This week's roundup of Houston innovators includes Joanna Nathan of Prana Thoracic, James Rees of BWT, and Aimee Gardner of SurgWise. Photos courtesy

Editor's note: In this week's roundup of Houston innovators to know — a special Labor Day edition, I'm introducing you to three local innovators across industries — from human resources to medical devices — recently making headlines in Houston innovation.

Joanna Nathan, CEO and founder of Prana Thoracic

Joanna Nathan joins the Houston Innovators Podcast and explains why she's taken on leading a medical device startup. Photo courtesy of Joanna Nathan

If there was a Houston innovation ecosystem playing card, Joanna Nathan would definitely have BINGO by now. From starting a startup while a student at Rice University and being an early hire of medical device company Saranas to leading investment at Johnson & Johnson's Center for Device Innovation, Nathan is headed back to the founder seat with Prana Thoracic, a new company planning to equip physicians with a better tool for lung cancer intervention.

"Unlike breast, prostate, and other types of cancers, we historically have not actively screened for lung cancer," Nathan says on this week's Houston Innovation Podcast. "Screening has only just begun in this world, and because of that, physicians still need the right tools to take early screening information and turn it into early intervention."

Last month, Nathan, who serves as CEO of the company, and Prana announced that Nucore Medical Inc., its wholly owned subsidiary, has been awarded a $3 million grant from CPRIT. Click here to read more and stream the podcast episode.

James Rees, chief impact officer at Botanic Water Technologies

James Rees is the Houston-based chief impact officer at BWT. Photo via LinkedIn

This probably isn't breaking news, but the world is on the midst of a water crisis. More than 2 million Americans don’t have access to clean drinking water, according to one study by the U.S. Water Alliance group.

To help close that water gap, international firm, Botanical Water Technologies, has plans to expand its presence in the United States with the Houston region being a strategic area to roll out the implementation of a patented water filtration technology. In addition, the group is launching a blockchain enabled trading platform with Fujitsu to help support the business.

“Water is finite,” says Houston-based James Rees, chief impact officer at BWT. “Due to global growth and climate conditions, we are going to have between 20 to 30 percent less water available to us by 2025. Communities are facing issues with water infrastructure. Some communities don't have water. This is where BWT plans to come in to help.” Click here to read more.Click here to read more.

Aimee Gardner, CEO and co-founder of SurgWise

Aimee Gardner is the CEO and president of Houston-based SurgeWise. Photo via surgwise.com

Over the course of the summer, Aimee Gardner has been writing strategic columns for startups with hiring tips. Her articles have focused on scaling quickly, why not to just trust your gut when hiring, and attracting and retaining a diverse workforce.

Gardner's advice is especially keen since she herself is a startup founder — but also has a Master's degree in organizational psychology. For years, she's been advising both her clients at her company SurgWise Consulting, but also students at Baylor College of Medicine.

"If your startup has gotten to the point of being able to grow the team, it is clear that ample vision, strategy, and innovation has been dedicated to the mission up until this point. Hiring in the next round of team members is not a process that should undergo any less dedication," she writes in one of her articles. "Ensuring that those around you share your vision, goals, and have a complementary set of skills and attributes will be critical to ensure success in your company’s growth and achievements." Click here to read her guest columns,

Creating a thriving culture for diversity, equity, and inclusion requires intentional focus and allotment of time and resources. Photo via Getty Images

Houston expert: How to attract and recruit a diverse workforce for your startup

guest column

The recent and long overdue awakening to systematic racism in the United States has brought with it a focused attempt to create more equitable opportunities in the workforce. Organizations are investing time reviewing their historical selection and performance data, creating new strategies for attracting applicants from historically underrepresented groups, and investing resources to ensure ongoing support and inclusion for all members of their community.

Startups in the early stages of bringing in personnel and crafting organizational culture have the advantage of building from a blank slate, and can benefit from implementing recruitment and selection strategies shown to help increase diversity.

