changed during the past decade. Gyms have gone from selling a membership to selling a lifestyle — logo athleisure wear included. Exercising is no longer just about results, Richardson says. Increasingly, it’s also about finding a community. He designed the DEFINE experience with that idea in mind, he says. The feeling of belonging is built in, from the welcoming, light-filled workout room to the lime body wash in the showers to the fact that the classes are designed for everyone, including pregnant women and seniors. Data show that an elevated marketing and branding approach is working. Boutique studios like Richardson’s have seen the biggest boom of all sectors of the fitness industry in the last decade. A Growing Market While cities like New York and L.A. have long been known for fashion-forward fitness, Houston has also proved to be a boomtown for boutique gyms. When Richardson moved back to his hometown from New York in 2007, Houston’s fitness landscape was so barren that you could conjure up an image of tumbleweeds to describe it. There was one lonely yoga studio in town. Today, the city has made a 180-degree turn. The luxury health club Equinox established a Houston outpost in 2015, taking up residency in the tony River Oaks District. And the high-end fitness chain Life Time, which opened its first facility here in 2004, now has nine in the greater Houston area — two of which opened in the past year. A Greenway Plaza location is scheduled to open later this year. Meanwhile, Rice Business alum Molly Carter, MBA ’14, opened a boutique fitness studio, The Preserve, in River Oaks last year. Carter describes the gym as beautiful, upscale, and personal. “I built the gym that I wanted to go to,” she said.
From the striking modern building, with glass walls to bring the natural world inside, to its futuristic “kinesis” cable-resistance machines, The Preserve is an homage to what Carter describes as a new national obsession with working out. More than ever, word-of-mouth is what gets new people to walk through the door, she says, so she’s sought to create an experience so unique and appealing that when people leave, they want to tell others about it. The presence of The Preserve in the Houston fitness market is one sign of how competitive — and potentially profitable — the region has become for exercise entrepreneurs. You can find another in a downtown high-rise where Gympass, a Brazilian company that moved to the United States two years ago, recently opened up an office. Gympass, which bills itself as a fitness discovery platform, says it’s out to “defeat inactivity,” with a goal of getting the estimated 1.4 billion people who still don’t engage in physical activity off their couches. It’s a lofty goal, but that’s what drew Rice Business alum Juan Castellanos, MBA ’16, to the company, where he’s now the global head of client operations. As someone who cares about health and fitness, he was intrigued by the fact that Gympass was trying to make exercise more accessible. “We always think about fitness in these boxes. ‘Oh, I have to get a gym membership, I have to do this or that.’ That’s kind of the old model,” says Castellanos. The new model is more sophisticated, he says — it’s about helping people find an activity they actually enjoy. Gympass offers its users, who are the employees of more than 2,000 companies that have purchased a membership plan, access to more than 900 different activities. “How do you get people up? You give them different things to try. Even if you dislike traditional workouts, you can try 365 different things every day for a year to find something you might like,” Castellanos said. A two-minute walk from one of the many spin studios in Houston, Gympass’ downtown office integrates elements of a workout facility: stacks of energy bars sit to the right of the reception desk, there are soccer balls and basketballs in a conference room, and inspirational quotes dot
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Students work out in a DEFINE class. The fitness chain now has 17 locations — six in the Houston area and others in cities from Cincinnati to Dubai.
When Richardson, pictured at right in DEFINE’s Heights studio, moved back to Houston from New York in 2007, the city’s fitness landscape was relatively barren.
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the walls. Yet Gympass has a slightly different vibe than the gyms it partners with, humming with the energy of a start-up. Its sales staff target employers, not would-be members. And they’re selling them a very different product: Buy a membership package with Gympass, which partners with workout facilities in Houston and around the world, and offer it as part of a benefit package to employees to improve recruitment and retention, increase productivity, and promote health and wellbeing.
Building Brand Strength Gympass is essentially a connector service, introducing people to the fitness communities that Richardson, whose franchise is one of the studios users can access through the platform, and others have created. Castellanos’ job is to make sure that their experience is seamless, whether they’re using the Gympass site to look up a class or to check in at a new gym they haven’t visited before. The Preserve, a boutique fitness studio in River Oaks, was designed to be open and airy with a sense of connection to nature. “I built the gym that I wanted to go to,” says founder Molly Carter, MBA ’14 (inset).
