Letter
Check out 8 quick takeaways from the latest issue of Rice Business magazine, featuring global MBA experiences, rising undergraduate momentum, faculty highlights, AI insights and much more.
From the Dean
Letter
"At Rice Business, we see AI as a catalyst for innovation in the classroom and the workplace. Our graduates won’t just be proficient in AI — they’ll be leaders in shaping how it is deployed across industries."
The Future is Here: AI in Business Education
When I talk with our students today about preparing for the future of business, one topic rises to the top again and again: artificial intelligence. AI is no longer a futuristic tool waiting on the horizon — it is here, transforming industries, reshaping job functions and changing the way leaders make decisions. As a business school, it’s our responsibility to not only keep pace with these changes but to help lead them.
I recently served on a panel of deans discussing the future of AI. I was able to talk a bit about what we can offer students at Rice Business. For our students, AI is more than a skill set to list on a resume; it is fast becoming a foundational competency. AI certainly has ethical concerns, but our goal is to show students how to use it as a supplementary tool, one that can enhance the way they think about an issue or one that can serve as a tireless tutor for their work, continually making them better thinkers, doers and leaders.
Our undergraduates have BUSI 233 (“GenAI For Business: Tools and Implementation”) to help students on an introductory level, but we are also offering graduate-level elective courses like “AI Tools for Business Decision Making,” with Piyush Anand, assistant professor of marketing, or “Introduction to Generative AI for Business Applications,” with Kathleen Perley, an instructor in management who is also serving as an adviser on AI initiatives at Rice Business. Whether you’re an aspiring marketer using machine learning to understand customer behavior, a finance professional applying predictive analytics or an entrepreneur leveraging generative AI to prototype new ideas, fluency in these technologies is no longer optional. We must prepare our graduates to work with AI — critically, ethically and creatively — rather than fear being replaced by it.
For our faculty, AI is both a challenge and an opportunity. It challenges us to rethink teaching methods in a world where students may come to class having already asked ChatGPT to analyze case studies. But it also opens new avenues for research — from modeling global supply chains more accurately to exploring how algorithms shape consumer trust. Importantly, it forces us to engage with pressing questions: How do we ensure AI is used responsibly? How do we guard against bias? How can technology serve human ingenuity rather than diminish it?
At Rice Business, we see AI as a catalyst for innovation in the classroom and the workplace. Our graduates won’t just be proficient in AI — they’ll be leaders in shaping how it is deployed across industries.
Business education has always been about preparing students to lead in uncertain times. Today, uncertainty often takes the form of rapid technological change.
But these shifts are less a threat than an invitation: an invitation to think bigger, move faster and lead more thoughtfully.
— Peter
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Beyond the Exam Room
Features
Five MD/MBAs share insights on the future of the nation’s healthcare system, the promises of new tech and how to achieve lasting reform.
Weezie Mackey
Five alumni, who also have medical degrees and are working across different corners of healthcare, share candid insights on where the nation’s healthcare system is headed, the promises of new technologies and the pitfalls that must be addressed for lasting reform.
There is a broad trend in healthcare leadership — the growing recognition that clinical excellence alone isn’t enough to navigate modern medicine’s complex challenges. Artificial intelligence, physician burnout and financial sustainability aren‘t abstract policy debates for the doctors on the front lines. They’re daily realities shaping how care is delivered — and how patients experience medicine.
Rice Business has emerged as a natural hub for this evolution, positioned in the heart of the world’s largest medical center. The school’s dual-degree program, pairing the Rice MBA with a medical degree from Baylor College of Medicine, prepares future physician-leaders to tackle healthcare’s multifaceted problems from day one. Meanwhile, the proximity to the Texas Medical Center draws established physicians to Rice’s Executive MBA program, where they gain the business acumen to drive systemic change in their organizations. “Our alumni with MDs are uniquely positioned to help shape the future of healthcare,” says Shiva Sivaramakrishnan, academic director of healthcare programming and the Henry Gardiner Symonds professor in accounting at Rice Business. “They combine firsthand clinical experience with the big-picture strategic thinking needed to tackle systemic challenges facing healthcare — from financial sustainability to technological innovation and workforce well-being.”
Whether earned alongside medical training or years into practice, the MBA becomes a powerful lens for seeing healthcare not just as a calling, but as a complex system that can be redesigned, optimized and ultimately healed.
The AI Revolution: From Burden to Benefit
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When electronic medical records (EMRs) first rolled out, many physicians saw them as one more bureaucratic hurdle. “Despite physicians complaining about electronic medical records adding time and cognitive burdens, no doctor would choose to work without them,” says Dr. Anita Ying, EMBA ’13, vice president of ambulatory and revenue cycle medical operations at MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Now, artificial intelligence is beginning to smooth out the rough edges. At MD Anderson, ambient listening technology automatically generates clinical notes from patient visits. “I can focus entirely on my patients,” Ying explains. “I still review and edit the draft, but the cognitive load is dramatically reduced.” Those notes simultaneously serve colleagues coordinating care, meet billing requirements and update patients through their online portal.
Ying sees even broader potential: AI-powered tools could analyze events during a patient’s hospital stay to identify potential safety gaps for clinicians, while large language models could streamline back-office tasks like billing. Telemedicine, too, has reshaped care since COVID. Before the pandemic, virtual visits were rare. Today, 20% of MD Anderson’s outpatient appointments are remote, saving patients travel costs and time away from work. Still, Ying warns that without interstate licensure reform and more comprehensive reimbursement models, the promise of telemedicine will remain incomplete.
Burnout at a Breaking Point
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If AI offers hope, the human toll of modern healthcare remains sobering. Dr. Aparajitha K. Verma, EMBA ’18, medical director of quality and patient experience at UTHealth Houston Neurosciences, describes physician burnout as “a persistent, progressive crisis.” Causes range from endless administrative tasks to rigid schedules that leave no space for work-life balance.
Some solutions are technological — AI scribes that take notes, tools that triage inboxes. But Verma insists that technology alone isn’t enough. “There needs to be fundamental cultural and policy changes led by healthcare organizations,” she says. She argues for aligning incentives with physician values, shifting compensation from volume to value, investing in leadership pathways and offering mental health support without stigma. “The goal is to reconnect physicians with their original purpose,” she adds, “while providing the flexibility and support they need to thrive.”
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Dr. R. Jason Yong, MD/MBA ’08, chief of the Division of Pain Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, echoes those concerns. He sees burnout as a form of “moral injury” — a widening gap between why physicians entered medicine and what their days actually look like.
Here too, AI offers a counterweight. Machine learning can uncover treatment insights from vast datasets. More transparent approaches, such as relevance-based prediction models, show physicians how conclusions are reached — preserving both accuracy and trust. Chatbots and AI-driven intake systems can also streamline visits, allowing doctors to spend more meaningful time with patients. “If designed thoughtfully,” Yong stresses, “AI can help restore what drew many of us to medicine in the first place: caring for patients face-to-face.”
Access and Equity: The Upstream Challenge
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While technology and burnout capture headlines, Dr. Omar Matuk-Villazon, EMBA ’18, chief medical officer at Suvida Healthcare, sees a more fundamental crisis brewing. Physician shortages aren't just numbers on a spreadsheet — they’re reshaping who gets care and how. At Suvida, a value-based primary care organization serving Latino seniors, those shortages translate directly into health disparities.
“For these patients, a shortage doesn’t just mean waiting longer for an appointment,” Matuk- Villazon explains. “It can mean worsening chronic disease and unnecessary ER visits.” Language barriers, cultural mistrust and geographic isolation compound the problem. Rural hospital closures leave entire communities stranded, while emergency department overcrowding becomes “simply the downstream signal of upstream failure.”
His Rice MBA training taught him to see these challenges structurally, not just clinically. “We cannot solve shortages with numbers alone,” he says. “We must redesign delivery — building team-based models where physicians, nurse practitioners and community health workers extend one another’s reach, supported by technology.” The vision goes beyond traditional brick-and-mortar thinking.
“Access is no longer just about hospitals; it’s about continuity, cultural trust and the right care at the right time.”
For Matuk-Villazon, the business challenge is clear: aligning incentives so that equity becomes financially sustainable. “When we succeed, we create not just access, but equity — and that is the foundation for healthier communities.”
Dollars and Diagnosis: The Economic Tension
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Beyond technology and workforce well-being, the economics of healthcare threaten its foundation. “The biggest challenge in healthcare today is financial sustainability,” says Dr. Rupesh Nigam, EMBA ’23. Costs continue to rise faster than wages, leaving families vulnerable to debt and health systems under pressure. Even insured patients face medical bankruptcy.
Nigam points to a deeper problem: healthcare is trapped between fee-for-service, which rewards volume, and value-based care, which rewards outcomes. The result is an unstable middle ground. “This tension makes it harder to plan, invest and deliver care efficiently,” he explains. The ripple effects are visible at the bedside: delayed discharges, fragmented coordination and avoidable readmissions — all costly, all corrosive to trust.
For Nigam, sustainability depends on treating healthcare both as a service and as a business. “We need to simplify processes without sacrificing quality, use technology to reduce waste, and build stronger alignment among payers, providers and patients,” he says. Only then can financial reality and clinical mission converge.
Where Medicine Meets Management
Across these perspectives, one theme stands out: Technology alone won’t heal healthcare, but it can be a catalyst for change. AI can lighten documentation burdens, extend the reach of specialists through telemedicine and make visits more human. But unless health systems also reform outdated structures, invest in their people and reconcile competing payment models, progress will remain piecemeal.
For physicians like Ying, Verma, Yong, Matuk-Villazon and Nigam, the vision is clear. Healthcare must evolve into a system where innovation, sustainability and humanity reinforce — rather than undermine — one another. That, they argue, is the prescription for a healthier future.
Hear more from Dr. Omar Matuk-Villazon ’18 on the “Owl Have You Know” podcast:
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Retail Remix
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Ramon Marquez ’25 is reinventing iconic retail brands by running them like startups.
Dan Morrell
Ramon Marquez ’25 is reinventing iconic retail brands by running them like startups.
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Ramon Marquez '25 has been predicting what customers want since he was 5. His grandfather had a general store in the small border town of Zaragoza, Chihuahua, Mexico — the kind where customers would approach the counter and ask for items, which his grandfather would dutifully go and track down for them. Marquez would visit his grandfather’s store on weekends, helping work the register and grabbing items for customers. “One of the things that I loved the most was to guess what they were going to ask for,” he recalls. “It became this kind of game for me.”
It was a fortuitous first experience with retail; Marquez has since led a more than 30-year career at some of the world’s most famous retail brands. “If you look at what my role has been throughout my professional life, it has been to predict what people are going to buy,” he says.
After graduating from the University of Texas at El Paso — where he briefly ran a side business selling sweaters to his fellow students — he joined JCPenney to help open their Mexican division in the wake of NAFTA. Over the next 20 years, he would hold senior roles at Old Navy, Abercrombie & Fitch, American Eagle and New York & Company — each one selected strategically. “I’ve always been very careful about picking who I work for,” he says. “At the beginning, it was JCPenney … but when I went to Old Navy, the idea was that I wanted to go into a fast-paced younger company that was in growth mode.” He joined when the brand had just 200 stores and left when it had ballooned to over 1,000.
Seven years ago, Marquez became the head of retail at Transformco — which manages Sears and Kmart, two of America’s iconic-but-struggling legacy retailers — taking on a job many industry insiders viewed as impossible: not just reviving the brands, but reimagining their future.
