Ph.D. Alumni
2014
Alexander Chaudhry (Marketing) is associate dean and associate professor of business analytics at Southern Utah University’s Dixie L. Leavitt School of Business, where his research applies machine learning, causal inference, and natural-language, speech and video analytics to large-scale behavioral data on consumer engagement, social influence, pricing and advertising. His 2025 Journal of Interactive Marketing paper, “Community Gifting and Recipients’ Engagement with Peers and Influencers: Evidence from Natural Experiments on Twitch,” was selected as an AMA Research Insight. As associate dean, he authored the Leavitt School’s Quality Education strategic initiative on AI preparedness and designed ANLY 6510, a project-based graduate course on generative AI systems.
2016
Elizabeth (Lizzy) Berger (Finance) is an assistant professor of finance at the Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston, where she studies banking, economic growth and corporate finance. Recent work includes “Half Banked: The Economic Impact of Cash Management in the Marijuana Industry,” in the Journal of Finance.
Edwin Hu (Finance) is an associate professor of law at the University of Virginia School of Law, where his work brings empirical analysis to corporate and securities law, market structure and financial regulation. His current AI-related project uses large language models to study private placement memoranda, examining how disclosure and risk language varies across issuers in exempt offerings. Recent work includes “Regulatory Leakage Among Financial Advisors: Evidence from FINRA Regulation of ‘Bad’ Brokers” in the Journal of Financial Economics (2025). He received the John L. Weinberg/IRRCi Research Paper Award in 2025 and co-authored an amicus brief of securities-law scholars and former senior SEC officials before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Wei Shi (Strategy) is a professor of management and Cesarano Faculty Scholar at Miami Herbert Business School, University of Miami, where he studies how shareholders influence firms’ strategic decisions — work he is now distilling into a book on shareholder strategy, currently under contract. His recent research speaks directly to the AI moment: A study in Information Systems Research finds that media exposure of labor issues creates reputational pressure that pushes firms to invest in AI — primarily to automate high-skilled work rather than augment it, ultimately reducing future labor use.
Alberto Mokak Teguia (Finance) is an assistant professor of finance at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business. His research brings understudied features of markets and human psychology — the market power of large institutional investors, the way investors revise their beliefs, the design of trading protocols — into otherwise standard asset pricing models, and traces the consequences for liquidity, prices and welfare. His paper “Granularity in Asset Markets” was conditionally accepted at the Journal of Finance this year. He is an elected member of the Finance Theory Group. He credits his time at Rice, and Kerry Back’s mentorship in particular, with shaping his path. His most recent milestone, he notes, is a personal one: He and his family welcomed twins in 2024.
Yang Wang (Marketing) is a principal economist at Amazon Ads Economics, promoted to that rank in 2025 after joining the company in 2022 following six years in academia (Temple 2019–2022, UTEP 2016–2019). His industry work sits close to the AI moment: He studies the economics of sales — territory assignment, segmentation, compensation, incrementality measurement — and is building AI-enabled digital twins to estimate B2B customer preferences. His academic research on how agency mergers reshape ad creative styles continues alongside the industry work. Recent publications include studies in Marketing Science (2022), Production and Operations Management (2023), the Journal of Interactive Marketing (2025) and Strategic Management Journal (2025).
Morad Zekhnini (Finance) is an assistant professor of finance at Michigan State University’s Eli Broad College of Business, where his research examines networks in finance. His paper “Publication Effect: Accelerating Anomalies” was recently accepted at the Journal of Financial Economics.
2017
Jonathan Bonham (Accounting) is an assistant professor of accounting at the University of Illinois Chicago. His research examines agency theory, executive compensation, corporate governance and contracting theory — much of it rooted in projects that began during his doctoral work at Rice.
Ioannis Spyridopoulos (Finance) was promoted this spring to associate professor of finance, with tenure, at American University’s Kogod School of Business in Washington, D.C. His research sits at the intersection of empirical banking, capital markets and financial networks, examining how lending relationships and market intermediation affect households, firms and the broader economy. Lately he has turned to AI: A grant from the Kroner and Koenigsberger Center for Financial Research at UC San Diego supports his project on AI-augmented strategic asset allocation using macro-financial narratives. Recent publications include studies in the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis and Management Science.