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That seems daunting when you consider that the company partners with more than 48,000 fitness facilities across the country and abroad. Yet it’s critical that amid innovation, companies provide consistency in order to maintain their customer base. “It doesn’t matter where you go with Starbucks, you want to have the same cup of coffee,” Castellanos said. “Same with us. Our brand is still to defeat inactivity regardless of where you are.” Building a strong brand identity will be key to long-term success in an increasingly competitive market, researchers say. Not only is the industry prone to being rocked by fads, with consumers lunging from Zumba classes one day to high-intensity interval training the next, but it is also competing against streaming services, the internet, and other entertainment businesses for slices of people’s free time. Jaeyeon Chung, an associate professor of marketing at Rice Business, said researchers generally believe that companies who can get customers to “embrace the brand as an understanding of self” fare better year after year than those who don’t. “People tend to choose products that represent their current self-image or their desired self-image,” she said. If you think you’re great at yoga, you buy high-end workout pants. Or if you want to be perceived as wealthy, you purchase a lower-priced item from Chanel. That means companies such as DEFINE and Gympass must offer something that appeals to both people who perceive themselves as fit and those who want to get in better shape to continue to grow. Community, accessibility, responsive customer service and product diversity — themes that Richardson and Castellanos both prioritize — are all elements that appeal to both types of customers. Setting The Bar Higher The challenge in the future, said Richardson, will be to continue to replicate the brand in new locations. DEFINE started with four studios in Houston; then Richardson decided to turn it into a franchise to grow the brand. Now there are studios in Austin, Colorado, South Dakota, and beyond. “We are at a phase of the business where I want it to be the right group versus just to open up another store, and so consistency and quality is what fuels me,” he said.
More and more, expansion is likely to come on two fronts: internationally and virtually. According to researchers who track the industry, hedge funds are dumping large amounts of money into the sector to fund both the development of new fitness apps and the plumbing of different markets. ClassPass, which allows people to try out workout classes at different gyms, recently announced it was expanding into Asia and the Middle East. And Peloton, an exercise equipment and virtual training company, has filed for an IPO. Richardson is tacking in the same direction. In 2017, he helped a family friend launch the first international storefront for DEFINE in Dubai, and this summer he is getting ready to launch DEFINE online, which will offer live and taped classes to members. Meanwhile Gympass, which is already in Latin America and Europe, announced in June it had netted a $300 million investment from SoftBank, a Japanese holding company, to expand into Asia. Such rapid growth in an industry, however, raises the question of whether the fitness Juan Castellanos, MBA ’16, the head of gym bubble is near bursting. Richardoperations and customer experience at Gympass, son acknowledges that the indusis working to make exercise more accessible. try could be reaching a tipping point, with too many types of studios in too many locations. On the other hand, he says, there still seems to be a large segment of the market who are just being introduced to new fitness concepts, and ready to give them a try. If you ask Castellanos, anything could happen. Fifty years ago, for example, no one guessed that a dancer named Judi Shepherd Missett, who launched Jazzercise in a basement, would go on to build a $2 billion company — nor did they think women would fuel a huge expansion in the fitness industry. Castellanos hopes Gympass and other innovators will see similar success in reaching a new demographic: the more than 1 billion people who don’t work out at all. “When you have a company like us that is literally redefining how people think about their lifestyle, or exercise, or level of activity,” he says, “why not?” u Hannah Sawyer is a writer in Houston. 45
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The Rice Business admissions staff recently debuted a new blog aimed at prospective students. “Admit It,” the admissions blog, will tackle topics including why to get an MBA in Houston, which program is the best choice, and what sets Rice Business apart from other schools. The inaugural blog post is presented on the following pages.
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“”
As the world economy depends more and more on new skills and ideas, where business students study is a key aspect of which school they choose.
