While Tsedal Neeley, a Harvard Business School professor, was meeting with the school’s dean and two associate deans over Zoom early in the pandemic, her 8-year-old son snuck into her office and surreptitiously handed her a note. “He thinks he’s not being captured on video, but he is, so of course I have to read the note out loud,” she recalls.

The note read: “We’re out of fruits. Can I have a cookie?”

Neeley, the author of “Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding from Anywhere,” was somewhat embarrassed by the interruption, which came in the midst of a serious conversation with the school’s top leadership. But in fact it broke some of the tension. “It was a tender, funny moment that was really disarming,” she says. And her son got the cookie. “I later found out we did have fruit, but that’s another story.”

While remote work has kept many of us physically apart from our bosses and co-workers for the past two years, video conferencing has brought us inside their homes, giving us an uncannily intimate look at their lives. We’ve observed our co-workers in their natural habitats, with cameos from their roommates, partners, children and pets.

What we’ve seen on the screen hasn’t always been pretty. We’ve witnessed out-of-control pets, messy kitchens, overflowing laundry hampers — and worse. An attorney who once wholeheartedly trusted his boss’s judgment came to question it after glimpsing her home décor. A content creator said his editor’s lackadaisical approach to webcam placement revealed new sides of him — including directly up his nose, sometimes as he ate a sandwich.

If office life was a scripted series, working from home is a documentary, and the cameras are perpetually rolling. We’ve glimpsed outtakes we wish had been left on the cutting room floor. But in many cases, seeing our co-workers interact with their loved ones in genuine, if imperfect, ways can make them seem more approachable and more likable, especially when it comes to our managers, says Marlon Mooijman, an organizational behavior professor at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business.

“A core component of trust is showing vulnerability,” Mooijman says. “If you’re willing to admit that you make mistakes, or reveal something private about your personal life, that fosters trust, especially for people in senior-level positions.

“My research on vulnerability has found that, when it comes to seeing aspects of their life that aren’t perfect, the more power people have, the more authentic and endearing that seems. If your boss, who has a lot of power, shows vulnerability, that means they’re choosing to do so. But if you’re someone who lacks power, it doesn’t have the same effect. If your kids are running wild and your dog is barking, it might just seem like you’re unable to manage things.”

And sometimes a glimpse into a manager’s personal life can be more off-putting than endearing. A 26-year-old consultant whose boss regularly quarrels with her husband during Zoom calls says he feels like he’s watching a reality TV show that he can’t turn off.

“It’s not yelling; it’s kind of just snipping at each other,” he says. “It’s clearly derived from work-related stress. She’ll have been working for 10 hours and he’ll be like, ‘Are you going to have dinner?’ And she’s like, ‘Leave me alone, I’m busy.’ It’s very cringey. I want to say, ‘Do you need me to step away while you have this conversation?’”

For the consultant, the experience has been a teachable moment akin to a visit from the ghost of work-life future. “It’s stressful to see, but it’s an interesting case study in bad work-life balance,” he says. “Even though she’s someone I work for and look up to, I’ve realized that I don’t want to emulate her style of working.”

Our bosses aren’t thrilled with everything they’ve learned about us over the past two years, either. An August survey of U.S. executives found that nearly one in four had fired an employee over a Zoom misstep. Some of those missteps amounted to indecent exposure, like the episode that cost New Yorker staff writer Jeffrey Toobin his job. Less serious blunders have been excused, such as when a Canadian politician's camera turned on unexpectedly while he was changing after a jog.

And then there was Jennifer, who brought her laptop to the bathroom during a Zoom call, oblivious to the fact that her camera was still on. The video, apparently leaked by a co-worker, has been viewed more than 7 million times and spawned the Twitter hashtag #PoorJennifer. Nearly everyone who saw it commiserated with her plight. But seeing our colleagues with their pants down, accidentally or not, is something we can’t unsee.

“I don’t know how you recover easily from that,” says Neeley. “But I think people are forgiving if you ask them for forgiveness.”

More minor incidents — even those that feel mortifying to us in the moment — may come across as charming to our co-workers, Neeley says. “It humanizes us in ways that our impression-managed work personas won’t.”

That has been the silver lining of remote work, she says: it has made us reveal more authentic versions of ourselves, whether we wanted to or not. And that can bring us closer to our colleagues despite the distance. What we’re learning about them, after all, is that they are real people with flaws and foibles, like us.  

Spring has arrived in time for an in-person Rice Business Plan Competition and alumni reunion (April 29-30) after a two-year hiatus. There is so much to be excited about. I look forward to seeing your faces in McNair Hall and at events on campus and around the city.

It feels like a new beginning, and McNair Hall is experiencing a renaissance of sorts amid the activities.

