[00:00]Brian Jackson: Welcome to Owl Have You Know, a podcast from Rice Business. This episode is part of our Flight Path series, where guests share their career journeys and stories of the Rice connections that got them where they are.

Today, I'm joined by Emma Konet, Professional MBA Class of 2024, and Jacob Mansfield, Rice undergrad Class of 2016, co-founders of Tierra Climate. Emma and Jacob met while working at Citi as they were building careers across power markets, battery storage, renewable energy and energy trading. Today, they're building Tierra Climate, an AI-powered platform helping companies navigate an increasingly complex energy landscape.

On this episode, we'll talk about the path that led them from energy professionals to entrepreneurs, what people still misunderstand about batteries, how AI is reshaping the energy industry and what they see as the biggest opportunities ahead.

First, I want to say thank you both for joining me. It's really a sincere pleasure.

[01:02]Emma Konet: Likewise.

[01:02]Jacob Mansfield:Thank you for having us on.

[01:03]Brian Jackson: Emma, I was doing a bit of background reading, and one of the things in your background, kind of, popped up and was interesting. You did a sixth-grade science fair project on global warming. I guess now, looking back, do you think that was the first sign that you'd end up building a climate technology company?

[01:20]Emma Konet: Yeah, maybe. You know, I think I've always been, basically, since that project, I've been interested in climate. I mean, that was really just about the greenhouse effect, like what happens when there is more gas in the atmosphere and sunlight comes into the Earth and becomes trapped as heat.

And I started, kind of, connecting the dots, and I was like, "Yeah, we are pulling a lot of carbon out of the ground and turning it into gas, and that has to have some effect on the world." And I think we're living through that.

I mean, I live in Houston. I live on the Gulf Coast. We get hit by more extreme storms, hurricanes. Summers are getting hotter, and I think that, like, what I saw in sixth grade is playing out in real life. I am very glad I am working in an industry to try to mitigate the effects of climate change, to improve people's quality of life.

[02:06]Brian Jackson: That's really great. So, Jacob, what originally drew you into energy and power markets?

[02:12]Jacob Mansfield: Yeah, it's a great question. I actually grew up in Houston and went to Rice for my undergrad, so I'm a Houston native and had a lot of folks in my family and just in my immediate circle that worked in the energy space. So, it makes sense, Houston being the energy capital of the world.

And when I was at Rice, you know, there were a number of things that, kind of, put me on my path, from classes and things in energy economics to energy policy, that I really knew that this was the place where I wanted to build my career because it's just such a foundational piece of all modern society.

You probably see a lot of memes or things on professional social media like LinkedIn, like I do, that there's no energy-poor wealthy countries. Like energy is just a linchpin to modern society, and where we need to go as an economy.

So, I landed on a trading floor, my first job out of college, learning, you know, drinking through a fire hose in terms of information around how power markets work, how financial services work, how I, as a little cog in the machine, fit into all of this.

And then, fast-forward, when Hurricane Harvey hit Houston, I feel like it was a lightbulb moment or a flashbulb moment where, for me, it was kind of a recognition that the work that I was doing could actually be somewhat meaningful in terms of turning the tide towards obviously bringing more resources to the market and building wind farms and solar farms.

But in addition to that, doing it in a way where we are actually actively decarbonizing the grid, hopefully staving off the worst impacts of climate change.

So, for me, coming from Citibank to eventually starting my own company, I think it's definitely infused itself into the core ethos of the company that we're building, where we really want to help physical energy assets operate on the grid as most efficiently as they can and hopefully with a bend towards decarbonizing the grid in the long run.

[03:53]Brian Jackson: On the trading floor at Citi is where you and Emma met. I guess I want to know, what was your first impression of each other?

[04:00]Emma Konet: I think we actually met in New York at training. So, basically, when you start off as an analyst on any of these trading desks on Wall Street, like the Houston office trades energy, so we both lived in Houston at the time, but they send you to New York for training. We were there for like six weeks.

And it's long days, and, you know, you're in the big city, and we're just right out of college. We were so young. I have pictures of us in training, and, like, we're sleep-deprived and being, kind of, goofy.

But yeah, we immediately, kind of, became friends. I mean, you, sort of, have to quickly make friends with the folks in your analyst class, is what they call it, because you're, like, in the trenches together. I mean, it's a tough job. It's, kind of, like Jacob said, "Drinking from the fire hose." So, we, kind of, trauma-bonded, I guess, over that.

And then, yeah, we worked on adjacent power desks in Houston for several years before I moved on, and Jacob stayed. But yeah, I don't know, Jacob, you want to add anything to that?

[04:54]Jacob Mansfield: I mean, I was just struck by how brilliant Emma is. I mean, she's very charismatic. I think that she has this kind of magnetism to when she's engaging with folks and is just super sharp and witty. I think, interestingly, on a trading floor, it is a male-dominated profession. You know, even on the power trading desks that we were both on, maybe 30-plus front-office employees, and probably like three of them are women.

So, it is very much a male-skewed profession. And, I mean, she certainly held her own and was very, very smart, really capable. And I think, similarly, being on adjacent desks where, you know, we covered everything from oil to refined products to natural gas, physical and financial, and power, that helped a lot in terms of, like, bouncing and pinging things off of each other, eventually transitioning to each other's roles, working together on deals.

Like, there were a lot of different ways that we overlapped with each other, such that, fast-forward to, I guess, three years ago, when I was wrapping up my MBA, you know, I was interested in storage. I was interested in the space. And I really reached out to her initially just to learn more about the space, not with really any expectation that we would start something together.

And as we talked about it, it was like, kind of, refreshed into my mind of like, "Emma is awesome. She's stellar." I started talking to other people she referenced me to, and they were like, "Yeah, she's incredible."

And very quickly, I was like, "Okay, if I want to build something, I really need this partner that complements me, has technical capabilities that maybe I don't have." And as we started exploring it, we realized maybe there was something there. And I think, fast-forward now three years later, it's been a fantastic partnership.

[06:28]Brian Jackson: So, you're having that conversation, these things are clicking for you. When's the moment you finally say it? It's almost like popping the question, I feel like, right? Like, it takes a bit of courage, and you're like, "Okay, I guess this is it. This is the fit."

[06:40]Jacob Mansfield: Yeah, I would say, you know, having gone through business school and talked to other folks that start companies, even with people they don't even know, there is, kind of, like, this intermediate phase where you're, kind of, getting to know each other.

And the number one reason why startups fail is actually not because of business issues, but it really is because of founder conflict. The fact that these people are misaligned, they aren't able to work through issues. And so, it's really important that you have that partnership on which you can scaffold and build the business that you want to build.

So, yeah, I mean, by no means were we, like, identical people. We're very, very different people, and we found this way to really work together with a mutual respect of each other's capabilities and what we bring to the table. But I remember in January of 2023, we had talked for a couple months around stuff in storage and what eventually was the initial idea for Tierra.

And I was like, "Emma, I think you should just come up to Boston." I was at HBS at the time. We figured out some time where she could fly up. It happened to be the coldest weekend in Boston the entire winter. It was literally, like, five degrees, and Emma, coming from Houston, I don't even know if you had a parka at the time.

So, it was like scrambling to get the, like, right gear, and this cold front came in, and it was like, you could hardly even walk outside. Your, like, eyelashes were frozen to your face. But it was a good opportunity for us to, kind of, like, lock ourselves into some conference rooms with whiteboards, work through some napkin math, talk through the business, and be like, "Do we feel good about this, and do we want to pursue this?" And we eventually decided to take the plunge a few months later and start the company.

[08:13]Brian Jackson: So, if there's someone out there hearing about Tierra Climate for the first time, can you explain, like, what exactly do you do, and why was this problem the one that you chose to tackle?