Internal review

Prior to developing any strategic recruitment plan, companies must first perform an in-depth internal review of company culture, values, and future plans for growth and evolution. Defining these organizational attributes will help the company better understand the types of individuals who will thrive in the environment so that it can 1) accurately market the company and 2) maximize person-organization fit (P-O fit). P-O fit describes the extent to which an individual’s competencies, values, and preferences are compatible with the organization’s core values and offerings and has been linked to higher job satisfaction, job performance, and organizational commitment along with decreased turnover. Carving out the company’s current and desired culture, values, and goals for growth can serve as a starting point for accurately marketing the company to prospective applicants, understanding what applicant attributes and values will be the best fit for the company, and creating outreach and screening methods accordingly.

Information sharing

After an organization has performed a thorough internal exploration, it can then begin to share relevant information with prospective applicants. By and large, much of this information is gleaned by applicants through organizational websites. Indeed, organizational websites are often the main source of information for applicants and can provide a positive first impression and communicate its culture to leverage P-O fit. Research also suggests that companies cannot go wrong by sharing too much information about the organization on their website and through social media.

Companies can also ensure that the information provided on their websites and on social media pages demonstrate pictorial diversity, as including pictures of minorities has been shown to increase organizational attraction among Latinos and Blacks. Including video testimonials from any incumbent employees who reflect the diversity the organization is trying to attract can also enhance employer attractiveness. Finally, organizations seeking to increase diversity – but with little baseline diversity – should be honest about their current diversity climate with prospective applicants. Being transparent about current diversity figures, along with goals for future growth and specific strategies taken to enhance the diversity climate, can be a successful strategy as well. It is much better for an organization to provide an accurate snapshot of the current milieu so that informed decisions can be made, as inflated and inaccurate expectations among new entrants can result in job dissatisfaction and turnover.

Targeted recruitment

Companies seeking to increase the demographic diversity of applicants can also engage in targeted recruitment by focused advertisement and promotion at schools who graduate large number of underrepresented minorities. For example, partnerships with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), such as Prairie View A&M University, Texas Southern University, and St. Phillip’s College, can ensure broad reach. Creating virtual visit days, providing lectures to students, and other educational outreach programs with these institutions can broaden awareness and interest.

Selection

Organizations must continue to ensure equitable opportunities for all even after receiving applications from a diverse group. Shortlisting applicants based on certain pieces of information in the application can be at odds with efforts to create a diverse workforce. For example, reliance on standardized examination scores, such as SAT and ACT, can negatively impact underrepresented minority applicants. Letters of recommendation are also often frequently relied upon in selection, despite their discriminatory origin and evidence showing differences across genders and socioeconomic groups. Finally, use of unstructured interviews can also increase susceptibility to biases against minority groups. Thus, companies should only incorporate screening tools and processes that will not disadvantage applicants from different backgrounds.

Other selection methods can help programs achieve their diversity goals. For example, inclusion of structured interviews can ensure interviewers avoid common interviewing mistakes and providing unbiased ratings.Often, small details can have a large impact on hiring decisions. For example, applicants with accents and ethnic names are often disadvantaged during interviews, receiving less favorable interview ratings. Similarly, overweight candidates receive significantly lower performance ratings in interviews, compared to average weight candidates. Finally, studies have shown an overall bias against pregnant women in interview settings. Fortunately, these studies have also shown that structured interviews reduce these biases. Thus, standardizing which questions are asked and training interviewers to avoid inappropriate and potentially illegal questions is critical.

In conclusion, companies seeking to enhance the diversity of their workforce must consider their practices and policies in recruitment and selection. Unfortunately, there are no “quick fixes.” Creating a thriving culture for diversity, equity, and inclusion requires intentional focus and allotment of time and resources.

------

Aimee Gardner is the co-founder of SurgWise, a tech-enabled consulting firm for hiring surgeons, and associate dean at Baylor College of Medicine.