When you’re next on campus, walk down the hall outside of the admissions office to see the mural by Kate Shepherd, “Tricycle Red, Pelican Gray etc., partial octagons,” which debuted in January. Then head up to the second floor, where you can get a close-up view of “Triple Virgo,” the hanging sculpture over the rotunda, and visit the renovated and reconfigured Business Information Center, the new Dean’s Suite and the Gibbs Gallery, McNair Hall’s new “family room.” It’s a place anyone is invited to relax, meet, mentor or just think quietly, and will also double as an event venue for smaller gatherings. Take a look at the updates here.

If you wonder why renovations to the building are important, the simple answer is that it makes the school a better place to study, teach and work. We have more students, undergrads and graduate-level, more professors and more staff than ever before. A refreshed McNair Hall keeps the technical infrastructure updated, attracts prospective students and high-level faculty and staff, and helps us stay competitive as a top 25 business school. Along the way, we improve how we function, too.

If I don’t see you at reunion, I look forward to seeing you soon.

— Peter

It’s early morning at the Ion, and founders, inventors and investors start to trickle in to the shiny new 266,000-square-foot innovation hub off Main Street in Midtown Houston.

Some grab a coffee and croissant from Common Bond on the ground floor before making their way to the nearby prototyping lab, where they can design products with a 3D printer and laser cutter. Others lug merchandise — whimsical wallpaper samples and cans of craft-quality cocktails, among others — upstairs to their co-working office space.

Later, a founder fires up the podcast room to record a segment with an investor, and when early evening rolls around, the ground floor buzzes as the seeds for investment are planted over dinner and drinks at the hub’s star-chef-run bars and restaurants.

That’s the vision for daily life at the Ion, the anchor of Houston’s budding 16-acre innovation district, which is planning its opening celebration in May. It’s the brainchild of Rice University leaders and city officials, who hope it will put Houston solidly on the startup map, rivaling Silicon Valley.

The Ion was envisioned as a base for startups in the accelerator or incubator phase, established innovative companies, venture capitalists and academics. “The space stimulates exciting conversations about what could be possible,” says Jan Odegard, the Ion’s executive director.

In the coming years, the Rice Management Company, which manages the Ion and oversaw its development, will spearhead the construction of several additional innovation district buildings, including more office space, retail and residential properties.

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A New Vision for Midtown

The idea for a Houston innovation hub gained momentum in 2018 when Amazon was searching for a site for its second headquarters. When the retailer bypassed Houston altogether, it was a wake-up call for the local business community.

Later that year, Rice President David Leebron and other leaders met with Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner to lay out a vision for the city’s future. The city had already been thinking about these issues; in late 2016, Mayor Turner had convened a taskforce to explore expanding Houston’s innovation economy. The taskforce had recommended that the city focus on finding a place where innovation activity could be centralized, similar to what had been done in cities such as Chicago and Cincinnati. Where to place the resulting innovation district, however, was a subject of debate.

During the meeting, Leebron mentioned the Sears building on Rice-owned land, built in 1939, and how it could be transformed into a vibrant mixed use space to support startups. The Rice Management Company (RMC), which oversees the university’s $6.2 billion endowment fund, had recently bought out the 28 years remaining on Sears’ lease. Rice currently owns 16 acres in the area, which connects downtown to the Medical Center and is less than a mile from Rice.

The mayoral taskforce visited a number of cities that had successfully undertaken such initiatives. Rice Business Professor Yael Hochberg, the head of the Rice Entrepreneurship Initiative, was a member of that taskforce, and had been involved early on in the planning of 1871, Chicago’s technology hub and business incubator, housed in a historic market that city leaders reinvented to support early stage, growth stage and corporate innovators. “Putting everything together in one space — that is the secret sauce,” says Hochberg. “When you do that, you start to see the serendipitous interactions that really lead to new innovative activity. It helps entrepreneurs find other entrepreneurs, resources and investors.”

“The concentration of activity is what lights the rocket,” she adds. “We saw how this really helped entrepreneurial activity in Chicago take off, when we did this at 1871 and MATTER in the Chicago Merchandise Mart. We saw the potential for doing something similar in Houston, if the right location could be identified and secured.”

RMC representatives described how the old Sears department store could be transformed into a modern innovation hub that would benefit students. Brad Burke, the managing director of the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship, an entrepreneurship initiative founded in 2000 to support startups at Rice and in the community, had seen the transformative impact 1871 had on Chicago’s entrepreneurial system and believed Rice could do even more.

“For two decades we have been building the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Houston with thousands of startups, investors, mentors, corporations and service providers, but until the Ion, we didn’t have a central hub with the density and capacity to enable the interactions necessary to change the trajectory of startups in Houston,” Burke says.

