Though he was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Thony Ngumbu ’18 has spent most of his life overseas: first in Belgium, where he attended secondary school, and then in the United States, where he came for college. He started off in Iowa but transferred to the University of Houston, loved the city, and stayed.

Yet even as Ngumbu was building a career here, he always wanted to return to Africa.

“I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” he says. “I just knew that I wanted to make a difference, as naïve as that sounds.”

After working at Verizon for nearly a decade, Ngumbu helped lead a United Nations-funded NGO and started his own strategic consulting firm. Ultimately, however, his path did lead back to the Congo. And he is making a difference.

While at Rice, Ngumbu joined up with a classmate, Fareen Elias ’19, and together they founded Mwinda Technologies. It’s a startup with a dual purpose: hooking Africans up to affordable, reliable solar power and connecting them to financial services.

“We want to be an energy access company, but also a financial inclusion company,” he explained via video chat from his office in Kinshasa, the Congolese capital.

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In the Congo, only 9 percent of the population has access to the electrical grid — when it works. “The grid is very prone to blackouts and brownouts,” says Elias. “It’s so unreliable, it’s like not having one at all.”

And while smartphones are ubiquitous, only 6 percent of Congolese have access to formal financial instruments such as bank accounts.

From a developmental and environmental perspective, these are serious problems. In a country of approximately 90 million people, most are confined to a cash economy. Lacking the capital or credit to invest in the hardware required for solar power, they are forced to rely on dirty energy sources like kerosene generators and cooking charcoal.

But Ngumbu saw possibilities. “These problems are really business opportunities,” he says. “You just need the right model.”

He appears to have found it. Ngumbu, Elias, and their fellow co-founders launched Mwinda by offering solar home kits to some of Kinshasa’s 15 million residents. These small kits can power an LED television or several lightbulbs, helping bars attract customers, letting medical clinics keep their lights on during blackouts, and allowing children to do their homework after dark. (Mwinda means “light” in Lingala, the most commonly spoken local language.)

Crucially, they are available on a pay-as-you-go basis: Rather than purchasing the kits upfront, customers make incremental payments on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis via their smartphones. (As in many parts of Africa, individuals can load cash into mobile wallets on their devices, then transfer funds without a bank account.)

Contracts are flexible, and once they are paid up, customers own the kits outright. Over a typical two-year contract period, a customer will pay approximately $720, or roughly $2 a day — the same or less than most were already spending on dirty energy.

Ngumbu received early-stage mentorship through the Rice Alliance for Entrepreneurship, and he and Elias were finalists in the Napier Rice Launch Challenge at the Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. But convincing investors to fund a startup in a country with a reputation for political instability proved impossible, and the co-founders had to bootstrap their initial operations.

“We got a lot of, ‘I don’t invest in Africa. It’s too risky,’” says Elias, whose parents hail from Kenya. Yet demand for solar proved so high that the team revised its business plan almost immediately. Mwinda was originally going to pivot toward larger, custom-built hybrid solar systems that can switch between the grid and solar power in its third year of operations. But customer inquiries about hybrid solutions, which can power everything from offices to schools, persuaded Ngumbu to make the leap in year one. Mwinda has since installed hybrid systems in several hospitals across Kinshasa, some under contract to the British government as part of a pandemic relief effort.

In keeping with the company’s commitment to financial inclusion, Ngumbu is working with local lenders to arrange financing for hybrid systems. He also plans to leverage the data that Mwinda collects from customers to develop a method for predicting a person’s creditworthiness even in the absence of a formal financial track record.

In time, Ngumbu intends to create solar mini-grids that can power entire neighborhoods. And he wants to export Mwinda’s model to other parts of the continent: Approximately 600 million Africans lack electricity, and 1 billion lack bank accounts. “We would like to become a pan-African multi-utility company,” he says.

Toward that end, he has launched a marketing campaign to grow Mwinda’s hybrid business and help the company raise capital stateside. In the meantime, hearing customers say that Mwinda’s reliable and affordable solar solutions are “almost heaven-sent” is enough to keep him and his teammates energized. “That motivates you to say, ‘We need to keep going. We need to do more of this, and we need to do it better,’” he says.

Alexander Gelfand is a freelance writer based in New York City who often covers business, science and social justice.

One team aimed to prevent infections from medical implants. Another tackled the issue of affordable housing. In its second virtual year due to COVID-19, the Rice Business Plan Competition (RBPC) drew its highest number of participants ever: 54 startups from around the world.