[08:24]Jacob Mansfield: I would say that we are building basically an agentic power trading platform. There's been a couple twists and turns to Tierra over time, but we really settled on energy storage being this core piece of the energy transition. It's the fastest-growing asset class in the market.

And with it, there are a lot of organizations that are deploying energy storage resources, either to manage their own load or their own exposure to power, perhaps for capacity reasons if you're looking to interconnect a data center. So, we're going to see this huge wave of batteries come to the market.

Now, the challenge is that batteries are fundamentally different than conventional dispatchable resources like fossil fuels, like natural gas plants or coal plants. But they're also very different than other renewable resources like wind and solar.

So, they are this kind of unique in-between. They're like a Swiss Army knife of the grid. They are highly flexible, highly deployable, very responsive, but very complicated. And so, we need a software system to interface with those assets.

To date, you know, we've gotten agreements in place with anything from Fortune 50 companies to, you know, top commodity trading houses, so a variety of different players that are approaching the problem of how do I interact with these physical assets on the grid, and what are the software solutions that I need in place?

So, in short, what we do is we forecast market conditions, we provide optimization solutions to manage those resources, and then we also provide AI-powered analytics so that you can understand the decisions that are being made and go deeper into the black box of understanding, you know, why did I forecast what I did? Why did my asset make the decision that it did?

Literally being able to ask the models and receive responses and answers, and trying to, kind of, lift the hood, or enable folks to peer into the models and hopefully marry human traders and operators with these really complex systems and algorithms.

[10:14]Brian Jackson: And I think that's how I understood it. Like, the human element's not totally removed out of the process here, right? You rely on it.

[10:22]Emma Konet: Yeah, no. My experience at the bank, and Jacob's as well, was that, you know, the kind of human in the loop is really important. I think it's unlikely that humans will be entirely replaced, even with the advances we've been seeing in AI. I think that it's an industry that, you know, still relies, for example, on brokers in a lot of ways. Like, you know, my husband's a natural gas trader, and a lot of the deals that he gets done are actually through people who are making those deals happen, the buyers and the sellers matching up, and it's not, like, algorithmic trading on a screen.

So, yeah, what we're trying to do is basically make the complex models that, you know, Jacob, kind of, dreams up, these, like, grand visions, and then I'm the one that goes off and builds it. And a lot of the stuff that we've built is, like, quite complex math. I mean, my background is in mathematics, so these are complex math problems. We're doing forecasting with machine learning models that are hard to understand if you're not a coder. And what we're trying to do is make all of that really accessible to people that might have a view in the market but might not be technical experts in software or engineering.

And we've done that through, kind of, this AI LLM layer on top that can take a lot of unstructured data that spins off of these models and actually turn it into usable insights that our customers can actually use to action and improve the value of how they're dispatching their energy storage assets.

[11:39]Brian Jackson: It seems like the target customer here would be, like, the mid- to small-size IPP who doesn't have some of the complexities that the big guys have.

[11:47]Emma Konet: Yeah, that's definitely one segment that is, kind of, a customer profile of ours. Folks that have assets, that own and operate them, but don't have a fully-fledged market operations team, and don't want to invest in building a fully-fledged market operations team.

What we're trying to do is create a software layer that allows you to be really effective with a very small team, like maybe one trader across a fleet of batteries, and that reduces cost for these IPPs and just makes them more effective and allows them to better use their time on building infrastructure, right? Like, that's what they do. They go out, and they raise capital, and they build batteries.

That's just one customer profile. I think that there are others, and I think Jacob touched on it a little bit earlier about top commodity trading houses and even corporates who are perhaps standing up energy desks but don't have the capabilities to really model out the complexity of energy storage problems.

[12:37]Jacob Mansfield: I would like to think of Tierra as, sort of, giving those, you know, individual traders or asset operators superpowers, where they don't have the luxury of scaling up their team linearly based on the number of assets that they're rolling out.

And so, there's going to be this gap between the deployed capacity of their shops or their businesses and their individual capabilities to manage all of those systems, and that's where software's going to fill that gap.

On the other hand, though, for larger players, I think that the value of a platform like ours, and just applications of AI in general, is these organizations are exposed to a lot of headwinds from a human capital standpoint. In some organizations, you have as much as 20% of the labor force nearing retirement. You may have as much as a quarter of your labor force turning over in terms of just leaving.

And so, it's very hard to retain institutional knowledge year over year over year, where, you know, we experienced this at Citi and in financial services, where you fast-forward four or five years and more than half the faces are new. And that's just, you know, par for the course for these types of organizations.

So, what AI enables us to do in terms of our platform is we have all this proprietary data that gets spun out in just day-to-day ordinary operations. If we can capture that, fetch it, and now train a system on how to interpret it, now we have this legacy system that's able to bridge the changes in personnel and team and provide you with continuity of business. And the ability to customize things within the platform starts to be this repository for institutional knowledge.

So, I think it actually does serve a lot of value across different-sized organizations. It's just slightly different in terms of the way that we frame it.

[14:17]Brian Jackson: Yeah, this is so interesting to me. We've talked about one of the segments being IPPs, which are Independent Power Producers, for our listeners who may not know. I'm also curious about, like, your interactions with the hyperscalers. You know, what have you learned from them? What's been surprising to you?

[14:33]Jacob Mansfield: Yeah, we've worked with a number of players, I guess, that you'd consider hyperscalers or the tech giants. And I think that their needs are changing with respect to energy storage. I think if you had looked back maybe two, three years ago, the way in which they would approach storage is as this sort of sustainability alternative, as an augmentation to the renewable energy portfolio.

And so, a lot of the work that we did initially on Tierra was setting up storage as, sort of, this clean energy asset in your portfolio. It can do a bunch of different things, but the big thing is charging up renewables, shifting it, discharging and displacing peak or fossil fuel plants, and avoiding emissions.

And while I think that is probably somewhere in the stack order of priorities, it's been bumped down by just speed to power. And so, folks have probably heard generally the concept of speed to power. But to give you a simple example, it's basically like if a data center company approached a utility and said, "Hey, I want to build a really massive data center in your territory." And the utility says, "Great, you can interconnect in 2032."

And they scratch their head and say, "Well, that doesn't really work for us because we, kind of, need this data center quickly because of the AI wars, and we've got to bring this capacity online and get economies of scale."

And so, what's happening is this new advent of bring your own capacity, or BYOC, which colloquially refers to this concept of bringing off-site resources like power plants that you've procured to a utility or an independent system operator and using that as a way to, kind of, circumvent the line because you're, kind of, adding to the problem, but now you're adding part of the solution in terms of balancing or offsetting your demand with supply.

That's a perfect use case in which storage can come in. It's quickly deployable. It's relatively low footprint. We already have the supply chain. It's pretty robust compared to the turbine, you know, backlogs that we're seeing for gas plants.

And so, storage is a really effective use case there, where there's going to be a lot more power plants put on the grid that now need to be managed in some form or fashion, and where our software can be very helpful to hyperscalers.

[16:37]Brian Jackson: What was the moment that Tierra felt like finally, like, "Oh, this is a company?”

[16:42]Jacob Mansfield: Probably when we started generating revenue. I mean, I think Emma and I used to joke early on about this concept of existential dread, which I'm sure founders can relate to. You know, when you work in a big organization, you may get some little nervousness around, like, bonus day or when you hear, you know, there's going to be some reorg. But generally speaking, like, I wasn't concerned going in, day in and day out, that Citibank would be in existence. It was one of the largest companies in the world.

And so, I think the difference is when you start a company, you do have, like, those butterflies in your stomach or that, kind of, like, "Okay, like, I want to make sure that what I'm building is going to amount to something and be meaningful."