At the time, Houston lacked a single location that connected entrepreneurs, corporations, the venture capital community, the government and civic community, and academia. Yet, “when all of those are working in concert together with each other, that really makes an innovation ecosystem cook,” says Kyle Judah, executive director of Rice’s Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Lilie), Rice’s center for entrepreneurship education and resources for students and faculty.

The RMC broke ground in the summer of 2019, and the Ion’s $132 million transformation was completed last summer. A hole cut a hole through the center of the previously dark Sears building allows light to spill in, and the 16-foot ceilings create an airy feel.

“The building is really unlike anything else in Houston,” says Ryan LeVasseur, managing director of direct real estate for the RMC. Historically, LeVasseur adds, Houston has relied on a few select industries for its economic development. Part of the thinking behind the Ion was to help the city further diversify.

Before and during construction, LeVasseur visited iconic innovation districts for inspiration, including the Cortex Innovation Community in Saint Louis, Missouri, the Kendall Square Initiative in Boston and Tech Square in midtown Atlanta. Odegard, who’s from Norway, toured the Oslo House of Innovation to source ideas, and both Odegard and LeVasseur helped secure the Ion’s membership in the Global Institute on Innovation Districts. 

Collaborations and Collisions

The Ion aims to be a place where innovators can collide and partnerships are born. In a sprawling city like Houston, a central, energizing location for innovators to meet is essential for creativity and growth.

“It’s really hard to feel energy and excitement about what’s happening in a city if the entrepreneurship and innovation community are so spread out,” says Judah.

The Ion secured Microsoft and Chevron Technology Ventures as founding partners and anchor tenants. Houston-based Baker Botts is a founding partner, too, and has an office in the building. Ion partner TXRX Labs, a Houston nonprofit, operates the expansive Ion Prototyping Lab on the center’s first floor. The 6,500 square foot lab is filled with cutting-edge equipment that startups can use to develop and refine their products, while TXRX staff provide hands-on training for entrepreneurs. Methodist Hospital used the space to design and 3-D print a prototype of a new cognitive function test for patients.

A massive soldering machine sits in the lab’s electronics workspace. Nearby are a series of circular lights designed by TXRX for installation along Houston’s bayou. Across the hall in the fabrication workspace, founders toil away on laser cutters and use lathes to shape and slice metal and wood. At the investor studio on the same floor, visiting investors can connect with founders. 

Members can also partake in the Ion’s programming, as can the general public. Recent programs have included “How to Start a Startup” and “Perfecting Your Pitch.” Baker Botts has also hosted free 30-minute consultations for founders.

On the Ion’s second floor is a bustling flexible workspace run in partnership with co-working space Common Desk. Startups and small businesses can choose from several workspace options, including shared and private offices or full suites with their own kitchenettes and conference rooms. Founders and owners collide and network at the workspace’s coffee bar, and there’s also a Wellness Room for nursing mothers.

Current tenants include All Hands Craft Cocktails, which makes “bar strength” cocktails in cans; the nonprofit BikeHouston; water testing company Water Lens; luxury designer wallpaper maker Olivia + Poppy; and Snapstream, a media workspace that helps companies tell their stories with videos, founded by Rice alum Rakesh Agrawal ’97, among others.

Members and the general public can also eat at the Ion’s multiple restaurants. The Lymbar, chef David Cordúa’s craft cocktail bar and restaurant, is scheduled to open early this summer. At Late August — a nod to the time of year when Sears’ iconic catalogue came out — chef Dawn Burrell and Chris Williams of Lucille’s will serve up Afro-Asian fusion. Second Draught, a 2,000-square-foot taproom run by Rice alum Adam Cryer ’01 and his wife Sarah Pope, will serve rotating beers on tap from some 70 Houston-based brewing companies.

Floors three through five are traditional office spaces that startups can move into as they grow, building out and renting space longer term. The Ion’s bottom floor is made up of an amphitheater and open meeting space with rolling white boards. Out front in the plaza, the community can gather at tables and chairs. A 10-story parking garage for around 1,600 cars is in the works.

Greentown Labs, North America’s largest climatetech incubator, is open down the street in a former Fiesta grocery store, and a dozen more mixed-use buildings will be built in the innovation district over the next decade.

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Room to Grow

For Rice Business students and alumni, the Ion provides opportunities for professional connections and networking, and a home base for budding businesses.

“We have an increasing number of MBA students who want to pursue entrepreneurial startups,” Hochberg says, “and the Ion can provide space for these fledging startups to launch.”

For the past three years, Rice Business has been ranked the top graduate entrepreneurship program in the country, due to the efforts of Lilie and Rice Alliance. “But while we’ve expanded and strengthened the innovation ecosystem on campus, the city itself hasn’t developed in lockstep,” says Hochberg. One of the Ion’s goals is for Rice graduates to no longer have to leave Houston to connect with investors and secure capital. After graduation, the Ion can be a landing spot for their ventures.