Daniel Zyung (Strategy) is an associate professor of management and leadership at the University of Houston’s Bauer College of Business. His research examines CEOs from nearly every angle — their cognitive styles and firms’ AI adoption, boomerang CEOs and organizational turnarounds, and how boards respond when CEOs breach stakeholder rights, the subject of his solo-authored 2025 study in Organization Science. Another 2025 paper in the Journal of Management examines competition and constituents’ polarization online. In May, he appeared as a panelist at a Bauer symposium on AI, “Being Human in the Age of AI: Thriving in the Modern Workplace.”
2018
Colby D. Green (Strategy) became MBA director at Southern Utah University’s Dixie L. Leavitt School of Business on July 1, moving over from his role as associate dean; he is also an associate professor of strategic management. He is helping launch a new AI emphasis in SUU’s MBA program, where he will teach a new course, Strategy & Innovation with AI. Outside the classroom, he co-founded backincharge.com with his wife, board-certified child psychologist Dr. Kat Green, to expand access to evidence-based psychological care for children and teens.
Erik Mayer (Finance) is an assistant professor of finance and the John and Anne Oros Term Professor at University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Wisconsin School of Business, where his research spans household finance, financial intermediation and the intersection of finance and labor economics. His recent work studies how financial institutions shape economic mobility and opportunity in the U.S., often in collaboration with Rice colleagues. Publications include “Racial Disparities in the Auto Loan Market,” with Rice professors Alex Butler and James Weston, in Review of Financial Studies (2023); “The Impact of Minority Representation at Mortgage Lenders” in the Journal of Finance (2025); and “Government Litigation Risk and the Decline in Low-Income Mortgage Lending,” with fellow Rice Ph.D. alumni Billy Xu (’23) and Lawrence Zhao (’23), in the Journal of Financial Economics.
2019
Justin Balthrop (Finance) is an assistant professor of finance at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where his research focuses on sports betting. His paper “Gambling Away Stability: Sports Betting’s Impact on Vulnerable Households” is forthcoming in the Journal of Financial Economics, and he holds a grant from Arnold Ventures.
Conor Callahan (Strategy) is an assistant professor at the University of Illinois Chicago’s Managerial Studies department. His work sits at the intersection of strategic leadership and the social evaluations of organizations, and includes three projects with Rice faculty currently under review at top management journals. He was recently invited to present at the Strategic Leadership Idea Development Event (SLIDE), where his research drew on generative AI to explore how AI deepfakes may shape stakeholder views of organizations.
Rafael Copat (Accounting) is an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Dallas’ Naveen Jindal School of Management. He studies corporate governance, with an emphasis on proxy advisers, shareholder voting, executive compensation and boards of directors. His study “Racial Diversity Exposure and Firm Responses Following the Murder of George Floyd” — co-authored with K. Ramesh, among others at Rice Business — appeared in the Journal of Accounting Research in 2023.
Toby Li (Strategy) is an assistant professor of strategy at Texas A&M University’s Mays Business School, where his research examines interorganizational governance — how firms structure contracts, incentives, monitoring and relational safeguards with suppliers and partners — and the unintended consequences those arrangements can produce, from environmental accidents to investment hazards and capability erosion. Much of his empirical work is set in the oil and gas drilling industry. His recent publications include a paper on resource idling and capability erosion in the Academy of Management Journal, and a second AMJ paper on how the pursuit of speed contributes to environmental accidents, now in press, which received a Best
Paper Award from the Academy
of Management.
Gary Lind (Accounting) received tenure in May at the University of Pittsburgh, where he is an associate professor of accounting. His research connects accounting and macroeconomics, with recent publications in Contemporary Accounting Research (2025), the Journal of Accounting Research (2026) and the Journal of Accounting and Economics (2026), the latter co-written with K. Ramesh and Marcela Aguilar (’26).
2020
Jonathan Bitting (Finance) is an assistant professor of finance at Appalachian State University’s Walker College of Business, in the department of finance, banking and insurance. His research focuses on agency issues, incentives, product markets and governance; he recently published “CEO Short-Term Incentives and the Agency Cost of Debt” in Contemporary Accounting Research (2025). This year brought a double distinction at Walker: first place in the Dean’s Club Research Prize and the Sywassink Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Zhuo (Emma) Chen (Strategy) is an assistant professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS). Her research examines technology innovation and entrepreneurship — including corporate venture capital, mergers and acquisitions, entrepreneurial finance, patent strategy and the strategic implications of artificial intelligence — with particular attention to how firms make innovation and investment decisions under uncertainty. Since joining CEIBS, she has published two papers in the Strategic Management Journal and presented at leading conferences, including the Academy of Management, Strategic Management Society and Strategy Science. She serves on the editorial review board of the Journal of Management.