The jump to Sears and Kmart was not an obvious move for Marquez. “I went to the Kmart store on 34th Street [in New York City] in Penn Station … and I said, ‘There’s no one — no one — who can clean this up,’” he remembers. “And then I walked away.” But something pulled him back. “What if I am that person?” he asked himself. He joined the company just weeks before Kmart’s bankruptcy filing.
What followed was a crash course in chaos management. “I didn’t know if, in the wake of the bankruptcy, I was going to have to lay off 200 people or if we were even going to continue to operate,” he says. But what Marquez soon came to realize was that this role was no longer limited to being the guy who can correctly guess what the customer wants. His role was also to redefine the culture of the organization. “They hired me to be the leader of these people — and to pick up the pieces and push the company forward,” he says.
That required a mental pivot. “There’s an ego behind it, right? Because I refused to be the person that got left behind, just shutting things down.”
Instead, he reframed the situation: “A turnaround,” he says, “is just a startup in disguise.”
That entrepreneurial mindset has defined Marquez’s approach.
The first thing he had to do was take an inventory. “We needed to understand what we are really good at, what our assets are and what our liabilities are,” he says. “Obviously you want to get rid of your liabilities as soon as possible. And then we needed to stay very clear on who the customer is and what opportunity we have with that customer. Because chasing a customer who has left and is not coming back is just not the right thing to do.”
He also had to learn to operate without the kind of available assets he had at his previous positions. “Scarcity breeds innovation,” he says. “I worked for companies that had it all … here, you have to think through it. But as long as you understand who your customer is … you’ll figure it out.”
In the early days there wasn’t much to work with — except, that is, for the stores’ existing real estate. “There are brands and partners that want to get into their real estate, but they don’t want to lease the entire store,” says Marquez. “So I partnered with them, and they would bring their product into my stores," Marquez says. “I didn’t have to spend the money on the inventory … and then we would split the commissions.”
He also introduced ready-to-assemble furniture in Sears locations. His team was skeptical at first. “They said, ‘This could not sell here,’” he says. “But it worked so well there that we actually brought it to the Kmart stores.”
As a manager, Marquez leaned into a leadership style that focused on building trust. “We’re a smaller team, more dynamic. We pick up the phone, and we have open communication,” he says. “I’m also in the stores all the time. I talk to sales associates, they pick up the phone, they email me.” When the pandemic hit, the company embraced remote work and created a more flexible team culture. “There’s a lot of trust among us,” he says.
Those open lines of communication have been critical to fostering innovation, says Marquez.
“A lot of companies, when things are tough, the first thing that goes is the creativity. So a lot of the innovation just gets cut and everybody goes for the safe option — but is it the safe option that got you to where you are? It kind of works against you.”
Marquez also credits a new humility in helping him lead innovation at the stores, which includes keeping an open ear for ideas. “I love talking to people that are not in retail or that are not in my business about things I’m going through, because they have a completely different perspective — that is not emotional, that is not brand-driven, that just comes from a different place,” he says.
Marquez wrapped up an MBA at Rice in May 2025, an experience he says allowed him to reflect and shape his leadership style and his definition of success. “It’s the people I work with — and how people feel at the end of the day and how I feel at the end of the day — that’s what matters,” says Marquez. He’s more patient these days, too. “I don’t react to things the way I used to,” he said. “I was more impulsive before. It was all about how fast I could get to an answer. And now it’s more about: Let’s think about it, see what our options are, and then make the best decision.”
But even with all that’s changed for him, the earliest lessons remain relevant. “Customer satisfaction is still paramount,” says Marquez. That 5-year-old kid at his grandfather’s store, eager to make a sale, is still alive and well. “If you come to the store and you stop me, and you tell me how much you love what we have, you make my day.”
Hear more from Marquez on the “Owl Have You Know” podcast:
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"At Rice Business, we see AI as a catalyst for innovation in the classroom and the workplace. Our graduates won’t just be proficient in AI — they’ll be leaders in shaping how it is deployed across industries."
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Startup Showdown
Features
From mushroom surfboards to farming with AI, the Rice Business Plan Competition has been putting founders to the test for 25 years.
Helen Huneycutt
From surfboards made of mushrooms to AI-powered farming, the Rice Business Plan Competition has been putting ideas and their founders to the ultimate test for 25 years.
On a pleasant April day in Houston’s Innovation District, Amelia Martin stands before a panel of hundreds of judges with a respirator dangling around her neck. In just 60 seconds, she lays out the danger of Styrofoam surfboards: In the workshop, the material sheds toxic dust and fumes; in the landfill, it lingers, leaching harm into the environment. From there she pivots, introducing her team’s solution: a nontoxic mushroom-based substitute to Styrofoam.
Pitching for a share of more than $1 million in prizes, Martin takes a steadying breath and lifts a surfboard prototype above her head. This moment is part of the “elevator pitch” at the Ion — stage one of the Rice Business Plan Competition (RBPC), the world’s largest and richest intercollegiate graduate student startup competition, hosted by the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship.
Martin’s pitch for her company, Mud Rat, is one of 42 presentations on the first day of the competition. Contestants range from chemical recycling for textiles to an automatic music transcription tool, an AI-powered sports watch, and firefighter gear made without carcinogenic PFAS (i.e., “forever chemicals”). There are many innovative ideas in this room, but only a few will make it through to the final rounds. Tonight is just the beginning.
After the preliminary round of pitches comes to an end, attendees step out of the Ion into the Gulf air — a warm welcome to competitors who have come from as far away as Canada and Germany. Tomorrow, the audience will gather in McNair Hall to see which of the 42 teams will pitch their way into the next round.
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By the second day of the competition, student teams have been divided into “flights” by industry, depending on whether their product addresses a concern in consumer products, digital enterprise, energy/cleantech, hard tech or life sciences.
It’s 9:15 a.m. when New Jersey natives Harrison Nastasi and Justin Iannelli step up to the podium in the consumer products room as their team, representing Bobica Bars, passes around samples. The clock ticking, Nastasi dives into his journey as a young founder: Motivated by his mother’s lifelong battle with arthritis and his father’s diagnosis of celiac disease, Nastasi began a search for dietary alternatives to support those with health challenges. Combining the benefits of smoothie bowls with on-the-go convenience, Nastasi created and began selling Bobica Bars, high-antioxidant glazed granola bars, as a freshman in college. On stage, the team endures a series of hard-hitting questions from their judges — some about quality control and others about financial projections.
What the audience is watching today has evolved considerably since the contest debuted in 2001 as the Southwest Business Plan Competition, when it welcomed just nine competing teams and about 45 judges to campus. It was Dennis Murphree, a Rice Business lecturer of more than 25 years and a successful venture capital investor, who introduced the idea to leadership. The inaugural event succeeded through the efforts of business school student volunteers led by MBA student coordinator Tom Stein and the team at Rice Alliance under the direction of Brad Burke, who remains executive director of Rice Alliance to this day.
Much can happen in 25 years. This year’s competition attracted 550 applicants, the most competitive pool of applicants to date. Representing 34 universities and four countries, each of the 42 teams have spent months, and in some cases years, preparing to pitch their product, service or technology.
One floor below the Bobica Bars group, the Mud Rat team is passing around a block of what looks like hay and packing peanuts melted together. But when Martin (UConn) joins Patricio Acevedo Zarraga (Florida International University) to begin their 10-minute pitch, judges learn that the mysterious brick is actually dried mushroom mycelium — an environmentally safe and biodegradable alternative to Styrofoam intended for surfboard production.
Martin, who spent her childhood on the ocean and began making her own boards in high school, uses her expertise in plant sciences to field questions from the judges about the harvesting, longevity and biology of the source of their board. At the end of an otherwise captivating pitch, one judge asks a pertinent question: “Why are you limiting your product to just surfboards?”
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Downstairs, a group of students from the University of Houston huddles in deep conversation with investors, trading tips on the perfect pitch — and where they fell short. “You’re asking for money, so there has to be this confidence and trust that you could be a good steward of it,” says one adviser. “Investors are going to grill you on the figures. They’re going to grill you on the tech. They’re going to grill you on the business.”
Since its first year, the competition’s prize pool has grown from a modest $10,000 to $200,000 just five years later — crossing the million-dollar threshold in 2010. The money certainly helps teams get off the ground, but the sound advice and tough questions that come from judges and investors are equally helpful.
Though it was renamed from the Southwest Business Plan Competition early on, the RBPC has picked up many nicknames over the years — like “April Madness” (Fortune magazine) and the “World Series of biz school contests” (CNN Business, then CNNMoney).
With this claim to fame, the RBPC continues to draw judges from around the world. This year celebrates its largest ever crowd of judges, more than 350 actively participating judges in total, comprising dedicated annual participants and first-time investors alike. Some come from globally recognized corporations; others, from organizations dedicated to local impact in the Houston area.
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On the morning of day three, 15 semifinalists add new elements and finishing touches to their presentations based on the feedback they received in Round 1, while the remaining 27 teams make their way into the wild-card round and a shot at redemption.
In the semifinalist pitch room, Madeline Eiken, a bioengineering Ph.D. student from the University of Michigan, steps up. She shares how preclinical drug testing models are failing at the expense of patients around the country. Eiken, alongside Don Sobell, Charlie Childs and their team at Intero Biosystems, are at the brink of revolutionizing personalized medicine.
What began as Childs’ and Eiken’s Ph.D. research in Michigan’s Spence Lab led to the discovery of a functioning human intestine contained in a petri dish. Guided by Jason Spence, a professor who made the foundational discovery of an adult stem-cell-derived human intestinal organoid in 2011, the two Ph.D. students realized these miniature organs could function as preclinical tools to predict patient response while reducing costs and minimizing animal testing. Marketed as GastroScreen, the innovation out of Intero Biosystems allows for efficacy testing, disease modeling and a precise reflection of drug safety and toxicity.
Following the 10-minute pitch, applause gives way to a flurry of questions. Judges, impressed with their groundbreaking progress in the lab, ask about scientific limitations, financial restraints and exit strategies. Afterward, Eiken, Sobell and Childs collapse into chairs in the Anderson Family Commons and begin debriefing.
“It was a very reactive room of judges, and we got some amazing questions,” says Sobell, an MBA student at Michigan. “I was impressed by one of the judges who asked about how much we expected to raise before we could exit, which challenged us to think really far into the future.”
In the wild-card room, four students from Louisiana State University take the podium to share how FarmSmarter.ai, one of multiple AI teams at the competition, is on a mission to help farmers and agricultural consultants. With the help of a virtual assistant called FarmerAI, farmers can optimize their yield with access to agricultural and regulatory information, crop management strategies, geospatial data, weather impacts and all their field notes with ease. Users can also identify plants, insects, fungi and diseases by simply uploading a photo to the app.
“I grew up farming,” says Cole Lacombe, an agricultural consultant and business developer at FarmSmarter.ai. “One wrong decision can be detrimental to your crops and livelihood. Our goal is to bring better insights and faster recommendations to farmers across the country.”
After all teams present, the crowd convenes in Shell Auditorium to hear which seven teams move forward in the last round. Intero Biosystems and FarmSmarter.ai are announced as finalists, along with re.Solution, MabLab, Mito Robotics, Xatoms and Rice University’s own team, Pattern Materials.
At awards night, the company showcase is abuzz with anticipation. Hundreds of judges mingle with the members of the 42 teams, congratulating them, sharing tips and encouraging next steps as attendees weave through the lobby to cast votes for their favorite startups.
After dinner, Rice Alliance executive director Brad Burke takes the stage alongside RBPC director Catherine Santamaria to announce winners of this year’s competition. Before the top teams are announced, an array of prizes is awarded — from industry-specific honors to those celebrating women and first-time entrepreneurs — ensuring all startups leave with recognition for their work.
