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

The COVID-19 pandemic revolutionized the way we work, shop, socialize and study — along with nearly every other aspect of our lives. And while the crisis seems to be subsiding, things may never get back to normal, or at least not the normal we knew. In the business world, remote work and video conferencing transformed workplaces; entire industries pivoted to offer virtual services and online ordering; business travel and even handshakes became unheard of. So which changes are likely to fade away, and which will become a permanent feature of our new normal? Rice Business editor Jennifer Latson asked professors to weigh in on how the pandemic is reshaping the ways we’ll do business long into the future.

Interviews have been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

Creativity could blossom, but managers need to keep the mindset going.

By Jing Zhou, Mary Gibbs Jones Professor of Management

The pandemic was an externally imposed shock to the system that encouraged every employee to tap into their creative potential. They may have been just going to work as a routine and now are questioning why things are done in certain ways. That prompts them to question which process is really good for the company or their work and which may be out of date or inefficient. This mindset of challenging the status quo and coming up with new and better ways of doing things is the essence of creative idea generation at work. It could lead to process improvements, as well as new product or service developments. If any company can hold onto that mindset after the pandemic, they could really benefit.

How can managers keep it going? They really need to see themselves not just as a manager, managing their employees’ creativity, but first and foremost, start to think about themselves as a leader: How can they lead by example and engage in creativity themselves? Have they mastered the tools that facilitate creative idea generation? Second, they have to build a system that not only encourages and coaches employees on how to generate creative ideas, but also how to evaluate and implement them. Employees really need to know what happens to their ideas when they share them. Some people try really hard to come up with an idea, but they never hear anything back from management or receive feedback on how to come up with ideas that can truly add value. Or employees submit great ideas, yet managers really only want to hear ideas that would create low-level, incremental change, not truly disruptive change. Part of the solution to that is to train managers to recognize creative ideas and to provide constructive feedback. Maybe you’re not going to use the idea right now, but you need to let the employee know that it’s a valuable idea and you can hold onto it for some time in the future.

A lot of companies don’t have a system in place for encouraging creativity, and that held them back during the pandemic. Not surprisingly, their focus has just been to survive — they’ve been reacting to challenges, and next week there’s something new, so they just make decisions on the go. One company that did have a system that worked well is Memorial Hermann. They have a chief innovation officer, and they were already working to digitize healthcare before the pandemic hit. The infrastructure was already in place to make telemedicine possible, and that made it so much easier to help patients during the crisis. They had a great vision for innovation, a senior executive in charge of innovation and a core group of people in place to generate and implement creative ideas. They realized that a digital transformation was coming and they needed to be ready. In the pandemic, their innovation saved lives.

Downtown business districts will survive, but office space will look very different.   

By Jefferson Duarte, Gerald D. Hines Associate Professor of Real Estate Finance

The pandemic is not going to be the death of the downtown business district. There are many CEOs that want their office workers back, so I don’t think downtowns will become ghost towns. There may be less demand for some of that office space for a while, but I think much of it will come back. But the design of office space is going to change. We believe people innovate better when they’re working together in person, so the office could become more of a hub where people enjoy going in to meet with their peers and exchange ideas. It becomes less of a place where you just go and do your work. The design of these top-tier office spaces is becoming a way to attract highly skilled employees, by making it a place where people have fun going.

We believe people innovate better when they’re working together in person, so the office could become more of a hub where people enjoy going in to meet with their peers and exchange ideas. It becomes less of a place where you just go and do your work.

These design changes can also translate to entire neighborhoods, like Houston’s new innovation district, where the Ion is opening up. There’s this idea that we want whole neighborhoods where people enjoy going to work. It’s not just about the office building but about the surrounding infrastructure. You can meet up with colleagues and maybe grab a coffee and go watch a lecture, recharge, exchange ideas, create something new, and then you might go back home to do the actual work. But this gets to the idea that innovation happens when people from different backgrounds meet, and that creates a different real estate need. Real estate design has a big role in creating these moments where people meet and talk and new ideas are created. That’s a trend that’s not going away, and not just in Houston. These kinds of innovation districts are popping up all over the country.

Lean operations will no longer be the gold standard.

By Amit Pazgal, Friedkin Professor of Management

Before the pandemic, everybody in the world was going lean. That means no waste, no extra inventory. The “just-in-time” inventory model was part of that. And that's no longer the case. We see a lot more companies that are willing to hold inventory. That’s costly, but it buffers you against unforeseen circumstances, like a pandemic — or a freeze in Texas. There’s always a tension between cutting costs and what happens when things go wrong.

