Pillar 3

This course gives students the opportunity to apply their MBA learnings to address an opportunity or challenge in the diversity, equity and inclusion space faced by a client organization. Over the past few years, clients have represented a variety of industries and nonprofits. They challenge their student-managed teams to address a focused, high-priority DEI-related business issue. The lab is project-centric and student-driven, with regular check-in meetings with the client representative, professor and whole class. The lab also discusses real-world inclusion and belonging issues, strategies being currently used by companies, and how focusing on this work helps companies be more successful. Students collaborate with their fellow Rice Business peers and client employees/leaders to design solutions while building relationships and getting real-world learning and application.

“The students have enjoyed working on the real-world challenges and had impactful recommendations, many of which have been implemented at the client organizations. The students were excited, engaged and applied their MBA learning as well as concepts from our class time. The clients have been thrilled to receive recommendations and solutions.”
Pranika Uppal Sinha (’04)

This course explores how processes at the individual, group, organizational and societal levels intertwine to shape diversity, equity and inclusion at work. We will discuss how to improve our ability to work within and lead diverse and inclusive teams as well as how to design an equitable workplace.

Launch of International Education Week (IEW) at Rice Business

For the first time, Rice Business implemented International Education Week as an annual tradition, aligned with the national initiative and in coordination with the larger Rice University community. Held during the third week of November, IEW provides a structured and celebratory platform to reveal GFE destinations, spotlight the school’s international reach, and streamline access to key global resources. The week also promotes awareness of the full range of international opportunities available, including exchange programs, global electives, international seminars and support services such as visa guidance and passport renewal.

Inaugural Global Elective to Dubai, UAE

In December 2024, Rice Business successfully launched its first-ever global elective in the United Arab Emirates, focused on innovation and energy in Dubai. As part of the JGSB Energy Initiative, this elective brought together students from all five MBA programs and received overwhelmingly positive feedback. Dubai served as a dynamic learning environment, offering MBAs a unique lens into global business practices, energy transition strategy, and innovation ecosystems in one of the world’s fastest-growing business hubs.

“It was an immersive experience that blended business, culture, and global strategy in one of the world’s most dynamic economies. What made this experience truly special was the opportunity to engage directly with industry leaders, government officials and entrepreneurs, gaining firsthand insights into Dubai’s all around transformation, innovation ecosystem and global trade influence. One of the most surprising aspects was witnessing Dubai’s rapid and safe infrastructural and societal development and its seamless integration of tradition with cutting-edge technology, challenging my assumptions about emerging markets. The skills I honed, including strategic thinking, cultural intelligence and relationship-building across diversity, will be invaluable as I transition into management consulting at EY-Parthenon, particularly in healthcare strategy, where global perspectives and adaptability are essential.”
Mark Yang, Class of 2025, PMBA-Evening

Record Participation in International Seminars

Outside of our traditional international course experiences such as GFE, Global Electives and international exchange, this year we saw record engagement in International Seminars, with 18 students representing most MBA formats (FTMBA, PMBA, EMBA and Hybrid) traveling to Germany, South Africa and Mexico. These short-format global experiences continue to expand our international footprint and offer students valuable immersion in global business environments beyond the core GFE travel opportunities.

The Rice Master of Accounting program is distinguished by its intimate, cohort-based model, enrolling only 30 to 50 students each year. In one year, the program prepares students to sit for the CPA exam and launch careers in business, regardless of their undergraduate major.

Accounting has long been an attractive field for first-generation college students because it offers strong career stability, a high return on investment and lifelong opportunities for professional growth.

Professor Ben Lansford, director of the MAcc program and professor of the practice in accounting, reports that the class of 2025 was 48% female and 21% underrepresented minority students. Before graduation, 100% of the class had accepted full-time job offers.

Scholarships

Since its 2016 re-launch, the Rice MAcc program has awarded merit-based scholarships to attract exceptional students.

Expanding Reach and Community Impact

Rice Business Executive Education continues to broaden its footprint both locally and globally.