One by one, final winners take the stage to accept their prizes, beginning with FarmSmarter.ai in seventh place. Six teams are called forward and then the room becomes quiet, just in time for the grand prize to be awarded to Intero Biosystems from the University of Michigan.
Founders Childs, Eiken and Sobell don’t just take first place at this year’s competition — they walk away with more than $900,000 in funding, the second-largest amount of prizes ever awarded to a single team in RBPC history.
“We’ve made so many wonderful connections at this year’s Rice Business Plan Competition. And it’s truly launching us into a whole new realm of support — from investors, connections and everything in between,” says Childs. “We’re so thankful.”
“Winning first place at the world’s largest graduate student pitch competition is a remarkable achievement. I’m excited to see how Intero Biosystems and their people-focused mission continues to grow and make an impact in medicine,” says Peter Rodriguez, dean of Rice Business.
“It’s been an honor to see the passion and innovation each team has brought to this year’s Rice Business Plan Competition, and we’re tremendously proud to support them in their journey.”
2025 RBPC Finalists
- Intero Biosystems, University of Michigan
- MabLab, Harvard University
- Re.solution, RWTH Aachen University
- Pattern Materials, Rice University
- Xatoms, Western University and University of Toronto
- Mito Robotics, Carnegie Mellon University
- FarmSmarter.ai, Louisiana State University
Hear more from the 2025 RBPC winning team, Intero Biosystems, on the “Owl Have You Know” podcast below:
Five Questions for Pattern Materials, The Rice University Team
Get to know Lucas Eddy and Alexander Lathem, Ph.D. students studying applied physics and two of the brilliant minds behind the Rice team. Their journey began in the James Tour Lab and has gained momentum through entrepreneurial support like the Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Lilie), where Lathem is currently an Innovation Fellow.
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- What does Pattern Materials do? We make graphene patterns using a laser scribing method, which can then be easily integrated into technologies like strain and pressure sensors, memory devices, and other advanced electronic devices.
- What is one helpful critique you have received at RBPC? The most helpful feedback has been to better translate the tangible value added by our technology, which is very technical at first glance.
- Where will your fourth-place prize money be going? Our prize money will allow us to purchase prototyping equipment and set up our workspace so we can focus on product development and customer acquisition.
- What advice would you give someone entering RBPC next year? Run your pitch by people who are not interested in the scientific field that your idea comes from — and focus on the value you add to your chosen market.
- If you had $1M to invest in one other team at this year’s RBPC, who would it go to? There were many great competitors at the 2025 RBPC, but it would probably be Motmot, which had a very neat robot designed to analyze water infrastructure without having to shut off service.
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Ramon Marquez ’25 is reinventing iconic retail brands by running them like startups.
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ChopnBlok and Trill Burgers' founders met over 10 years ago at Rice. Now they're teaming up on comfort food.
Entrepreneurship
In the Media
Student & Alumni Mentions
In The Media
ChopnBlok owner and Rice MBA '14 Ope Amosu is partnering with Trill Burgers to host two fusion dining nights, blending West African flavors into comfort food. The collaboration celebrates ChopnBlok’s first year in Montrose and re-connects Amosu with Bun B, whom he first met years ago.
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Faculty Media Mention
ChopnBlok and Trill Burgers' founders met over 10 years ago at Rice. Now they're teaming up on comfort food.
Entrepreneurship
In the Media
Student & Alumni Mentions
In The Media
ChopnBlok owner and Rice MBA '14 Ope Amosu is partnering with Trill Burgers to host two fusion dining nights, blending West African flavors into comfort food. The collaboration celebrates ChopnBlok’s first year in Montrose and re-connects Amosu with Bun B, whom he first met years ago.
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Faculty Media Mention
Strong-Arm Leaders Often Get the Minority Vote
Faculty Research
In the Media
Leadership
In The Media
A study co-authored by Rice Business professor Marlon Mooijman on voter preferences in the U.S. and Europe helps explain why strong-arm leaders often get the minority vote.
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Faculty Media Mention
In Emerging Economies, Shared Knowledge Is Key
In nascent markets, breakthrough products like clean cookstoves can save lives. But lasting impact does not come from donations. It comes from the “knowledge intermediaries” that build a market infrastructure to get these products into homes.
Strategy and Environment
Rice Business Wisdom
Strategy
Peer-Reviewed Research
Emerging Markets
In nascent markets, breakthrough products like clean cookstoves can save lives. But lasting impact does not come from donations. It comes from the “knowledge intermediaries” that build a market infrastructure to get these products into homes.
Based on research by Diana Jue-Rajasingh
Key findings:
- Markets may need to be built from the ground up in countries that lack the markets for distributing certain life-saving products.
- Building markets to distribute these products is likely a more scalable and sustainable approach to improving public welfare than dropping them into a community for free.
- Many scholars think of governments and multinational corporations as the main actors behind market-building. But they’re overlooking an important third actor behind this work: the “knowledge intermediary.”
More than two billion people — roughly one-third of the world’s population — cook with heat sources that pollute their households and cause respiratory illness. The World Health Organization estimates that three million people die every year from problems related to cooking on open fires or stoves using fuels like kerosene, wood, crop waste and coal.
The good news is many of these deaths are preventable. Since the 1950s, a product has existed that can cook without yielding as many harmful emissions. It’s called the clean cookstove.
Like many proven technologies that haven’t pervaded their intended markets, clean cookstoves raise some tough questions: How do we get these life-saving, culturally appropriate tools into wider use? And how can we do it in a way that is financially viable and self-sustaining — i.e., not entirely dependent on donations?
In theory, economic markets are meant to match supply with demand. But when it comes to delivering life-saving goods and services, that mechanism often falters. What happens if the demand for something like clean cookstoves exists in a particular region that has no market infrastructure for it?
When Products Exist but Markets Don’t
Who creates such markets, and how? In a new paper published in Organization Science, Rice Business assistant professor of management Diana Jue-Rajasingh looks beyond the usual suspects — governments and multinational corporations — to study a critical market-building role: the underappreciated, multifaceted actor she calls the “knowledge intermediary.”
“There are critical players doing work in this space that are not companies or governments,” Jue-Rajasingh says. “This opens the door to a third sector.”
In the clean cookstoves space, for example, the main knowledge intermediary is the Clean Cooking Alliance (CCA). (Coincidentally, the CEO of CCA is a Rice Business alum.) The CCA is housed within the United Nations but represents a broad coalition of public and private collaborators, including U.S. government agencies, nonprofits like the Shell Foundation and private companies.
Although building knowledge for a new market is costly and complex, Jue-Rajasingh’s findings show why investing in it is essential.
She contrasts the “knowledge-push” model of market-building with the more common “charity-push” approach, where products are simply given away in low-income communities. She argues that the knowledge-based strategy is more likely to produce scalable, sustainable results over the long term.
“The charity-push ignores what people actually want,” Jue-Rajasingh said. “It overlooks the need to build local capacity — whether through businesses, entrepreneurs or supportive policies and norms. You can hand out products, but if nothing is changing on the ground, the impact may be minimal.”
“If a country has only nonprofits and no companies, it won’t generate the full range of activity and momentum the industry needs — and the same is true in reverse.”
The Overlooked Role of Knowledge Intermediaries
Making a market, especially in poor and remote communities, is a complicated and expensive process with complementary components for both supply and demand.
On the demand side, education is key: Potential customers need to know that an improved product exists and that it’s relevant to them. They also need to know how to correctly use and maintain it. Sometimes financing tools are also part of the equation, to ensure new products are affordable for their target audiences.
On the supply side, distribution networks need to operate dependably to get the products to people who need them. Often, building a new market also calls for government actors to step in, either by taxing certain products differently, helping to promote specific solutions or exempting key product parts from tariffs.
All of this collaborative, educational, market-making work falls under the purview of the knowledge intermediary.
Jue-Rajasingh explains that the effort unfolds in two stages. The first involves a first-order knowledge intermediary — in this case, the CCA — helping launch high-level industry development in a small group of countries (for the CCA, these include Bangladesh, China, Ghana, Guatemala, India, Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda). At this stage, the intermediary acts as a central hub: gathering and sharing information, brokering partnerships for pilot projects and learning opportunities, and providing resources such as technical assistance, business training, financing and more.
In the second stage, a different set of organizations move to the fore: those that have worked with the main knowledge intermediary in its countries of focus during stage one. Now, those many organizations become second-order knowledge intermediaries, bringing their new market-building knowledge further afield. These second-order knowledge intermediaries are typically existing companies and nonprofits.
If a first-order knowledge intermediary like the Clean Cooking Alliance represents the hub of a wheel, second-order knowledge intermediaries are the spokes — transmitting knowledge and market capacity into new places.
Hubs and Spokes
To trace the ripple effects of the efforts made by first- and second-order knowledge intermediaries, Jue-Rajasingh conducted interviews and drew archival data from the various second-order organizations that were active in the CCA’s primary countries and beyond. She also leveraged a dataset derived from a CCA partner directory, which comprised 2,371 organizations operating across 113 countries between 2013 and 2019.
The data revealed that, indeed, second-order knowledge intermediaries that connected to the central hub of the CCA did appear to spur more entrepreneurial activity in the countries where they operated, outside of CCA’s geographical focus.
While she had suspected that second-order knowledge intermediary organizations were helping to spread market-building knowledge, she says she was struck by the level of activity she observed: “In the secondary countries, these organizations weren't just trying to sell products — they were working with other organizations to build a market infrastructure,” she says.
Of course, focusing only on market mechanisms to disseminate social solutions can be taken to an extreme, Jue-Rajasingh notes. The approach can overlook people who have very constrained financial resources, for example. Also: Countries with a healthy mix of companies and nonprofits were more likely to build strong markets for clean cookstoves.
“There were some kinds of knowledge and capabilities that companies could take up, and others that nonprofits could,” Jue-Rajasingh explains. “If a country has only nonprofits and no companies, it won’t generate the full range of activity and momentum the industry needs — and the same is true in reverse.”
Written by Katie Gilbert
Jue-Rajasingh, “Second-Order Knowledge Intermediaries and Multi-Country Entrepreneurial Entry into a Nascent Industry.” Organization Science (2025), forthcoming. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2021.15661
Assistant Professor of Strategic Management
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What Do MBA Rankings Really Measure?
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MBA rankings can be useful, but what do they really tell you? Learn how annual lists are created, what they can reveal about top schools like Rice Business and how to use them in your MBA search.
When you’re narrowing down your dream business school, you may be pointed toward MBA rankings. There are many lists identifying the “best” programs, but it’s not always easy to understand what each of them truly measures.
Rankings can reveal a lot about what makes a top MBA program like Rice Business unique. Let’s dive into the methodologies behind major rankings, how to read these rankings effectively and what they can mean for you.
A Quick Guide to MBA Rankings
In your MBA search, you’ll find a number of sites and outlets reporting on a variety of elements from broad topics like overall program to specific lists, like which schools have the most female MBA students. Here’s a sample of what you might find on each website:
- U.S. News & World Report: Overall MBA programs; Best online MBA programs; Best MBA programs for specialties, like entrepreneurship, accounting, management, etc.
- Poets&Quants: Best MBA and undergraduate programs for entrepreneurship; Most influential business schools; Best international MBA programs
- Financial Times: Top 100 business schools in the world, with interactive columns evaluating salary, carbon footprint, diversity, faculty expertise and more
- Bloomberg Businessweek: B-school rankings by compensation, learning, networking, entrepreneurship and diversity; MBA schools ranked by region
- Fortune: Annual MBA program ranking that includes components like acceptance rate, median base salary of new grads, median GMAT and tuition
- Princeton Review: Best Business Schools based on alumni and student surveys; Top graduate entrepreneurship programs (No. 1 spot held by Rice Business for six years)
Interested in Rice Business?