Entrepreneurs vied for more than $1.6 million in prizes during the 21st year of the world’s largest and richest student startup competition, hosted by the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship. The event has grown considerably since its first year, when nine teams competing for just $10,000 in prize money. To date, the RBPC has helped entrepreneurs raise $3.16 billion in funding. Of the more than 700 program alumni, 257 of their startups are still in business or have had a successful exit.

Prizes this year included a combined $75,000 in new funds pledged from the Urban Capital Network and the Business Angel Minority Association. During the four-day competition in April, entrepreneurs networked virtually with both investors and each other, and gained valuable insights and tools to help develop their startups.

“We wanted to mirror the in-person competition as much as possible, and we learned some good lessons from 2020. I was worried people would be ‘Zoomed out,’ but there was high engagement this year,”

says Catherine Santamaria, director of the RBPC. 

There were also a record number of applicants for this year’s annual Napier Rice Launch Challenge, Rice’s internal startup competition, hosted by the Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Lilie). The competition was virtual, too, and for the first time, it was split into student and alumni tracks.

“We separated it this year because there was so much interest,” says Lilie entrepreneurship program specialist Paget Kern.

Virtual Networking

The Rice Business Plan Competition kicked off with the usual lively elevator pitch session, where entrepreneurs deliver a 60-second plug for their product or service.

Typically held in a packed auditorium at Rice Business, this year’s session was presented via video. Entrepreneurs filmed themselves pitching and the organizers stitched the clips together into a video they webcast. Judges watched live, then rated the pitches. One benefit of going virtual was that more people were able to participate, including a larger, more diverse group of judges, Santamaria says.

Each team also participated in an initial sector-specific round where they gave a 10-minute pitch over Zoom, followed by a 10-minute Q&A. This year’s RBPC included three new sectors: consumer products and services, hard tech, and digital enterprise.

Throughout the competition, organizers provided opportunities for networking. Using the Whova event management platform, participants linked up to socialize in groups and one on one. The startups also hosted virtual booths where judges, investors and other entrepreneurs could drop by anytime.

“We needed a space where we could have these kinds of random collisions,” says Santamaria.

The two top-scoring teams in each sector progressed to the semi-finals. Ultimately, seven teams made it to the finals on the morning of April 9. The prize announcements were live-streamed to an audience of nearly 1,000 viewers.

The connections Thomas Healy made when he competed in the 2015 RBPC are still with him today, he says. Healy is the founder and CEO of Hyliion, which produces electrified powertrain systems for commercial vehicles, and which was the first company from the RBPC to go public. It’s now trading on the New York Stock Exchange. “The Rice Business Plan Competition is an amazing place to lay a foundation for creating your startup,” he said. He advises participants: “Stay in contact with everyone you meet, because they are the people that can help you with the journey that you’re on.”

A Startup That’s All About Convenience

An Auburn University startup, SwiftSku, was the RBPC’s grand prize winner this year. The brainchild of Auburn mechanical engineering students and childhood friends Mit Patel and Daniel Mazur, SwiftSku is a mobile application that lets convenience store owners remotely manage and monitor their businesses from their smartphones;

The duo impressed the judges with their story and their product. Patel’s parents are immigrants from India who saved for years to buy their own convenience store. Patel and Mazur are committed to helping bridge the data gap between brands, retailers and consumers through a novel analytics platform. “We bring big data and analytics to convenience stores and power them to compete against the big box stores of the world,” Mazur says.

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The U.S. is home to 153,000 convenience stores, with 96,000 independently owned. Of the independents, 93% are run by Indian immigrants, many of whom face a language barrier — including Patel’s parents. He used to play the role of translator between his parents and their vendors. The SwiftSku app helps with that hurdle, connecting point-of-sale systems at convenience stores and providing customer support in Hindi, Gujarati and English.

SwiftSku won $432,667 in cash and other prizes, including the $350,000 GOOSE Capital Investment Grand Prize and the $50,000 Business Angel Minority Association Investment Prize. The grand prize also included the opportunity to ring the closing bell at the Nasdaq Stock Market in New York. RBPC prizes add to the $3.2 million Patel and Mazur recently raised as champions of the Auburn Tiger Cage Competition. With the money, they’ll be able to hire additional engineering talent and grow their sales team, they say.

The startup’s goal now is to expand their client list, from just over 200 convenience stores now to 5,000 by May 2022. “We’re pushing it,” Mazur says. “It’s all about carrying the momentum we have and keeping that growth on track.”

An MIT startup, AgZen, took second place with a total of $538,667 in individual prizes, including the $300,000 OWLs Investment Prize and the $100,000 Houston Angel Network Investment Prize. The startup has developed a field-tested and patented pest control spray that reduces pesticide usage by 50%.