And I think that when we finally solved the cold-start problem, we had gotten a really large corporate that we started working with. It started to feel like, "Okay, now we're validating our existence as a business and all the work that we put into it thus far."

But I don't know. Emma, what are your thoughts on that?

[17:35]Emma Konet: Yeah. I mean, I would say maybe a little earlier for me. I think Jacob was finishing up his MBA, and I actually quit my job at Key Capture Energy, which is an energy storage IPP, before your MBA finished up.

And so, I was full-time, but I don't think I was paying myself. Like, we didn't have any money. We had some money that we had, you had won, like, a pitch competition. We had a little bit of money in the bank, but, like, we needed it really to, like, pay for data and get the company off the ground.

And so, I would say we did a pre-seed fundraise in Q4 of 2023, and when I started getting a paycheck, I think I was like, "Oh, okay, we have a real company." Enough people believed in this business idea to fund it, and I could start paying myself to actually build this thing. You know, that was a pretty big eye-opening thing for me. I mean, really, with being a founder and starting a business, like, you know, awesome to be able to be innovative and make a change in the world, and that's really cool.

But it's also cool to just take capital and turn it into jobs and turn it into productivity and create value for people. And I think that's been, looking back on the past three years, like, we've accomplished a lot, but that's also just, kind of, like, important to me, what we've done for job creation and just creating this thing that didn't exist before that actually improves someone's life.

[18:52]Brian Jackson: That's great. So, I guess, you know, pre-starting, I'm sure you had assumptions of what being a founder and an executive of a company that you create is, but looking back now, are you like, "Yeah, wow, those assumptions are completely wrong. I had this totally misframed."?

[19:07]Emma Konet: So, I went and did my MBA at Rice, and I did the, like, professional program. So, I was doing nights and weekends and summers and all that stuff, like, straight through two years. I think going into that program, I'm not sure I ever would've quit my job and foregone health insurance and, like, taken the big risk because I was scared. I mean, I was genuinely like, "Oh, like, that feels really risky. I'm not sure my risk tolerance is there."

But through the process of my MBA, I think because Rice is so focused on entrepreneurship, like, that's, kind of, in the veins of the MBA program throughout. I basically got convinced that it wasn't as big of a risk as I thought, and I think throughout that program, it just made me realize, "You know what? Just do it." Like, it was kind of the just-do-it, just-take-the-leap mentality that pushed me over the edge, and I'm very, very glad that I went full-time on this.

I think it's really hard to successfully build a company when you're also having a full-time job somewhere else, like, and you're just trying to do it on the side. I think you really do have to commit, and committing is, I think, what started to get the company off the ground. You know, I have every reason to believe that Tierra Climate's going to be a success, and I hope it will be.

I think if it's not, I want to build something new. I want to keep going on this journey of entrepreneurship and try to make a mark on the world and, you know, be my own boss. And I think that brings a lot of joy and happiness. Like, I wake up every day, and I love my job, and I can't say that about any other job that I've had.

And I think if you're thinking about building something, you will find more happiness by building it than staying in your job that you're stuck in that has stability.

[20:42]Jacob Mansfield: Yeah, I think on that exact point, what I was going to bring up was I had a professor in business school that said that magic happens when you commit. There's some sort of lucky space of serendipity that you invite when you talk to people, and you clearly come from the space, and you understand their pain points, and yet you've, kind of, left all of that world to try to solve the problem. I think that's pretty compelling for folks.

I think it's committing at inception, but it's like a continual process of commitment throughout the entire journey. Kind of, to provide maybe a more bleak analogy, I think maybe it's timely given SpaceX's IPO, but Elon Musk, I think, once said, "Entrepreneurship is like, you know, staring off into the abyss and, like, chewing broken glass."

And honestly, sometimes it feels that way, where it is a grind, and you are grinding away, and there's highs and lows. But yeah, I would say that it is a continual process of commitment and also, like, being adaptable to things that are changing. I think we've had to adapt from time to time to changes in the macro environment, to the political environment, and that's not a bad thing.

And so, I think one of the benefits of being an entrepreneur is you get so much access to so many people and things, but also you get to chart your own journey. Like, I don't have to go through some sort of bureaucratic process to make some change. It's like all of the decision-makers are in one room, and we can very quickly make a determination as to what we need to do, which is really exciting and I think very freeing.

The last thing I would say is, you know, when I think about the folks that we add to our team, I once heard this analogy that folks fit into three buckets. They're either commandos, soldiers, or police.

And so, commandos are like what you'd imagine, like Army Special Forces. They parachute into the jungle. They cut down the jungle. They, kind of, build everything from scratch. They don't have a game plan.

And then the soldiers come in. They pave the roads. They frame up the walls. They, kind of, formalize processes and structures. And then police come in, and at that point, they're just directing traffic and making sure things don't break.

And I think for a lot of people who work in big organizations, they probably fit into, like, the latter two categories, maybe even most often the last category. But the benefit of being an entrepreneur is you can come in and you can build everything from scratch. It's going from zero to one.

And I think that's the really exciting part of being an entrepreneur. Now it makes me think it'd be hard to go back to being, like, a police officer-type role in a large organization where everything's already built out, and I, kind of, fit in as this very small piece of the overall puzzle.

[23:11]Brian Jackson: But to take that leap, to commit, what did you feel like was the hardest thing to leave behind? I mean, you all both, you know, large organizations, and you had successful careers you were parting ways with.

[23:22]Emma Konet: So, when I left my job, KCE had been acquired. So, you know, I was a pretty early hire there. I was the 25th hire, so it's certainly not as small of a company as Tierra, but, like, it still had startup vibes.

And by the time I left, it was over 100 people. So, it had grown quite a bit and had been acquired by a private... You know, by SK E&S. They now own KCE.

It, kind of, felt like that journey was coming to a natural end. I mean, I could've stayed on. I mean, obviously, like, a lot of people did. And, you know, I think things changed because the company changed ownership. It felt like a natural time to leave. I didn't really feel like I was leaving that much behind. It felt just, like, exciting to step into the entrepreneur position.

[24:01]Jacob Mansfield: I would similarly echo that. I think we both were well-positioned to take the jump into entrepreneurship, where we have both been in careers where we have built up some experience. We know we have marketable skills.

That makes it a lot easier to take a leap because I think you always fear, "What if I fail?" But you have other things to fall back on. And I think the other thing, too, is entrepreneurship compresses a ton of learning into a very, very finite period of time, where you're pressed to do things that you never had to do before, maybe several things that you've never done before, all at the same time.

And so, it's really challenging you to grow very, very quickly. You have to present yourself in a certain way. Even, like, you know, in my role, where I was really focused on structuring and originating deals for wind farms and solar farms and supply agreements for corporate clients in the bank, selling software is completely different.

And so, there are a lot of learnings along the way that you acquire, such that you come out of it, you know, being able to certainly do something that's marketable and valuable to society, even if the startup fails.

So, that is hopefully comfort or assurance to folks that, like, it doesn't have to be a completely scary thing to do. And I think right now the barrier to entry is so low, especially for software companies, because of the fact that the tools that are readily available and accessible, which is a really big advent of the time that we're in with AI and what that means for hopefully the proliferation of other companies to start.

[25:29]Brian Jackson: So, if you had the entrepreneurial bug and you were looking at utilizing these tools now that can, kind of, expedite an idea to actually, you know, something actionable, what would you do to, kind of, test-case it and figure it out and generate ideas? Where would you be?

[25:44]Emma Konet: Yeah, I mean, I think this is something that we talked a lot about at Rice and, like, the Lilie Lab. We talk a lot about, like, the minimum viable product that you can build that is something you can sell, and getting feedback as early as possible.

And, like, I think they always use the example of, like, the Mechanical Turk. Basically, it was this machine that, like, everyone thought could, like, play chess, but it was actually just a person, like, in a box playing the other side.