Michael Dong (Finance) is an assistant professor of finance in Missouri State University’s Department of Finance, Economics, and Risk Management, and a Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis research fellow. His research spans litigation finance, financial markets, corporate finance, family office investments, and AI and big data, including a recent published paper on ChatGPT in finance
and accounting.
Emmanuel Yimfor (Finance) is an assistant professor of finance at Columbia Business School, where he studies entrepreneurial finance, venture capital and private equity with a focus on discrimination and access in capital markets. Two recent papers are squarely on AI, including “Funding Black High-Growth Startups” in the Journal of Finance (2026), which uses image- and name-processing algorithms to determine that of the founders seeking VC funding represented in the researchers’ PitchBook sample, only 3.47% were Black. This year he took home the Yihong Xia Best Paper Award at the China International Conference in Finance and the Bradford-Osborne Research Award at the University of Washington Foster School of Business.
Rustam Zufarov (Accounting) is an assistant professor in the department of accounting at the University of Illinois Chicago College of Business Administration. His research examines innovation, government procurement and corporate financing, and he is a recent recipient of the prestigious American Accounting Association (AAA) Competitive Manuscript Award.
2021
Daniela De la Parra (Accounting) is an assistant professor of accounting at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, where her research examines corporate disclosure and accounting information. Her most recent paper was conditionally accepted at the Journal of Accounting and Economics this year.
Yessenia Tellez (Finance) is an assistant professor of finance at Virginia Tech’s Pamplin College of Business, where her research focuses on household finance, banking, corporate finance and financial intermediation — studying how financial institutions and local economic conditions shape household outcomes and firm behavior, using large administrative and proprietary datasets. Her paper “Consumption Smoothing via Product Markets” is forthcoming in the Review of Corporate Finance Studies.
Hanyi Livia Yi (Finance) is an assistant professor of finance in the Seidner Department of Finance at Boston College Carroll School of Management, where she studies public finance, entrepreneurship and household finance. Her paper “Algorithmic Underwriting in High Risk Mortgage Markets,” co-authored with Rice Business professor David Zhang, is forthcoming in the Journal of Finance. Earlier work has appeared in the Journal of Financial Economics — on deputizing financial institutions to fight elder abuse (2023) and on the gig economy and new business formation (2022) — among other outlets. A two-time winner of the Carroll School’s Teaching Stars Award (2023, 2025), she also took home the best paper award at the 2024 Fintech & Financial Institutions Research Conference.
2022
Taehoon Im (Marketing) is an assistant professor of marketing at California State University, Northridge’s David Nazarian College of Business and Economics, where his research focuses on AI and sustainable marketing. He recently received a Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity Award from CSUN’s Division of Academic Affairs and was elected a faculty senator.
Yajing Li (Strategy) is an assistant professor in the management department at Lehigh University’s College of Business, where she studies entrepreneurship and innovation. Her study of independent directors on venture boards, co-authored with Sam Garg, appeared in the Journal of Business Venturing in 2025, and she is co-principal investigator on a UoM–CUHK joint research seed fund grant.
2023
Seyed Kazempour (Finance) is an assistant professor of finance at Louisiana State University’s E.J. Ourso College of Business. His research studies how information is produced, communicated and processed to form prices in financial markets; he uses various forms of AI — machine learning, textual analysis and large language models — to analyze financial data, most prominently social media. His work is published or forthcoming in the Journal of Finance and the Journal
of Financial Economics.
Jenny (Yoon Jung) Kwon (Strategy) joined Temple University’s Fox School of Business as an assistant professor of management in July 2026. Her research examines innovation, corporate venture capital, incumbent-venture ties, the market for
technology and the energy industry. A recent paper of hers is forthcoming in the Academy of Management Journal.
Xiao Liu (Accounting) is an assistant professor of accounting at Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business, where she studies banking, financial reporting, and the real effects of accounting standards and financial regulation. Recent work has extended into bank lending and loan loss provisioning, and she is currently examining how generative AI has affected the readability of corporate financial disclosures.
Billy Xu (Finance) is an assistant professor of finance at University of Rochester’s Simon Business School, working on consumer finance, mortgage lending and regulation. He recently placed two papers in the Journal of Financial Economics: “Government Litigation Risk and the Decline in Low-Income Mortgage Lending” and “Defunding Controversial Industries: Can Targeted Rationing Choke Firms?”
