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:

  1. Financials
  2. Growth
  3. Roles
  4. 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 foundation doles out $700K for Texas chemical research

fresh funding

Houston-based The Welch Foundation has issued $700,000 in additional funding to support chemical research through two of its newest grant programs.

The foundation has named the recipients of its Welch eXperimental (WelchX) Collaboration Retreat and Pilot Grants and the Welch Postdoctoral Fellows of the Life Sciences Research Foundation Grants.

The WelchX grants were awarded to teams of two Texas researchers who presented "innovative and collaborative ideas" addressing challenges in the clean energy space, according to the foundation.

Researchers from Texas universities gathered in Houston earlier this summer to discuss the theme “Chemical Research for Grand Challenges." They then paired off into nine teams and submitted proposals for the $100,000 pilot grants. The seven selected teams, several with ties to Houston, and their research topics include:

  • Yimo Han, Rice University, and Yuanyue Liu, The University of Texas at Austin, “Stabilizing Copper Electrocatalysts for CO2 Conversion”
  • Ognjen Miljanic, University of Houston, and Indrajit Srivastava, Texas Tech University, “Ping-Pong' Afterglow Luminescence in Self-Assembled Molecular Cubes”
  • Raúl Hernández Sánchez, Rice University, and Andy Thomas, Texas A&M University, “Accelerating Magnetic Resonance Imaging Contrast Agent Discovery via Rapid Injection NMR: Improving the Detection of Lithium for Disease Diagnostics”
  • Benjamin Janesko, Texas Christian University, and MD Masud Rana, Lamar University, “Cyber Twin Chemical Ensembles for Near-Infrared-Emitting Graphene Quantum Dot Therapeutics”
  • Ivan Korendovych, Baylor University, and Dino Villagrán, The University of Texas at El Paso, “Selective Bio-Inspired Electrochemical Probes for PFAS Analysis and Degradation”
  • Samantha Kristufek, Texas Tech University, and Kayla Green, Texas Christian University, “CIRCUIT: Critical Ion Recovery using Conductive and Ultrafiltration Intelligent Technology”
  • Fang Xu, The University of Texas at San Antonio, and Hong Wang, University of North Texas, “Visualize Molecular Adsorption on Supported Ni-porphyrin Model Catalysts via Substitute Effect”

The Welch Postdoctoral Fellows of the Life Sciences Research Foundation provides three-year fellowships to recent PhD graduates to support clinical research careers in Texas.

The foundation previously announced that it would name fellows from Rice University and Baylor University who would receive $100,000 annually for three years. This year's recipients and their research topics include:

  • Teng Yuan, Rice University, “Unlocking New Chemistry of Nonheme Iron Enzymes for α-Amino Acids and γ-Lactones Synthesis”
  • Katelyn Baumler, Baylor University, "Crystal Growth of Ln2Fe4Sb5 Phases Toward the Study of Novel Quantum Properties”

“As these programs become more established, it is thrilling to see the new research our awardees are exploring,” Adam Kuspa, president of The Welch Foundation, said in a news release. “The Foundation is very pleased by the applications that we continue to receive describing exciting new research projects to advance chemical research.”

This additional funding comes on the heels of the foundation doling out $27 million for chemical research, equipment and postdoctoral fellowships earlier this summer. The foundation made 85 grants to faculty at 16 Texas institutions at the time. Read more here.

How a Houston company is fighting anxiety, insomnia & Alzheimer’s through waveforms

mental health

A Houston-based company is taking a medicine-free approach to target brain neurologically associated with mental illness.

Nexalin Technology’s patented, FDA-cleared frequency-based waveform targets key centers of the midbrain to support the normalization of neurochemicals through a process known as Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation (tACS). Delivered via a non-invasive device, the treatment gently stimulates the hypothalamus and midbrain, helping to “reset networks associated with symptoms” of anxiety and insomnia. Early clinical evidence suggests this approach can promote healthier brain function and improved sleep.

Through its recently appointed scientific advisory board (SAB), Nexalin also aims to target Alzheimer’s disease with a clinical development pipeline supported by published data and internal data from studies involving its proprietary DIFS technology. Nexalin’s Gen-2 SYNC and Gen-3 Halo headset delivers the DIFS, which is a waveform that can penetrate deep brain structures implicated in cognitive decline and mental illness.