Think you’re a great judge of character during interviews? You’re not alone — but you’re probably wrong. Photo via Pexels

You shouldn't be just trusting your gut when hiring, says this Houston expert

guest column

If your startup has gotten to the point of being able to hire in new team members – congratulations! Your hard work and innovative ideas have been recognized, and you are now able to bring in others to help achieve your vision. While you may have specific ideas about the types of individuals you want on your team, interviewing candidates is not an easy feat, and deserves the same amount of strategy and organization you have dedicated to other critical company decisions. It can be tempting to rely on gut instinct when interviewing, but the science suggests there is a better way.

Organizations, regardless of company size or tenure, most commonly conduct unstructured interviews — those in which applicants meet with a bundle of organizational stakeholders and are asked a variety of questions deemed valuable for that interviewer. Questions typically cover topics such as interest in the role, experience in the field, specifics about their application, or anything else intended to develop rapport with the candidate. Interviewers may even utilize brainteaser questions intended to put applicants on the spot or try to gauge their ability to think on their feet.

Despite the fact that interviewers often feel they are a great judge of candidates during these interviews, interviewers actually obtain little usable information from them. Unstructured interviews limit the ability to gather specific, competency-based data on each applicant, create difficulty in comparing candidates along the same dimensions, and do not ensure that rating forms, if they exist at all, are being used in the same way among interviewers. The literature supports these limitations, showing that unstructured interviews can lead interviewers to focus on irrelevant information and increase susceptibility to biases, are highly unreliable are poor predictors of job performance, and can actually hurt predictive accuracy compared to not even interviewing at all. And those brainteaser questions? After years of studying their effectiveness, even Google has admitted they are worthless at predicting future job performance.

The alternative then is to adopt a structured interview. Structured interviews have four key characteristics:The first is that all questions are created prior to the interview, and are based upon a thorough job analysis — a rigorous, multi-method competency modeling process to help organizations identify key competencies required for success in the role. These data are used to develop role-specific interview questions and rating forms. Structured interviews also require that all candidates are asked the exact same questions, and in the same order to provide an equitable opportunity for applicants and reduce any primacy, recency, or contrast effects. Finally, structured interviews require that interviewers are trained not only on how to conduct interviews to maximize utility and minimize bias, but that they are also trained to use the competency rating forms in the same way.

As a result of this structure, these types of interviews have a strong evidence-base behind them. They demonstrate higher levels of reliability between raters, are better able to predict later job performance, and minimize opportunities for racial and gender bias to emerge. Importantly, structured interviews are also more efficient. Studies have shown that it would take three to four unstructured interviews to reach the same levels of accuracy as just one structured interview conducted by one interview. In summary, the structure and standardization embedded within structured interviews is important from the validity, reliability, fairness, and practicality perspectives. For all of these reasons, structured interviews meet best practice and legal standards for a high-stakes assessment method.

When building the team for your startup, it is imperative that you can accurately assess all job candidates and their alignment with your company’s goals, vision, and needs. Informal conversations are unlikely to help achieve this aim. Despite how great a judge of character you think you are, the data are clear — structured interviews are the most efficient and effective way to evaluate candidates for your positions.

------

Aimee Gardner is the co-founder of SurgWise, a tech-enabled consulting firm for hiring surgeons, and associate dean at Baylor College of Medicine.

Consider these evidence-backed hiring tips before scaling your startup's team. Photo via Getty Images

Houston expert: How to scale your startup team quickly and efficiently

guest column

Startups often use the first rounds of funding to bring in key individuals who will help make the company vision a reality. But hiring the right talent is not an easy task, and ensuring the right team is in place is important now more than ever during the early stages of your company’s growth.

Fortunately, there is a science to employee selection. In fact, there is entire field — Industrial & Organizational Psychology — dedicated to providing professional guidelines, best practices, and over 100 years of evidence to support recommendations into identifying talent an effective, efficient, and equitable manner.

From this field, we know that the first step to hiring in the right talent for your startup is to perform a thorough job analysis. Whether you are bringing in a new CEO, a vice president of sales, or extra hands for your technology platform, gaining consensus among your team about the competencies and attributes required to effectively perform in a new role is critical.