Lawrence Zhao (Finance) is an assistant professor of finance at Texas Tech University’s Rawls College of Business, with research interests in empirical corporate finance, household finance and financial intermediation. His most recent paper, “Government Litigation Risk and the Decline in Low-Income Mortgage Lending,” was published in the Journal of Financial Economics.
Yiying Zhu (Strategy) is an assistant professor of management at Montclair State University’s Feliciano School of Business, where she studies innovation, entrepreneurship, sustainability and social impact. Recent publications include “How Social Movements Catalyze Firm Innovation” in Organization Science (2025) and “Gender and Social Entrepreneurship Fundraising: A Mission Drift Perspective” in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes (2025).
2024
Patrick Blonien (Finance) is an assistant professor of finance at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business. His research explores market microstructure and market design — especially how trading mechanisms, trading hours, fragmentation and liquidity provision shape price discovery and allocative efficiency.
Sung Hun (Brian) Chung (Strategy) is an assistant professor of management at Texas A&M University’s Mays Business School, where his research focuses on strategic leadership, corporate governance, corporate activism, corporate scandal, and how firms and executives respond to social and institutional pressures. His article “Threading the Needle of Corporate Activism: How Firms Frame Their Stances on Polarizing Social Issues” was published in the Academy of Management Journal in 2025.
Geoffrey Pears (Accounting) is an assistant professor (lecturer) at University of Utah’s Eccles School of Business, where his research examines discrimination in mortgage lending, the enforcement of laws and corporate commitments to DEI.
2025
Zijun Liu (Accounting) is a visiting assistant professor of accounting at Texas Christian University’s Neeley School of Business, where his research examines managerial overconfidence in decision-making, financial reporting, voluntary disclosure, corporate governance and debt contracting. In January 2027 he will join the University of New South Wales’ School of Accounting, Auditing and Taxation as a lecturer in accounting.
Jose Torres (Accounting) is an assistant professor of accounting at INCAE Business School, teaching across the MBA, Executive MBA and executive education programs. His research focuses on banking and financial reporting — particularly how bank stakeholders acquire and use information — by examining the active monitoring role of depositors, information acquisition through regulatory disclosures, and how banks fold private forward-looking information into loan loss provisions under CECL.
David Nathaniel Wilson (Accounting) worked at Rice for a year as an instructor of accounting and acting director of the Rice Business Finance Center. This fall he begins as an assistant professor of instruction at Northwestern University’s Harvey Kapnick Center for Business Institutions. His research explores how information affects intraday trading dynamics, with a focus on institutional investors, market intermediation and market quality.
Anthony Zdrojewski (Finance) is an assistant professor of finance at Texas Christian University’s Neeley School of Business. In 2025 he received the Brattle Group Ph.D. Candidate Award for Outstanding Research at the WFA conference for his job market paper, which he also presented at the Lone Star Finance Conference and the Dallas Federal Reserve.
2026
Marcela Aguilar (Accounting) has joined the University of Chicago Booth School of Business as an assistant professor of accounting and James S. Kemper Faculty Scholar. Her paper “What Role Does Accounting Play in the Informal Economy?” co-authored with K. Ramesh and Gary Lind (’19), is forthcoming in the Journal of Accounting and Economics.
William Gonzalez (Accounting) has accepted a position as assistant professor in the James Benjamin Department of Accounting at Texas A&M University’s Mays Business School, beginning fall 2026.
His research focuses on financial reporting, disclosure regulation and accounting standard setting.
Alexander Ober (Finance) was recently hired by Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management as a Donald P. Jacobs Scholar and assistant professor of finance. His research spans asset pricing, market microstructure and applications of AI to financial problems.
Xi Wang (Strategy) is an assistant professor of strategic management at the University of Texas at El Paso, where her research focuses on technology and innovation, platforms and ecosystems, and entrepreneurship. Her recent work is published in Academy of Management Proceedings and was presented at the 2026 Academy of Management Annual Meeting in Philadelphia.
Yifan Zhang (Finance) joins the University of Missouri’s Trulaske College of Business this fall as an assistant professor of finance, where he will teach international finance. His research focuses on market microstructure, asset pricing and empirical finance, with recent work on intraday return dynamics, market liquidity and investor expectations.
1999
Jonathan Ha was promoted to senior director, leading neocloud business development at AMD, where he is driving the expansion of strategic neocloud partnerships and helping to accelerate growth across AMD’s data center GPU business.