Photo by E.J. Santillan (aka Mumbles) 46 RICE BUSINESS
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Why Should You Get Your MBA In Houston
Houston’s work-friendly culture is ideal for MBA degree holders. First, Houston’s culture revolves around jobs. Large, small and nascent companies gravitate here for the city’s business-above-all environment. The most obvious lure is Texas’ lack of a state income tax, which allows companies more freedom to hire and invest in growth. Secondly, Houston is distinct in being the only major American city with no zoning laws. This policy, or rather lack of one, makes for the city’s signature landscape of tiny bungalows side-by-side with towering apartment buildings — and also creates fertile ground for businesses to sprout anywhere an entrepreneur’s imagination may roam.
By Janice Kennedy, Executive Director of Recruiting and Admissions
The sight is quintessential Houston. Scrawled on the overpass over a teeming freeway, a set of giant handwritten letters urge all who pass through: BE SOMEONE.
Those two words also happen to be short-
hand for why the culture of this port city has become an influential tool for serious students of business.
As the world economy depends more and
more on new skills and ideas, where business students study is a key aspect of which school they choose. A Houston MBA degree — earned in the fourth largest city in the U.S., a magnet for entrepreneurs and gateway to a 21st century Silk Road — means access to a range of business experiences that may be unique in America.
The average cost of living in Houston is 25.8 percent lower than that of other major U.S cities. Third in Houston’s trifecta of business attractions: affordability. The average cost of living here is 25.8 percent below the average for the country’s 20 most-populated cities, the Council for Community and Economic Research reported in 2019. In 2017, Forbes ranked Houston second among cities where a paycheck will go furthest. The lower cost of living means fewer distractions for Houston MBA students, a seductive quality of life that turns sojourners into residents and a safer setting in which to launch a new business and hire new workers. Graduate into a pro-business ecosystem with a Houston MBA degree. This pro-business ecosystem means that most graduating MBAs need look no further to use their Houston MBA
48 RICE BUSINESS
degrees. While for decades the city’s fame hinged on petroleum, the 1980s oil crash prompted diversification. Twenty Fortune 500 companies now operate and recruit from Houston, and the city boasts the world’s largest medical complex. Startup founders, meanwhile, can dive into a community where 400 of every 100,000 residents starts a business every month. Join a built-in pool of business talent. Rice Business actively enriches this climate, helping its MBA graduates with ongoing guidance and opportunity. Rice Business’ Owlspeak, part of a network of startup accelerators, launched 22 new businesses in the past six years, while the Rice Business Plan Competition generated almost almost $2 million in prizes last year. Rice has also pledged as much as $100 million to an ambitious complex housed in the vintage Midtown Sears building, dubbed The Ion, to convene scholars, companies and startups to support new businesses. Power source: America’s most ethnically diverse city. And in an era when human capital — ideas, practices and inventions — is the most critical resource of all, Houston enjoys a major power source. It is the most ethnically diverse city in the country. This is an asset crucial to 21st-century business, which must prioritize adaptability to new skills and technology to thrive, notes the personal finance site WalletHub. Houstonians know — and teach each other — how to thrive. It’s a city where more than 46 percent of minority-owned businesses posted at least half a million
49
dollars in annual revenue last year. It’s a leading destination for refugees from around the country, who choose Houston for their new beginning. And it’s a city whose business community openly values the drive and innovation that its foreign-born residents bring the economy. Use your MBA degree in a city where you can BE SOMEONE. Houston is rich territory for workers with MBA degrees who are eager to put their ideas into action. It’s a city where old-time wildcatters can speak fluent Spanish, where leaders of both political parties reflexively support each other in crisis, where the first openly gay mayor of a major U.S. city extols the power of Southern charm and the will to work together. It’s a city where every few years, when some naysayer vandalizes the public reminder to BE SOMEONE, someone else climbs up and paints it right back. u Interested in learning more about the MBA programs offered by Rice Business? Send us an email at ricemba@rice.edu.
FALL 2019
hiddentalents |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Lifting Each Other Up By Jennifer Latson
50 RICE BUSINESS
A
s supportive co-workers
Reichenbach says. “For example,
go, it’s hard to top Emily
in the engineering quad, we
Reichenbach and Megan
thought, ‘We could mimic what’s
Gossett. They lift each other up
already here, using our bodies.’”