It sounds simple, but it is actually a rarity for organizational stakeholders to get together and comprehensively map out what the role entails and what candidate qualities are necessary to meet those requirements and expectations. Factoring things in such as early-stage demands, future landscape, and organizational culture will help create a list of competencies and attributes needed to be optimally effective in the role, beyond just professional experience and certifications.

After prioritizing the list of competencies and qualities deemed vital for candidates, you will then want to prioritize the list based on importance, how frequently they are required in the role, and the extent to which each is required upon hire —versus being easily trained or acquired on the job. Those at the top of the list should be directly assessed during the candidate screening and selection process. Whether it is through work samples, written assessments, situational judgment tests, or interviews, creating a diverse lineup of candidate screening processes will help ensure you are able to measure the whole person.

Because selection decisions can be high stakes — both for the candidate and your company — ensuring these assessments are directly related to the position, data-driven, and equitable will be key for maximizing the utility and legal defensibility of your selection system. For example, implementing unstructured interviews is common practice in many organizations large and small.

However, what the data shows is clear: structured interviews — those that consist of a pre-defined list of questions related to the role that are used for every candidate, use standard interview rating tools, and involve interviewers who have been trained to conduct structured interviews and use the rating tools — are more efficient and effective in accurately assessing job candidates.

Furthermore, the structure involved in this interview format reduces the opportunity for common biases and inappropriate questions to emerge during the interview process, thereby enhancing the likelihood for making equitable selection decisions and avoiding potential for legal litigation. Thus, it is important to ensure every screening tool or process has been thoughtfully considered and implemented from an efficiency, effectiveness, and equity lens. Making a shortlist of candidates and final offers based on the data accumulated through these processes will maximize the likelihood of identifying best fit candidates based on comprehensive data points.

If your startup has gotten to the point of being able to grow the team, it is clear that ample vision, strategy, and innovation has been dedicated to the mission up until this point. Hiring in the next round of team members is not a process that should undergo any less dedication. Ensuring that those around you share your vision, goals, and have a complementary set of skills and attributes will be critical to ensure success in your company’s growth and achievements.

------

Aimee Gardner is the co-founder of SurgWise, a tech-enabled consulting firm for hiring surgeons, and associate dean at Baylor College of Medicine.

This week's roundup of Houston innovators includes Kelly Pracht of nVenue, Aimee Gardner of SurgWise, and Kelly Avant of Mercury. Courtesy photos

3 Houston innovators to know this week

who's who

Editor's note: In this week's roundup of Houston innovators to know, I'm introducing you to three local innovators across industries — from sports tech to venture capital — recently making headlines in Houston innovation.

Kelly Pracht, CEO and co-founder of nVenue

nVenue's proprietary predictive analytics appear at the bottom right corner of the screen on Apple TV broadcasts. Photo via nvenue.com

Next time you're watching an Astros game on Apple TV, check the bottom right-hand side of the screen. That prediction data comes by way of a Texas startup with deep Houston roots. nVenue, co-founded by Houstonian Kelly Pracht, struck a deal earlier this year that allowed her data-driven sports analytics platform on the screens of baseball viewers this season.

"In under two weeks we structured the deal, convinced them it worked, pulled together every bit of testing we could — by then we only had one week of pre-season games to test — and we pulled it off," Pracht says.

The technology has a lot of potential when it comes to microbetting — a part of sports fandom that's growing by the second. Click here to read more.

Aimee Gardner, CEO and president of SurgWise

SurgeWise is giving surgical teams the right support for hiring. Photo via SurgWise.com

Hiring surgeons is a whole thing — tons of paperwork, inequitable and archaic processes, and lots of medical practitioners' time wasted. Five years ago, Aimee Gardner came up with a solution and founded SurgWise Consulting, where she serves as president and CEO.

"We help provide assessments to help screen competencies and attributes that people care about," Gardner says. "(Those) are really hard to assess, but really differentiate people who really thrive in training in their careers and people who don't."