Napier Rice Launch Challenge

The Napier Rice Launch Challenge held its student competition in April and its alumni competition in June.

A record number of current students applied this year: 85, nearly double last year’s number. More than 400 people watched the April competition on Zoom. The first place winner, RUTD: Resources United Technology Driven, won $27,500 to put toward its app, which works to connect veterans with resources to reduce the risk of veteran suicide. A group called Green Room placed second, with tools to power the local live music industry. In third place was another musically focused team, called A440, which developed a content distribution platform for the classical music industry.

The June alumni competition attracted 48 applicants, four times as many as in 2020. First place winner Starling Medical won $20,000 to develop a safer, smarter alternative to traditional urinary catheters for people with neurogenic bladder dysfunctions. CaseCTRL took second for its intelligent surgical case management system, and Koda Health was third with a medical care planning platform.

Both the Napier Challenge and the RBPC are scheduled to be in person in 2022, and organizers are eager for participants to come together again for face-to-face networking. But they’re also looking keeping some virtual elements to allow for greater participation from people around the world.

“Everyone is just very excited to be back in person,” says Santamaria. “They miss their friends and colleagues and the excitement of an in-person event. But we’ve shown that we can adapt and pivot, and there are benefits and opportunities in having a hybrid event.”

Deborah Lynn Blumberg is a Houston-based freelance writer specializing in health and wellness and business and finance.

In the Rice Business MBA program, everyone’s learning. I’m learning from my peers; my peers are learning from me. I always appreciate the openness my classmates have to my insights and my experiences as a woman of color.

Raisha Smith, FTMBA ’22

When Raisha Smith founded EveryDopeGirl in 2018, she was feeling down and burned out. She was managing high-profile projects at work, but she wasn’t getting a lot of professional recognition. She felt underappreciated. But she knew she wasn’t alone in that feeling. So she started blogging about women who were doing interesting side hustles and pursuing their passions beyond their day jobs.

“I wanted to highlight projects most people don’t hear about and women who don’t really get their flowers in public,” says Smith. “EveryDopeGirl shows that you can still be dope and work at the same time.” The social enterprise became her own side hustle: building a community that empowers women entrepreneurs through in-person and virtual events, and giving them exposure and access to new opportunities through corporate partnerships with companies including Google and Verizon.

Smith, who has a bachelor’s degree in marketing from Texas A&M University, decided to pursue an MBA in part to help her make her own professional pivot from the energy sector into tech. The Rice Business network helped her get an internship at Microsoft this summer, where she worked as a customer success manager with clients in K-12 and higher education.

“One thing I really like about the customer success side is taking a community-building approach. We’re looking at ways to lead through peer-to-peer influence and getting feedback directly from the customer that can translate into new designs,” she says. “I love making an impact. That’s why I’ve loved my time at Microsoft.”

As someone who has spent the last eight years of my career in Houston, I have always known Rice Business as a top-tier institution with an intimate class size, a very successful alumni network and numerous post-MBA opportunities in energy, technology and consulting.

David Akpakwu, FTMBA ’23

Growing up in Lagos, Nigeria, David Akpakwu was drawn to petroleum engineering. For one thing, his father — the first in his family to have a formal education — was an engineer. And it was an especially meaningful field in Nigeria. “I saw it as a way to give back to a country that depended heavily on revenue from oil and natural gas,” he says.

After earning his bachelor’s degree in 2011, Akpakwu got the chance to live and work in the U.S., and ultimately became a citizen in 2017. His engineering career took him to onshore and offshore oil exploration sites, where he worked to identify hazards and keep workers safe. Over the years, however, he became fascinated with the technological innovations that helped him do his job, and decided to pursue software product management. He earned a master’s degree at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and then made the pivot into consulting at Accenture. An MBA from Rice Business will equip him for the next phase of his career, which could take two different paths. On the one hand, he’s interested in helping lead the way toward renewable energy at a supermajor oil company. Or he may continue down the software path at a tech company where he could lead the creation of new technology solutions.

“An MBA, for me, is a career accelerator that opens doors to different opportunities. That’s because you not only get to build a strong, diverse network of professionals from around the world, but you get immersed in a rigorous business curriculum designed to prepare you for real-life business challenges,” he says.

Just when it seemed like “normal” was right around the corner, COVID threw us for another loop — and then another.

