Expert shares advice for Houstonians experiencing a pandemic-sparked career change

Guest column

Many Houstonians are unemployed, laid off, or furloughed amid the pandemic. Others are literally burned out and ready for a life-altering career change. This expert has advice for both. Photo via Pexels

I've had so many pivots in my professional career; moving across the country, internal promotions, leaving a corporate job to launch my own company, and repositioning myself and my brand in new markets. But I'm one of those people who enjoy lots of change, and as I've continued in my career journey, I've found that those sentiments are not shared by many.

Making a career transition can not only be stressful for a majority of professionals but can paralyze people from making decisions that carry their livelihood alongside them. This is one reason I am fueled to help professionals, to be a support system for these complexities and helping them make decisions based on facts and strengths, not on fear.

As a career coach, it's my job to find a way to piece together years of experience for professionals in order to tell a story of growth, change, and transferable potential to sway key decision-makers for employment and economic opportunity.

Over the past several years, I've seen many trends in client challenges, storytelling similarities and developed a knack for helping people with complex stories make a successful career or entrepreneurial leap.

A new approach to career transitions

But then at the end of 2019, COVID-19 crept across Asia, slowly derailing markets, leading me to shift my focus to supporting my European clients as they began their lockdowns.

Job offers were being taken off the table, hiring freezes were put in place and travel required a two-week quarantine at either end. The fear in each of my clients' voices was palpable, and my resolve needed to be strong. I needed to stay steady, calm, and think more strategically than ever before to help them navigate this unchartered territory.

Within two months, the United States had been infiltrated by the virus, and the layoffs and furloughs began piling up. Now I was working across nations and states going through different phases of impact and needing to understand how to support these entrepreneurs and professionals in navigating through this.

Navigating the nuances of career change

What I realized is that I already had these answers. Navigating complexity has been my place of zen and working with intelligent, hungry individuals like yourselves continued to fuel my ability to innovate strategy and make a significant impact on career transitions.

I began to divide clients into priorities: furloughed and need work, laid off, overworked and need an exit, career epiphany, and entrepreneurs needing to reevaluate their business models.

If you were furloughed, there was a sense of hope, anxious to return to the workforce, and leaving bitterness for many when that call never came. In the state of Texas, 2.5 million professionals have lost their jobs, and only 1.8 million returned to work in 2021 to date.

In Houston, unemployment rates have maintained a high rate of about 8 percent in recent months. At the peak of COVID-19, the unemployment rates spiked significantly to more than 14 percent which translates to a large number of qualified people out of work.

Laid off and evaluating next steps

For those who were laid off, we had to evaluate financials. Was this a three-month endeavor or an ASAP, "my electricity will be shut off in two weeks if I don't find a job" scenario?

That dictated how we approached it. For the longer timeframe, we looked at roles carefully and targeted the best outcomes, tailored branding documents, and profiles and were highly intentional about applications.

In the second scenario, we made mandatory updates to branding and started the rapid apply approach to line up interviews quickly — even if it was going to be a short stint or a less than a glorious long-term option.

Overworked and anxious

Overworked and anxious to leave their jobs, this group had different desperation in their voice. They had previously enjoyed what they did, had an ambivalent outlook toward their employer, and thought things were 'going well.' This all changed when their support staff was sent home on furlough and those hours and that workload was enveloped by their department. These professionals felt blindsided.

How could things go from 'all is well' to 'get me out of here NOW!' in only a few short weeks? The mental, emotional, and physical stresses were and continue to be a leading factor in the rise in depression across the nation from 20 to 25 percent to 40 to 50 percent.

For this group of professionals, we focused on the role they had before the pandemic hit and those areas of fulfillment. We also focused on boundary setting to help support a move to a company where boundaries would need to be upheld to promote a healthier life balance.

Career epiphany clients

Next were my career epiphany clients. These professionals were awoken from the monotony that was once their career. Working from home, having different priorities, and learning to juggle many hats afforded new perspectives. This also meant that these professionals were no longer fulfilled in the direction of their careers, and were prepared to start anew.

This opened up an entire world of possibilities.

Unlike the career changes who had immediacy and trauma associated with their move, these epiphany clients were optimistic and strangely calm amidst the chaos and weight of this decision. Their priorities were no longer focused on one area but encompassed a much more holistic viewpoint.

And so, having the calm on our side, we would spend time working through their work attributes, close values, and defining their innate drivers in life. This work allowed us to choose roles that spoke to them.

Entrepreneurs

In the last group were my entrepreneurs. These business owners were looking at a brand new market and not knowing how to evolve their business model to fit the needs and budgets of their consumers. So many were filled with doubt on how they could ask for more money, or not have to increase their working hours to make the math work.

Our work felt like an enormous puzzle, putting all the right colors together first, then seeking out the corners and edges, until we could work toward the middle and most ambiguous pieces.

Together we redefined their clients (were they the same? Did they have the same needs now?) and how to best serve them. This required them to get out of their tried and true practices, as needs and budgets have also changed and evolved for their customers and clients. So we reverse-engineered into new pricing and service offerings that would provide immense value in a time when people needed it the most.