Community Engagement at The Ion

In FY25, Executive Education moved partial operations to The Ion, launching collaborative programming that featured Rice Business faculty and alumni. This initiative brought in approximately 1,020 community members across six complimentary, public-facing events. Topics included:

• Strategy
• Leadership
• Innovation and AI
• Managing Organizational Challenges

These sessions were delivered through panels and master classes, offering valuable insights and thought leadership to the broader Houston community.

Sharing Faculty Expertise Globally

We have also built a robust online presence, engaging learners around the world. A recent complimentary lunchtime webinar on AI, led by Kathleen Perley, attracted 242 attendees.

The webinar promoted the new program, The Future is AI, in which 43 participants enrolled. The virtual format allowed participants to join remotely during lunch hours, enhancing accessibility and convenience.

We continue to collaborate with Rice Business faculty to bring their curriculum to learners around the world through asynchronous courses available on various low cost digital platforms. These offerings make high-quality business education accessible to a global audience anytime, anywhere. Our digital offerings span a wide range of business topics, including:

• Leading Workplace Diversity
• Small Business Entrepreneurship
• Financial Statement Analysis
• Business Statistics and Analysis Specialization
• Investment and Portfolio Management Specialization
• Business Finance and Data Analysis Fundamentals
• Real Estate Investment and Development

Our online content continues to grow in popularity, with our top participant countries being:

• United States
• India
• United Kingdom
• Canada
• Mexico

Total Enrollments for FY25: 26,949

Women Leaders Forum

The inaugural Executive Leadership for Women session from the Executive Education program at Rice Business brought together professionals from industries such as insurance, oil and gas, military, engineering and healthcare to learn how to help women advance and thrive within the top ranks of business. The session is designed for women leaders, allies and mentees who aspire to accelerate their careers and help others. Read more

Executive Education Women Leaders Advisory Board

The advisory board was created to champion a one-day Women’s Leadership Forum. The board consists of eight women in senior positions at their respective enterprises who have a passion for supporting women advancing in their careers and who will provide insights in areas such as pricing and content as we produce this unique program. This board is led by Ann LeSavage, who is a graduate of Rice’s Executive MBA program.

Women in Maritime Operations Lunch and Learn

Rice Business Executive Education partnered with Women in Maritime Operations (WIMOs) for a series of lunch-and-learn sessions. Janet Moore led “Personal Branding for Success” to an audience of about 30 women. In April 2025, Deputy Dean Jing Zhou discussed “Negotiation” in New Orleans, LA with 30-plus women from the maritime industry. In June 2025, Anthea Zhang spoke to 60-plus WIMOs members across the country about women in corporate workplaces. WIMOs is a non-profit organization of women who are actively employed in the maritime industry and is dedicated to retaining, advancing and promoting women in the maritime industry through sharing knowledge and continuing education.

The Fireside Chat events are designed to recognize and celebrate leaders who are championing efforts to elevate culture and community in their organizations, exemplary stories of initiatives in the workplace and opportunities to gain insights from corporate efforts.

Richa Bansal ’17, Fall 2024
The event featured Richa Bansal ’17, founder and executive career coach at Pinkcareers, and Jessica Campbell, the executive director of the Career Development Office at Rice Business.

The Office of Belonging and Engagement hosted the Houston Impact Series which highlights influential leaders who are positively impacting the Houston community.

Norma Torres Mendoza ’20, Spring 2025
Norma Torres Mendoza ’20, senior director, EY-Parthenon, and Danika Brown, Ph.D., the executive director of the Center for Civic Leadership, Rice University.

EmpowerHer is a community-building event for women at Rice Business. The event invites undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty and staff to connect, engage in thoughtful tabletop conversation, share their experiences and resources, and grow in community with one another.