“It’s really a financial investment for future students,” LeVasseur says. “The Ion is attracting companies that think differently and providing opportunities for students at all of Houston’s universities to stay here for their careers.”

In 2020, the Ion received a $1.5 million grant from the Economic Development Administration to fund an accelerator hub, which will include the Ion Smart and Resilient Cities Accelerator, the Rice Alliance Clean Energy Accelerator, and DivInc Accelerator, a program for minority- and women-led startups. “The Ion’s Accelerator Hub is a unique collaboration that benefits all accelerators in Houston. As the most diverse city in the U.S., it is important that entrepreneurial resources are available to a diverse and an inclusive community, and the Hub will help ensure their success,” Burke says.

Last November, founders from Houston and beyond pitched their business concepts live in the Ion’s amphitheater during the Houston Startup Showcase, a year-long pitch competition. Cancer patient engagement platform Ankr was crowned the winner and received a $10,000 prize and $10,000 in legal support from Ion partner Baker Botts.

The annual Rice Business Plan Competition, in which some 42 startups from universities across the globe compete for more than $1.5 million dollars in prizes, will also benefit. The Rice Alliance hopes to host competition programming at the facility. Another idea is for finalists, in addition to prize money, to win working space at the Ion. “We’ve had several RBPC startups move their company to Texas as a result of meeting investors at the competition. The Ion will provide another incentive to attract those startups to build their companies in Houston,” Burke says. “We’re also looking at possibly hosting the Rice Alliance’s OwlSpark Accelerator at the Ion, which would provide a place for these Rice startups to reside at the end of the program.”

For Odegard, success also comes with connections — for example, if Microsoft or Chevron executives get drawn into a founder’s product demonstration or a captivating conversation. “That’s what we’re aiming for,” he says.

Organizers expect the innovation district, anchored by the Ion, to evolve into a true destination, a walkable, bikeable, livable district, a so-called “15-minute city” where everything community members need to live and work is just 15 minutes away by foot or bike.

“The Ion is just the tip of the iceberg,” Hochberg says. “The innovation ecosystem that we are building has the potential to be a game-changer for Houston and its startups. The platform and potential is there for Houston to build an ecosystem that truly expands its economic base, and that takes advantage of all the diversity that Houston has to offer.”

Before the pandemic, Scott Gale ’19 dressed in a suit and spent up to seven hours a week commuting to and from his global strategy job at Halliburton headquarters north of Houston. Every quarter, he jetted off to far-flung destinations like Argentina, Brazil and Saudi Arabia.

His hectic schedule left little time for self-care or for quality time with his wife, Nicole, and their four kids. “I had a bad joke that I never saw my house in the light of day,” Gale says. “I was out before the sun came up and back after it went down. It was a grind.”

Then, in early 2020, at 36, Gale was diagnosed with colon cancer. He started chemotherapy as the world went on lockdown and transitioned to remote work. Not long afterward, he took on a new role creating an energy accelerator for Halliburton, bringing together investors, startups, industry leaders and academics. It was a feat he says wouldn’t have been possible to complete so quickly without the ability to work from home.

“Remote work has been an absolute shelter through this storm,” Gale says. “This can’t be understated: It’s enabled me to bring my whole self to what I do.” Now, he can’t imagine returning to a traditional, in-office 9-to-5, even after the pandemic subsides.

The pandemic upended the work lives of countless executives like Gale, changing their perception of what work should be and how they want to do their jobs. Some shifted to work-from-home out of necessity during the height of COVID but found that they relish the benefits — from money saved without a commute to more time with family. According to the freelancing platform Upwork, employees who work remotely save an average of 51 minutes a day.

“The pandemic is a moment of reflection and consideration,” says Scott Sonenshein, the Henry Gardiner Symonds Professor of Management at Rice Business. “We’ve seen the empowerment of the worker and the recognition that the standard 9-to-5 schedule is passé.”

Now, more than 50% of employees say they want to work remotely at least three days a week, according to a recent PwC study, and 52% of men and 60% of women say they’ll quit a job if they can’t work remotely, according to FlexJobs. By 2025, the number of remote workers is expected to double from pre-pandemic levels, from 16.8 million Americans to 36.2 million.

Meanwhile, online searches for remote roles across industries jumped 360% from June 2019 to June 2021, according to the job search engine Glassdoor. This acceleration will add to what was already a growing trend: Over the last 12 years pre-COVID, remote work had seen 159% growth, according to McKinsey.

Working Smarter and Faster

For Gale, who’s now the executive director of engagement at Halliburton Labs, the transition to remote work was smooth. His first job out of college was as a work-from-home account representative for Dow Chemical, and the company put workers through remote work training.