Now, Gardner is tapping into the last five years of data she's accumulated and has big plans for developing a tech platform for her solution. Click here to read more.

Kelly Avant, investment associate at Mercury Fund

Kelly Avant, investment associate at Houston-based Mercury Fund, shares how and why she made her way into the venture capital arena. Photo courtesy of Mercury

Kelly Avant's resume might not make sense to you at first. She went from a gender studies major in undergrad, followed by a stint in the Peace Corps, before heading to law school. After moving on to get her MBA over her JD, Avant realized a way she could really make the biggest impact: venture capital.

"VC is an awesome way to shape the future in a more positive way because you literally get to wire money to the most innovative thinkers, who are building solutions to the world’s problems," Avant tells InnovationMap.

Avant joined the Mercury Fund team last year as an MBA associate before joining full time as investment associate. Now, after completing her MBA from Rice University this month, Avant tells InnovationMap why she's excited about this new career in investment in a Q&A. Click here to read more.


SurgWise is giving surgical teams the right support for hiring. Photo via Getty Images

Houston startup equips medical teams with data-driven hiring tool

staffing up

A surgeon spends over a decade in school and residency perfecting their medical skills, but that education doesn't usually include human resources training. Yet, when it comes to placing candidates into surgical programs, the hiring responsibilities fell on the shoulders of surgeons.

Aimee Gardner, who has her PhD in organized psychology, saw this inefficiency first hand.

"I worked in a large surgery department in Dallas right out of graduate school and quickly learned how folks are selected into residency and fellowship programs and all the time that goes into it — time spent by physicians reviewing piles and piles of like paper applications and spending lots and lots and of hours interviewing like hundreds of candidates," Gardner tells InnovationMap. "I was just really shocked by the inefficiencies from just a business and workforce perspective."

And things have only gotten worse. There are more applicants hitting the scene every year and they are applying to more hospitals and programs. Future surgeons used to apply for 20 or so programs — now it’s more like 65 on average. According to her research, Gardner says reviewing these applications cost lots of time and money, specifically $100,000 to fill five spots annually just up to the interviewing phase of the process.

Five years ago, Gardner came up with a solution to this “application fever,” as she describes, and all the inefficiencies, and founded SurgWise Consulting, where she serves as president and CEO.

"We help provide assessments to help screen competencies and attributes that people care about," Gardner says. "(Those) are really hard to assess, but really differentiate people who really thrive in training in their careers and people who don't."

Aimee Gardner is the CEO and president of Houston-based SurgWise. Photo via surgwise.com

These are the non-technical skills, like the professionalism, interpersonal skills, and communication. While SurgWise began as a service-oriented consulting company, the company is now ready to tap technology to expand upon its solution. The work started out of Houston Methodist, and SurgWise is still working with surgery teams there. She says they've accumulated tons of data that can be leveraged and streamlined.

"We're now pivoting from a very intimate client approach to a more scalable offering. Every year we assess essentially around 80 percent of all the people applying to be future surgeons — those in pediatric surgery, vascular surgery, and more,” Gardner says. “We’ve used kind of the last five years of data and experiences to create a more scalable, easy-to-integrate, and off-the-shelf solution.”

Gardner says her solution is critical for providing more equity in the hiring process.

“One of our goals was to create more equitable opportunities and platforms to assess folks because many of the traditional tools and processes that most people use in this space have lots of opportunity for bias and a high potential for disadvantaging individuals from underrepresented groups," she says. "For example, letters of recommendation are often a very insider status. If you went to some Ivy League or your parents were in health care and they know someone, you have that step up from a networking and socioeconomic status standpoint."

Personal statements and test scores are also inequitable, because they tend to be better submissions if people have money for coaching.

SurgWise hopes to lower the number of programs future surgeons apply to too to further streamline the process. She hopes to do this through an app and web tool that can matchmake people to the right program.