It looked like it was this fancy thing, but it ended up being hacked in a way. And that's really good for entrepreneurs and startups because you don't want to spend a lot of resources on a product until you know that it's valuable to someone, because, like, you could build this fancy mousetrap, but if no one wants it, then you've just wasted time and resources, and you won't have a successful business.

So, I think the way that that plays out in what we're working on, especially in this time of coding agents, which are just really incredible, I mean, the ability of what they can do. I mean, for me, as, like, the CTO and running this company and running the technical team, it's like having another engineer, if not more than one engineer. It's like I can send agents out to go do things, and it just increases productivity.

And so, what we've done is, like, no one on our team has front-end engineering experience, meaning, like, we've never built, like, web apps, and we don't really know JavaScript. I mean, we all code in Python.

But with the help of these coding agents, we are able to very quickly, like, get prototypes of the type of features that we thought people might like, and then we can go out to the market and be like, "Okay, what do you think about this?" Go to friendlies, go to people who are interested in buying the software, and then they give us good feedback. And then once we've established that the thing that doesn't work but, sort of, looks cool is valuable, then we go make it work.

And then that's where it actually does take a lot of, you know, professional engineering time, and the coding agents can't exactly do all of that back-end work. But at least we know that we're onto something. And I think that's how we've really refined the product and gotten it to a point where it's quite valuable to folks, and it's because we haven't wasted time building something that we hadn't validated yet.

[27:41]Jacob Mansfield: That's, yeah, a good point, Emma. I think that there's a lot of, like, core models, like proprietary modeling, that has to be done. I think that's probably where, like, the secret sauce is, of how do you understand power markets? How do you, you know, apply mathematics and complex optimization to these issues?

And so, I think that's the value of, like, the human architecting this entire system. And then things like building front ends are, like, certainly things that Claude Code or Codex are very good at. It's like finding a way to marry, you know, those things, like our core capabilities, with what these models' core capabilities are.

Back to that question around, like, where would you start, one of the things that I wrestle with of, like, if I were to ever start another company in the future, what would it be, is one of my priors is this idea that there is some inherent value to founder-market fit, meaning that a founder is well-suited to a domain or a market that they have experience in.

And I'm not entirely sure that that's the case. I think that there are a lot of instances in which you could go into a domain which you don't have priors in. Obviously, you'd have to be a good student of it and learn very quickly. But if you're customer-obsessed, you can, kind of, come up the learning curve.

Now, that has its limits, right? Like, I probably couldn't go out and start a nuclear fusion company with no understanding of, like, the core technology. I think it would be pretty challenging. But I do think it means that there's a pretty wide range of opportunities for folks to pursue. It could be informed by a personal pain point.

That's probably where founder-market fit really comes into play, is, like, being in a domain, being in an industry day in and day out, wrestling with the same issues, and then wanting to go out and solve them. And that's where I think that, with the tools and, like, with the motivation and ambition, like, people can go out and actually start to solve those problems.

[29:30]Brian Jackson: Yeah, that's really great. I think one thing you all have both talked about is the Rice connection and the common thread between both of you all. Jacob, you did your undergraduate there. Emma, you had your professional MBA. I wonder if you can pinpoint a way the Rice network influenced your careers or, ultimately, impacted Tierra as you've, kind of, gone through the last couple of years.

[29:52]Jacob Mansfield: Yeah, it's funny. At one point, our entire team had a Rice connection. Two of us had done our undergraduate at Rice, different years, years separated, and two of us had also done, you know, professional programs or master's programs at Rice. I adore my time at Rice. I think super fondly of it.

I think it was a really special time of learning more about myself, building connections with other people, really fostering intellectual curiosity, this kind of unconventional wisdom that then you take to other domains. And I think one thing that's really helped me on my founder journey is there's a set of Owls that have gone before me, have started companies in the energy space, have been quite successful.

And I think fostering a connection with them, where I didn't go to school with 50,000 people or, you know, minting a class of 10,000 people a year, it was a very, very small group of people, such that I can build those personal connections, and they can be a support network for me in building my own company.

So, I think that that's been hugely valuable in terms of just the ecosystem and the entrepreneurs within the alumni base of Rice.

[30:58]Emma Konet: Yeah, I would, kind of, echo that. It's, sort of, like the people and the community. I mean, obviously, the education is valuable, and I learned a lot, and the MBA has been useful with starting a company. But I would say, like, I made a lot of really good friends, especially women, you know, high-achieving women who are in senior roles at various different companies.

I think that is, like, you know, when working at a really small company, like, we don't have a lot of coworkers. When you're a company of four, and you're remote, like, I live in Houston, and Jacob's in New York, and our other two employees are in Boston, I don't get to have, like, a coworker relationship in the standard way that you would think of, like, going into an office.

So, I think having this network of professionals is super valuable to, like, kind of, keep me grounded. And, you know, the fact that I graduated only a few years ago, and so, like, most of these people still live in Houston. The other piece I would say is, like, shoutout to Kyle Judah at Lilie, because I have called him in panic several times since I graduated.

I mean, we were quite close while I was in the program, but he's a great sounding board for, like, founders who maybe started companies while at Rice or used, kind of, Rice as a launchpad to start a company, and he has been quite supportive, even, you know, long after I've left.

And so, that's been really, really great, to just, kind of, have what I would call just, like, a mentor that I know that I can call, who's been a founder, who's experienced it, who knows what it's like to chew the glass, and, like, can, kind of, talk me off the ledge when things are getting rough.

And not to say that it's, like, I mean, there's obviously highs and lows, but the lows tend to, like, really weigh on you. And he's been super helpful in not, like, over-indexing on things that go wrong and being able to pivot and make sure that, you know, we're just doing the thing we need to do to keep the business alive and keep us successful.

[32:41]Jacob Mansfield: I would also say that's where, like, the founder partnership comes into play. And Emma and I, being very different people, I think that we respond with varying amplitudes to the good news and the bad news, and that's actually really good, is to have, you know, founders that are, sort of, countervailing forces to each other, where one of us has to be obsessed with the things that can fail, and one of us has to be the optimist as to, you know, "What if this worked out?"

And you, kind of, need both of those folks to, kind of, counterweight each other. Otherwise, you can, kind of, spiral into despair or be blissfully ignorant to all the things that you need to address as a business that you're putting off because you're just looking at only the positives.

[33:19]Brian Jackson: Yeah, and you were talking about that network of the people you can call. I find in the renewable space that there are more Owls, there are more Rice undergrads and MBAs out there, than I think I had seen four or five years ago. One place I'm finding a lot of them is at the Corporate Energy Buyers Association Conference.

I believe y’all were just at it, which, coincidentally, so was I. I'd be curious, what were your biggest takeaways from those conversations this year?

[33:46]Jacob Mansfield: We've been a member of CEBA for the last three years, and I think, in part, it's because we've been really obsessed with, you know, the buy side of the market, how corporates can be a big catalyzing force for deploying these assets through their off-take agreements.

And so, I think that this year was pretty unique insofar as there was actually a pretty clear pendulum shift from just signing more wind and solar deals to, what are standards going to look like for the energy landscape? How do we get credit for these types of solutions? What types of novel technologies do we want to support in deploying and bringing online? And specifically, energy storage.

So, I mean, when I... Let's say, you know, three years ago, I think I led a roundtable on energy storage, and it was, kind of, a cute topic. We're like, "Oh, okay, yeah, maybe batteries." And this year there were, like, three or four different events on just storage alone.

And so, I think it's clearly breaking into the zeitgeist of corporates as they think about grid reliability, how they contribute to grid reliability, how they grapple with and manage market risk, where they are a load, so they're exposed to market volatility.