It’s clear that supply chains are changing. They’re no longer chains; now companies want supply networks and not chains. If you’re relying on one company to supply you and something happens, you’re dead. Companies are looking for suppliers that are closer to them, geographically, which was unheard of before — you go where things are cheap. People made everything in Asia, and that has repercussions. Now things take six months to get to the U.S. from China, as opposed to one month, and there's nothing you can do about that. So now there’s a lot more padding in the supply chain, and cultivating alternative suppliers, and making them close geographically if possible, so they can drive instead of flying or shipping. Costs will go up, and prices will go up, no question.

Is it permanent? No one really knows. As countries get back to pre-pandemic situations, we’ll see how quickly they reverse these trends. But we still see a ton of people shopping online and expecting the products to arrive at their homes. And that has a huge effect on the companies and their supply chains. Stores don’t want to be caught without toilet paper again. On the other hand, they don’t want a warehouse full of toilet paper just waiting for a pandemic to hit.

I think in general, you see a lot more technology in the supply chain, and a lot quicker adoption of that technology, including blockchain. Now Walmart, or any of the big suppliers, can follow a mango from the orchard in Honduras to the store to your house. That’s here to stay. These processes were in place already, but the pandemic accelerated everything. It probably would have happened anyway, but in 10 years instead of two.

Telemedicine could take off — as soon as insurers get on board.

By Tolga Tezcan, Professor of Operations Management

One of the difficulties of telemedicine before the pandemic was that reimbursement from insurance companies was not the same as for in-person visits. Insurance companies were slow to update their reimbursement rates. The COVID pandemic meant they had to move on this issue.

Before COVID, my colleague and I did a study where we partnered with a geriatrician in Rochester, New York, who treats Parkinson’s patients. These patients are primarily elderly, with limited mobility as the disease progresses, so they have a hard time getting to appointments. We studied what would happen if they had the option of doing telemedicine instead: Would it increase demand? Would it change the doctor’s workload? Would it increase wait times? What we found was that it led to a huge reduction in a variety of costs for the patients: The time getting to and from appointments, the expense or complication of getting a ride to the doctor’s office, and the risk of contracting COVID — or something else — in the waiting room. If you look at it from the point of view of doctors, patients, and the overall social welfare, it’s a win-win-win.

Whenever any new technology comes into an industry, it always takes a while for the rules and regulations to catch up, and with telemedicine, it means insurers will have to figure out new policies. But I don’t see why they shouldn’t, because everybody wins here.

Malls could become social hubs, no purchase necessary.

By Jaeyeon (Jae) Chung, Assistant Professor of Marketing

A generation ago, people used to go to shopping malls to shop. Now that people are buying more online, brick and mortar stores are having trouble with the high cost of maintaining their stores. That started before the pandemic, but the pandemic accelerated it. Lots of retailers have filed for bankruptcy or closed stores in the past year or two, including Gymboree, Victoria’s Secret, Forever 21, Brookstone, and more. All the big names we know are having trouble, and obviously so are smaller retailers.

Because of these changes, malls are looking to attract consumers in a different way: Now it’s not as much about shopping; it’s more about experiential consumption. Malls are becoming more of a getaway and a digital detox. In Houston and other hot cities, where you can’t really go outside in the summer, this is where you can go and get out of your house and away from screens. A lot more malls are creating natural areas inside the actual mall, with trees and plantings, to make that an attraction for people. They’re creating wellness retreats in some malls — and those are expensive, but people are paying for them because they need to get away from the confined spaces of their homes.

For example, Gucci, instead of just selling luxury bags and shoes, is trying a new concept called Gucci Garden, and recently opened one in Italy. It’s a whole experience, with a boutique, art installations, a bookstore, a restaurant; you have to pay to get in, but it’s a whole experience you can’t just buy online. Examples like this tell us that brick and mortar stores aren’t just for selling products, but for providing experiences that help fulfill people’s basic needs for social contact and belonging.

The reputation a company earned during the pandemic will stick around, for better or worse.

By Anastasiya Zavyalova, Associate Professor of Strategic Management

The pandemic was kind of a stress test for companies; the priorities they expressed during the pandemic revealed their true identities. So if their priority was the wellbeing of their employees, it signaled that this is the issue they truly care about. For companies that either let go of their workforce or were not sensitive to their employees’ situations, it showed that maybe that was not their top priority to begin with. And the less empathetic a company was to its employees, the longer that memory would linger. 

For companies that either let go of their workforce, or were not really sensitive to the employee demands, it showed that maybe that was not their top priority to begin with.

Such decisions will definitely affect employee retention. If the right opportunity comes along and they felt betrayed in some way during the pandemic, it wouldn’t be as difficult for them to jump ship and switch to another company now. In companies where that bond was stronger, and employees felt like they had a good relationship with the company, it’s not going to be as easy to just detach and leave.