“They taught us best practices, and I was able to dust those off the shelf,” Gale says.

When Halliburton’s CEO asked Gale if he would develop the energy accelerator, Gale jumped at the chance to build something exciting and new, a welcome distraction from his cancer treatment.

“If I’d been asked to do that job the year before, I would have been on a plane to San Francisco and Boston to understand the startup community and meet people,” Gale says. But during the pandemic, he met people over video instead, speeding up the process.

It took him a mere three months to make the connections he needed to build out the accelerator. He started the new job on June 1 and had an advisory board less than two months later.

“Work-from-home massively accelerated what we were trying to do,” Gale says. “Managing my own time and schedule made a huge difference.”

Now, the accelerator has seven employees. Nearly 40 companies have pitched projects across four events, and 12 were selected to participate in a 12-month “scalerator” experience.

At the same time, Gale gained valuable time with family. He started biking with his kids to school and often picks them up at the end of the day. He’s taught his now fifth-grade daughter how to play basketball, took his seventh grader to cross-country practice every week last fall, and spent time playing video games with his kindergartener son.

“I went from never seeing my home in the light of day to stepping out of my office and having lunch with the kids,” he says. “I termed it as reintroducing myself to my family.”

New Career Paths

The pandemic also changed the way Brian Jackson ’21 approached his work. 

When COVID first gained a foothold in the U.S., Jackson was working as a litigator at a small Texas oil and gas law firm, where he donned a sport coat and commuted daily to the office. He often spent long hours away from home — and his partner and their dog.

“I used to believe that being the first car parked in the lot at the office meant you were a good or even the best employee,” says Jackson, who now lives in Boston.

In the fall of 2020, the law firm let him go as clients scaled back projects, and he took a remote role working as a contract manager at renewable energy company Enel Green Power. No longer does he have to dress up or slog through a long commute. He’s enjoying his time at home working alongside his partner, who’s in hybrid dental school.

“My life shifted to being present with the people and dog I love,” Jackson says. “Now, I believe that having a workplace that cares about your individual need to balance career and home matters. Without the pandemic, I wouldn’t have shifted to a new career and would not have grown to know a culture that supports me.” 

According to a Pew Research study, Jackson isn’t alone. Nearly 40% of new remote workers say it’s now easier to balance work with family obligations.

In Seattle, Michael Scott ’05 also relishes the extra personal time remote work makes possible. Scott and his family of four moved from Austin to Seattle in the fall of 2018 after Expedia acquired the company he was working for, HomeAway.

At the time, Expedia was building a new headquarters on the Seattle waterfront. Scott moved to the new facility in November 2019, only to be sent home months later to work remotely because of COVID. At the same time, travel screeched to a halt. Scott’s team, which was responsible for managing cash and liquidity, worked day and night rebuilding forecasts and working through worst-case scenarios.

“It was incredibly stressful and burned out many people on the team,” he says.

At first Scott and his laptop bounced around the house, from the kitchen table to a card table in the bedroom. When it became clear that COVID wasn’t going away, he bought a desk and set up a work station in the basement. In March 2021, he joined Rice Business alum Jason Sanders ’15 at Fastly, taking a fully remote job as senior director of treasury.

Now, Scott is treasurer at Dropbox, a remote-first company. Among other perks of working from home: He walks his dog three times a day. “The dog is the biggest winner here,” he says. He also likes that his family could pick up and move again to a new city if they wanted to. “Remote work has really opened up options,” he says.

Yet at the same time, Scott misses being with colleagues in a shared workspace and the camaraderie and spontaneous, informal interactions that happen in offices, especially with projects that require back-and-forth or deep conversation. “There’s still not a good way to replicate that,” he says.

Keeping the Culture Alive

As CEO and president of the branding agency Savage Brands, Bethany Andell ’01 has worked throughout the pandemic to strike the right balance between safety and flexibility, culture and connection.

Pre-pandemic, her Houston employees were 9-to-5ers. “We were not used to a remote or hybrid workforce,” she says. She shut down the office in March, an easy transition since her employees work on laptops and already had video conferencing capabilities. Workers were able to take their computer monitor and desk chairs home with them.

“What was different, though, was that we didn’t necessarily understand how and when to connect with each other unless we were specifically working on a project,” says Andell.

She’s felt detached from what her teams were working on, despite weekly leadership Zoom meetings and all-staff Zooms. But she’s constantly trying new techniques. On a Zoom call after New Year’s Day, employees took turns setting a one-word intention for the year.

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For Martin Luther King Day, an all-staff Zoom featured a video of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. She also recently asked a new employee to give a 15-minute Zoom talk about himself, and on Fridays she hosts a Zoom coffee hour for anyone who wants to catch up.