Each set of variables were unique, but the mindset and fears were so aligned with one another within each of these groups that I could provide streamlined tools that I knew would work to move the dial in their progression and overall success.

Innovative approach to career transitions

Utilizing resources that I already had, meant I just needed to find innovation in my approach. How was I to get professionals and entrepreneurs to learn and apply at rapid speed? How would I get through to them during this stressful time?

The approach was to give more actionable tools for them to leave each call with purpose and a sense of adventure ahead. I utilized a goal-setting sheet to identify priorities and lead from their reality, rather than standard best practices.

We focused on 4 key areas:

Financials
Growth
Roles
Timeline.

I realized that the biggest fears were in the unknown. So if we could start at a basic framework of knowing what they needed in order to pay bills and not disrupt life more, we could then focus on what was in their ideal, their wants, their bigger goals.

But I found that almost everyone trying to envision more money, or growth in roles during a global pandemic, didn't know how to focus on the future if they didn't know what needed to happen now, in the current state.

Everyone's reality was different, yet the momentum and freedom created by writing down their most vulnerable, essential needs, created a release in their energy and made conversation fill with hope. Having created a tangible plan of action had more impact than ever before. I took this momentum and challenged clients to do their homework, speak to their partners, their families.

With every group of transitioning professionals, this worked. My analogies and anecdotes changed and evolved as the year progressed, but this new starting point was the cornerstone to build confidence and momentum quickly.

Building a new path

As we start to see Texas opening up its businesses and mask requirements starting to shift, we will continue to see people in flux.

Overcoming storms, a pandemic, depression rates increasing, and an influx of new residents, the state will continue to find resilience. But professionals need to understand that before letting fear set in, there are steps you can take to release that pressure and build a new path, a new career, and a new story.

Understand and embrace your reality, write it down, uncover what is leading the fear, then take the first step to eliminate it.

Making a transition takes effort, but understanding your options based on your needs, and then your wants, will help create the movement you need to take that next step and keep moving in the right direction.

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Briar Dougherty, CEO and president of Career Organic, an Atlanta-based career coaching company.

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Houston startup's revolutionary automotive recycling tech to begin commercial operations

houston innovators podcast episode 267

Vibhu Sharma observed a huge sustainability problem within the automotive industry, and he was tired of no one doing anything about it.

"Globally, humans dispose 1 billion tires every year," Sharma says on the Houston Innovators Podcast. "It's a massive environmental and public health problem because these tires can take hundreds of years to break down, and what they start doing is leaking chemicals into the soil."

Today, 98 percent of all tires end up in landfills, Sharma says, and this waste contributes to a multitude of problems — from mosquito and pest infestation to chemical leaks and fire hazards. That's why he founded InnoVent Renewables, a Houston-based company that uses its proprietary continuous pyrolysis technology to convert waste tires into valuable fuels, steel, and chemicals.

While the process of pyrolysis — decomposing materials using high heat — isn't new, InnoVent's process has a potential to be uniquely impactful. As Sharma explains on the show, he's targeting areas with an existing supply of waste tires. The company's first plant — located in Monterrey, Mexico — is expected to go online early in the new year, an impressive accomplishment considering Sharma started his company just over a year ago and bootstrapped the business with only a friends and family round of funding.

"It's about 16 months or so from start to commercial operations, which is phenomenal when you consider what it takes to build and operate a chemical or petrochemical facility," Sharma says.

Currently, with the facility close to operations, Sharma is looking to secure customers for the plant's products — which includes diesel, steel, and carbon black — and he doesn't have to look too far out of the automotive industry for his potential customer base. Additionally, the plant should be net zero by day one, since Sharma says he will be using the output to fuel operations.

While the first facility is in Mexico, Sharma says they are already looking at potential secondary locations with Texas at the top of his list. Houston, where Sharma has worked for 26 years, has been a strategic headquarters for InnoVent.

"When it came to doing the research and development, we were able to work with experts in the Houston and Texas areas to test out our idea and validate it," Sharma says. "One thing that gets under appreciated about Houston is how well it's connected to the rest of the world. There are so many direct connections between Houston and Latin America, as well as Europe, Middle East, and Asia."

"I also find that the Houston ecosystem is very supportive of new companies and helping them grow," he adds.

Houston expert on what AI is changing in the workplace — and why employers need to recognize the 'human edge'

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When OpenAI's GPT-4 made headlines by passing the bar exam and scoring in the top 10 percent on medical licensing tests, I noticed something fascinating: everyone focused on AI replacing professionals, but they missed the deeper story. AI isn't just disrupting work – it's exposing fundamental flaws in how we've built our entire workplace ecosystem. It's holding up a mirror to our organizations, revealing just how far we've strayed from what makes us uniquely human.

The World Economic Forum tells us 44 percent of workers' skills will need updating by 2027, but that statistic only scratches the surface. In my conversations with business leaders, I'm watching a transformation unfold in real-time. Take the accounting industry, where I've observed forward-thinking firms like Deloitte and PwC turning their accountants into strategic business advisors while other firms continue training junior staff for tasks that AI will soon handle. This isn't just a skills mismatch – it's a fundamental misunderstanding of human potential.