This is not to say that companies that had to lay people off did the wrong thing. Many were financially strained. But it’s a matter of how you made and communicated those choices. Some companies had lower-paid workers laid off, but the highly paid employees stayed on. All of that is to say, even if you have to make tough choices, make sure they are aligned with your company’s true identity, because down the road the consequences of those choices are going to linger.

Updated from original post that was published on 10/07/2021.

Life evolves, and so does Houston. And we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Houston ranked No. 2 nationally for growing tech markets during the pandemic and No. 19 in the Global Startup Ecosystem Report. With 24 Fortune 500 headquarters, ranking us No. 3 in the U.S., and one of the largest concentrations of U.S. headquarter locations for companies around the world  — Houston is booming. So choosing an MBA program in Houston, Texas is a smart decision, offering opportunities to expand your career and enrich your life. 

Houston is the most diverse American city. A perfect place to gain new perspectives on business, culture and of course cuisine. (We’re always in the top 10 foodie destinations in the U.S.) It’s also affordable, compared to other big cities. The cost of living is lower in Texas (where most things are bigger). Think groceries, gas, rent and also no income tax

Looking at Rice Business with Houston as its backdrop, everything feels heightened, especially your opportunities to work and play. There is so much to do in your two years, along with studying for your MBA. Let the people you meet, the student clubs you join and the experiences you have build a foundation for learning and earning your degree, and launching the next phase of your life.

Here are my top 6 reasons why you should choose the city of Houston for your MBA:

For Food

• 11,000+ restaurants
• Representing 70 countries and American regions
• #6 food truck city in the U.S. 

For Innovation

• The Ion
• No. 19 in the Global Startup Ecosystem Report
• No. 1 ranking in Entrepreneurship from Princeton Review

For Industries

• Aerospace and Aviation
• Digital Technology
• Energy
• Life Sciences and Biotech

For Sports

• Astros
• Dash
• Dynamo
• Rockets
• Texans
• Livestock Show and Rodeo

For Culture

• Museum District (150 museums)
• Theater District (13,000+ seats)
• Ballet
• Symphony
• Grand Opera

For Play

• 366 parks
• 200 green spaces
• 125 miles of hike-and-bike trails

Want to learn more about pursuing your MBA in Houston? Request more information or check out our blog post: Choose Houston. 

Explore Why Rice

Rice Business announced that their Class of 2021 Full-Time MBA graduates have exceeded expectations, recording some of the highest employment numbers in the school’s history.

“We reported our highest base salary ever,” said Philip Heavilin, executive director of the Career Development Office. “And 100% of our job seeking international students accepted a job offer within three months of graduation.”

While the school increased the full-time Class of 2022 from 120 to 180 students, Heavilin shared the news “that 100% of the class has secured internships for the third year in a row. The Rice MBA continues to deliver results to our students and graduates.”

Highlights include:

• Highest offer rate
  • 97% offers by 3 months post-graduation (90% in 2020)
  • 92% acceptances by 3 months post-graduation (89% in 2020)
• Highest recorded salary in school history
  • Average base salary of $131,384 ($123,786 in 2020)
  • Median base salary of $135,000 ($125,000 in 2020)
• Highest acceptance rate for international students in school history
  • 100% of seeking international students accepted within 3 months post-graduation (88% in 2020)
• 78% of accepted job offers from the Rice Business community (74% in 2020)
• 100% of the full-time Class of 2022 secured internships for the third year in a row (even though we increased the class to 180 students from 120)
• Technology was the #1 industry for internships for the first time
• Top employers include: Amazon, BCG, HP, McKinsey & Company, Accenture, Citigroup, Dell, EDP Renewables, EY, JP Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley.
• Top 4 Industries:
  • Consulting 32.1% (24.5% in 2020)
  • Financial Services 21.8% (22.3% in 2020)
  • Petroleum/Energy 16.7% (12.8% in 2020)
  • Technology 14.1% (20.2% in 2020)
• Top 4 Functions:
  • Consulting 34.6% (24.5% in 2020)
  • Finance/Accounting 33.3% (32.3% in 2020)
  • General Management 7.7% (11.8% in 2020)
  • Marketing/Sales and Operations/Logistics 6.4% each (16.1% and 3.2% respectively in 2020)

The numbers speak to the school’s growing impact on Houston and the local economy. The Rice Business Career Center will release its comprehensive Full-Time MBA Class of 2021 Employment Report and Class of 2022 Internships Report this fall.

Owl Have You Know

Season 2, Episode 1

Patra Brannon-Isaac '11 talks about the process of being admitted to Rice Business, the impact her MBA has had on her career trajectory, and her involvement in diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at the school.

Subscribe to Owl Have You Know on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.