— literally. The former dancers,
who now work together in execu-
that supporting each other in
tive education, spend their breaks
physical poses also reinforces
doing performance art based
some of the business principles
on the principles of acroyoga, a
and skills they’ve picked up
form of partner yoga in which one
at Rice Business — such as
person supports the other in an
teamwork, negotiation, creative
aerial pose.
problem-solving, communication,
and trust.
“Neither of us actually has
And they’ve discovered
any training in acroyoga — this is
just us playing around,” Gossett
tionship blossom, along with our
explains.
friendship,” says Gossett.
But both have plenty of
“It’s made our working rela-
The pair are now exploring
formal dance training. Reichen-
a design startup that has drawn
bach, a senior client manager in
interest from Rice Business
executive education, spent four
faculty and alumni, which came
seasons as a Rockets Power
about in part because of this
Dancer, performing at Houston
creative collaboration.
Rockets games and traveling
internationally to places like
says Reichenbach. “We started
Istanbul and Beijing to promote
collaborating on one thing and
the Rockets brand. Before
then thought of something else
starting at Rice Business, she
we wanted to collaborate on.” u
“It definitely built that trust,”
spent six years coaching the Rice Dance Team.
Gossett, Rice Business’
healthcare program manager, was a dancer with the Fort Worth Ballet for four years, then taught ballet and Pilates for nine years as part of Rice’s Lifetime Physical Activity Program. When she stopped dancing, she earned her Master’s in Social Work, concentrating in healthcare, which led her to her current position.
While their hobby is playful,
the pair put some serious thought into matching their poses with the architecture and landscapes they encounter around the Rice campus.
“The backdrop is as import-
ant as the pose we’re doing,” 51
FALL 2019
around the water cooler
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Class of 1985
Class of 2004
Class of 2011
& Marsal. Robert was recently
John Dobelman, Ph.D., and
Robin Tooms has joined
Laura Kamrath always dreamed
promoted to Senior Manager
his wife Kathleen have five
Members Choice Credit Union, a
of starting a business and with
at Mattel where he oversees
children, eight grandchildren,
full-service financial institution
the tools she learned through
the Action Figures portfolio for
and two Great Pyrenees dogs,
and SBA-preferred lender, as
her MBA, she is now the founder
the US.
and recently moved from the
the Chief Marketing Officer. Rob-
and CEO of Zebra Marketing
Woodlands to Bellaire. They
in is honored to be part of the
Solutions, LLC, a company spe-
Jennifer Ortegon and Jaime
would like to shout out to all their
executive leadership team and
cialized in helping oil and energy
Ortegon welcome Joaquin
friends from entrepreneurship,
is excited to help actively shape
companies to retain and attract
Aaron, born April 24, 2019!
strategy, finance, accounting,
the strategy and branding during
customers, grow revenues,
communication, INTOP, dean’s
a time of tremendous growth
and gain market share through
Jared Field is the President of
seminars, two new buildings, and
and change.
website design, Search Engine
Field Industries, a one stop shop
Optimization (SEO), Google
for steel and alloy materials.
new families and believe that all alumni should take some time
Class of 2005
Ads, social media, and LinkedIn
Field Industries was recently
and remember these days and
Cameron Simoneau announced
marketing.
named #1228 on the Inc. 5000,
consider their futures. They also
the fourth member of the
#32 in energy, and # 26 in
send congratulations to the class
Simoneau family, Sophie Anne
11th Houston to Austin MS 150
of 2019. May your career be long,
Simoneau, was born on March
bike ride, raising over $3,000 for
fruitful, and may you invest in
25, 2019 in Cincinnati, Ohio!
MS. She has enjoyed traveling
Class of 2014
Laura also completed her
Houston.
with her boyfriend, Andrew, to a
LaTisha Cotto, Master Life
Class of 2009
multitude of destinations such as
Coach + Motivational Speaker,
Class of 1997
Alejandro Cestero has transi-
Turkey, Micronesia, Hawaii, Cal-
LaTisha Cotto ‘14, recently
Steven Ebel joined XPO Logistics
tioned from a career in legal and
ifornia, and Colorado. They are
launched her monthly mem-
as the Vice President of Opera-
corporate general counsel to a
looking forward to more exciting
bership program, The Red
tions based in Houston.
career in aviation as the Presi-
trips on the horizon!