The challenge runs deeper than individual industries. McKinsey predicts 30 percent of hours worked globally could be automated by 2030, but I believe they're missing a crucial point. We've spent decades designing jobs around industrial-era ideals of efficiency and standardization – the very qualities that make them perfect targets for AI automation. In our obsession with measuring, standardizing, and streamlining everything, we've created workplaces that treat humans like machines rather than the complex, creative beings we are.

What's emerging is a striking paradox: as work becomes more automated, our workplace cultures are growing more disconnected. Microsoft researchers identified a "collaboration deficit" in remote work environments, with 56 percent of employees reporting a decline in workplace friendships. This cultural shift is occurring precisely when we need human connection most. During the Great Resignation of 2021, 47 million Americans quit their jobs, they weren't leaving because of salary considerations or technological inadequacies. The most common reasons cited were lack of human connection, purpose, and authentic leadership.

Yet instead of heeding this wake-up call, the rise of AI is pushing us further apart. A decade ago, the concept of "workplace family" was commonplace – now it's often dismissed as manipulative corporate rhetoric. This shift reveals a troubling blindspot in our thinking about work. Consider this: we spend more than 90,000 hours at work over our lifetime – more time than we spend with our own families – yet we're increasingly treating these relationships as purely transactional. In our rush to establish boundaries and protect ourselves from corporate exploitation, we've overcorrected, creating sterile workplaces stripped of human connection.

This timing couldn't be worse. As someone who studies the intersection of technology and workplace culture, I've observed a clear pattern: the more we automate routine tasks, the more our success depends on distinctly human qualities like trust, emotional sensitivity, and the ability to navigate complex interpersonal dynamics. Yet we're systematically dismantling the very cultural foundations that enable these qualities to flourish. It's as if we're entering a boxing match by tying one hand behind our back – at precisely the moment we need every advantage we can get.

The real crisis isn't that AI might replace jobs – it's that we're creating workplace environments that suppress the very qualities that make us irreplaceable. When we treat our colleagues as mere interfaces rather than complex human beings, we don't just damage relationships – we damage our capacity for innovation, creativity, and the kind of deep collaboration that complex problem-solving requires.

Some companies are starting to get it right. When I look at examples like IKEA, who chose to retrain their call center workers as interior design advisors rather than simply replacing them with chatbots, I see a glimpse of what's possible. They recognized something profound: you can't automate the human ability to understand what a frustrated customer really needs, or the intuition to read between the lines of what they're saying.

This is what I call the "human edge" – and it's far more nuanced than most leadership teams realize. It's the marketing manager who can sense team tension during a video call and address it before it derails a project. It's the sales representative who builds such strong relationships that clients stay loyal through market upheavals. It's the team leader who knows exactly when to push for more and when to show compassion. These aren't just nice-to-have soft skills – they're becoming our most valuable business assets.

But here's the challenge: we're still trying to measure workplace success like it's 1990. We track productivity metrics, sales numbers, and project timelines, but how do we quantify someone's ability to defuse a tense client situation? How do we measure the value of a team leader who creates an environment where people feel safe to innovate? These human capabilities – empathy, emotional intelligence, relationship building, creative problem-solving – are increasingly what separate successful companies from failing ones, yet they're nearly impossible to capture in a performance review.

When I talk to business leaders, I tell them bluntly: if a job can be reduced to a process, AI will eventually do it better. Our value lies in all the messy, human things that happen between the bullet points of a job description. Instead of asking "How many tasks did you complete?" we should be asking "How did you help your team navigate that difficult change?" Instead of training people to follow processes, we should be developing their ability to build relationships and navigate complexity.

It's time we started treating these human capabilities not as soft skills, but as core business competencies. The question isn't whether AI will change work – it's whether we'll use this moment to finally build workplaces that enhance rather than diminish our humanity.

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Nada Ahmed is the founding partner at Houston-based Energy Tech Nexus and author of Amazon Bestseller “Determined to Lead- The Disruptive Woman's Guide to Stop Playing Small and Transform your Career through Agile Leadership.”

Houston robotics co. closes series B after year of growth

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Houston- and Boston-based Square Robot Inc. closed a series B round of funding last month.

The advanced submersible robotics company raised $13 million, according to Tracxn.com, and says it will put the funds toward international expansion.

"This Series B round, our largest to date, enables us to accelerate our growth plans and meet the surging global demand for our services,” David Lamont, CEO, said in a statement.

The company aims to establish a permanent presence in Europe and the Middle East and grow its delivery services to reach four more countries and one new continent in Q1 2025.

Additionally, Square Robot plans to release a new robot early next year. The robot is expected to be able to operate in extreme temperatures up to 60 C. The company will also introduce its first AI-enabled tools to improve data collection.

Square Robot launched its Houston office in 2019. Its autonomous, submersible robots are used for storage tank inspections and eliminate the need for humans to enter dangerous and toxic environments.

The company was one of the first group of finalists for the Houston Innovation Awards' Scaleup of the Year, which honors a Bayou City company that's seen impressive growth in 2024. Click here to read more about the company's growth.