“Our ultimate goal is to create a platform for applicants to obtain a lot more information about the various places to which they apply to empower them to make more informed decisions, so that they don't have to apply to a hundred places," Gardner says. "We want to essentially create a match-style app that allows them to input some data and tell us 'here's what I'm looking for here are my career goals and any preferences I have.'”

While that tool is down the road, Gardner says SurgWise is full speed ahead toward launching the data-driven hiring platform. The bootstrapped company hopes to raise early venture funding this summer in order to hire and grow its team.

“As we continue to consider this app that I talked about and some of the other opportunities to scale to other specialties we're gonna start looking for a series A funding later this summer.”

Ad Placement 300x100
Ad Placement 300x600

CultureMap Emails are Awesome

2024's 5 most-read startup feature stories

year in review

Editor's note: As the year comes to a close, InnovationMap is looking back at the year's top stories in Houston innovation. This past year, InnovationMap featured profiles on dozens of these Houston startups — from health tech to startups fostering community. Here are five Houston startup features that stood out to readers this year — be sure to click through to read the full story.

Houston immuno-oncology company reaches next FDA milestone, heads to phase 2 trial

A Houston company with a promising immuno-oncology is one step closer to delivering its cancer-fighting drug to patients who need it. Photo via Getty Images

A Houston immuno-oncology company has recently made major headway with the FDA, including both a fast track and an orphan drug designation. It will soon start a phase 2 trial of its promising cancer fighting innovation.

Diakonos Oncology was born in 2016, the brainchild of Baylor researchers already hard at work in the realm of dendritic cell vaccines. Drs. Will Decker, Matt Halpert, and Vanaja Konduri partnered with Dan Faust, a Houston businessman and pharmacist, to bring their treatment to the public, says COO Jay Hartenbach.

The name Diakonos means “deacon or servant in Greek,” he explains. “A lot of companies end up focusing on treating a specific disease or cancer and what you end up having is a significant amount of potential but with a lot of tradeoffs and downsides. And so our goal is we need to eliminate the cancer but we can't harm or dramatically malign the patient in doing so.” Continue reading.

Houston founder taps into AI tech to create game-changing healthy eating platform

A Better Meal — a new app from a Houston founder — gives you all the tools you need to make healthier food choices. Photo via abettermeal.com

After many years of living to eat, a large swath of American society is now facilitating a seismic shift to the healthier alternative, eating to live.

But here’s the rub: eating healthy is confusing, time consuming and, unfortunately, oftentimes pricey.

So, anyone that can come in and cut through the healthy eating machine can carve out a necessary niche in the marketplace.

Enter Houstonian Mark Semmelbeck, founder and CEO of A Better Meal, a platform created to help busy families plan healthy meals easier and to make gradual improvements to their health and well-being.

“My vision is to use rapidly expanding AI technology together with the knowledge and wisdom of an active community to take the stress out of meal planning and improving nutrition,” says Semmelbeck, a seasoned oil and gas executive with over 30 years of experience in founding companies. “While developing the technology for the app, my daughter gave me two beautiful grandkids who both have significant food allergies. Combine that with the fact I now have five cardiac stents and the significance of eating well while paying attention to the details has only grown in importance.” Continue reading.

Hardtech startup moves into Houston area with new Conroe facility, eyes tests in space

FluxWorks, a hardtech startup, opened its new home-base in Conroe, Texas. Photo courtesy FluxWorks

FluxWorks, a hardtech startup, recently opened its new base of operations in Workhub Developments’ Conroe location.

Founded in College Station by CEO Bryton Praslicka, FluxWorks specializes in making contactless magnetic gears for use in extreme conditions. At 9,000 square feet, the new Conroe facility is a result of discussions with Governor Greg Abbott's office and the Greater Houston Partnership, who introduced the company’s leadership to the Conroe Economic Development Council, encouraging their move, Praslicka tells InnovationMap.

“The pieces of the puzzle were all there, and with the support of the local, state, and federal government, we were thrilled to move to Conroe,” Paslicka says. Continue reading.