How Are MBA Programs Ranked?
At first glance, rankings might seem straightforward: the higher the rank, the better the school, right? The truth is that each ranking system uses its own formula, weighing certain factors more heavily than others.
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For example, rankings from the U.S. News & World Report emphasize school reputation and career outcomes. To do this, they measure peer and recruiter evaluations in a quality assessment (25%), starting salary (20%), salary by profession (10%), employment rates at graduation (7%) and at three months (13%), and evaluation of student selectivity (25%), which includes student GMAT/GRE scores, undergraduate GPA and acceptance rates.
By contrast, The Financial Times takes a more international approach, evaluating components like career progression (i.e. salary increases), professional growth, faculty research and education, international mobility, alumni workforce and various diversity metrics.
And business school aficionado Poets&Quants combines multiple rankings like USNWR, The Financial Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, LinkedIn and the Princeton Review, aiming to produce a composite view.
Reading Between the Rankings
Rankings can offer helpful benchmarks, but they might not capture the full value of a school’s MBA program. That’s why you should consider the factors that matter most to you and what your long-term goals are as you begin narrowing down your options.
When evaluating rankings alongside your personal goals, be sure to keep in mind that:
- Methodology matters. Each ranking system emphasizes various metrics and focuses on specific priorities, like career progression or diversity.
- Metrics can be narrow. Most lists measure specific quantifiable metrics, which can discount intangible (but critical) factors like campus culture, peer relationships and networking strength.
- Lists change annually. Rankings fluctuate, sometimes due to minor statistical shifts and other economic and geopolitical factors. A slight change in rank may not necessarily reflect a real difference in program quality.
Rankings can offer a ton of insights and key data, but it’s still worth looking past the numbers to understand what drives a school’s reputation and student success. At the end of the day, what matters most is your “fit” with a particular school.
Making the Rankings Work for You
At Rice Business our faculty expertise, career services and engaged alumni network have earned Rice Business consistent recognition across multiple ranking platforms. MBA rankings are valuable guides, but should be one of many tools you use in your decision-making process.
The right MBA program should align with your personal ambitions, values and learning style, while equipping you with the network and skills to reach your goals. One of the best ways to find your community is by visiting a school. We encourage you to contact a Rice Business recruiter or attend an upcoming event to learn more about our MBA programs.
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Rice Business is the top-ranked graduate entrepreneurship program and home to the annual Rice Business Plan Competition (pictured above).
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Entrepreneurship Is in the Rice DNA feat. Al Danto ’00
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Entrepreneurship
Season 5, Episode 17
In this special live episode, Al Danto '00, senior lecturer in entrepreneurship, shares his extraordinary career journey and his story of recovery after two life-threatening medical crises.
Owl Have You Know
Season 5, Episode 17
Al Danto, senior lecturer in entrepreneurship, has been a trusted mentor and beloved member of the Rice Business community for more than two decades. A serial entrepreneur, he launched his first company at the age of 23, growing it through multiple acquisitions before selling to a private equity-backed group. After earning his MBA at Rice Business, he returned to teach New Enterprise, Enterprise Acquisition and their corresponding E-labs – guiding students as they build and acquire businesses of their own. He is also a driving force behind the Veterans Business Battle.
Beyond his professional success, Al has had a personal journey few could imagine. In May 2022, Al experienced two life-threatening medical crises and was placed on advanced life support. Sixty-five days later, he walked out of the hospital determined to return to the classroom, and by October, he was back.
In this episode of Owl Have You Know, Al shares his extraordinary career journey, his story of recovery and why he urges everyone to “grab life” and make a difference.
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Episode Transcript
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[00:00]Maya Pomroy: Welcome to Owl Have You Know, a podcast from Rice Business. This episode is part of our Up Next series, where faculty, researchers, and alumni weigh in on the trends currently shaping the world of business.
Rice Business is known for its quality and its caliber of professors. And some have even reached legendary status. One of those legends is Al Danto. Al's classes are a mix of MBA bootcamp, a part entrepreneurial masterclass, and part life lessons. He is truly an extraordinary professor and someone that everybody wants to get into that class, no matter how long you wait.
From running lemonade stands to outperforming his peers and Little League raffle ticket sales, Al is always someone who sees opportunities where others see obstacles. At the age of 24, he launched a business, grew it to be listed on the Inc. 500 Fastest Growing Business list, and then exited through a sale to private equity. Since then, he has launched multiple ventures, consulted with business leaders about high stakes and strategic exits, and invested across multiple industries. And through it all, as a person who has survived two life-threatening medical crises, with a renewed sense of hope, faith, and determination to live each and every day to its fullest.
His life is a blend of grit, gratitude, business prowess, and determination. And he is here this evening to talk to us about the mindset and the lessons he's learned that can transform the way that we live and the way that we lead. Please, join me in welcoming Al Danto.
[02:02]Al Danto: Woo. Thank you. Woo. Here we go, baby. Thank you, Maya.
[02:09]Maya Pomroy: Absolutely!
[02:09]Al Danto: Thank you very much for the introduction.
[02:11]Maya Pomroy: Yeah. So, my first question is, how many of those tickets did you sell?
[02:15]Al Danto: Well, it was really interesting. We talk a lot about DNA, and maybe I'll give you some insights to the class, kind of, what were you as a kid, right? What did you do as a kid? What did you enjoy? Were you analytical? I know Al Galindo. I've worked with a lot. Our latest faculty member, it always been engineering, always been analytical. Other kids are outgoing, you know, jumping out, you know, off of roofs and stuff like that. And one of mine, we had to sell raffle tickets for Little League. And we were outside the bank. It was Friday. I had my Little League uniform, getting ready to go to the game. And my dad, we saw people come out of the bank. Back in the day, everyone cashed their check on Friday. So, I walked up, this little kid, and I said, “Hey, would you like to buy a raffle ticket?” And they couldn't say they didn't have any money.
[03:02]Maya Pomroy: It's all about marketing and being in the right place at the right time.
[03:05]Al Danto: It is. It’s being, you know, being in the right place at the right time. And then, you know, so that became my secret spot to sell raffle tickets, based on people had money, they came out of the bank on Friday. As a little kid in a baseball uniform, how could you say “no” to them, right?
[03:20]Maya Pomroy: Right. No, you can't say “no” to a kid, like, with Girl Scout cookies or, you know, anything that the Boy Scouts are selling as well.
[03:26]Al Danto: Exactly.
[03:27]Maya Pomroy: So, you grew up in Michigan? Cold.
[03:29]Al Danto: Cold.
[03:30]Maya Pomroy: Cold in Michigan. And so, did you always know that this is what you wanted to do, or was it something that sparked that interest for you?
[03:38]Al Danto: You know, that's a good question. I grew up in Michigan. A fun fact, I played ice hockey for 55 years.
[03:45]Maya Pomroy: Still playing?
[03:45]Al Danto: I still play. I play every Friday. And I love to do that. So, I grew up in Michigan, and a lot of life evolved. So, I came to Houston for a summer. We're supposed to work in Alaska on fishing boats. It fell through, so we had to do something. We came to Houston and got a good summer job. And I met my wife.
[04:05]Maya Pomroy: Donna?
[04:05]Al Danto: Donna. We dated that summer. And I went back to Michigan, finished school, and came back down there. I said, “I would never live in Houston. It was too hot. Flooded, cockroaches, 100 degrees,” like it is now. And so, I said, as soon as you graduate from UT, we're going to go back to Michigan. That was 39 years ago or 40 years ago. And been here ever since, because in the winter, got to fish, play ice hockey, play softball, and do the things that I enjoyed. So, been here ever since.
[04:34]Maya Pomroy: So, when you came to Houston, tell me about your very first business that you started at the age of 24. So, it was a document business.
[04:46]Al Danto: Yeah.
[04:48]Maya Pomroy: What started that? What was, sort of, the impetus to that?
[04:52]Al Danto: So, my first job out of college was the NCR Corporation. And we would help companies when they go from a manual system to an automated system. A lot of companies didn't have computer sips back then. So, we would work with the programmers to design an old-fashioned thing called business forms. Anyone heard of a business form before? It's an invoice, a check. So, if you think about all the paper that companies consume, you know, banks and hospitals and universities, they all came out at the end of the printer. They came with… so, you print invoice, little things.
[05:23]Maya Pomroy: Well, the little things that you'd have to rip off on the side, right?
[05:26]Al Danto: So, we would help companies get set up and do their paper flow system and their accounts payable system. And one of our vendors was an envelope sales rep. That's all that we did at NCR, was that one product, because they figured, if you're going to spend all this money on a computer system, then you're going to get your first forms from us. You could go out after that and get them anywhere else. But they had to go into envelopes and their other products. So, I developed a relationship with other sales reps and they became our vendors. And they provide us with those products. So, one of them was an envelope sales rep. And Blaine Smith, his company started to have troubles. It was the mid-’80s. Anyone know what the price of oil was in the mid-’80s?
[06:06]Maya Pomroy: Depends on which part of it of the mid-’80s.
[06:09]Al Danto: About $8 a barrel, right? It was really, really low. And his company was hurting. So, they were starting to go out of business and he couldn't supply our envelopes when our systems went live. So, I said, we need to find an envelope company to get them from. And he was like, “I got just the idea.” There's these private label manufacturers that will make envelopes and we can sell them to our customers. And so, he started selling them. I said, “I don't care where you get them from, as long as you get them to me.” That was my problem that he hadn't solved, right? You have a computer system going live. These forms are coming out, and no envelopes.
[06:43]Maya Pomroy: Imagine that's a problem — to not have envelopes.
[06:45]Al Danto: Yeah, huge problem. You've got this computer system in there and all that. So, I said, “I don't care where you get them from. And so, let's start a company supplying envelopes.” And so, started the classic envelope company. And we went to private manufacturers. And they made the products mostly for him and they fulfilled our needs and then others. And then his company eventually went under. We took the three salespeople from that company and brought them in. And we needed a place to work, right? So, we started in our apartment. We started a company in our apartment.
[07:16]Maya Pomroy: Sounds like that happens a lot in the garage or the apartment.
[07:19]Al Danto: Right. Yeah. I think that's the first lesson for entrepreneurship, is, what's the problem? What's the core problem? And what can you do different, right? So, we were able to supply envelopes at a lower price than even manufacturers in Houston could because we were buying them from other areas and bring them in. And we turned our apartment into a large storage area. So, we'd store envelopes for Schlumberger and Cisco Foods, Allied Bank, the big, big companies and big hospitals. And then from there, you know, we ultimately grew and expanded and started to acquire manufacturing companies.
[07:54]Maya Pomroy: Yeah, I was going to say, how did you scale? Because that sounds like a lot of customers to have to provide your product to.
[08:01] Al Danto: Yeah. You scale by need, right? You scale by, you scale by need. And so, customers started to ask for other products. They asked for those forms. So, we found private label forms manufacturers. They asked for printing. So, we found private label printing manufacturers, and we found out that customers wanted to have kind of a one-stop, kind of, a mid-market. They didn't want to deal with four or five different vendors. So, we're able to become a one-stop for these companies.
And then, ultimately, we acquired our first printing manufacturing company, but we were in business for probably three or four years as a distributor before we ever acquired our first manufacturing company. Then we acquired our first manufacturing company, and then we started to acquire other manufacturing companies and, kind of, consolidate it together. Grew from there.
[08:45] Maya Pomroy: Wow. So, you did that for a bit, and then you decided to sell.