Now Andell has cut her company’s office space in half and is moving to a hybrid “hoteling” model, where employees come in a few times a week to use an open desk. “I don’t care what time or how long they stay,” Andell says. “I just want to start encouraging people to meet in person,” especially for brainstorming or collaborations.

About a third of chief operating officers plan to reduce their companies’ office space, according to McKinsey. And while working remotely has benefits for workers, this could also benefit the planet. The average remote worker lowers their carbon footprint by around 1,800 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions by working from home, according to a report from Alliance Virtual Offices.

“We’ve become much more flexible in our thinking about talent and where people live,” Andell adds, noting that one employee moved to Washington State. For her own part, Andell enjoys working from home and finds she works harder without as many in-person interruptions. But there are drawbacks.

Sometimes she has trouble separating the work day from personal time. She’s lost her “liminal space,” she says, or the transition from work to home, which used to be her commute. “I’ve had to manufacture that transition,” she says. Some days, it’s a glass of wine that demarcates the workday from downtime at home.

Gale, too, has increasingly noticed the boundaries blurring between work and home, as have around a third of people working remotely, who say they’re working more hours now than they were before the pandemic, according to Pew.

Gale’s strategy has been to block off his calendar for key events like cancer treatment and family activities. He also uses the delay delivery feature in email, scheduling messages to go out in the morning rather than sending them at night. He doesn’t want employees to feel compelled to respond after hours because he’s emailing when his schedule permits.

In January, Halliburton began reopening its Houston campus, encouraging employees to come into the office several days each month. Gale appreciates the opportunities for colleagues to collide, which he agrees is hard to mimic virtually. But still, he prefers to maintain control over his schedule.

“It’s the flexibility that’s been fantastic,” he says. “It’s had a huge impact on our quality of life. It really has been a silver lining during the pandemic.”

Sonenshein acknowledges that, while some tasks are better done quietly at home, people are indeed longing for connection. “You do need that in-person interaction at least part of the time to build up camaraderie,” he says. “What we’re going to see is a blended approach. Hybrid work is here to stay for the foreseeable future.”

The omicron surge hit Houston hard over the winter holidays — just as Rice Business students were preparing to return to campus for the spring semester. Once again, COVID threw us for a loop. But this time around, the loop was shorter. After reverting to remote learning for the first part of January, the spring semester marked a return to in-person classes and events. And by the end of March, wearing a mask was no longer required anywhere on campus, indoors or out.

Across the country, schools have grappled with the fits and starts of the ongoing pandemic, balancing community safety against the benefits of in-person education. Now, many see omicron as a sign that COVID will endure indefinitely in some form — but a much less deadly one. And Rice has shifted its approach from an attempt at containing the virus to one aimed at coexisting with it. The latest pivot to remote learning was meant to give omicron a chance to recede before the school returned to a more normal mode of instruction, with safeguards in place.

“My gauge is that the university is ready, for the most part, to treat COVID more as a management issue and something we will live with, as well as something we try to avoid,” Rice Business Dean Peter Rodriguez said. 

“We have become experts at handling last-minute changes, appreciating the small wins and staying optimistic,” Rodriguez added, in an email to the community, when in-person classes resumed Jan. 24. “It hasn’t been easy for our community of students, staff and faculty. Learning, teaching, working, spending time with family and friends — everything we do has been affected in some way. Your constant support and cooperation has made Rice Business shine.”

Because Rice accepts federal contracts, it was required to comply with President Biden’s executive order for all employees to be fully vaccinated by Jan. 4, except for those with a medical or religious exemption. And as of Jan. 10, vaccine boosters were required for all students and Rice employees.

Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the university’s strategy has evolved along with the virus. As vaccines became more widely available and treatment options for the most vulnerable improved, the risks from COVID lessened and administrators began easing restrictions on campus, allowing larger gatherings and less isolation.

“We’ve entered a new and different phase of the pandemic, one that requires us to revisit and revise our COVID policies and operational decision-making,” Rice President David Leebron wrote in a Dec. 26 email to the community.

“Most public health experts believe there will not be a clear end to the pandemic as COVID-19 transitions into more of an ongoing endemic condition that is always with us, but generally significantly less life-threatening with available vaccines and treatments.”

“We must also recognize and take into account the toll that our pandemic risk mitigation policies and personal choices have taken on both the broader wellbeing of our community and our ability to execute our mission at a high level, and we must adapt accordingly,” he wrote.

In a Jan. 16 New York Times article, Leebron pointed out that there had not been a serious COVID case within the campus community in months. He said he worried that extending lockdown-style restrictions would lead to even more serious problems. “Across campus, there are mental health issues,” he said. “If we have a disease that, for college-age vaccinated people does not pose a serious risk, those other factors need to be taken into account.”