Because the vast majority of Rice Business students, faculty and staff were fully vaccinated by summer, most of us enjoyed a respite from masks and distancing until late July, when the Delta variant hit. And it hit Houston especially hard. As always, our top priority is to keep every member of the Rice Business community healthy, and especially to protect the most vulnerable among us: people with compromised immune systems or who are caregivers for people with underlying health conditions, elderly relatives or unvaccinated children. The precautions we thought we’d left behind re-emerged as we began the fall semester in person, but wearing masks and staying socially distant indoors to guard against this fast-spreading variant.

Then came another unwelcome surprise. As Rice prepared to welcome incoming freshmen to campus on Aug. 13, the university’s testing program had begun ramping up again, and over the course of a week or so, about 4,500 people were tested. Alarmingly, 81 of those tests came back positive. That positivity rate, roughly 2 percent, was much lower than the surrounding community, noted Kevin Kirby, the chair of Rice’s Crisis Management Advisory Committee. “The average [for the same period] for Texas Medical Center testing is about 15%, and for the entire city of Houston it’s more than 20%,” he wrote in an Aug. 22 email to the school. “But for Rice, a 2% rate would be significantly higher than our historical positivity rate of 0.24% over the last year, when we ran about 150,000 tests.  This unusual campus positivity rate prompted us to take quick action and assume a more cautionary posture until we could determine whether there was a significant risk of widespread infection.”

Administrators scrambled to make undergraduate classes entirely remote for at least the first two weeks of classes. Rice Business, meanwhile, petitioned for an exemption from the online-only rule, since our students do not live on campus, and since we’ve successfully offered in-person instruction during earlier stages of the pandemic, equipped with safety precautions including testing, masking and social distancing. The provost granted that exemption, allowing us to proceed with a hybrid model, meaning some students attended classes in person (masked and distanced) while others attended online via Zoom.

But as it later emerged, the high positivity rate on campus was an anomaly caused by a glitch in testing protocols. “Those results didn’t seem right for a number of reasons: Over 90% of the positive infections came from a single test provider; three-quarters of the positive tests were from people who reported no symptoms; the positive results were widely scattered across various groups in our population, with only one potential cluster that seemed more likely to be associated with their proximity to a particular testing location; and over 90% of the reported infections were for people who were fully vaccinated,” wrote Kirby. “When we consulted with the provider, we learned that they had begun using a different protocol than they had previously used at Rice, resulting in significant differences in how test results are decided.”

“Dozens of people whose initial tests showed them to be COVID-positive have been retested twice and all but one of those have turned out to be negative,” Kirby said. 

Undergraduate classes remained online-only through September 3, since students and professors had already made plans, and Rice Business kept its hybrid model in place for those two weeks. Students took the latest change in stride.

“The students who returned to campus to experience the hybrid delivery in McNair Hall have demonstrated tremendous gratitude, resilience, and attention to the required safety protocols,” said Adam Herman, executive director of the Student Program Office. “Both the students on campus and at home on Zoom are particularly grateful to the faculty who have pivoted quickly to deliver the best in business education, again through hybrid delivery, and to the Rice Business staff who are keeping everything running.”

Now we are all back on campus, with additional precautions in place. That means that, for now, everyone, regardless of their vaccination status, is required to wear a mask indoors while other people are nearby. And everyone who comes to campus is undergoing regular COVID testing. For vaccinated people, that means weekly tests; anyone who’s not vaccinated must be tested twice a week. Our high vaccination rate and our adherence to these protocols has kept people safe on and off the Rice campus.

By this point, we’ve fully mastered the art of the pandemic pivot. COVID has proven to be remarkably adaptable — but we’ve shown that we’re even more so.

“This stage of the pandemic, like earlier stages, has resulted in quick changes as new information comes out. If you’re starting to get whiplash from the sudden reversals, you’re not alone,”

Rice Business Dean Peter Rodriguez wrote in an email to the community after announcing the switch to a hybrid course delivery model.

“Although we hoped to be nearing the end of this crisis, it has not yet subsided. And in times of crisis we need to be adaptable and flexible. You have been, and I appreciate it immensely. I ask for your continued patience and understanding as we navigate this new — and hopefully final — leg of the marathon we’ve been running for more than a year now. We will reach the finish line together.”

The potted plants are dead and the office fridge has become a science experiment. Many white-collar workers were fortunate to work from home during the pandemic, safely away from colleagues and their droplets. Now, nearly 18 months after saying goodbye to cubicle life, many of us are trickling back to the office. Although the rampaging spread of the delta variant has delayed the return of workers at some large companies, including Amazon, Google and Lyft, others, such as J.P. Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, are proceeding with office reentry as planned. It hasn’t been a joyful reunion for everyone, and not just because it has meant finding the ossified remains of the banana we left on our desk in March 2020.

