Self-driving rideshare company cruises its robotaxies into Houston

look ma, no driver

Soon, you'll be able to cruise to your destination without a driver in Houston. Photo via Cruise/Facebook

Anew driverless ridehail service is coming to Houston: Cruise, the all-electric, driverless car company backed by GM, is expanding in Texas with launches in both Dallas and the Bayou City.

This follows an initial launch in Austin in 2022, their first city in Texas.

Cruise builds and operates driverless vehicles that you can call via an app, like any other ride hailing service. "But our vehicles show up without anyone else inside," they say.

The entire fleet is all-electric and the vehicles are equipped with a 360-view, with the ability to react to whatever they encounter on the road.

They test their vehicles using simulations, through millions of scenarios and virtual miles; they’ve also driven more than 4 million real miles, mostly in San Francisco.

They have not defined what the cost will be but according to The Verge, the rates in San Francisco vary depending on length of trip and time of day: "A customer taking a 1.3-mile trip would pay 90 cents per mile and 40 cents per minute, in addition to a $5 base fee and 1.5 percent city tax, for a total of $8.72." By comparison, an Uber ride for the same trip would cost at least $10.41.

The company was founded in 2013 and vehicles began to hit the road in 2022. They operate a total fleet of roughly 300 all-electric AVs, powered 100 percent by renewable energy. In addition to Austin, they operate in San Francisco and Phoenix, where they've completed 35,000 self-driving deliveries in a partnership with Walmart.

According to a statement from CEO Kyle Vogt, they'll begin supervised driving (with a safety driver behind the wheel) in Houston as they finetune their AI technology to understand the nuances and unique elements of the city, with Dallas to follow shortly after.

In a blog post, Vogt says their cars drive the speed limit and come to a complete stop at every stop sign. They respond to police sirens, flashing lights on fire trucks or ambulances, and stop signs that fold out of school buses.

They react to people on scooters, people using bike lanes, and cars driving on the wrong side of the road. "In short, they are designed to drive safely by obeying the law and driving in a humanlike way," he says. Actually, that sounds better than humans.

When vehicles encounter a situation where they aren’t 100 percent sure of what to do, they slow down or stop and pull over to the side of the road. This has caused some bumps in San Francisco where cars stopped and idled in the street for no apparent reason, delaying bus riders and disrupting the work of firefighters.

Photo via Cruise/Facebook

Some of the "bumps" have been comical, such as the 2022 incident in which a confused San Francisco police officer pulled a Cruise over, and then the Cruise drove away.

And as Reuters notes, autonomous vehicles have not rolled out as fast as anticipated, due to regulations, safety investigations, and arduous technology.

When Cruise first enters a city, they hire a mapping and data collection team to learn bike lanes, school zones, and major intersections. But most of the time, the vehicles will be carrying riders in the back seat, or completely empty and en route to another pickup.

The company partners with first responders, including police and fire departments, to ensure they’re ready and familiar with how to interact with the vehicles, engaging with those agencies before and after launch.

"Our guiding mission has always been to improve road safety, reduce emissions, and reduce congestion with our driverless ride-hail service in cities, which is where we’ll see the most significant positive impact the soonest," Vogt says. "Houston and Dallas are committed to reducing traffic deaths as part of their Vision Zero commitments, and we are excited to operate in and partner with these new communities in this shared mission."

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.

Winston Wright leads Houston operations for Dallas-based Alto, which is taking on the likes of Uber and Lyft. Photo courtesy of Alto

Dallas-based ridesharing app gears up for expansion across Houston and beyond

HOUSTON INNOVATOR PODCAST EPISODE 118

Before he started his current job, Winston Wright would have thought a startup attempting to compete with the likes of Uber and Lyft was going to fight an uphill battle. Now, he sees how much opportunity there is in the rideshare market.

Wright is the Houston general manager for Alto, a Dallas-based company that's grown its driving service platform into five markets — first from Dallas into Houston and then to Los Angeles, Miami, and, most recently, Washington D.C. Alto's whole goal is to provide reliability and improve user experience.

"We're elevating ridesharing," Wright says on this week's episode of the Houston Innovators Podcast. "With Alto, you get a consistent, safe experience with. a high level of hospitality. And that's a key differentiator for us in the market, and we're able to replicate that time and time again."

Wright, whose background is in sales and operations in hospitality, says his vision for alto in Houston is to expand the service — which operates in the central and western parts of the city — throughout the greater Houston area.

"The vision I have for this market is that, as we move forward and continue to expand, that we're covering all of Houston," he says.

This will mean expanding the company's physical presence too. Alto recently announced its larger space in Dallas, and now the Houston operations facility will grow its footprint too.

Wright says he's also focused on growing his team. Over the past two years, pandemic notwithstanding, the company has maintained hiring growth. Alto's drivers are hired as actual employees, not contractors, so they have access to benefits and paid time off.

The company, which raised $45 million in its last round of investment, is expanding next to the Silicon Valley area, followed by three to five more markets in 2022. Then, by the end of 2023, it's Alto's mission to have a completely electronic fleet of vehicles.

"Our goal is to have over 3,000 EV cars and be the first company with a 100 percent electric fleet by 2023," Wright says.

Wright shares more on Alto's future in Texas and beyond, as well as what's challenging him most as he grows the team locally. Listen to the full interview below — or wherever you stream your podcasts — and subscribe for weekly episodes.


Houston's tech workforce makes double the average salary — but when it comes to job growth, the city needs improvement, according to a new report. Photo via Pexels

Report: Here's how Houston ranks when it comes to tech salaries and job growth

by the numbers

It truly pays to work in the tech sector in the Houston metro area.