And wind and solar deals can only cover you so much, but the real pinch point is when the sun sets, and the sun hasn't set in yet, and folks are coming home, they're turning on their appliances, and prices start to spike in the evening ramp. And that's where a solution like batteries really helps to extend that runway and cover those periods of time.

And then, on top of that, the ability to actually claim environmental benefits when you can effectively use storage to shift renewables and displace the peaker plants, the avoided emissions coming from it.

So, that was, I think, a really big change from years past that I think is really exciting. I hope it continues, and I certainly believe that it will if we continue on the pathway that we are of tremendous growth in energy demand.

[35:33]Brian Jackson: So, looking ahead, and I mean, I'm sure as founders, you all probably have things that keep you up at night, but what is keeping you up right now? What has you concerned?

[35:43]Jacob Mansfield: I mean, both of us have really small children. I have a 13-month-old, and Emma has, like, a three-month-old. So, I was going to say, probably quite literally, depending on evening to evening, probably our children.

But the other way to turn that is, like, yeah, I mean, I want to build something that has consequence and meaning. It's not worth that opportunity cost. I'd like to think that it's something that I'll look back fondly on and somehow find the right balance between professional and personal life, and raising a family, and also building a fledgling company that's, like, you know, in itself a toddler and growing it to be something that's a mature company that's self-sustaining and produces a lot of economic value.

[36:22]Emma Konet: Yeah, for me, I think it's, you know, I'm the CTO, Jacob's the CEO, so our jobs are very different. You know, Jacob is talking to customers, and he's talking to investors, and he's, like, painting this kind of broad vision of what the company is and what the company can be. And my job is much more technical.

I'm kept up at night by math problems sometimes, right? And, like, I wake up in the middle of the night, and I'm like, "Oh, okay, this is how we should do it. I came to this conclusion that, after thinking about it nonstop for three days, like, I finally unlocked this thing."

And so, yeah, I think I experience maybe more of, like, an acute sense of action, and I have to, like, build something that works, you know? It has to physically, like, go out there and do the thing that we wanted it to do.

And, so far, we've done it. I mean, we've hit all our KPIs, our, you know, the pilot that we had with this hyperscaler went, like, very, very well. We were blowing our KPIs out of the water, like 3X what we thought we were going to hit.

And so, that, you know, that's validation that things are going well. But every time you turn a corner, it's, "Can we pull this off?" And from a technical perspective, that's a tough question. I think from the early days of the company, you know, the company has pivoted several times, and we've, kind of, you know, we're obviously still in storage. We've changed a little bit what we originally were setting out to do. But I was like, "I don't even know if this can be done."

There were certain questions where I was like, "Can anyone do this?" Like, we were trying to predict the emissions rate in the future in Texas. That's like, maybe we can't do it. It turns out we could, and we did it very well, and it worked out. But I think it's those kinds of existential questions when you're trying to do something for the first time that no one's ever done, like an execution thing for me.

[37:58]Brian Jackson: So, doing the pilot, having it go well, I mean, that's a huge milestone. Were there lessons learned from it? And I guess if you could just, kind of, high-level walk through what the pilot was. I think it was a 100-megawatt battery in Texas.

[38:11]Emma Konet: Yeah. So, 200-megawatt-hour system in West Texas, 100 megawatts, 200 megawatt-hour. And it was with a hyperscaler and an IPP, and we were trying to demonstrate what it could look like, you know, if a hyperscaler does a toll, operating that battery to that hyperscaler's KPIs.

And really, it's dependent on, like, what the company wants to do. Like we said, batteries are a Swiss Army knife. You can, you know, optimize the battery for revenue maximization, you can optimize it for carbon minimization, you can do something in between. And I think for this pilot, we were doing something in between. It was a company that cared about making a sustainability claim in addition to, you know, hedging their exposure to energy markets.

I think the biggest learning that I took away was that we had an extremely small team, and we were operating an asset 24 hours a day. I mean, power doesn't sleep, right? Like, you've got to make... This thing's got to run overnight. And, like, we had four technical people working on it at the time.

And I think that the takeaway for me is that it's really incredible that we could basically do this really, really difficult thing with a very small team, and that was the indicator that I think that we could scale this business massively.

[39:17]Brian Jackson: Well, Jacob, Emma, thank you both so much for your time today and for joining me on Owl Have You Know.

[39:22]Jacob Mansfield: Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

[39:23]Emma Konet: Thank you.

[39:25]Brian Jackson: 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 podcast. We'd love to hear what you think. The hosts of Owl Have You Know are myself, Brian Jackson, and Maya Pomroy.

Pivoting to investment banking requires gaining new skills. Many candidates make the transition through higher education programs like a graduate certificate, or an MBA, if you have little financial experience. Internships, often secured through an MBA program, are the main on-ramp for roles in investment banking, and can be highly competitive.

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No, prior finance experience is not required for admission to top MBA programs, including those with strong finance recruiting outcomes. Candidates from consulting, engineering, operations and other non-finance backgrounds successfully transition into finance careers through MBA programs every year. What matters more than your previous industry is your ability to demonstrate analytical thinking, quantitative ability and a clear rationale for why you want to pursue a finance career. Read more about how your work experience, regardless of industry, will enrich your time in the MBA.

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Yes, several international MBA programs offer strong finance career outcomes, particularly in London and Canada. However, U.S. MBA programs typically provide easier access to Wall Street recruiting and U.S.-based financial institutions. If you want to work in U.S. finance long-term, attending a program based in the U.S. simplifies visa and recruiting logistics.

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[00:01]Maya Pomroy: Welcome to Owl Have You Know, a podcast from Rice Business. This episode is part of our Flight Path series, where guests share their career journeys and stories of the Rice connections that got them where they are. I'm your host, Maya Pomroy. Today's guest is Pablo Coello, MD, and Rice MBA from the Class of 2025. Welcome, Pablo.

[00:25]Pablo Coello: Thank you. Thank you very much for having me. Excited to be here.

[00:28]Maya Pomroy: Well, we're thrilled to have you. You're a graduate of the dual program degree that's offered at Rice Business in partnership with the Baylor College of Medicine, the MD/MBA program, but I’d rather call it the MBA/MD program, right? MBA should start first.

[00:41]Pablo Coello: That's very fair, yeah.

[00:44]Maya Pomroy: And you're currently an orthopaedic surgery resident at UC Health in Cincinnati. You earned your undergraduate degree in biochemistry at The University of Texas at Austin. I know people say University of Texas, but it's The University of Texas at Austin.

[00:57]Pablo Coello: Uh-huh, right.

[00:58]Maya Pomroy: Your background spans clinical medicine research, which you conducted at Harvard Medical School, and now business. And I'm sure that you probably have a unique perspective on the future of not only healthcare, but the business of healthcare.

[01:13]Pablo Coello: Yeah, maybe. So, the entire purpose of me getting the MBA, and it's a question I get asked all the time, because a lot of people wind up scratching their heads as to, you know, why you would possibly, A, delay graduating med school an extra year, and B, get an MBA in the first place. It's not something typically a physician will get as part of their training.

And I totally agree, it's unusual. But the thing is, at least in my medical school training, we did most of our training at Ben Taub Hospital, which is a major county hospital, downtown, as well as some other training at, like, St. Luke's and Children's, both of which are private and have access to a lot more resources and money, et cetera. But seeing, kind of, how those environments, you know, operate as like a business of healthcare side of things rather than just from a clinical perspective, realize there's, like, 1,001 inefficiencies that affect both the clinical and non-clinical side of the hospital.

The clinical, at least for me, obviously being the most important. And there's a lot of ways that physicians, at least my own mentors, you know, in my training, were frustrated and had solutions that they felt would be adequate for different problems that they saw day to day, but didn't have the means to communicate that in, like, a business language, if you will, or in a way that comes across in a useful and actionable way to like an actual administrator with the power to make, like, a big change.