I returned in July, with mixed emotions, to the Rice University campus, where I edit the alumni magazine for Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business. On the one hand, the 1,000-square-foot house I share with my partner and our 18-pound cat has felt increasingly cramped with the three of us always in it, especially when one of us yowls for attention and pukes on the rug. So I was looking forward to coming back to an actual workspace with limited yowling.

But there were drawbacks. Out of practice, I took forever to get ready for work. The commute felt interminable. And as my colleagues and I soon discovered, nearly all of the office electronics had inexplicably broken down during our absence. The printer wouldn’t print; the fridge wouldn’t refrigerate. I found myself missing the comforts of home. And my cat.

Experts say I’m not alone in having reservations about returning to the office. For some, remote work provided perks they don’t want to give up. For others, a year of working from home was a slog, and they’re burned out. For all of us, the COVID-19 pandemic was a traumatic experience, and it will take time to get back to “normal” — which may never look the same. So how can managers better manage the return to in-person work for employees who may not be thrilled to be back?

First, acknowledge that this is a tough time — for everyone. Psychologists know that periods of transition are the most stressful moments of our lives. “Change is hard,” says Mikki Hebl, a professor of psychology and management at Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business. The pandemic has upended all of our lives, whether or not we or our loved ones got sick, due to isolation, lost jobs, food insecurity or just plain uncertainty.

At the same time, we’ve also gone through what Hebl calls a racism pandemic, with high-profile acts of violence against Black and Asian Americans. “The effects are certainly worse for Blacks and Asians, but research suggests members of every racial group have heightened stress regarding racial tensions,” she says.

The twin pandemics combined have taxed the mental health and coping skills of all Americans. “When that happens, people start acting defensively and in their own self-interest,” Hebl says. “A smart manager will, first, understand the problem; second, address it; and third, give space for conversation and coming together.”

Don’t assume you know what your employees are going through — or that their anxieties are the same as yours. For example, a new survey from Project Include, a nonprofit that advocates for diversity and inclusion in the technology industry, revealed that workplace harassment paradoxically increased while people were working from home during the pandemic. More than a quarter of respondents experienced more gender-based harassment and 10 percent experienced more race-based harassment while working remotely.

Ellen Pao, Project Include’s CEO, said the survey’s results show how deeply rooted discrimination has been in our workplaces since long before the pandemic struck. “There was a lot of sexism, transphobia, xenophobia and all sorts of systemic bias in the tech sector, in business sectors generally, and in individual companies. COVID made it worse — COVID didn’t magically solve those problems,” Pao said in an interview with Charter, a media and services company focused on the future of work. “The big learning we had is people will harass people and be hostile to people no matter what the environment. They will find a way.”

Workers who are experiencing harassment will be even less likely to look forward to reuniting with their coworkers in person, a situation managers need to be ready to defuse, Hebl says.

“They should be open and available to hear about traumas their employees are experiencing, from COVID-related deaths in their family to trauma related to ‘working while Black,’” she says.

“They should allow for check-ins about how people are doing — what psychological spaces they are in and where else their mind might be.”

Understanding these issues, and showing compassion, will go a long way toward easing the transition back to the office, says Boris Groysberg, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. “As the COVID-19 pandemic starts to wane, we cannot expect to wake up one day and find our lives miraculously restored to what they were in pre-pandemic times. We will all be forever changed by this experience, and the transition to a post-pandemic world will be a slow and rocky one,” Groysberg said in March.

The pandemic has dragged on for so long that we’ve all had plenty of time to acclimate to our new normal, which for many of us included remote work. So even if working from home was difficult at first, we’ve fully adapted to it by now, says Kate Sweeny, a psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside. That has made returning to our old offices an unfamiliar and potentially uncomfortable prospect. But there are ways to manage the anxiety that comes along with uncertainty. “It helps to plan ahead to gain a sense of control over an uncertain future,” Sweeny says. “Second, you can look for the good in returning to work. Are there coworkers you’ve missed? Old routines that will be a welcome relief?”

Managers can help ease the transition by allowing workers to ramp up to their pre-pandemic office schedules, perhaps by working in person a day or two a week to start. And companies should consider building in more flexibility for employees who need it even after the pandemic is well behind us, Hebl says. The world is a different place now — and so are workplaces.

“We can’t just go back to two years ago and pick up where we were. Our world, our workforce has changed. And some of it will ultimately evolve into changes for the better,” she says. “For instance, many individuals — let’s take individuals with physical disabilities and new mothers, who often get only two weeks of unpaid leave to care for their babies, as examples — should have long ago been given greater flexibility, support and pay to work from home. Shorter workweeks, job sharing and flex work are temporary strategies that worked well during the pandemic and should not be abandoned as possible ways for organizations to be flexible.”