On Feb. 24, two years after Rice notified the Houston health department of what it believed to be its first COVID case, Associate Dean of Degree Programs George Andrews emailed the Rice Business community, writing, “Think about how far we have come, and how much we have endured.”  

“You will begin to see Rice return to ‘normal’ in the coming two months,” Andrews said. “Soon, we will get back the multipurpose rooms and testing facilities will be consolidated. You will be receiving antigen tests from the university for your use as needed, and the mask policy will continue to relax over that time as well.”

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Mask rules became gradually less restrictive as the semester progressed. At first, masks were required at all times indoors; then only in classes and for groups of more than 25. By early March, they were required only in classes. After spring break, even that requirement was lifted.  

Still, COVID has disrupted the lives of everyone in the Rice Business community and beyond. The losses are incalculable, and the effects will be far reaching. The precautions we’ve taken and the sacrifices we’ve made helped minimize the worst possible outcomes. And while those sacrifices were enormous, in many ways the accommodations made during the pandemic — including flexible schedules and virtual programming options — have led to innovations in the ways we work, study and socialize that could bring about more accessibility and inclusivity in the future. 

“Congratulations on making it through the past two years,” Andrews said. “It is hard to believe it was only two years ago [that the pandemic began]. It seems closer to a decade. Here’s to an amazing 2022, your indomitable spirit, and a return to normalcy.”

You can find updated information about COVID on campus here: https://coronavirus.rice.edu/

Few industries have been as subject to the wild ups and downs of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as the world of real estate. Almost two years into the pandemic and the real estate business has seen itself transformed again and again as the world responds to each new phase of the pandemic.

It’s never been a better time to sell a house — but buying one is another matter. Vaccines brought workers back into offices and workplaces — and new COVID variants sent them back home. Retail businesses and restaurants weathered municipal mandates and the changing preferences of customers. Industry trends that might have taken five to 10 years to play out now happen in a matter of months.

The year ahead seems to hold more of the same — cautious optimism, steady growth, and the need to quickly adapt to shifting circumstances. That’s according to the Rice Business alumni working in real estate markets around the world, who shared the trends they’re watching in 2022.

‘The New Normal’

Rising prices and intense competition have characterized the residential real estate market during the last two years and Brandi Downey-Wade ’11, a broker and owner of DiverseCity Realty in Houston, expects those trends to continue in 2022.

“The residential market is very strong in Houston and Austin,” she says. “Things are normalizing a bit; at this time last year you might have a home go under contract within two days and with multiple offers, and now properties are sitting closer to 30 days.” There still isn’t enough inventory, though, and with demand outpacing new construction, the market remains heavily in favor of sellers.

“I had a client who’s been looking in the Cypress area. She put in an all-cash offer, $25,000 over asking price, and the offer was not accepted,” she says. In the last year, the median sale price for a home in Houston has increased by almost $100,000, according to Downey-Wade. “It’s great for folks in real estate and great for sellers, but for home affordability, it’s tough.”

Downey-Wade’s commercial clients are having an opposite experience, however. “There’s a ton of (commercial) inventory … coming to the market,” she says. And while office space remains unpredictable, she’s seeing the boundaries between retail and office space blur. An online retailer may simply need an office space for logistics and shipping, while a small business may want a storefront to attract clients.

The one thing Downey-Wade doesn’t expect in 2022 is a crash. The pace of growth may slow, but there won’t be a reversal. “With Texas growing as rapidly as it is, these prices are our new normal.”

Emerging Industries

Though the pandemic has changed where and how we work, Brandon Houston ’09, a principal at Trammell Crow Company in Atlanta, remains bullish on office space — particularly in the life-sciences industry, which covers everything from biopharmaceuticals to medical device research and manufacturing.

“We’re breaking ground on a large life-sciences project here in Atlanta in the next couple weeks — 370,000 square feet, a spectacular building. The opportunity is here to make a market,” Houston says. While cities like Boston, San Francisco and San Diego are seen as the core markets for med-tech companies, Houston believes Atlanta is about to have its moment.

“There are about 150 million square feet of life-sciences space across the country,” according to Houston, and he expects that number to double in the next decade. As the home of the Centers for Disease Control, Georgia Tech, Emory University and others, “Atlanta has all the fundamentals” to become a major life-sciences player.

That emerging market is going to create growth in other areas, Houston says. He expects increased development in 2022 as more people move to Atlanta for work. “I think there’s still some concern about whether people will get fully back into the office, and what that looks like from a remote or hybrid-work perspective, but I still believe there will be a return to the office,” he says. “More companies are choosing to relocate to the south … and I see Atlanta being a winner in office space in 2022 and beyond.”

The life-sciences industry will be particularly beneficial for office space.