[08:50] Al Danto: Yeah. Crazy story, you know. It's really interesting, is that hardly anyone in here has heard of business forms, right? But in the early '80s, that was kind of the beginning of this industry. Because computers were coming out, and people had them. We became a vendor for Anheuser-Busch, MillerCoors, the distributors. We would follow software companies, kind of, like I did at NCR.
So, when a software company would install a system, they'd call us. So, we contracted with software companies that supplied software, like beverage distributors, dry cleaners, travel agencies, and when they installed a system, they contacted us for the forms. So, we did that and eventually had a couple sales reps that just handled beverage wholesalers. And we went out to the National Beer host... Beer Wholesalers conference in Las Vegas.
[09:40] Maya Pomroy: It's a good conference.
[09:42] Al Danto: Good conference. It was a great conference. All new beer is coming out. You get the taste of them, you got everything coming out there, right? So, we did that, and I walked up and there was a trade show display, and they said, "This is... It was the very first kind of electronic pad." And they said, "We're going to eliminate paper." I said, "Oh, crap. [inaudible 00:10:02] the paper vision, you know.” And believe it or not, you know, when that came out, I came back, and I had all these... We were, like a little Pac-Man buying up these little companies, and they're big national Pac-Men come, kind of, buying companies.
[10:16] Maya Pomroy: M&A, yeah.
[10:17] Al Danto: Really big, right?
[10:19] Maya Pomroy: But when you saw that, you knew?
[10:21] Al Danto: I saw it and I knew, you know, I was, kind of, literally, like, writing on the wall that I, that I, kind of, saw and we'd be getting these offers and things were going on. I was in probably, like, last... Late 30s, 37, 38 years old.
[10:34] Maya Pomroy: So, this is, like '99, '98?
[10:35] Al Danto: Exactly. '90, 98. So, I got this crazy idea. I was in an advisory board. We'll talk about our round tables a little bit to the Alumni Association. I came in and I said "Hey, I want to sell my company." They said, "What do you want to do?" And I said, "Well, Rice has this MBA program was had been the flex program. I knew some people had gone through it and they were going to convert it to the executive MBA program, the weekend program." I said, "I want to get my MBA." And they said, "What's next?"
I said, "I don't know, you know, if I can put away enough money, I'll be okay." So, I came back and hired a consultant on an industry and investment banker, and I said, "I made it sell the company." And he handled all that and did that, I applied to Rice, and I got in into Rice. And so, I sold to a company that's private equity backed, and they were "Who's sort of the more business forms company?"
[11:25] Maya Pomroy: [inaudible 00:11:25].
[11:27] Al Danto: One person. They were the largest business forms company in the world.
[11:31] Maya Pomroy: Wow.
[11:31] Al Danto: $2 billion in sales of business forms and some executives left, they got private equity money and, and they requiring companies and they acquired ours. And, you know, what they said during due diligence? They were not worried at all about a paper ever going away. They said, "No one will ever not have a paper check."
[11:49] Maya Pomroy: Mom still has paper.
[11:52] Al Danto: Yeah. Paper invoice, a paper purchase order, a paper something. And so, I said, "You know, I'm ready to kind of move on." And so, we, you know, we exited and, and, and came back to Rice.
[12:05] Maya Pomroy: And it's funny because you hired somebody to help you through that process, and now you're a person that helps people through that process. Right? Is that that's some of the... Some of what you gained by coming to Rice and...
[12:18] Al Danto: Exactly.
[12:19] Maya Pomroy: Right? So, that's interesting. So, you applied in '98 because you graduated in 2000. Right? Which is when you sold your company. Right? So, you were class...
[12:30] Al Danto: Yeah. It was '99.
[12:32] Maya Pomroy: '99. Okay. And so, tell me about what the business school was like when you came 25 years ago. Because it's been a minute, so I'm curious to know because I don't think that... Well, some people in this room, I'm not going to ask. I'm put anybody on the spot. What it was like in the year 2000 of walking? I mean, it didn't look like this, right?
[12:52] Al Danto: This nothing was here, nothing was here. We were in a little, I think we had a couple classrooms over in Herrig Hall. I think the entire we were the EMBA class, first Weekend Class, Full-Time. I think there might have been 200, I don't know.
[13:06] Maya Pomroy: How many, how many kids that... Or how many, how many people in the EMBA class?
[13:08] Al Danto: Our class is 41. Heather Kopecky was one of my classmates. She's here. She's here today. We'll bring her in. But I think there was...
[13:16] Maya Pomroy: Was she on your team? I'm just kidding. Well, no?
[13:19] Al Danto: We went deeper than that. We started a company together.
[13:21] Maya Pomroy: Yes, I know. I know. Well, so, let's dovetail into that, because you're here. Maybe you can add some color. So, you started in 2000... Well, you started in '98.
[13:32] Al Danto: '98, yeah.
[13:33] Maya Pomroy: In the EMBA program. And you started another business with a teammate for nursing. There was, like, a nursing shortage in terms of staffing.
[13:45] Al Danto: Right, right.
[13:45] Maya Pomroy: So, how did that happen? Because I know that a lot of us in here have... Are, you know, part of Rice and got our MBAs from Rice, and we know about how, you know, we have our teams and...
[13:55] Al Danto: Right.
[13:56] Maya Pomroy: You know, and a lot of teams actually go on to launch businesses and become entrepreneurs. So, how did you two meet?
[14:03] Al Danto: Yeah, so entrepreneurship's in the Rice DNA, you know, which we'll get in into, I think, a little bit, but it's always been, "Okay, we're going to provide a practical framework." But the reality is you have to get out there and do it. You know, and you have to embrace that culture in a lot of academic in university institutions aren't going to do that. They're not going to, it's going to give you this free will to go out there and do it. But Al Napier and Ed Williams, the founder of the program here, said, "We want our entrepreneurs to learn in the classroom, but get out there."
And we really haven't changed that from the early '80s, I think, late '70s when we started teaching it. So, that's in our DNA; it's a really important thing, which we'll touch on. So, we were encouraged to think outside the box. And when you come back to school, when you come back to Rice, and you come back to MBA program, especially when you come back as an executive, a professional, and any age, you're looking for something different, I think on the other side, right? I think you really are.
[14:56] Maya Pomroy: There's a before you say there's a, before the MBA, and then there's after.
[15:00] Al Danto: There's a before and after, and in between, you're almost, like, in a cocoon. I mean, you really have time, and I encourage everyone here, you know, coming in, you know, use that time, and you don't know what you're going to do on the way out. But all kinds of doors will open for you. You'll see new opportunities and encourage you to do that. So, we were encouraged to do that. And it really came from the top and from our professors. So, we were encouraged in a class. We had to go out and start a company. And it was an elective class that I teach now, pretty much.
[15:28] Maya Pomroy: Al Napier was teaching it at the time.
[15:30] Al Danto: Al Napier was teaching it.
[15:30] Maya Pomroy: The other Al.
[15:31] Al Danto: The other Al, yeah.
[15:33] Maya Pomroy: Yes.
[15:34] Al Danto: Al Napier's teaching it. And we had to come up with an idea. So, Heather and I think we were at Valhalla.
[15:40] Maya Pomroy: For sure.
[15:41] Al Danto: Great ideas happened over alcohol, right?
[15:42] Maya Pomroy: Does everybody know what Valhalla is?
[15:44] Al Danto: A little bit of Valhalla?
[15:45] Maya Pomroy: Well, you need to tell him. I mean, if you don't, it's around the... It's this wonderful little bar.
[15:48] Al Danto: I actually think... Where's Patrick Gray? I think the Rice Alumni...
[15:51] Maya Pomroy: He's right there.
[15:53] Al Danto: So, it's going to have an after party to Valhalla. He has an open cab.
[15:58] Maya Pomroy: MBA is out to party.
[15:58] Al Danto: So, there's an open tab, and I think beer at the time was 75 cents a beer. So, Heather and I were probably into a $50 worth of beer, and we had to come up with this idea. And you know, I call them DFI. Everyone has the...
[16:11] Maya Pomroy: So, DFI? Okay. So, back up. So, I love this. So, we talked a little bit about this. So, what does everybody think what DFI stands for? Any guesses? Oh, come on.
[16:23] Al Danto: Come on.
[16:24] Maya Pomroy: You know what the DF stands for.
[16:27] Al Danto: It's a Dumb Freaking Idea. There you go, you know. And they're at the beginning...
[16:33] Maya Pomroy: A Dumb Freaking Idea.
[16:34] Al Danto: I mean look who would've ever thought you're going to get in a car with a stranger or worse, let stay at their house or recruit nurses from the Philippines. But Heather was a, was a PhD nurse, and her classmate was a Ph.D. nurse from the Philippines. And she knew the pain point. Again, we're going to come back to this need
[16:51] Maya Pomroy: Solving problems.
[16:51] Al Danto: Hospitals were really... Yeah, solving problems. Hospitals were really struggling with nursing shortage, and Heather came up and with the idea, and we came back, we wrote a business plan to recruit and place nurses from the Philippines. And we went to Memorial Hermann and St. Luke's, and we were able to secure agreements with them to do that. And we started Universal Worker, and we recruited nurses from the Philippines. And you know that that became, kind of, post Rice, and we, as we came to our graduation, we had our first checks from Memorial Hermann and St. Luke's, and we were off to the races.
[17:29] Maya Pomroy: How much were your checks for?
[17:30] Al Danto: I think, ultimately, maybe a total of about $100,000.
[17:35] Maya Pomroy: Well, that's not too shabby.
[17:37] Al Danto: So, they prepaid to, and that set us up, and we recruited out of the Philippines, and our... We had 10 full-time employees, and our entire payroll, they're all college graduates, pretty much nurses. Our entire payroll was about $5,000 a month, so we were outsourcing before outsourcing was cool and back then and we recruited, and we placed nurses in Memorial Hermann and St. Luke's, Seton in Austin and some other facility.
[18:05] Maya Pomroy: And so, how long did you have that business?
[18:08] Al Danto: You know, we ran it for, I think about seven years, and then we got acquired by an International Nurse Recruiting and Staffing company and the really cool thing to me... I had come out one of my life, I didn't want to jump back into the rat race after, after Rice, and I was fortunate enough to put away enough money to not fly private jets or have a place in Aspen, but I could pay for my kids' college education and I could do things that I, that I wanted to do, right? People call it FU money somewhere. I had a little, I had a little F, but I have a Big U, you know, so, it was kind of that, and I was able to, kind of, do these things, and I sat on a nonprofit, and I got approached by somebody.
They said, "Hey, you went to Rice?" People are going to look at you a little different when you come through Rice, right? "You got Rice MBA. You must have learned something there." And you will, you'll learn a lot. And someone on a nonprofit board said, "Hey, we're approached by a private equity company to be acquired. Would you represent us?" And I said, I said, "Sure, you know, I'd do that." And I, and I did that, and it worked, worked pretty well. And then our company that we were running, we really never had to open up a U.S. office after 911. We didn't open up a U.S. office, and our nurses came in and they were integrated into the Philippine culture.
They saved their expense money, and the Philippine nurses at the hospitals brought them in and let them stay with their families and everything. So, we never had to open up an office, and it really was good for me. I had young kids, so I was able to, you know, coach their games and be around and travel and do all that stuff. And I didn't want to jump really back into the... In the rat race, and didn't have to, and then start... Then Al Napier asked us to come back to the class.
[19:51] Maya Pomroy: So, right. So, let's talk about that. So, you were out living your life as an entrepreneur and doing all the things that you love to do, and the folks here, they certainly didn't forget about you. And came back and approached you. So, tell me the story about how Al and... It was Ed Williams and Al, and how they approached you, and they're like, "I have, I have an idea for you. I have an entrepreneurial venture for you over here at Rice Business."