So, I figured it was like, well, I’m going to be stuck in the same position, you know, 10, 20, 30 years from now if I don't get myself either the credibility, at least, with the correct, you know, right three letters after my name, and...

[02:41]Maya Pomroy: Five.

[02:42]Pablo Coello: Five, like, well, but look, I needed to add the MBA portion, so that people take me a little more seriously. But I also wanted to understand things more than just at a superficial level. And even, like, not necessarily, like, you know, general big concept things, but, like, if I were to see a problem, and were to be able to see the numbers behind that problem and see, kind of, why the hospital is stuck in whatever position it's stuck in.

I think as a clinician with business training, rather than a businessman, I'll have a unique perspective on how maybe we could come to a solution that is best for the hospital at the end of the day, which is what the administrators want, but also best for our patients and the community, overall.

[03:22]Maya Pomroy: But a lot of people figure this out much later, right? Like, not in the middle of getting their MD. Did you always want to be a doctor?

[03:30]Pablo Coello: Yeah. I mean, as long as I can remember anyway, figured it out, at least as far as my family and I are concerned, sometime around maybe 12 or 13 years old is when the idea started, kind of, really taking shape. I did, like, a career fair or something like that in sixth grade for it, and then in middle school I started volunteering and doing some other things, and that obviously snowballed into eventually getting into Baylor at, you know, downtown Houston, and, you know, now I'm a resident. So, as long as I can remember, it's always been the goal.

[03:59]Maya Pomroy: Medicine. Always wanted to do medicine. And that's what led you to biochem and then to Harvard and to do some research there. So, you did a lot of undergraduate research at Harvard Medical School. Can you tell me a little bit about that experience that you had?

[04:11]Pablo Coello: Yeah. I'd be happy to. So, part of the application process into medical school, which is hard, to put it simply. It's very, very comprehensive. You have to have grades, research, volunteering, clinical experience. You have to do a lot of things, and you know, college, at least looking at it now, was not as hard as I had thought about it then, but in the moment, you know, you just started out, you just left home. It can be very overwhelming.

So, as a freshman, I started looking for research opportunities, eventually found this one at Harvard, which required, like, an application process, et cetera. I was fortunate enough to get a spot. The whole point of that summer was to develop a... Not to get super nerdy here, but we, like, created, like, a genetic construct to test different genes. We could basically, like, take a gene that we want, insert it into this mechanism, activate it, and then, kind of, see what that gene does.

[05:04]Maya Pomroy: So, like gene therapy, sort of?

[05:06]Pablo Coello: Kind of. It's more so like gene understanding, if you will. Just, like, wanted to see the effects inside cells, like human cells, of what these genes do, and the entire purpose was to, like, characterize or understand the pathophysiologic background of atherosclerosis.

So, in other words, like, why do we get plaque in our arteries. And it's a very, very complicated, physical problem in terms of, like, fluid dynamics, et cetera, as well as actual genetic transcription stuff, so I was studying the genetic side of things. And I did that for two summers, and it was great. It was... It really opened my eyes, and I was convinced I was going to be a cardiologist.

[05:40]Maya Pomroy: You had some time at the Texas Heart Institute, at THI, didn't you?

[05:44]Pablo Coello: I did. I did spend some time over there while I was at Rice, which was great. But yeah, I mean, it was, it was really just more getting my feet wet and getting strong research experience. That was the entire purpose of getting the position in the first place. Once I got there and made the project my own, I really took a lot more pride in it, and it became very near and dear to me.

And it has to this day, like, informed how I approach, study design, and things like that. That's really the main purpose of that experience is, like, learning how to do research as, you know, an undergrad student, a medical student, and now as a resident, eventually as a full-time clinician, as an attending, because science is the foundation of medicine, that at the end of the day was the main purpose of that experience, and I think it absolutely achieved that.

[06:26]Maya Pomroy: Wow. So, you did that, and then you did decide to go to medical school and applied. You were saying that while you were in medical school, you had some great mentors that really, sort of, drove you to think about, you know, adding an MBA while you were getting an MD. Can you tell me about that?

[06:45]Pablo Coello: Yeah, sure. So, I won't say that any particular mentor, like, directly said, "Oh, I wish I had an MBA," or, "Oh, Pablo, you should get an MBA." Like, those words never came out of anyone's mouth. The thing is, I think most of my mentors... These were all orthopaedic surgeons, they're extremely talented surgeons, but they're surgeons. Generally, most of them don't have other interests in administrative things, as is the case for most clinicians, I would argue.

But they were still extremely frustrated about various problems, the most significant of which were all based out of inefficiencies in the OR. Like, how much stuff we waste, basically, because the systems in place to prepare the necessary supplies for the OR are not perfect. And they will never be perfect, but they were so imperfect to the point that we were throwing away thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars' worth of medical equipment because it was stuff that was single-use, opened, could not be recycled-

[07:42]Maya Pomroy: Used again. Yeah.

[07:43]Pablo Coello: ... or reprocessed or reused, right? And some of that is unavoidable. You know, medical equipment is extremely expensive. Like, you know, there's certain pieces of plastic that are key for certain joint surgeries that just those pieces are thousands of dollars, right?

[07:58]Maya Pomroy: Yes.

[07:58]Pablo Coello: And you would never guess that. Along with other things, right? And turnover time, et cetera, between cases. The list goes on. But the message was always the same, no matter which hospital I was in. It's like, "I can't believe we're throwing this away. Oh, my gosh, like, we're in the middle of the surgery, and we're not ready." We're like, "Now the case is going to be delayed," and every minute in the OR costs, like, 150 something dollars.

So, like, all these things eventually add up, and the echoes were the same, regardless of having a lot of resources or not, like, over at Ben Taub, or the VA, or St. Luke's, like, the problems were always the same. There was no effort made to make any change. It was just, "Ugh, I'm frustrated with this. I can't believe this. This is unacceptable, blah, blah, blah." And then the next day it was the same thing, and then the same thing, and the same thing.

And that's not their fault. Their biggest concern is in making sure that a patient has excellent healthcare. Like, you know, that we deliver the highest quality possible care, which is great. But at the same time, because the supportive structures around the OR and other clinical aspects are simply not where they should be, we are failing the patient.

And we are doing that over and over and over and over again. It's affecting, like, the overall health of the community. It's affecting the overall, like, opinion of the community on the healthcare system, and it's costing the hospital, whatever hospital, thousands of dollars a day, like, every day for eternity.

So, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that, you know, "I got this MBA because I wanted to be, like, this knight in shining armor, and I was going to solve all the problems," because I'm not. That's unrealistic, and I get it. But I want to be part of the solution, if you will. So, that's why. Like, my mentors didn't really tell me, like, "Oh, Pablo, I really think most clinicians should have an MBA."

[09:38]Maya Pomroy: Well, because I mean, getting your MD is, kind of, a time-consuming, you know, endeavor.

[09:44]Pablo Coello: Yeah. Totally, totally. But it's not just me. I graduated with 13 other MD/MBAs. We all came to the same conclusion eventually, and we all decided to delay graduation by an extra year and got this additional training, and I would bet all the money in the world, which I don't have much, but all of it, that not a single one of them regrets spending that year at Rice, and myself included. I don't regret it. I think it was 100% the right decision.

[10:10]Maya Pomroy: So, it was seeing the same problem over and over, and it, sort of, was banging you upside the head of, like, "This is ridiculous." Like, "We need to... This... We're better than this." And that was your drive to come to Rice. And so, you know, I had in my Executive MBA program, multiple orthopaedic surgeons.

[10:30]Pablo Coello: Did you really?