Houston startup secures IBM partnership for AI-backed consumer tech

IBM and Boxes recently partnered to integrate the IBM watsonx Assistant into Boxes devices, providing a way for consumer packaged brands to find out more than ever about what its customers like and want. Photo courtesy of Boxes

With the help of a new conversational artificial intelligence platform, a Houston startup is ready to let brands get up close and personal with consumers while minimizing waste.

IBM and Boxes recently partnered to integrate the IBM watsonx Assistant into Boxes devices, providing a way for consumer packaged brands to find out more than ever about what its customers like and want.

The Boxes device, about the size of a 40-inch television screen, dispenses products to consumers in a modern and sustainable spin on the old-fashioned large vending machine.

CEO Fernando Machin Gojdycz learned that business from his entrepreneur father, Carlos Daniel Machin, while growing up in Uruguay.

“That’s where my passion comes from — him,” Gojdycz says of his father. In 2016, Gojdycz founded Boxes in Uruguay with some engineer friends. Continue reading.

Houston founder aims to help find your purpose, make strategic connections over a cup of coffee

Cup of Joey has expanded across Houston to help make valuable connections to Houston entrepreneurs. Photo courtesy of Cup of Joey

What is your purpose in life? One Houstonian is asking that question of his fellow entrepreneurs all across town.

Joey Sanchez founded Cup of Joey, a weekly meetup opportunity for innovators, business leaders, and the whole Houston community. The events are a place not only to share a cup of coffee but also their very own mission in life.

It all started in 2021 at the Houston Tech Rodeo, an initiative from Houston Exponential, where Sanchez worked as a director of corporate engagement. Texas had just opened social distancing in public events since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Sanchez was finding ways to reconnect the Houston community.

‘We thought what better way than over a cup of coffee?” Since then, Sanchez has connected thousands of people based on purpose every Friday for the past three and a half years. Continue reading.

3 clean energy innovators make Forbes list of top young energy professionals

under 30

A handful of Houstonians have been named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Energy and Green Tech list for 2025.

Kip Daujotas is an investment associate at Aramco Ventures, a $7.5 billion venture capital arm of the world's largest energy company. Houston is the Americas headquarters for Saudi Aramco. Since its inception in 2012, Aramco Ventures has invested in more than 100 tech startups. Daujotas joined the team over two years ago after studying for an MBA at Yale University. He led Aramco’s first direct air capture (DAC) investment — in Los Alamos, New Mexico-based Spiritus.

Also representing the corporate side of the industry, Wenting Gao immigrated from Beijing to obtain an economics degree from Harvard University, then got a job at consulting giant McKinsey, where she recently became the firm’s youngest partner. Gao works on bringing sustainability strategies to energy and materials companies as well as investors. Her areas of expertise include battery materials, waste, biofuels, and low-carbon products.

Last but not least, Houston entrepreneur Rawand Rasheed is co-founder and CEO of Houston-based Helix Earth. He co-founded the startup after earning a doctoral degree from Rice University and co-inventing Helix’s core technology while at NASA, first as a graduate research fellow and then as an engineer. The core technology, a space capsule air filtration system, has been applied to retrofitting HVAC systems for commercial buildings.

Each year, Forbes 30 Under 30 recognizes 600 honorees in 20 categories. The 2025 honorees were selected from more than 10,000 nominees by Forbes staff and a panel of independent judges based on factors such as funding, revenue, social impact, scale, inventiveness, and potential.

Specifically, the Energy & Green Tech category recognizes young entrepreneurs driving innovation that’s aimed at creating a cleaner, greener future.

“Gen Z is one of the fastest-growing groups of entrepreneurs and creators, who are reshaping the way the world conducts business, and our Under 30 class of 2025 proves that you can never begin your career journey too early,” says Alexandra York, editor of Forbes Under 30. “With the expansion across AI, technology, social media, and other industries, the honorees on this year’s list are pushing the boundaries and building their brands beyond traditional scopes.”

------

This article originally ran on EnergyCapital.