[20:17] Al Danto:Well, things just started to grow, right? The entrepreneurship program started to grow, and in 2000, we had plans for the new building.
[20:25] Maya Pomroy:And it wasn't growing at the speed everywhere else, that it was growing here.
[20:30] Al Danto:Entrepreneurship wasn't right, you know, entrepreneurship is in our DNA, like, I said, it goes back to the '80s, but we started the Rice Alliance. And the Rice Alliance was an idea that Steve Currall and some others had, Al Napier and Ed Williams, and others to kind of combine what was going on at Rice around technology, funding, and business, and pull it all together. And they came up with the idea for the Rice Business Plan Competition, and that was launched in 2000, the Rice Alliance was launched, and again, that was somebody's DFI. So, what you see today with the Rice Alliance and the largest business plan competition in the world, and all the impact that had it started as an idea, back then. [inaudible 00:21:11].
[21:12] Maya Pomroy:Sort of the iPhone, right?
[21:13] Al Danto:Sort of the iPhone.
[21:13] Maya Pomroy:That was a DFI.
[21:14] Al Danto:Yeah, they all were. So, you know, Rice started and just kind of continued to expand, and then Rice kind of went all in, I think on entrepreneurship, and you, and you have to have it from the top. So, Gil Whitaker, who was the dean at the time, said, "Hey, we're going to be... If we're going to be entrepreneurial, we have to be entrepreneurial-minded and we have to support these ideas that come through and give them encouragement and grow." And they started... It started to grow, and we started to expand the programs as it went on. And Heather and I came back, and we started to present as a case study here. And then eventually that lead led to taking over a class. And then, and then we needed something for our alumni.
So, we came up with another DFI, and that was the JGSEO, the Jones Graduate Entrepreneurs Organization. Which we model after the EO Entrepreneurs Organization and YPO, which is a peer-to-peer support group. So, we just said, "Let's have events education. Let's have support for our alums." So, our alums started to meet in little advisory boards, small groups of about eight to 10 alums that they meet and support each other, help with their entrepreneurial ideas and their businesses.
And today, I am really proud to say, since through a lot of the work through the Lilie Lab, Spencer Randall... I don't know if Spencer's here; he heads up our round tables, and we have about 250 alumni. They're actively engaged in our roundtable. So, as you come through, as an alum, you'll be connected for life through the RIE and Lilie Lab, and our alumni meet in these roundtables. So, we started to do that, and we started to have educational events.
[23:00] Maya Pomroy:And the Lilie Lab is also something that, you know... Could you tell everyone, those who may not know what the Lilie Lab is? Because that's really, really unique to Rice, and other people try to copy it, but it's just a copy.
[23:12] Al Danto:Yes. So, I think the Lilie Lab is the next version of Al Napier and Ed Williams. So, when Al Napier, Ed Williams were here, if you had an idea, if you wanted to bounce something off them, if you wanted a connection to go out there and reach and connect, you went to them. And then after I came through, you went to one of the three of us, and then it grew and expanded, and then our... We came in there and then, and then eventually we just needed so much more than that, right?
You needed to have a hub that would connect, a place to go to, a place to bounce ideas off of, a place to develop your ideas, a place to connect you to funding and resources, and support. So, the Lilie Lab eventually became our latest version of that, and it's an incredible program that we have here now, it's available to students, graduate, undergraduate, and alums. And it's...
[24:07] Maya Pomroy:It's an idea lab.
[24:08] Al Danto:Yeah, it's an... It's idea lab. It's a hub. It's a connection, it's so much more. And I think what's really cool is Yael Hochberg and Hasan and Kyle and Patrick, that run… That have really maintained the spirit of an entrepreneur needs a place to go to you know, vet their ideas, to connect to resources, to be supported, to fail. And be able to fail...
[24:35] Maya Pomroy:To take risks.
[24:37] Al Danto:To take risks. You have to take risks.
[24:37] Maya Pomroy:Take risks.
[24:38] Al Danto:Right?
[24:37] Maya Pomroy:Right. And that space, if you haven't been in there, which I hope a lot of you have, is this just so much energy. You walk in-
[24:43] Al Danto:There's so much in there.
[24:44] Maya Pomroy:Even, I mean, there's... It's just you feel, like, you can come up with so many DFI and, like, maybe one of them will work. And it's really, really exciting just to be surrounded in that environment and by the people that are there. I mean, it's just this energy that's palpable, Al.
[24:59] Al Danto:Exactly.
[24:59] Maya Pomroy:That I just don't... You just don't get that everywhere.
[25:03] Al Danto:You don't get anywhere. And it's really... You know, MBA, y'all know what an MBA stands for?
[25:09] Maya Pomroy:Yeah, basically anything.
[25:12] Al Danto:Nick, one of my former students, you get an A+, you remember.
[25:15] Maya Pomroy:You get another A+.
[25:16] Al Danto:He got A. He was an A+ student. He is an A+ student. He is here, and he is an A+ in life. It's a master's about anything, you know, the really cool thing that you get at Rice is you get accounting from the best. You get finance from the best; you get marketing from the best. You get strategy from the best.
[25:30] Maya Pomroy:You get entrepreneurship from the best.
[25:32] Al Danto:Yeah. And entrepreneurship pulls everything together. So, you're being taught from a leadership position and everything is important, right? So, you've got all that. So, it all, it all comes together there. So, it's a place where you can also come together and you have to learn and understand all of that, right? And have a place to figure it out.
[25:52] Maya Pomroy:So, tell me about when you started teaching here, because I want to know about some of the, some of... Because I've taken every single one of your classes in the labs, and I mean, I always got really lucky and, like, I know some people have to beg you to get into your classes because they, it's, like, calling a radio station and getting tickets to get into Alice class. Because it's really, really hard. And I know that as soon as, you know, the registration's open, like, that's the first thing that you get into is, like, "I need to get into this class first."
First of all, I mean, obviously, you are legendary and, you know, not only at Rice, but, you know, throughout the country and the world. But, you know, why do you think that people are so drawn to the idea of trying something and failing? Really. Because you have to fail. Like, we talked about Thomas Edison. I mean, how many light bulbs failed until they finally, until it finally didn't, you know? But I mean, for people to sign up to really take these risks, what do you think that it is that you bring that people are so excited about?
[26:53] Al Danto:First thing I try to do is talk you out of it. It's not, it's not easy. I mean, it's tough. You have, it's really, it's hard. I mean, you see about a lot about the glamor, and you see all this stuff, you know, 80% of businesses, you know, startups fail, I think. I think at Rice, what we do is we have a fertile ground, right? To plant these seeds in. You have support. You have nurturing and you have everything, but it's a tough road. To me, a lot of it is you get to, you make the decisions. I personally think for the most cases, if you start a business, the success or failure comes to you, you know, 80% of plane... 86% of plane crashes are pilot or human error, right, which we talk about in class. And I think entrepreneurship is pretty similar, you know, if you look over at a printing company, "Why are they successful and I'm not?" You look at a restaurant, "Why are they successful and I'm not?" You look at a university, "Why are they successful and we're not?" So, I think you say, "Okay, we have to do something here that's better. What's our secret sauce going to be?" And I think that that's a part of it to come in here. And I think what's really great is, over the years, Rice has built up this real reputation, and it's real because it goes back so long, you know. It goes back almost to our beginning for, you know, for over 40 years ago now, I've been teaching entrepreneurship. Other universities have started to pick it up a lot later, and they started to teach it. And some teach it from a very academic standpoint. Or what good is that really going to do?
[28:20] Maya Pomroy:No, like, the E Labs where you have to go out and you have to do it.
[28:22] Al Danto:You have to go out there and you have to do it right. So, you know, you learn about ROE, who knows what ROE is? Do you remember what it is, Nick?
[28:31] Nick: Which one is that?
[28:32] Speaker 5: Return on Equity.
[28:32] Speaker 6: Return on Excel?
[28:34] Maya Pomroy:Return on Excel.
[28:34] Al Danto:Javier? A+ Javier. Yeah. All right. It's Return on Excel. You can make your proforma look like whatever you want to make look like, honestly.
[28:41] Maya Pomroy:Yeah. And many do.
[28:43] Al Danto:Many do. "Oh, we need a little... We'll change our discount rate. Oh, we'll change our growth rate to 9.7%." But the reality is you have to get out there and you have to do it, and you have to make these things real. And I think you know, we've done that. It's kind of in our DNA, and so now, you know, five years, six years in a row now, the number one graduate entrepreneurship program, it's not because of me, it's because of what was started long ago, and it's because of support. And now our alumni come back in and they say what they've done, the good and the bad, you know that, that we bring back in.
[29:17] Maya Pomroy:Yeah. So, in the... You said secret sauce. So, my question is, you've met a lot of entrepreneurs, some have been hugely successful, and some have failed over and over and decided to get... So, what's the secret sauce of what makes it work? What have you noticed in the years of teaching here? Of what is it... Because there's got to be, you know, some sort of thing that's that people have, like, what is it?
[29:49] Al Danto:You have to take the class to find it.
[29:52] Maya Pomroy:But I want you to say it because I did take the class.
[29:55] Al Danto:You know, there's a lot of, obviously, it starts with, you know, the customer. You have to come up with something that people want to buy. And I think one area where people go wrong at, I could tell you some of the areas where people fail at, probably more than I could tell you secret sauce. But one area is really cool technology, really cool stuff, but who really cares? Who's really going to buy it? You know, what kind of problem are you going to solve for somebody? Another thing where we see a lot of success at is somebody that comes from their own industry. Their own problem. Is it a problem that you faced?
[30:26] Maya Pomroy:Well, like what you two did?
[30:28] Al Danto:Yeah.
[30:28] Maya Pomroy:It was something that she noticed was an issue and a problem. A pain point.
[30:31] Al Danto:It was a huge pain point. Yeah. Heather had all the stats and all the research, and why we're... We had this nursing shortage, so we had a solution for it right? And so, you see that, so I encourage you... Who's just starting the program? Oh, whoa. Oh, oh. Awesome. I just encourage you to think about problems and solutions and ways that you can make things better. One of our alums has some... We literally came in and we had a meeting, like this back years ago and said, "What's the biggest problem you face?" Well, he worked at... He worked at a oil field service company and he said, "One of my problems are in these pipe covers." And he’s just, "Why don't you just devote your time while you're here to figure out a good solution for it?" He was an engineer. Right? So, he developed a kind of, a next generation of pipe covers, and by the time he graduated, he had a company, he raised capital, he went out there, he left his job, and now he runs his company. So, he used the time in his MBA to figure out, you know, this problem, sometimes it can be doing something better, faster, cheaper, right? I mean, obviously we have millions of restaurants in the U.S. And there's going to be another restaurant open tomorrow. But what's going to be different? What's going to be unique about that? What can you bring to it that will carve you out and will make you the place that people want to come to when they do it?
Sometimes it can be as simple as we call it, "Hang a shingle." "Hey, I'm a really good engineer. I'm going to go out and start an engineering company." "I'm a really good CPA; I'm going to go out." A really good friend of mine was the partner of a big four company back in the day, it was a Big Eight. He had incredible relationships. He just took a team of people, and he left and he used his relationships to get in the door, and he built an incredibly successful company. So, you have to take a look and say, "What's going... How will I be a little bit different? How can I carve my market share out? And what problem... You know, why will customers..." You talk about the job to do when you hire a company, you're hiring them to do a job, you know, what is that job, and how can we do it better, faster, cheaper, a new way to do it.
[32:49] Maya Pomroy:More efficiently.
[32:51] Al Danto:More efficiently.