Scholar Talk, Fall 2024 and Spring 2025
This year, the Rice Business Office for Belonging and Engagement hosted Scholar Talk, a new interactive discussion forum for Ph.D. students to engage in thoughtful discussions and explore ideas that shape their academic journeys. In our first session, “Pondering Positionality,” we discussed how personal identity and experiences influence and shape the doctoral journey, research and scholarly perspectives. In our second session, “Cultivating Community in Academia,” we explored practical ways to build meaningful connections and support one another in the academy. It was a true opportunity to connect, reflect and grow!

“As I always say, Ph.D.s are like the ghosts of McNair Hall. We somehow wander around the building during the day, the night and even holidays. Even when we were somewhere in the building, no one (except for our advisors) really recognized us. Some people were surprised about having a Ph.D. program in business school, once we exposed ourselves. When I first heard about the workshop for doctoral students, I honestly thought this was another ‘public relations thingy,’ a symbolic event to just show the world. But actually, I was wrong. It turns out the two workshops have been very joyful and helpful to me. It was really nice that somebody was willing to listen to us and solve problems together. It felt like I finally met someone who could actually see the ‘ghosts.’ I really am thankful for the OBE team to host such an event. There’s still a long way to go for doctoral/post-doctoral students inclusivity. However, it is always nice to have more opportunities (even small) for us and future students to resonate with ‘you belong here.’”
Hyung-Kun "HK" Park (Ph.D. student in Strategic Management)

Dialogues on Community at Rice, Fall 2024
Dialogues on Community at Rice (DCR) is a set of undergraduate workshops designed to explore critical approaches to culture, identity and dialogue fundamental to living and working at Rice and essential for taking full advantage of a Rice education. DCR is an invitation to undergraduates to think about how to better navigate differences while honoring each other’s humanity and dignity while holding space for the complexities of creating community with people from varying backgrounds and experiences. Rice Business Office of Belonging and Engagement director Meghan Griggs and assistant director Regina Edwards served as facilitators of the five-week workshop.

Curricular Collaborative, Spring 2025 
The annual Curricular Collaborative brought together Rice University students, staff, community members and faculty to review the curriculum of the five-week undergraduate workshop Dialogues on Community at Rice (DCR). Regina Edwards, assistant director of the Office for Belonging and Engagement at Rice Business, supported by institutional research analyst Maria Waquar, Ph.D., reviewed, analyzed and synthesized course evaluations through mixed methods and offered expertise as facilitators and researchers.

RISE stands for responsibility, inclusion and student empowerment and is an annual, preterm residential program offering incoming freshmen the opportunity to explore questions of racial justice, equity and urban life. Rice Business collaborated with other cross-campus partners to offer financial and program support to this university-sponsored, 10-day seminar that is aimed at familiarizing first-generation, limited-income and/or underserved students with both Rice and Houston. Dean Peter Rodriguez and Senior Associate Dean Connie Porter regularly participate in one of several “pop-in” panel discussions where staff, faculty and other campus leaders engage with students in critical conversations about life at the university and in Houston.

The Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship (Rice Alliance) is the university’s nationally recognized initiative devoted to the support of technology commercialization, entrepreneurship education and the launch of technology companies. For 25 years, the Rice Alliance has served as a hub for entrepreneurial efforts at the university by championing the adoption and growth of new programs and weaving an entrepreneurial mindset across campus. Their long-time partnerships bridge Houston’s entrepreneurial ecosystem with Rice’s campus; in 2024 they began leading programming at The Ion, Houston’s innovation hub in Midtown powered by Rice University. Rice Alliance has several initiatives that prioritize impact for students and the entrepreneurial community, including the Rice Business Plan Competition, Ignite Entrepreneurial Trek to Silicon Valley, the OwlSpark Startup and Small Business Accelerator, the Clean Energy Accelerator, and the Energy Technology Venture Forum.

The Rice Business Plan Competition (RBPC) is the world’s largest and richest intercollegiate student startup competition. The RBPC offers an educational program that gives collegiate entrepreneurs the real-world experience to pitch their startups, enhance their business strategy and learn what it takes to launch a successful company. Since 2001, alumni have raised more than $6.9 billion in funding.