The board includes experts in neurology, neuroimaging and neurodegenerative diseases with Dr. Mingxiong Huang, Dr. David Owens, and Dr. Abe Scheer coming on board. Nexalin plans to initiate new Alzheimer’s-focused clinical studies in the Q3 2025 by incorporating cognitive testing, imaging biomarkers, and guided metrics to assess treatment efficacy and neural activation.

“I am excited to work alongside Nexalin’s leadership and fellow SAB members to help guide the next generation of non-invasive neuromodulation therapies,” Huang said in a news release. “The intersection of neuroimaging, brain stimulation, and clinical science holds enormous potential for treating neurodegenerative disease.”

Recently, Nexalin’s proprietary neurostimulation device moved forward with a clinical trial that evaluated its treatment of anxiety disorders and chronic insomnia in Brazil. The first of Nexalin’s Gen-2 15-milliamp neurostimulation devices was shipped to São Paulo, Brazil, and the study will be conducted at the Instituto de Psiquiatria University Hospital (IPq-HCFMUSP). The shipments aim to support the launch of a Phase II clinical trial in adult patients suffering from anxiety and insomnia. The Nexalin Gen-2 15-milliamp neurostimulation device has also been approved in China, Brazil and Oman. Its Gen 1 device first received FDA clearance in 2003, according to the company's website.

The company also enrolled the first patients in its clinical trial at the University of California, San Diego, in collaboration with the VA San Diego Healthcare System for its Nexalin HALO, which looks to treat mild traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder in military personnel and the civilian population.

Nexalin previously raised $5 million through a

public stock offering.

Houston innovation hub announces first cohort for energy-focused accelerator

Powering Up

Energytech Nexus, a Houston-based hub for energy startups, has named its inaugural cohort of 14 companies for the new COPILOT accelerator.

COPILOT partners with Browning the Green Space, a nonprofit that promotes diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the clean energy and climatech sectors. The Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator (IN²) at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory backs the COPILOT accelerator.

The eight-month COPILOT program offers mentorship, training and networking for startups. Program participants will be tasked with developing pilot projects for their innovations.

Two Houston startups are members of the first COPILOT class:

  • GeoFuels, housed at Houston’s Greentown Labs, has come up with a novel approach to hydrogen production that relies on geothermal power and methane decomposition.
  • PolyQor, which converts plastic waste into eco-friendly construction materials. Its flagship EcoGrete product is an additive for concrete that enhances its properties while reducing carbon emissions. PolyQor’s headquarters is at Houston’s Greentown Labs.

Other members of the COPILOT cohort are:

  • Birmingham, Alabama-based Accelerate Wind, developer of a wind turbine for commercial buildings.
  • Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Aquora Biosystems, which specializes in organic waste biorefineries.
  • Phoenix-based EarthEn Energy, a developer of technology for thermo-mechanical energy storage.
  • New York City-based Electromaim, which installs small hydro-generators in buildings’ water systems.
  • Chandler, Arizona-based EnKoat, an advanced materials company whose flagship product, the IntelliKoat System, is a patented two-layer thermal and weather barrier roof coating for flat and low-slope commercial buildings.
  • Calgary, Canada-based Harber Coatings, which manufactures electroless nickel coating and electroless nickel plating.
  • Dallas-based Janta Power, which designs and makes 3D solar towers.
  • Miami-based NanoSieve, a developer of gas remediation technology.
  • Palo Alto, California-based Popper Power, which has developed a platform that turns streetlight networks into resilient, maintenance-free distributed charging infrastructure.
  • Buffalo, New York-based Siva Powers America, developer of small wind turbines for farms, utility companies and others with annual energy needs of 300,000 to 2 million kilowatt-hours.
  • Los Angeles-based Thermoshade, which specializes in cooling panels for outdoor environments.
  • Waukesha, Wisconsin-based V-Glass, Inc., developer of a vacuum-insulated glass for affordable high-efficiency windows.

“These startups reflect the future of energy access and resilience innovation,” said Juliana Garaizar, founding partner of Energytech Nexus. “By connecting them directly with partners through COPILOT, we’re helping them overcome the ‘pilot gap’ to build solutions that scale.”

The startups will run pilot projects along the Gulf Coast for their inventions.