2004
Ritesh Sheth recently became a certified yoga therapist (C-IAYT) and earned the highest level of certification from Yoga Alliance as an E-RYT 500. He is registered as a Yoga Alliance Continuing Education Provider (YACEP). He is serving as a full-time volunteer at The Art of Living Retreat Center in Boone, North Carolina. He is also volunteer-teaching at The Happiness Retreat and the Sacred Yoga Mountain Retreat. He is volunteering on the award-winning Shankara Ayurveda PanchaKarma detoxification program as an allopathic biometrics specialist. He hopes many will come to visit them at 4,000 feet in the Appalachian Mountains. “Namaste,” says Sheth.
2008
Mark Rudkin has been named director of marketing and communications at IM Houston, a nonprofit serving seniors through Meals on Wheels, refugees through resettlement services, faith communities through interfaith dialogue and residents seeking volunteer opportunities through Volunteer Houston. Rudkin previously held leadership roles at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business and the Houston Airport System.
2009
Tony Oguamanam recently graduated with a doctorate in business administration from the University of Houston. His research is in integrated-planning-budgeting-forecasting (IPBF). This research investigates whether an integrated planning, budgeting and forecasting process improves organizational financial performance.
2012
Mallory (Engler) Robins, co-founder and partner of internationally recognized interior design studio KOBEL + CO, recently was named to House Beautiful’s “Next Wave Class of 2026,” which recognizes designers shaping the future of the industry. The honor coincides with another exciting chapter for the firm: the grand opening of its new studio and showroom in Kansas City.
2019
Gavino Rivas is returning to Rice to join the space studies program after earning his Executive MBA from Rice in 2019. He is returning in celebration of his retirement after serving 24 years (in more than 30 countries), including two combat tours.
2020
Brooke Graham and her husband Wiley Graham welcomed a baby Owl in June 2026, Wiley Lucas Graham. Lucas is their second Owl, little brother to Wyatt Aaron Graham.
2021
Ben Clemenceau was recently promoted to senior manager-strategy at Accenture.
Brian Jackson is excited to share his engagement to Dr. Trace Matthews. Jackson proposed during a trip to Lanai, Hawaii, and the couple is looking forward to planning their wedding and beginning this next chapter together.
2022
Lynn Huang recently published a book, “Beyond Expectations: How Ordinary Choices Create Extraordinary Lives.” It is a reflective memoir about leadership, career, motherhood, reinvention and finding meaning beyond conventional definitions of success. Drawing on her journey across countries, cultures and leadership roles, the book explores how the expectations placed on us — and the expectations we place on ourselves — quietly shape our choices. One of the central ideas of the book is simple and eloquent: extraordinary lives are rarely built through extraordinary moments. They are built through ordinary choices, made with intention, every single day. Huang’s book is an invitation to pause, reflect and ask a deeper question: Are we building the life others expect, or the life we truly want?
2023
Olvin Hernández recently acquired Gulf Shade Structures, a Houston-based company that fabricates and installs custom commercial shade-sail canopy structures for car wash operators and other commercial clients across the country.
Madeleine Tunnard and her husband, Andrew Deavers, welcomed their first child, Theodore “Teddy” Thomas Deavers, on Feb. 18, 2026.
Ben Wang and Rebecca Wang welcomed baby Leo in August 2025, marking a joyful new chapter filled with love, growth and cherished moments as they begin this exciting journey together as a family.
2024
Gloria Samuels, a friend of Xavaier Olipahant, shared a wonderful photo of Oliphant and his beautiful bride Dorothy on their wedding day, May 16. “It was especially meaningful to see so many of his fellow Consortium classmates there to celebrate this special moment, including Andrew and Ashley Ward, Jasper Knight and Adrienne Miller, and Brandon Johnson and Anthony Sanchez Rodriguez,” says Samuels. “Rice brought this incredible community together, and moments like these remind them that the friendships and connections built there last far beyond graduation. Congratulations to the happy couple, and here’s to a lifetime of love and happiness!”
2025
Camrii (Alexcee) Alfaro has had a year of healing, love and forward motion. She completed treatment for Stage 3 cancer, married Agustin in August and continues creating smarter processes at a global, publicly traded renewable energy company. She is recovering, building and stepping into this next chapter with gratitude.
Katy Doan is global head of accounting and finance and program lead, PMO, at Varel Energy Solutions. She also serves as a fractional chief financial officer at Toptal, advising global clients on finance transformation and strategic reporting. Doan previously held senior leadership roles, including CFO of a $2B investment fund and controller at IES Residential. Beyond her corporate work, she is recognized as one of the youngest lecturers at Vietnam National University – High School for the Gifted, and continues to contribute as a trainer and public speaker in accounting, finance, project management and education. She is currently pursuing the CFA designation and preparing for a doctorate in law and education.