Many caregivers and people with disabilities saw the opportunity to work remotely as a silver lining of the pandemic. Take Ruby Jones, a British disability activist who has a connective tissue disorder called Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, which limits her mobility. She created a Twitter hashtag, #MyAccessiblePandemic, to highlight the ways the pandemic improved accessibility for disabled people. “Working from home means I am able to work a full-time job without exhausting myself to the point of hospitalization,” she tweeted.

A chorus of other voices chimed in, including people with physical disabilities and mental illness. “WFH means I can adjust my sleep/awake schedule as necessary to match my chronic fatigue cycles,” one person commented. “I've been able to attend really interesting talks, events and conferences I never would have been able to manage in person. I can switch my camera off if it gets too much and been able to type questions when my anxiety is high rather than have to speak,” tweeted another.

Some of the lessons we learned during the pandemic could help us create more inclusive workplaces for the future, Hebl says. We can do that by combining some of the highlights of our old normal — such as connecting with coworkers and exchanging ideas face to face — with a new normal that includes compassion and accommodation for those who need more flexibility to succeed. And flexible schedules for everyone could mean we all get to spend a little more time with our cats, for better or worse.

Jennifer Latson is the editor of Rice Business magazine and the author of “The Boy Who Loved Too Much.”

This essay originally appeared in the Houston Chronicle.

As senior associate dean for the Office of Belonging and Engagement, Connie Porter is working to advance racial equity, among a broader set of DEI-related initiatives, at a time when the nation is struggling with it. Porter, an assistant clinical professor of marketing at Rice Busines, accepted the DEI deanship last spring, taking on a role that had been created based on the recommendation of the Rice Business Task Force on Racial Equity and Social Justice following the May 2020 murder of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, at the hands of white police officers in Minneapolis. Since then, the drive for equity and justice has only become more urgent.

Rice Business is focusing locally to start, with an effort to enhance diversity, equity and inclusion at the business school. The task force drew up 33 initiatives across five categories — including curriculum and programs, school culture, and student, faculty and staff development — to serve as a starting point. We spoke to Porter about what Rice Business has done to make the school more equitable and inclusive, what more we need to do, and what challenges we face.

In what areas do you think Rice Business is succeeding when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion?

We’ve had an amazingly successful diversity and inclusion conference for the past five years and we’re going to continue it this year while changing the name to the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Conference. We have very high-level, prominent keynote speakers and workshops. It’s a way for us to engage not only the Rice Business community, but also the greater business community, which is invited to attend. We also have a number of diversity-related student organizations that I feel view our office as a big support mechanism for them to feel a sense of pride and belongingness in our community.

Tell us about some of the DEI work that still needs to be done.

The school has, on the full-time level, one of the most diverse populations in the country in terms of racial ethnic background. Where we still have work to do is on the inclusion and equity piece. To be a competitive institution going forward, it’s going to be insufficient to tout the fact that we have a diverse population of students. The way we will differentiate ourselves is on equity and inclusion. Until we can proudly tell the world that we’re known by our students to be the most inclusive place that we can be, that they’re treated with equity, that all students feel that way, not just underrepresented minorities, then we’re not winning yet and we still have work to do.

Inclusion means we’re aware of, understand, recognize, and value the unique identities of our students. Equity is about fairness and justice. It’s about fair process, fair outcomes, fair access to resources, and the willingness to remove systemic barriers to fairness.

What about diversity, equity and inclusion for faculty and staff?

The provost of the university wants to have greater emphasis on hiring and retaining underrepresented minority faculty members. That would be Black, Latinx and indigenous people who are historically underrepresented in higher education in business schools. There are policies around hiring staff that we probably need to take a look at. For example, looking at how job descriptions are written and at questions asked in the application process that have the potential to systematically exclude certain populations in ways that are unfair and likely not to the betterment of our institution in terms of getting the best candidate.

How can faculty and staff enhance inclusiveness?

With inclusive content and inclusive teaching pedagogy. Content means that, in the speakers we invite and in the business cases presented, are the executives and managers representative of the identities of our students broadly speaking? My vision is that students see themselves reflected in front of the classroom, in our speakers, in our content, in our faculty. It’s also about our teaching practices. Are we facilitating a climate where all voices are being heard? It’s calling someone by the name they wish to be called by, referring to them by the gender they want to be referred to by. These are signs of inclusive teaching. It takes time to rethink your content and your pedagogy, but it’s what we need to do if we’re going to make advances.