“Life sciences folks can’t work from home; they’ve got to be in the office, so I don’t see a prolonged pandemic impacting life sciences at all, other than to spur more growth and development in that sector.”  

The one challenge Houston sees in 2022? Finding space for industrial developments. “Atlanta is the fifth-largest industrial market in the country, and we cannot find industrial land suitable for development,” he says. “It’s scarce, and the lots are being gobbled up by developers just like us.”

Hungry for Connection

Like office space, shopping centers could see a comeback this year, according to Matt Okmin ’18. Okmin is a partner at Whitestone REIT, a Houston-based commercial real estate company focused on small shopping centers in high-income neighborhoods. “Our outlook for 2022 is pretty good,” Okmin says. “Our tenants have come back strong.”

Agility and adaptability have helped those tenants weather the pandemic, according to Okmin. For some, that meant moving restaurant seating out to the shopping center’s parking lot during the early days of the pandemic. For others, it meant finding new ways to work with customers. “A client in San Antonio has a restaurant that did about 3 percent of its business in takeout before the pandemic. It just wasn’t their model and they were doing pretty well,” he says. “Because of the pandemic, they figured out how to bring their takeout business to about 30 or 40 percent. They’re a very agile and forward-thinking company.”

While the future of COVID presents a host of unknowns, Okmin is optimistic. “People are figuratively and literally hungry to get out there. So far, we’re seeing that people are still going out. In Austin and San Antonio, people seem to be OK” with mask requirements.

Outdoor community shopping centers like Whitestone’s are particularly able to meet the customer demands changed by the pandemic.

“We give people a place to connect, with open spaces for safe social distancing, to meet with friends.”

Experiences Over Items

That desire for in-person experiences is driving the growth of malls and shopping centers in China, too, according to Curt Lam ’94, a general manager with Wanda Group Hong Kong.

“In the last five years, we’ve seen tremendous pressure on physical retail malls and commercial space,” Lam says. Massive online retailers like JD.com and Alibaba have upended the Chinese retail market. Their outsized portion of the retail market, combined with integrated digital payment apps like WeChat Pay and Alibaba’s own Alipay, have squeezed traditional retail businesses.

Commercial real estate companies like Wanda Group have responded by shifting their focus to offering unique experiences rather than simply selling products. In China, that means you’re likely to see a virtual travel park or an indoor ski resort attached to a typical shopping mall — one of Wanda Group’s malls features a ski resort with four slopes and a 66-meter vertical drop. A day out might include a visit to a salon, lunch at a restaurant and a few hours of skiing. Customers less inclined to speed downhill could opt for a virtual sightseeing experience, viewing immersive scenes of other countries and famous locations while sitting in seats that move up and down, and even rotate.

“We’ve also seen malls include water parks — real, sizable indoor water parks — combat-themed parks, escape room parks. They know they can’t compete with JD.com or Alibaba [by selling physical products],” Lam says.

Lam expects physical retail malls to continue doing well in China in 2022. The omicron variant may have slowed down business, but Lam believes that consumers’ desire for in-person connections and experiences — and government scrutiny on the big online retailers’ anti-competitive — are positive indicators for commercial malls.

“We’re promoting our malls as community centers — places where teenagers and older folks can come in and wander around. You can sit at a restaurant and enjoy the air conditioning or enjoy an auto show. And once people are there, it creates foot traffic, so there will be spending,” he says.

And when the pandemic ebbs, Lam predicts an even stronger resurgence. “I think there’s a pent-up demand for gathering. That’s another positive element in supporting a stronger case for physical or in-person retail. I think we’re going to see a bounceback across the world once the pandemic flows out. But I think the bounceback will be stronger in China than elsewhere.”

Our first piece published in The Conversation, “What is the ‘social cost of carbon’?” co-writen by Rice Business lecturer and Baker fellow Jim Krane with Baker fellow Mark Finley, was republished by 38 news outlets —including Fast Company, the Houston Chronicle and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer — and read by more than 9,500 people. The story ran in print in the Tampa Bay Times and the authors were interviewed on public radio.

In March, Rice Business Professor Yan “Anthea” Zhang published a piece about the conflict in Ukraine, “Shell, BP and ExxonMobil have done business in Russia for decades — here’s why they’re leaving now,” which was republished in 31 outlets with more than 23,000 reads. Zhang was interviewed about the piece for an article in The Independent. Professor Doug Schuler collaborated with University of Mannheim Professor Laura Marie Edinger-Schons to write “Why Apple, Disney, IKEA and hundreds of other Western companies are abandoning Russia with barely a shrug,” which was republished in 43 outlets with more than 29,000 reads. Schuler was interviewed by the Financial Times and appeared on Toronto public radio and a South American TV news program.