[10:31]Maya Pomroy: I did. I did. That, that I've kept in touch with. And so they saw the same problem and... But they chose to take the leap a little bit later, not while they were in med school, but once they were already, you know, practicing physicians and were like, "Okay, this is crazy." You know, the fact that you decided to take this on says a lot about the preparation that you knew that you needed in order to be a better doctor, all at the same time. That's something that is really unique about your story.

So, tell me about your time at Rice, and you said that there were a couple of you that decided to do this together. Is that right?

[11:06]Pablo Coello: Yeah. It was 14 MD/MBAs.

[11:08]Maya Pomroy: Wow.

[11:09]Pablo Coello: Which, from what I gather, is a very unusual number. Most of the time it's only a couple. But it's been growing steadily, and our goal was to, like, keep it that way, because like we alluded to earlier, clinicians should understand business. It's just part of our job and something we ignore often.

But anyway, as far... The first class was the strategy course that we all take on, like, basically just being able to understand how different corporations in different spaces, like, position themselves competitively, you know, for, like, long-term success, if you will. That transition into business, having finished all of my primary, like, core clinical rotations, was weird.

It, like, just to put it briefly, like I definitely felt like I was a fish out of water, if you will. But I...

[11:59]Maya Pomroy: I think we all do. We all do. It doesn't matter what your background is.

[12:01]Pablo Coello: Yeah, I've been told... Yeah, which is... Was an... It was reassuring in a way because I looked at... I remember looking around, and it's like everybody looked as clueless as I felt. So, I was like, "All right, we're all on the same page. It's great. We're all going to be fine." And it was exciting too. I remember thinking, like, "Okay, like, this is exactly what I signed up for." I wanted to learn something new and expand whatever skills, or just get new ones, because quite simply, I had no previous business coursework of any kind.

I did, again, like, a business minor in undergrad through McCombs at UT, but like I didn't remember any of that. It was all, like, my first three semesters, I think it was. So, jumping into that course was a rude awakening, but in, like, a very, very good way, I would say. Kind of really jolted me awake, if you will, and prepped me for the rest of the year, and challenged me to grow and think in different ways that I didn't really expect. But that was the whole goal, so, yeah.

[12:59]Maya Pomroy: None of us expect that, right? Like, that's what I'm saying. It's in those DNA that you were talking about. The... It's... You have one perception of the way that it's going to be, and then you show up, and you're like, "Oh no, that's not the way it's going to be." And it's like 100 times better, and then it does, it sort of seeps into who you are, and then you can't see... You can't unsee things anymore, right?

[13:19]Pablo Coello: Right.

[13:19]Maya Pomroy: Like, you're like, "That's inefficient," and "Wow, that's amazing," and "They figured that out." And so, like, your whole vision of the world changes, you know?

[13:28]Pablo Coello: Mm-hmm.

[13:28]Maya Pomroy: So, tell me about what are the most valuable lessons that you got from your MBA while you were at Rice?

[13:34]Pablo Coello: Well, honestly, the first one that comes to mind was the, I guess, forced teamwork that we were all, like, put into, right?

[13:41]Maya Pomroy: Yes, the teams.

[13:44]Pablo Coello: Yeah. And that's, I think, a defining aspect of Rice and the MBA that we all have. But that I think was the biggest lesson, if you will, was, kind of, learning how to navigate things in an environment filled with people that talk a different language than I do, almost.

Because, you know, medicine is a team sport. You hear that all the time because we interact with other teams all day, every day. You know, as an orthopaedic surgery resident, our field is very specialized. So, as a result, we get called by a lot of people, and we have to also call a lot of other people to help us manage things that we simply don't know how to manage.

And I think, having learned what I learned in the MBA helped a lot in terms of, like, managing a lot of different things at once, different voices, if you will, in, like, the clinical setting, which I didn't really expect, to tell you the truth. But it helped, because I learned, also, to not rely on myself as much. My team is excellent. They're extremely skilled at what they do, and I could just relax a little bit and focus on my own tasks and things. That's probably the biggest takeaway. Obviously, there's the coursework itself.

The conversations we had about finance and, like, looking at things long term, helped me, like, really understand the bottom line when looking through important financial information, which, at the end of the day, explains why big organizations, be them corporations or hospitals, make the decisions that they do.

And that was one of my main goals was to understand that and try to figure out why things are going in a certain direction, and maybe see if I can try and steer the ship in another direction, that I might think is better, or promote my own possible solutions using those numbers, right? And then there's marketing, etc.

[15:26]Maya Pomroy: Data. More of that data, right?

[15:27]Pablo Coello: Right. Exactly.

[15:27]Maya Pomroy: The more data you have, the better.

[15:28]Pablo Coello: Exactly. So, it absolutely, I think, expanded my... I keep going back to the word understanding, because, like, I guess at the end of the day that's really what it is, of just how things really work behind the scenes. Because I was so used to just, like, patient B, patient C, patient B, et cetera, and that was just rinse and repeat, right?

[15:47]Maya Pomroy: Yeah.

[15:48]Pablo Coello: Whereas these organizations don't function without this entire, you know, conglomerate functioning behind the scenes.

[15:55]Maya Pomroy: Well, and it's also, it's also very siloed, right? So, you've got like the folks that, you know, the CEOs of whatever hospital, and, you know, you've got like all of those people, and then you've got the doctors, and very rarely do you have someone that has the expertise in both, right? And like you said, it's broadening your understanding because healthcare, whichever way you want to slice it, is a business.

[16:17]Pablo Coello: Yeah.

[16:18]Maya Pomroy: You need to be able to be efficient and successful and all of those things in terms of the financial data, in order to be a top hospital and provide quality of care, all at the same time. And so, like the quality of care should be the very, very top, but in a lot of places, it's what kind of turnover do you have, you know, in terms of, what are those financial statements? What... How much money are you really generating, right? And then the more you generate, the higher quality of doctors can you hire and retain.

[16:49]Pablo Coello: Right. Yeah. It's a positive feedback loop at the end of the day, which is obvious now, but it wasn't then. It just wasn't. So, it's one of the big, I guess, learning points recently.

[17:00]Maya Pomroy: What would you tell a current, you know, med student of, like, why they should go to Rice and get this MBA and go and do this?

[17:10]Pablo Coello: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a great question, and it's a question I've been asked by med students before. Like, "I'm thinking about doing this. What... Do you think it's worth it?" And the answer is absolutely. The thing is, it's hard for me to tell someone, "Here's why you should do it," unless they've, kind of, seen these same issues play out. Like, if you had told me when I was a first-year med student, "Hey, would you consider an MBA?"

[17:34]Maya Pomroy: You'd be like, "No."

[17:36]Pablo Coello: I would look at you like you had four eyes. Like, there's just no way. Why would I possibly delay graduating med school an extra year, delay having a real job for a year, when all I really want to do is be a doctor? And what I would tell myself back then is, medicine is so much more than just what you do in a clinic, in the OR, in the hospital in general. A hospital is an entity in a community. It's not just a place you go. Like, I've noticed this even especially now that I'm actively practicing and training, there are people that, like, actively need your help.

And if you broaden your skills, eventually your level of impact is not just going to be on a patient-to-patient basis. It's on a community as a whole. That's why I got my MBA, and that's why I would argue as any med student in the Houston area, any med student in general that has access to a business school, especially one as good as Rice, in their backyard or anywhere close, should ideally, if it's financially possible and the timeline works out, get an MBA, so that they can have that impact in their community eventually.

A lot of people are going to think, "Oh, I don't really need that," and it's true. I mean, you don't need it. You don't need it.

[18:48]Maya Pomroy: No, but it's a competitive advantage, and it makes you a better doctor.