What are some of the challenges you might face as you do this work?

Number one, resourcing [in terms of budget and staff]. This is a big job and we have a lot of ground to cover. Number two, making sure that we bring everyone along on this journey with us, no matter where they’re starting. Meeting people where they are, and growing them along the journey with us is critical. It takes patience. Change takes time. Managing people’s expectations, while still harnessing and sustaining their enthusiasm is a fine line to walk, but I’m prepared to walk it.

Tell us about the new Diversity, Equity and Inclusion course that will be offered this spring.

The school will launch a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion lab course. Teams of students will go out and work on real projects at real companies solving real DEI problems. I’m totally excited about it, because it’s what I call a “threefer” in my world of trying to make an impact. One: Our students will love it and benefit from it. Two: It will engage our alumni. And three, there’s the organizations themselves. We’ll be engaging Houston-based organizations — big businesses, small businesses and everything in between.

How do you see alumni getting more involved?

We’ve already proposed to the alumni board that we engage our alumni as mentors in DEI-related project-based courses and experiential learning. We can also all take it upon ourselves to be self-aware of our preferences, biases, and how that influences interactions within the community. We can be respectful of other people, value them, and try to understand others and their differences. Alumni should also know that my office is the advocate for all stakeholders. If they feel there’s something we can do better, I would love for them to tell us.

You can reach Porter at constanceporter@rice.edu. For more information, visit the DEI office’s website: https://business.rice.edu/about/diversity-equity-and-inclusion.

Throughout her career in the offshore industry, Ally Cedeno got used to being one of the only women working aboard a ship. But in 2015, as a dynamic positioning operator in the Gulf of Mexico, she found herself working alongside several women for the first time. It was like discovering a new community.

“I found a level of camaraderie I hadn’t known before and a sense of belonging,” says Cedeno, 35. “There was just this expectation that women would be there and that was very foreign to me because when you’re in a very male-dominated environment, you’re always aware of your gender.”

The feeling stayed with Cedeno even after she was promoted and went to work on a new drillship in South Korea. She kept in touch with the women she’d worked with and realized how important it was for other women within the offshore and maritime industries to experience this type of community. Her idea for her nonprofit, Women Offshore, was born.

Cedeno, who has spent more than a decade in the offshore industry, earned her MBA from Rice Business in 2020. She credits her time at Rice with helping her gain the skills necessary to run a nonprofit and preparing her to rise as a leader in the offshore industry. She is currently in an operations development program and training as an assistant driller with aspirations to go into management.  

“There are still a lot of decision makers out there that are not women. I see decisions being made that affect women, and I wonder if those women will be around when they don’t see the role models in their companies and they don’t see decisions being made with the mindset that ‘Hey, we have women in our fleet as well, not just men,’” she says.

Learning the Ropes

Growing up in Seattle, Cedeno first discovered her love of the water as a 6-year-old, when her dad taught her how to sail a small boat.

As a kid, she thought she would end up going to medical school at the University of Washington. But as she got older, her skill and passion for sailing grew and she began racing sailboats competitively. Since she knew she didn’t have enough money for college, she realized sailing could be a way to snag a scholarship.

In 2004, she was recruited to race sailboats at the United States Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, New York. Most of the school’s graduates go on to become maritime officers, engineers, and ship captains. After graduating in 2008 with her third mate license, Cedeno started working on a cruise ship in Northern Europe. The ship made its way to Antarctica and Cedeno was hooked. She was supposed to be on board for only about three months, but stayed for five.

“I didn’t want to leave,” she says.  “Antarctica is amazing. Navigating around it is very challenging … but there’s no other place really like it.”

For the next year, Cedeno found herself navigating cruise ships all around the world — in the Suez Canal, the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean. In 2010, she transitioned to the offshore industry when she joined a dive boat owned by Global Industries.

Braving the Elements

Working offshore is demanding and often dangerous. Cedeno usually works 12-hour days as a dynamic positioning operator, a role that requires her to keep the rig over an oil well as it’s being drilled. She uses a computer system with sensors, GPS, and underwater beacons to maintain the rig’s positioning.

Although she enjoys the work, it can be isolating, with month-long stints away from family and friends. Halfway through each stint, she finds herself feeling down. She calls it the “mid-hitch blues.”

“I will experience moments out there, where I’m like, ‘I don’t want to be here.’ Or everything’s so hard right now, whether that’s the heat, or the task at hand, or politics on board, you name it,” says Cedeno.