Carpet Collective. The mission
your lives.
dent of AccuFleet International
of the Red Carpet Collective is
Class of 1999
Inc., a privately-owned provider
Class of 2012
to empower women with the
Emily Durham has been named
of airfield and aviation support
Puja Verma will be joining her
training, tools and support they
partner at Waterman Steele Real
services to major commercial
mother in the family business,
need to love themselves into
Estate Advisors where she heads
airlines and airports. The best
Kiran’s, full-time and hopes to
the life of their dreams. She has
up the commercial real estate
part of this transition is that
see many students and alumni at
also teamed up with Tawkify, a
brokerage’s hospitality division.
the opportunity came through
the restaurant soon!
personal dating concierge, as
long-time friend and fellow
a matchmaker. For more infor-
Rice undergraduate, Jim Davis,
Kelsey and Robert Knox
mation, please visit latishacotto.
AccuFleet’s Chairman/CEO and
welcomed their son Charlie on
com or send an e-mail to info@
majority owner! Alejandro and
November 18, 2018. When they’re
latishacotto.com.
Jim met working on a Jones
not doing laundry and washing
Partners committee over 10
baby bottles, Kelsey continues to
years ago and had kept in touch
lead the west region Ops team
over the years.
as Finance Director for Alvarez
52 RICE BUSINESS
Class of 2016 Nick Girardi and Caroline Girardi welcomed Jillian Love Girardi to the family on May 31, 2019. Class of 2018 Edward Clark welcomed their
Photos: 1. Cameron Simoneau and family with Sophie. 2. Edward Clark, wife and baby boy, Edward A. Clark V. 3. Frank Cottrell and Kristina with their son Charles Hudson Cottrell. 4. John Dobelman, Ph.D., and family. 5. Baby Joaquin Aaron Ortegon. 6. Almost 1-year-old Charlie Knox. 7. Nick and Caroline Girardi welcomed Jillian Love Girardi.
1
2
baby boy, Edward A. Clark V, on April 11, 2019 at 10:44 CDT, at 6lbs, 10 oz., and 19.25 inches! Frank Cottrell and Kristina Cottrell welcomed their first child, son Charles Hudson Cottrell, born April 25, 2019. They have relocated to Cypress to be
3
4
closer to family. Sean Marshall is excited to announce that he will be running for Houston City Council District C, which houses Rice, and would love for fellow Rice 6
alumni to share the news with others! He also welcomes any ideas and asks that you reach out if you are interested in
5
getting involved. Sasha Gumprecht joined the team at The Carnrite Group, an energy-focused management consulting company based in Houston, as a consultant.
53
FALL 2019
7
100 Home Sweet Rice
Come home to Rice on Nov. 2 for a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the university’s first homecoming.
Our tailgate — featuring beer from local brewery Eureka Heights, wine, non-alcoholic beverages, food and Rice Business swag — starts at 11:30 a.m. in Tailgate Owley, east of Rice Stadium. Rice kicks off against Marshall at 2:30 p.m. Purchase tailgate tickets at business.rice.edu and game tickets at riceowls.com.
54 RICE BUSINESS
peter’s page SNAPSHOTS FROM THE DEAN
Above (in phone): @profp_rod (and son) at his daughter’s graduation from James Madison University.
Top right: @profp_rod shares his insights on Bloomberg TV. Middle right: @profp_rod’s family surprises him with Father’s Day breakfast in bed. Bottom right: @profp_rod poses with Rice Business Professor Jing Zhou and Schwarzman Scholar (and Rice alum) Fay Pauly on a trip to Beijing in May.
55
FALL 2019
NONPROFIT ORGANIZATION US POSTAGE
PAID
PERMIT #7549 HOUSTON, TEXAS
Rice University P.O. Box 2932 Houston, TX 77252-2932
RICE BUSINESS YOU BELONG HERE Remember your first days at Rice Business, when you felt the beginning of something strong — friendship, inspiration, belonging? That sense of belonging deepened through the years and continues to grow as you stay connected to classmates and professors, hire new grads and attend reunions. Now we want prospective students to feel what you know: “You Belong Here” means you, and they, will always be a part of the Rice Business family.
business.rice.edu 56 RICE BUSINESS