[32:52] Maya Pomroy:And even if it's better, because I... You know, an example is the VHS and Beta. Beta was better than VHS, but it didn't survive. Right? And it has a lot to do with timing, and there's so many different variables at play-
[33:01] Al Danto: Exactly.
[33:02] Maya Pomroy:... that don't... You know, it has to fit at the right time at the right place and, you know.
[33:10] Al Danto:Exactly, you know, and in understanding that, surround yourself with... To know the technology is a lot of printing companies and business forms company went down the drain. I say I might've been lucky, but I saw that I thought the industry was going to change and Beta has to see that VHS is coming out and what's next. And you have to understand a lot of that. And you have to surround yourself with people that understand technology or understand the restaurant business or understand whatever you're getting into. Right? You have to understand that.
[33:38] Maya Pomroy:And you also have to be determined and focused. And have a whole lot of faith. So, I want to talk to you about something that you went through that because of who you are and your determination and your faith and, and really... You know, the person that you are is why you overcame something that a whole lot of people don't. So, I was actually in your class in 2022. There are some of my classmates in here from my EMBA cohort. You can raise your hands too if you want to. Yeah, yeah. So, in this... Right after in May of 2022, it was, like, the COVID, we were the COVID cohort.
So, it was around that time that you noticed something. And I don't know if it was in class or not, but you noticed something was off, and you paid attention to it, but it was, it was something that you probably would've never imagined. So, tell us about, tell us about that story, about what happened and what... When was that day and what that felt like?
[34:40] Al Danto:Yeah. It's really tough, and I think, hopefully, I'll impart some lessons and experience. And on the personal side, I've never had any health problems. I've always been very healthy, always taking care of myself, but maybe been a little bit stubborn, and I'm not going to go to the doctor. I'm not going to go see this. I'm not going to go in. And I was noticing I had some trouble with my vision. I couldn't... I've just started to lose, like, kind of, the side vision. I thought it was, kind of, a... Just something in my mind, and things started to get a little bit blurry. I thought that was from grading too many papers. So, it's...
[35:16] Maya Pomroy:You needed more TAs.
[35:18] Al Danto:I had 40 students at one time, now last, I four... So, you know, but, you know, you put heart and soul into it and you want to do it. So, I noticed things getting a little fuzzy, and I went in and I went to my eye doctor and said, "Looks like you have a cataract." So, he said, "We'll do cataract surgery." So, I went, I had cataracts done but came out and didn't cure it. So, they said "We want to send you in for some testing." And I said, "Come on, I'm not going in for testing." And it was during the VetBiz Battle. Calvin's the latest leader of our Veterans Business Battles event so where we bring veterans to your Rice...
[35:48] Maya Pomroy:But you also, that you also supported, we needed to get back to that as well.
[35:50] Al Danto:Yeah. That was another DFI. But anyways, so I left. I said, "Guys, I got to leave here. I got to go get this stupid MRI done." I said, "My wife wants me to get." I said, "I'm going to go get it, make her happy."
[36:01] Maya Pomroy:Good choice.
[36:02] Al Danto:Yeah, good choice. So, I went in and they, and they found a tumor, a large tumor that was on my optic nerve, and that was causing my vision. And they said, "Well, there's one doctor in town, Dr. Baskin over at Methodist, and he's the specialist, but he's really hard to get into." And this is another big lesson of mine as well. One guy that I helped get into business for himself, and he's now the head of the Liver Center at Methodist, Dr. Galati. That's my contact over there. And he goes, "Well, you better see if he can help." So, I called, and Joe said, "Dr. Baskin, I know him. Gimme a minute." And he calls over there, and he goes, "Yeah, we'll see you Friday." I said, "Okay."
[36:37] Maya Pomroy:Convenient.
[36:39] Al Danto:Yeah, it's convenient, but, you know, your network's important, right? Who you connect, connect to. So, I was able to get in, and they performed a very delicate surgery. It was two eight-hour surgeries. They thought it was going to only take about five hours, but there was some complexity around it, and they wanted to make sure they saved my optic nerve and, of course, my vision. So, it turned out to be two eight-hour surgeries that were about eight or nine days apart. And I had it done, and then I had a long recovery time in the hospital. After that, I went to TIRR and I recovered. And I came out, it was all total of about a month from start to finish. And then I was out.
[37:20] Maya Pomroy:And this is May through June?
[37:21] Al Danto:Yeah, this is May of 2022.
[37:23] Maya Pomroy:'22. Yeah.
[37:24] Al Danto:Through June 2022, middle of June, and I came out, and then in the first week of July, I started having really bad chest pain, and my daughter's a physical therapist and we live over in West U. So, she came over, my blood pressure had dropped to, like, 75 or 80, over, like, 40. And she said... But my heart rate was, like, 160. So, my heart was pumping really hard. She said, "Dad, you've got a blockage." I said, "Oh, come on. Just called Dr. Joe." She said, "No, we're calling an ambulance." And she called an ambulance, and they got me back into Methodist Hospital and they got me into a room, and they put me up and I looked up there, three doctors in the talking. I said, "Well, this isn't good." And so, they said... I came over and they said, "Look, you, you have a saddle embolism."
And I had all these blood clots that have formed. I had COVID in the spring. They pushed my surgery back. I had the surgery, I was laid up, and then your body starts to form blood clots quicker when you're under the stress. So, they were all forming and they eventually stopped at the... Kind of, bypass going into my lungs, my left lung and right lung, and ultimately, they clogged up and I wasn't getting blood flow. So, they said, "We're either going to crack your chest open or we're going to give you... Or we're going to put you on an ECMO life support and see if this will settle." And so, they gave me some drugs, and...
[38:56] Maya Pomroy: I hope they did. It's a pulmonary embolism.
[38:59] Al Danto:It was a pulmonary embolism, and they put me on life support, and I was on life support for 13 days, and...
[39:05] Maya Pomroy:And a lot of people don't survive 13 days of life support.
[39:09] Al Danto:support. Yes. It's pretty tough. And this is my lesson, and I promised it to the doctors when I came out. Because I asked what I could do for them. And when I came out, the whole room was full of people and doctors at Methodist and people. And they said... They... Because this is "El Milagro." That was "A miracle" in Spanish. And they said, "It was a hockey player. It's a hockey player. A hockey player."
[39:36] Maya Pomroy:That's a good way to be... I mean, that's a good one, you know.
[39:37] Al Danto:And they said that because of the condition, my entire body was tested. I had liver failure, kidney failure, I went through dialysis.
[39:46] Maya Pomroy:Had to relearn how to walk or it was, it was... You basically had to do everything, relearn how to do most. Everything that you, you know, we take for granted.
[39:55] Al Danto:Most everything. Yeah. I had to come, come back there, come back in and you know, the doctors did everything they could do. And then it turned, kind of, to me, and they said, "Now it's up..." It was up to me, and I went back and went to TIRR after I stayed Methodist rehab inpatient, and I started to rehab. And one thing they said, "You have to have goals. Set a goal for the first of the year." And I said, "October 22nd, I want to be back in the class."
[40:24] Maya Pomroy:Of 2022.
[40:24] Al Danto:2022.
[40:26] Maya Pomroy:10/22 of 22, like, this... What month, what month was this? What month was this?
[40:28] Al Danto:This was, like, maybe early September.
[40:32] Maya Pomroy:Oh, fantastic.
[40:34] Al Danto:Yeah, late, mid-September maybe, when we were doing it.
[40:35] Maya Pomroy:Okay. So, you got a month and a week to get me back through the same...
[40:38] Al Danto:Six weeks. Yeah. So, anyways, I said... Well, Ed Williams, when he taught, he would teach from a chair, like this, and later years, and I said, "If I have to be back there, I'll be back in there." And so, I got worked through and got back in and was back in the class, classroom in October. And then I started...
[40:52] Maya Pomroy:October 22nd.
[40:54] Al Danto: October 22nd.
[40:55] Maya Pomroy:2022.
[40:56] Al Danto:Yeah. 2022. And then I played hockey and went skiing-
[40:59] Maya Pomroy:In February.
[41:00] Al Danto:In February. So yeah. So, it was really cool. Thank you.
[41:08] Maya Pomroy:But that's about... That says a lot about your mindset. Right? So, that's one of the things is that, you know, to be able to get through something like that. Because we can think about what that feels like, but you really don't know what that feels like until you go through it.
[41:22] Al Danto: Exactly.
[41:23] Maya Pomroy:Right? So, again, what is that mindset that you have to have in order to be able to get through that, kind of, a challenge that most people hopefully never have to endure or encounter?
[41:36] Al Danto:I'd like to say it's something special, but I really don't think it is. I think if you get pushed in that and you have a will for life; you're going to do what it takes. Right? And it was, "Oh, you did so much." I said, "No, I just... I did what I had to do every day, you know."
[41:50] Maya Pomroy:Day by day.
[41:51] Al Danto:Day by day, step by step, and I think entrepreneurship is very...
[41:54] Maya Pomroy:It's very similar. It's the same thing.
[41:58] Al Danto:Ups and downs. Maybe I'll bring that in the classroom. Ups and downs and all of that. But it is kind of... You do what you're faced against, you know, incredible things that we do. And we take it a day at a time. Now, when we look back at it, we can look back at it and we can learn, but I think at that point, you learn about faith. You have to have faith that things are going to get better.
You have to understand that family and friends and what you have is what's most important, all the zeros that you have in your bank account now, the good thing about that, I think, you can make a difference in the world, and you can, you know, that's what entrepreneurs can do. But at the end of the day, you know, it comes down to that faith and family and everything and ability to get back out and create is that something...
[42:44] Maya Pomroy:Which is, like, going to battle similarly.
[42:47] Al Danto:It's like battle. Yeah.
[42:48] Maya Pomroy:Right? So, I was going to bring it back to the Veteran Business Battle, right? Like, that's what you guys are. So, and I... And that was something that you decided to help launch with veterans. Because a lot of MBAs are former veterans that have, you know, gone through tremendous, you know, uncertainty and really, you know, fought for our country and, and seen things that nobody should ever see and really went through, like very similar things that you went through in terms of just one thing a, you know, one day at a time, right?
And this was even before you went through all of this. So, what drew you to really believe that veterans are unique... Have unique opportunities to really be entrepreneurs and should be supported in a way that veterans aren't in any other business school, really?
[43:37] Al Danto:Yeah, you know, my first class I came into Al Napier, who I took over from, he said, you know, "Go into class and go into class prepared." He knew every student's name, where they went to undergraduate school when the first day of school. So, my first class had 41... 40 students in it.
[43:57] Maya Pomroy:And you almost dropped out of... You didn't even want to go into the EMBA program because you... The ones... And they knew... He knew your name. Or, like, the professor knew your name and that because you, you were going to drop out of the EMBA program once you got accepted.
[44:10] Al Danto:Yeah. That, that's a whole another story. Look, I want to bring that out. Yeah. I almost dropped out of the program. I had a lot going on in the sale of the company, which we were, kind of, getting ready to prepare going through. And I, and I got in the program. And then maybe, like, a lot of you that are starting out, you know, coming in here, a lot of, lot of anxiety, a lot of worry, like, "Can I do this? Can I get through it?" And I decided to drop out of the program. I called in to Kay Henry, and she didn't answer the phone.
And I said, "Hey, I'm going to drop out. I'm going to drop out of the program. I just... I've got too much going on. I just... I'm going to drop out of the program." And my wife said, "Go talk to Dr. Joe." So, I talked to Joe Galati and he said... I said to Joe... I said, "I got this stack of books, like..." I didn't know how to use words. I didn't know how to use PowerPoint. I didn't even know how to use Excel. I didn't know how to turn on a computer. My generation, I barely sent emails, quite honestly.