RBPC 2025: Record Growth, Greater Impact
Rice Business served as title sponsor of the RBPC for the first time, underscoring its commitment to this impactful annual event. The 2025 competition welcomed its largest cohort in years — 137 team members and advisors from 42 startups, including 10 from first-time universities. Over $1.8M in prizes were awarded, with 57% of teams including women (up from 52% in 2024) and 26% including a Black or Hispanic team member.

Expertise in Action: Judges and Mentors Elevated Startup Success 
The 2025 RBPC welcomed a record 362 judges who provided high-impact micro-mentoring through real-time feedback, helping teams rapidly refine their pitches. One competitor noted, “We improved our pitch deck immensely from Day 1 to Day 3.”

Eighty-three percent of judges were active investors, entrepreneurs or ecosystem partners — an increase from past years, highlighting the caliber of expertise available to startups. Continued outreach also sustained 38% representation of women judges, reflecting venture capital industry shifts toward more women in investing.

For the 15th year, the RBPC has engaged with the Entrepreneur Futures Network (EFN) to offer competing startups free mentoring. In advance of the competition, 24 mentors from the Entrepreneur Futures Network conducted 156 hours of prep with startups, with six of the seecn competition finalists participating in the program.

Eagle Investors 
Since 2019, the Eagle Investors program has empowered under-resourced students to engage with innovation and entrepreneurship through the Rice Business Plan Competition (RBPC). Now run by Goodwill Industries, the program culminates with students serving as special prize judges. In 2025, over 35 Eagle Investors applied their year-long training to select and award a record $25,000 investment prize, their largest ever, to a competing startup.

Notable news from the past year of RBPC

• Gecko Robotics (RBPC year) achieved unicorn status with this latest funding round; their valuation is over $1B (article).
• The 2024 1st-place team, Protein Pints, expanded into 5,000 stores in the U.S. Protein Pints is backed mainly by investors from the Houston area who met the company at the RBPC.

Accelerator Programs

The Clean Energy Accelerator (CEA) and OwlSpark Startup and Small Business Accelerator (OwlSpark) aim to ensure our mentors and entrepreneurs-in-residence make up a diverse community, creating a culture that is open and welcoming to all participants, and to increase the scope of the programs by partnering with other accelerators that focus on diversity. These initiatives have resulted in an increased number of entrepreneurs-in-residence and mentors from diverse backgrounds beginning with the OwlSpark class of 2018 and the inaugural class of the CEA in 2021. Since 2021, program materials have provided inclusion and accessibility options for both accelerators.

Clean Energy Accelerator (CEA)
The Rice Alliance Clean Energy Accelerator (CEA) continues to advance Rice University’s leadership in energy innovation by accelerating the commercialization of breakthrough clean energy technologies. This year, CEA deepened its influence in venture funding, sector diversification, and regional ecosystem development, solidifying its role as a key driver of the energy transition:

• Expanded startup portfolio and funding success. Since inception, CEA has supported 55 startups that have collectively raised over $250 million in funding — up from $166 million last year. This growth highlights the program’s strength and increasing value to investors and industry partners seeking credible, high-potential clean energy ventures.
• Global reach and sector breadth. The program’s global appeal drew applications from across the U.S., Canada and beyond, with selected ventures spanning a wide array of sectors: advanced materials, hydrogen, carbon management, energy storage, corrosion detection, biomass, wind energy, and digital energy solutions. This diverse portfolio positions Rice as a central node of Houston’s energy innovation ecosystem.
• Strengthened commercialization pathways. CEA convened a cross-sector community of entrepreneurs, investors, corporate leaders and subject-matter experts to sharpen commercial strategies and accelerate market entry. Several startups secured pilot and demonstration projects with major energy firms — validating the program’s focus on actionable commercialization support.
• The CEA saw a 30% increase in quality applications from 2024, leading to a more selective cohort with 12 startups admitted from 65 eligible applicants (18.5%) compared to 24% last year.
• There are 4 XiRs and 80 mentors have committed to participating in 2025