“Sometimes all of that at once, it hits you hard. So I’ll just coach myself to get through the next hour, or the next minute, or the next day, whatever I feel like I can’t get through.”

Bad weather on land can quickly become a nightmare at sea. During the winter freeze that devastated Texas in February, Cedeno was working on a rig in the Gulf of Mexico, where there was no escape from the elements. She packed on extra layers of clothes, braving the brutal weather.

“I was shivering, but I kept working,” says Cedeno. “It just pushed me to every max that I could reach.”

Building a Business

Women Offshore had its origin as a blog Cedeno started writing in 2017, based on interviews with other women in the field. But she soon realized it could be much more than just a website. She turned to the MBA program at Rice Business to help her structure her idea and figure out its next steps. 

In one class, she came up with a business plan to create an online swag shop for Women Offshore. She had just taken a pricing strategy course, which she leaned on heavily as she figured out what to charge for merchandise. Cedeno also collaborated with her pricing strategy professor, Utpal Dholakia, who served as a mentor as she created the swag shop.

“That was neat to not just apply what I learned, but to go back to him and keep learning,” said Cedeno.

During her time at Rice, Cedeno also felt the support of her classmates. In her core marketing class, her group decided to use Women Offshore as a model for their big class project, designing a marketing plan around the organization.

Throughout the year, the nonprofit offers events, mentoring and other resources. During 2020, its main revenue source was an annual conference, which Cedeno and her fellow organizers had to remake as a virtual event during the pandemic. It required quick planning to take the in-person event online and to keep the organization afloat financially. Cedeno spent late nights brainstorming with staff, but the virtual event was ultimately a success.

Cassi Laskowski, the program administrator for Women Offshore, describes Cedeno as extremely driven. “She puts her heart into Women Offshore and her job,” said Laskowski. “She’s a really hard worker. She leads by example. There’s nothing she would ask any of us to do that she wouldn’t be willing to do herself.”

Cedeno has also started a podcast on which she interviews women who work in the offshore industry, discussing a wide range of sometimes challenging topics, including sexual assault and harassment.  

Welcoming Women

Even though progress has been made in the industry, thanks in part to organizations like Cedeno’s, women still make up only about 3.6 percent of the offshore workforce, according to trade organizations. To keep moving the industry forward, Cedeno said companies have to start recruiting more women. And that has proved difficult during the pandemic, when many companies had to lay off workers or stop recruiting altogether.

Rebecca Ponton, the author of “Breaking the Gas Ceiling: Women in the Offshore Oil and Gas Industry,” says that support is key in helping women persevere.

“You need to have people that encourage you,” she says. “You need to surround yourself with positive people who believe in you, who believe that you can do it. In turn, that helps you have confidence in yourself.”

Despite the lack of women in the field, Cedeno says those who do persevere end up building skills they can use for the rest of their careers.

“It’s going to push you to a level that you’ve never been pushed to. But know that you’ll become a part of this elite group of women who’ve done it,” she says. “When you do move on, and a lot of people will, whether that’s two years or 10 years from now, you’ll have these skillsets that will be valuable to your next company, but also to yourself to help you get through the next set of challenges that come your way.”

Brooke Lewis is a Houston-based freelance writer currently working on a novel about faith, love and friendship. 

The beginning of every school year holds immense promise, and this year is no different. While the last 18 months have tested our resolve — and the last month has reminded us that change is constant — we have persevered and stayed the course. This fall we welcome the inaugural cohort of undergraduate business majors, and with our second year of enrolling a larger full-time MBA class of approximately 180, there are more students in McNair Hall than ever before — a signal of great things for the school and our reach into the business community.

With more students in the building, our top priority remains the health and safety of all members of the Rice Business community.

We’re making adjustments for the fall semester because of the surge in Delta variant cases, but our situation is better today than what we faced a year ago. With safety precautions in place, we hope to see each other face to face again — or at least the top half of our faces — by the time you read this.

In May, I met with the school’s senior leadership team and more than 40 members from the dean’s suite, faculty council, department coordinators and business leaders to discuss an effort to chart the future of the school and put a plan together. We were all in agreement that this is necessary and important. We’re calling the project Strategy and Vision 2030. It’s a complex undertaking with an ambitious timeline that will require everyone’s help and support. I’ll keep you informed of our progress as we go.

It is my great pleasure to introduce another edition of the Rice Business magazine. This publication, over all the others, strives to keep you informed about our ideas, accomplishments, alums doing good and new faces (meet our most recent faculty here). Most significant to me, however, is its ability to keep us connected even when circumstances have kept us apart. Please enjoy the stories in these pages.

— Peter