[45:09] Maya Pomroy:But you knew not about paper, but you knew about paper.
[45:11] Al Danto:I knew about paper. Trust me. Yeah. Paper would've been okay. But, so, yeah. So, I said, "I'm just not going to go through it. I'm going to drop out." And then Joe said, "Look, you, you're in. It's tough. You've got take the first weekend, see how it goes, take it a day at a time, get prepared, go in there." And Al Napier was our instructor, first class, and he said, "Hey, you got into Rice. That's the hard part you're going to get through. We're going to make sure that you get through, you're a part of a family, we're going to get you through. You know, you have nothing to prove. Getting get through. We're going to make sure that you get through and everyone coming in, you know, you will. It's enjoy the ride, you know, you got in here, you don't got to prove anything. You don't got to... Just..."
[45:57] Maya Pomroy:You have to pass.
[45:57] Al Danto:To pass. You're going to pass. You don't pass; that's another problem. But you will. And everyone there, you know, some, I thought, you know, look to your left, look to your right. One of you's not going to be there. It was, like, look to your left, look to your right. Make sure you all get through together. And that was the... Yeah, that was the philosophy of it all.
[46:15] Maya Pomroy:Right. And it still is.
[46:15] Al Danto:It still is. It hasn't changed. There's some fundamental things that haven't changed. I think that's what makes Rice special. And you'll figure it out as you come through and everyone feels the same thing. Everyone's feeling-
[46:26] Maya Pomroy:Terrified.
[46:27] Al Danto:... terrified. This uncertainty terrified and everything. And you're going to get through and enjoy the ride. And then you'll be sitting here as alumni, and you'll be alumni for life, you know, you'll be a part of the family for life. So, that's kind of a tangent on that. So, my very first class that I came into to teach. Al Napier wanted me to take over his classes. And I said... You know, I never had an aspiration to be a business school professor, but I think a part of me liked to coach and go back to my DNA to help, to coach, to get others along the way. And so, he saw something in me that I don't think I even saw myself.
[47:09] Maya Pomroy:Those are the best mentors.
[47:10] Al Danto:Yeah. They're the best. And seek out mentors. Seek out those that have been down the road. Right. And so, he said, "I want you to take over my class." And I said, "Okay." So, I shadowed him. He was the best. Him and Ed Williams were the best. They won all these entrepreneurship awards, and Ed Williams said, "Don't even nominate me for the faculty award anymore." Because they put their heart and soul into things, and so he came in there. So, I learned everyone's... And I noticed all the military veterans from West Point, Naval Academy, Citadel that we had in the class. And I said, "Wow, this guy's got to be kind of leaders." And I just kind of got to know them in the class. And we started talking about the...
Other thing, your professors here they're all approachable and they're here to help you, know, get to know them pretty well. And so, I... We'd... I'd talk and we'd talk about the military, and I'm from a military family, all military family. And my dad was in the military, and my uncle's killed in Vietnam War. And they said, "We want you to..." They were first responders and they said, "We... Two things. We want, we want you to not go to the military and not be a first responder, so you're going to college." So, they saved that, went to college, but I kind of identified with the, with the veterans, Chris Franks is here. And it was just, like, "Okay, you understand sacrifice and a mission and working hard and uncertainty. Entrepreneurship is full of uncertainty. You just don't know what the next day is going to be."
But you, kind of, know your mission, right, you know, what you want to accomplish, but it's, kind of... You got to change. No plan's going to get you through to the end. Right? No plan. So, you've got to do that. And we've had these conversations, and I really connected with them and we went out to a dinner one night at the Palm, and EO is Entrepreneur Organizations and they were looking to do something in the city. So, like, great entrepreneurs, we kind of stole the idea if the Rice Business Plan Competition, and we said, "Why don't we do the Veterans Business Battle?" And we started that.
[49:11] Maya Pomroy:What year was that?
[49:12] Al Danto:Huh?
[49:13] Maya Pomroy:What year?
[49:13] Al Danto:That year was 2012. I think the first VetBiz, well, was 2013. Chris, you were... Right? 14?
[49:20] Maya Pomroy: 13.
[49:21] Al Danto:Yeah. Yeah. Chris was 10th year. Yeah. So, we started it and we went out there and said, "Hey, let's provide an opportunity for military veterans to come in and apply with their business ideas. We'll help them along. We'll get the finals to come here and pitch, and we'll have an event around education support, resources." Mike Tatz, Corbin Bates, Jordan Speaker, and others said, "Okay, let's do that." So, we started that, and now here we are.
[49:53] Maya Pomroy:13 years later.
[49:54] Al Danto:13 years later. Calvin's running it this year, and we've raised you know, well over $10 million for veterans and connected them to resources and support. Now in the online program, we have a Veterans Accelerator class that Dan Maxwell and Sterling Dodd run. And that will reach out into the veteran community to help military veterans a little bit more than just entrepreneurship. Tomorrow we have a meeting at 7:30 with a company in town that wants to hire veterans. And so, we're doing that. And I think you know, one thing along that, I think it's important to have something that you believe in. I think if you can't believe in, you know, and anytime you see a military veteran, they put their life, you know, to go give us freedom.
And a couple years ago, one of the veterans told me the best way that you can show our support is not to thank us, but to go out there and take advantage of the freedoms that we have. I think entrepreneurship is one of them as well. So, it's really been great, and every year these guys have not wanted to let the next person down, and they've stepped up and stepped into it. And I think that's just not letting the next person down. And I think everyone that goes through Rice is going to experience that, you know, it's tough. But you're in the rowboat mentality, you know, we're in this together and we have to get through it, and y'all will and that's part of it.
[51:21] Maya Pomroy:So, my last question before all of you get to ask Al all sorts of questions. So, what do you... What is your vision for Rice going forward? What do you want this place... Because I mean, it's really an extraordinary school, and it's the people that make the school.
[51:38] Al Danto: It's people, yeah.
[51:38] Maya Pomroy:It's people to make the school. So, what are your hopes and your dreams for when you decide, which hopefully is not anytime soon, to pass the torch to somebody else. What, what do you wish that Rice will become going forward as it grows from, you know... Because it's not a startup anymore, it's sort of an...
[51:55] Al Danto:It's going through growth.
[51:58] Maya Pomroy:Yeah. But as it matures, what do you wish for Rice?
[52:01] Al Danto:You know, I certainly hope it will continue the spirit of that we have this entrepreneurial spirit of you... You can... And if you look at the key to the success of where we're at, it's from our leadership. It's from, you know, Dean Rodriguez, today has just carried on so much, and to see this building and what he's going through to build the building and create so much, you know, be... And then before him, Gil Whitaker, right? Who we came through. And then Dean Glick, and if you think about everything you see today, these could have been squashed as little ideas. So, the Veteran Business Battle, the Rice Business Plan Competition, our E Labs that we have-
[52:41] Maya Pomroy:It's the vision.
[52:42] Al Danto:... these ideas. It's the vision. And it's so easy to say, "Now we're not going to do that." And, you know, not everything's worked 100%, but look at... Do you know now has it brought the school down? You know, have we been, you know, shut down? No, you know, these ideas. And I think, I think as we continue that and to grow and develop and get more support, as our alumni become more successful, they give back to the school, and they teach, and they continue.
And the work that's getting done over at the Lilie Lab, those guys work so hard, and I like to say that, you know, the people around Rice, from the dean and the leadership, they would be incredible entrepreneurs. And you're seeing the results here in a new building going on in our class going, I think we're going to classes, like, 700.
[53:25] Maya Pomroy:They are the entrepreneurs, right? They're serving...
[53:27] Al Danto:They built this.
[53:28] Maya Pomroy:Yes. Their idea.
[53:29] Al Danto:Their consideration is not, you know, billions of dollars in going public, but it's seeing these results, and that's what we've continued to do and to build. And I hope we continue that. And, you know, this year we're super excited. And we have our first alumni cases. So, those of you that are taking my class in the, in the fall...
[53:49] Maya Pomroy:They're not Harvard cases, they're Rice cases. Is everybody excited?
[53:53] Al Danto:We're going to use a Harvard case for those that failed, maybe, right? And the Rice places for those that made it.
[53:56] Maya Pomroy:So, exciting.
[53:56] Al Danto:But, you know, what Rice alums are going to... So, you're going to read about Rice alums and what they did and their cases, and then be able to come in and hear them in the classroom, right? So, it's been a big vision of mine. You know, these E Labs to continue to get it. And again, I keep coming back to the Lilie Lab, but they're just as heart and soul to bring mentors. So, if you need a mentor around, you know, tech, you have a mentor around tech, which is completely different than oil and gas, or it's completely different than a distribution company.
So, we've got that, and we continue to grow and we continue to, you know, be able to, you know, have those seeds and give them the support that they need. And we don't ever lose this kind of entrepreneurial and sense of family that we have. We have it and it continues. The Partios, again, someone's, you know, idea that they had, you know.
[54:47] Maya Pomroy:It's a great idea. It wasn't a DFI. It was GFI, right?
[54:52] Al Danto:Yeah, yeah. You know, the international trips, you know, Michael Koenig, I saw him, what he's doing with our outreach now to-
[55:00] Maya Pomroy:Globally.
[55:00]. Al Danto:... globally, yeah, you know, we have a global outreach of education around entrepreneurship and everything Barb Ostdiek in which she's done with the online program. You know, why have to have the separation and make you come to a physical classroom when you can deliver a lot of this online? And, you know, imagine the pushback that you got to push that idea uphill to take at MBI program online in 2016, 2017. All of a sudden it became the thing to do in 2020. But it wasn't in 2017. It just wasn't right. Executive education to push what we do out there to corporations and everything. That easy to say no to, right?
[55:45] Maya Pomroy:Yeah. But that's one of the things that you always say yes to the DFI and the GFIs and to all the kids that really, really want to be in your classes. You know, it's really been... You can tell by the amount of people in the room that how much you're beloved and really one of the best professors I want. I'm not going to be, you know, pick favorites, but you really are one of the most favorite and best professors. And that's for a reason is because you are very much approachable and anybody can talk to you and come up to you, and you are always willing to connect people to whoever is, or in your network or even a person that might know another person, and a lot of people don't do that. So, I think we're very, very grateful to you for being a part of this community.
[56:25] Al Danto:Yeah. Again, we need the next gen, you know, Al Galindo's here, his latest faculty member has gone through and acquired a company and went on and he's coming back, and I can't be there for everybody all the time. Right? And so, as we do that and the know the... All have, you known, Scott, that was a DFI.
[56:39] Maya Pomroy:No, it was a GF.
[56:41] Al Danto:DFI has turned to GFIs real quick. Then they turned to really great ideas. But, you know, to have that, to have the podcast, which you're doing and what you've done, and it’s so cool to see that.
[56:51] Maya Pomroy:And that was, so that wasn't for me. That was not my... I mean, I'm, like, the third generation of it, so, you know, that was something that started way before. That was when I had started at Rice, and really it has grown so much, but it was also on the shoulders of others, which you have stood on them and someone will stand on yours. So, well, Al-
[57:10] Al Danto:Thank you.
[57:11] Maya Pomroy:... it has been an absolute joy and pleasure, and I thank you so much for taking the time.
[57:14] Al Danto:Thank you so much.
[57:16] Maya Pomroy: Thanks for listening. This has been Owl Have You Know, a production of Rice Business. You can find more information about our guests, hosts, and announcements on our website, business.rice.edu.
Please subscribe and leave a rating wherever you find your favorite podcasts. We'd love to hear what you think.
The hosts of Owl Have You Know are myself, Maya Pomroy, and Brian Jackson.
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