Tyler Sullivan recently was promoted to supply-chain director for Occidental’s Rockies Business Unit. The new role brought a move west, as Sullivan and his wife, Marie, relocated from Houston to Denver this summer. They are excited to make Colorado home and explore everything the Rockies have to offer.
2026
Felipe Lastra started as a consultant at EY-Parthenon. He is expecting a baby boy, due mid-September.
Marie Olavere recently relocated to New Jersey, where she has taken on a position as a grant fund manager at Princeton University.
Luis Torres, founder and CEO of Torres Orbital Mining, was selected for a NASA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 1 contract for the “non-ejective intake bit,” a sealed excavation architecture that collects lunar and planetary regolith samples without ejecting contaminating dust. The same approach targets hazardous silica dust exposure in terrestrial mining. The six-month effort is being carried out at Greentown Labs in Houston.
H. Russell “Russ” Pitman ’58
1936–2026
H. Russell “Russ” Pitman ’58 died on April 10, 2026, at age 89. Pitman’s connection to Rice spans seven decades — first as a student, then as a staff member and ultimately as one of the university’s most generous benefactors. Just two years after graduating with double majors in business administration and economics, he returned to campus July 1, 1960, the very day Rice Institute became Rice University, to serve as the university’s chief accountant. From 1969 to 1976, he was assistant to President Norman Hackerman, then he became manager of business affairs in 1976. Pitman retired in 1980 after serving the university with distinction for two decades.
Pitman established more than 75 endowed funds, awarded over 50 planned gifts and made several more gifts to academic schools at Rice. He enabled the creation of scholarships, travel grants, lecture series, art purchases and faculty initiatives. He also contributed to the creation of Virani Hall — a staircase in the new building bears his name (see page 34) — as well as many other spaces across campus.
Pitman was awarded the Gold Medal from the Association of Rice Alumni in 2019. He also was awarded the Dean’s Medal from the School of Architecture in 2023, and in December 2024, he toured the new Academic Quadrangle with university leaders in a celebratory moment of his lifelong love of the institution.
Janice McNair
1936–2026
Janice McNair, Houston Texans co-founder and senior chair, whose generosity, leadership and enduring commitment to education helped shape Rice University and Rice Business for generations, passed away on July 14, 2026. Alongside her husband, Bob, McNair believed deeply in the power of education to transform lives. Their extraordinary philanthropy touched countless institutions — largely in education and medical research — but few places reflect that legacy more visibly than McNair Hall, which was named for the McNairs in 2005 and has served as the home of Rice Business for more than two decades. Bob and Janice McNair also established the McNair Scholars program at Rice Business to fully cover tuition for an exceptional student each year.
“Mom was exceptional. She exuded kindness, radiated joy, had an endless amount of hope and love, and lived an incredible life centered around faith, family, philanthropy and football,” said Cal McNair, Texans chair and CEO, in a statement. “…Mom leaves an indelible mark on our family, our team and our community and her giving spirit will always be embedded in the fabric of our organization. While I’m heartbroken, I take great comfort in knowing she is now reunited with my dad, her favorite teammate.”
Herbert D. Simons ’57
1935—2026
Herbert Simons ’57, a prominent Houston attorney, oilman, civic leader, philanthropist and genealogist, passed away on Aug. 19, 2026, three days after celebrating his 91st birthday.
Simons had a long and distinguished career in law and was a nationally recognized expert in taxation. He joined the firm of Butler & Binion in 1962, and he served as partner there from 1973 until the firm’s closure in 1999. He was subsequently Of Counsel at Winstead PC until his retirement in 2007. He was, for many years, a member of the Board of Directors of XTO Energy, a leading independent oil and natural gas producer, which was acquired by ExxonMobil in 2010.
He received his law degree in 1960 from Harvard Law School. Simons served as a council member of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and the Houston Zoo, among other philanthropic and community interests. In memory of his father, he established the Verne F. Simons Memorial Scholarship at Rice and the Verne F. Simons Distinguished Assistant Professorship in Finance at Rice Business.
Simons was also a noted genealogist and family historian. He was also an enthusiastic traveler and enjoyed opera and politics. Simons will be remembered for his kindness, wit, boundless energy, the breadth of his intellect, his successful professional career, his devotion to the institutions and community of Houston, and his lifelong interest in the history of his family and the families of early America.