[18:51]Pablo Coello: But absolutely. Absolutely. And I will tell you now, like that was the single most asked question I got when I was applying to residency. It's like, "Why did you do this?" And I answered the exact same way I just answered you, and it worked. Like, everybody was like, "Yeah, I see the value in that. It makes total sense why you would do that," and then oftentimes it's like, "I actually think, I'm thinking about getting an MBA myself." But it's like, "Well, great." And then we talk about that, and then, you know...

There is so much opportunity for you to do good that I myself haven't even really been able to utilize. Like there... I haven't been able to take advantage of all these opportunities because I'm so early on. Like I have with the chairman of my department, who I, like, look up to and admire, like, a lot. I can't even describe how much. This guy is, like, extremely professional and well put together both physician and also administrator. He is an MD/MBA. He's the chairman of the department, also the CEO of the physicians group at University of Cincinnati Hospital.

And that guy drives the ship like I've never seen anyone else do. The level of respect he commands and, like, the change he can enact is like he, like, snaps his fingers and things change, but I think, at least in my case, a good first step in order to have that level of impact eventually was to get the MBA early so that I'm poised to take advantage of opportunities later when they show up rather than having to backtrack and get my MBA when it's a less opportune time.

And on top of that, Rice was very generous with, like, a good scholarship, which helped a lot too. Because, at least in my case, I pay for everything myself, so that also was a very important factor.

[20:32]Maya Pomroy: Well, and I mean, Rice is in the medical center, right?

[20:35]Pablo Coello: Right.

[20:35]Maya Pomroy: I mean, it's the med center, like you said, it's a... That's in your backyard. So, you have this opportunity to really take advantage of both at the same time, which is, you know, why I think that Rice Business is such a phenomenal place for physicians, specifically.

Because it really does strengthen the industry and the profession, and the whole point is to take care of people as best you can. And if you have all of that knowledge and perspective and understanding and everything else, then it makes you the best doctor that you can possibly be and to run the best hospital that you can possibly run, right?

[21:10]Pablo Coello: Yeah, I think so. Now I'm not saying I'm going to be the CEO of a hospital one day. I'm not even-

[21:14]Maya Pomroy: No?

[21:15]Pablo Coello: ... I'm not even sure that's a goal of mine. Genuinely...

[21:16]Maya Pomroy: Why not? It should be.

[21:19]Pablo Coello: Maybe it is. Maybe that's an opportunity that will come my way one day. But right now, I can't see more than a month ahead of me. My number one goal since the age of 12 was to become the best possible physician that I could be. Anything administrative will come hopefully many years down the line after I've developed my craft, if you will, as much as I can.

I'd never intend on stepping away from practice, because it's what I love. I love this. I would hope that maybe the administrative things will be, like, another aspect of what I do in any day life. I think if I were to become a head hospital administrator at the level of, like, C-suite, it would probably mean stepping away from practice, and that maybe that's a decision I make eventually.

I'm not sure. We'll see where God takes me, where life takes me, and I'll decide eventually. But for now, I'm not even going to think about that because my number one goal is just becoming a good doctor.

[22:15]Maya Pomroy: Well, so I guess I should ask you this question because I... You just said, "I don't know," but I'm going to ask it anyway. And then, and so what does success look like for you in, like, 10 years?

[22:24]Pablo Coello: Sure, yeah. Well, so I guess 10 years is maybe too short of a timeframe, because residency for orthopaedic surgery is five years.

[22:31]Maya Pomroy: It's true. Sorry. So, 20 years from now.

[22:34]Pablo Coello: Yeah. 20 is maybe better, yeah. So, I'll finish residency, I guess in 2031, because that'll include five years of residency plus one year of fellowship, which I don't technically have to get. Fellowship is just like a subspecialty. So, like sports or pediatrics, trauma, hand, spine, et cetera. Regardless of what I end up doing with that, that leaves, I guess, 14 more years of actual practice. At that point, I don't know. I mean, obviously, I'll be an attending. I would hope to be at a major academic center, as opposed to, like, private practice. You know, if I decided...

[23:07]Maya Pomroy: In Houston, right? Back in Houston?

[23:09]Pablo Coello: That would be awesome. Yeah. There is a major hospital being built in Austin, that I think the Dell family just donated, like, I don't even know how many hundreds of millions of dollars. I think it was maybe 600 or 700 to help kickstart. My fiancée's a pediatrician, so we're both maybe hoping to make our way back to Austin eventually. She also graduated from The University of Texas.

[23:31]Maya Pomroy: The University of Texas. Okay. But she did not get the MBA from Rice Business, just saying.

[23:37]Pablo Coello: No, she did not. Yeah. So, I will always...

[23:39]Maya Pomroy: Maybe she should consider that, too.

[23:40]Pablo Coello: Maybe she should. Maybe she should. I'll... I don't know. I'm working on it. But as far as, like, success goes, ideally an established attending, at that point, I won't be a senior attending by any means. I'll still be relatively young. But established for sure. And I'd like to be involved as much as possible in the actual administrative side of, like, the running the hospital, whether that be in subcommittees, committees, or chairing something else, or maybe holding an actual position on top of my clinical duty. My chairman is currently, like, an active surgeon but is also the CEO, right?

So, I'm not sure I have the bandwidth to do what he does, maybe eventually. So, if I can somehow model my career to look a little bit like his, I think that would be, you know, an absolute slam dunk. Because on top of doing all these things, both clinically and administratively, he's a very family-centered guy as well, spends a lot of time with his family.

So, I don't know how he finds time to do all this. I truly don't. But if I can manage to do that and stay balanced and happy with my life, that being, I guess, the key aspect is, like, "Do I enjoy what's going on day to day?" That would be success, I think. But who knows? You'd asked me that same question 10 years ago, I would've said that, "Oh, well, I'll be an orthopaedic surgery resident somewhere."

[24:56]Maya Pomroy: Well, that's, that's the beauty of life, you know?

[24:59]Pablo Coello: Yeah.

[25:00]Maya Pomroy: It's... What I tell my children is, you know, the only thing that is constant in life is change, and that the person that you are, you know, five years ago is going to be a completely different person five years from now.

[25:12]Pablo Coello: Yeah, 100%. I mean, I just think about the, like, who, who I was, like, before, as med school was starting, which was, I guess, six years ago now, I was a totally different person back then than I am now, so...

[25:24]Maya Pomroy: Well, yeah, because you went to Rice.

[25:26]Pablo Coello: That's true. Yeah, I had... Exactly, yeah. That was the big factor there. And nothing changed until I stepped foot on campus, and then everything changed.

[25:33]Maya Pomroy: I mean, same with me. That's the beauty of Rice, and we are, we're so grateful that someone like you and your cohort that were also MDs, decided to go and pursue this because it really will make, you know, as cliché as it sounds, it's going to make the world a better place for all, and a healthier world.

[25:51]Pablo Coello: Yeah. I think that's what all of our goals would be. Like, I still keep in touch with most of these guys, and they're all in their training. And that's the goal I think that everybody shares is to, you know, have a positive impact on their community. It's the foundation of medicine in general. I think we're heading in the right direction for all. [inaudible 00:26:08].

[26:08]Maya Pomroy: You're heading in the right direction.

[26:10]Pablo Coello: place. Yeah.

[26:10]Maya Pomroy: And yes, making the world a better place and a healthier place and, you know, taking those risks, because getting a dual degree like this, that's a risk and that you were willing to take. So, that's the definition of a Rice Business and Baylor College of Medicine student, is that these are... You know, you're... It's people that are willing to take the risks, to dive in, and to try.

[26:36]Pablo Coello: Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree more.

[26:39]Maya Pomroy: Well, Pablo, it's been a pleasure talking with you, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what your future holds. And we will definitely keep in touch.

[26:47]Pablo Coello: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.

[26:54]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 podcast. We'd love to hear what you think. The hosts of Owl Have You Know are myself, Maya Pomroy and Brian Jackson.