OwlSpark Accelerator for Tech Startups and Small Business (OwlSpark)
Established in 2012, OwlSpark was founded to ignite a passion for entrepreneurship within the Rice community. The impact of OwlSpark has built an ecosystem for entrepreneurs to connect and venture teams to launch. OwlSpark provides students, faculty, staff and recent alumni hands-on entrepreneurship experiences and a roadmap from innovation to commercialization. OwlSpark 2025 is the 14th cohort of the program, and its impact is already being felt:

• Five MBAs participating — one alum, one PMBA student, three FTMBA students
• 57 sessions during the 12-week program, including 80 hours of training
• 40-plus mentors will support this year’s accelerator

Ignite Entrepreneurial Trek to Silicon Valley

The Ignite Trek provides entrepreneurial students with a chance to meet some of the most successful and up-and-coming entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. One of the goals of the Ignite Trek is to expose greater numbers of students from diverse backgrounds to entrepreneurship and venture capital. Ignite is a joint program between Rice Business, the Brown School of Engineering, the Weiss School of Natural Sciences, and the Rice University Office of Innovation. For the 2025 trek, graduate students from Enventure — a Houston-based nonprofit that supports the growth of Texas’ medical innovation industry — were invited to apply and take part.

Students hear the personal stories of entrepreneurs working to build their companies and learn from the successes (and failures) of the best-and-brightest that Silicon Valley has to offer. This intense immersion experience features company visits and entrepreneurial speakers. Site visits included Tesla, Google, Kleiner Perkins, Mitra Chem, Bessemer Venture Partners, and B Capital.

2025 Trek initiatives and achievements:

• Largest number of applicants in the program’s history — 216 applications for 60 spots in the trek
• Near gender parity of participants (47% women, 53% men), reflecting the increase in women in entrepreneurship and venture capital
• 12 different site visits for attendees (seven new ones from the previous year), from fast-scaling startups to large-cap venture capital firms

Feedback from participants:

• “Ignite Trek has been one of the best programs I’ve ever participated in — it has completely changed the way I see the world and the possibilities available to me after graduation.”
• “Life and career changing! Definitely the best thing that has happened to me in the year.”
• “It’s the best crash course on entrepreneurship and VC and the best resource available to Rice graduate students!”
• “Words can’t describe the impact Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship’s Ignite 2025 trip had on me as a student and as an aspiring entrepreneur.”
• “It is a game-changer if you want to know more about entrepreneurship! Totally recommended!”

Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers

The Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers (GCEC) is the premier leadership organization addressing the emerging topics of importance to the nation’s university-based centers for entrepreneurship. Headquartered in the Rice Alliance, GCEC has more than 700 members from over 350 universities. It has become the industry vehicle by which the top, established and emerging entrepreneurship centers can work together to share information, develop programs and initiatives, and collaborate globally. 
globalentrepreneurshipconsortium.org

In 2024, the GCEC hosted its largest conference to date, welcoming 715 attendees to Babson College for three days of learning sessions, networking opportunities and interactive roundtables. The GCEC Conference regularly features content on inclusivity and programming and courses to serve traditionally underestimated students. This has led to many GCEC member institutions creating inclusivity metrics.

Additional strategic initiatives:

• The GCEC introduced two virtual certification programs: Center Leader Certification Program and Educator Lab Certification. The Center Leader Certification Program delivers comprehensive training on key aspects of entrepreneurship center management. In 2024, ten members completed the program. The 2025 cohort has 16 participants enrolled. The Educator Lab Certification Program supports members in enhancing their teaching through evidence-based strategies. Launched in partnership with the Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship in 2025, the inaugural cohort includes 12 members from around the world.
• The Leadership Circle sponsorship program fosters collaboration among global leaders in entrepreneurship education. In 2024, 42 leading institutions participated, up from 37 the previous year, reflecting the program's increasing influence and value as well as GCEC’s commitment to expand the program.
• Global Summit: Bangkok was launched in 2024 to reach more members in emerging markets, in hopes of growing international engagement.