A report published January 11 by Austin-based tech company Spanning Cloud Apps LLC shows workers in the Houston area can more than double their pay when they hold down a tech job. In fact, Houston ranks fifth among the country's largest metro areas for the pay advantage in tech occupations versus all occupations.

According to the report, the median annual pay for a Houston-area tech job stood at $91,190 in 2019. By comparison, the median annual pay for all occupations sat at $40,570. That puts the area's median tech pay 124.8 percent higher than the median pay for all occupations, giving Houston a fifth-place ranking in that category.

At 124.8 percent, Houston is sandwiched between fourth-place Dallas-Fort Worth (127 percent) and sixth-place San Antonio (124.7 percent) in terms of the pay premium offered by tech jobs. At No. 27 is Austin, with a 106.1 percent pay premium for tech jobs.

As for median tech pay, DFW ($91,760) claims the No. 12 spot among large metro areas. Meanwhile, Houston is in 15th place ($91,190), Austin is in 24th place ($85,640), and San Antonio is in 30th place ($81,870).

The report identifies 84,040 tech workers in the Houston area. In that regard, Houston ranks 13th among large metro areas, with DFW at No. 5 (158,490), Austin at No. 18 (66,800), and San Antonio at No. 35 (28,200).

While Houston earns a high ranking in the Spanning report for the pay gap between tech jobs and all jobs, it's toward the bottom of the pile when it comes to the share of tech jobs, the report indicates. Among large metro areas, Houston ranks 41st for the share of computer and math occupations in the workforce, 2.8 percent.

San Jose, California, takes the No. 1 spot in that category, with 12.7 percent of employees working in computer and math occupations. Austin ranks sixth (6.2 percent), DFW holds down the No. 13 spot (4.3 percent), and San Antonio comes in at No. 42 (2.7 percent).

Spanning based its report on data collected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In February 2020, the Greater Houston Partnership indicated the region was home to about 150,000 tech workers, far above the number tallied in the Spanning report. The partnership says the region boasts the 12th largest tech sector in the U.S., generating an annual economic impact of $28.1 billion. Among the country's 20 largest metro areas, Houston ranks first for the share of tech workers at non-tech employers.

From August to September, Houston saw an 11 percent rise in postings for tech jobs, according to a third-quarter report from tech career hub Dice. That was one of the highest growth rates among the country's largest metro areas.

"As the home of NASA's human space program and headquarters to the global energy industry, Houston has long been known for its engineering prowess," the Greater Houston Partnership says. "Although most of Houston's technology talent is embedded in some of the area's largest industries such as energy and health care, subsectors such as software development, programming, and database management are also growing."

In the tech sector, Houston is bound to benefit from Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. (HPE) shifting its headquarters from Silicon Valley to its campus under construction in Spring. The company praises Houston as "an attractive market for us to recruit and retain talent, and a great place to do business."

HPE already employs about 2,600 people in the Houston area. The move of its headquarters to Spring could mean the addition of hundreds of local jobs in the coming years.

"HPE's headquarters relocation is a signature moment for Houston, accelerating the momentum that has been building for the last few years as we position Houston as a leading digital tech hub," Bob Harvey, president and CEO of the Greater Houston Partnership, said in December.

Chicago and New York residents are eyeing Houston. Getty Images

Report finds two major metros are the biggest sources of new Houstonians

new to hou

Despite the current state of things — a pandemic, historic unemployment numbers, and an unstable economy — people are still thinking of moving. And, according to Apartment List, they have eyes on Texas.

The website's quarterly Renter Migration Report is out, using searches made on its platform between January 1 and April 15, 2020, to map where renters are looking to make their next move.

Chicago (3.3 percent), New York (3.4 percent), and San Antonio (22.8 percent) are also eyeing Houston, while H-Town residents are looking to keep it close in Dallas (8.9 percent), San Antonio (6.8 percent), and Austin (6.6 percent).

Austin is the most popular Texas city in the report, with the region increasingly being seen as an alternative to the expensive coastal metros where tech jobs have historically clustered. A staggering 70.9 percent of searches for apartments in Austin come from outside the metro, Apartment List reports, the highest share among the nation's 50 largest metros.

Aside from the 25 percent searching from San Antonio, the 4.6 percent from Dallas, and the 4.5 percent from Houston, 4.2 percent of renters searching for apartments in Austin currently live in the New York City metro. Furthermore, 2.5 percent of inbound searches to Austin are coming from Los Angeles and an additional 2.5 percent are coming from the San Francisco Bay Area.

For as many people who want to enter Austin from San Antonio, there's nearly the same amount that would be doing the opposite. Austin renters searched for San Antonio (16.8 percent), Dallas (7.9 percent), and College Station (6.4 percent).

While current Chicago residents and New Yorkers are typing "Dallas" into their search bars, accounting for 3.6 percent and 3 percent of data exploring Big D, respectively, it's San Antonians who are truly interested. A whopping 23.1 percent of current Alamo City residents made exploratory apartment searches in Dallas this past quarter. Overall, 32.8 percent of those looking for a place to live in Dallas are searching from outside the metro.

Meanwhile, 8.7 percent of apartment hunters currently living in Dallas are looking to move elsewhere. They searched for Houston (4.9 percent), San Antonio (4.8 percent), and Los Angeles (4.5 percent).

And though we've heard about it several times, where does San Antonio fall in all this? Turns out renters who currently live there are thinking about moving to Dallas (17.7 percent), followed by Houston (12.4 percent) and Austin (8.4 percent). Residents of McAllen (5 percent), Dallas (3.9 percent), and Houston (3.5 percent) are considering making San Antonio home.

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.

Houston usurped the Dallas metro to grab the No. 2 ranking in the United States for big cities attracting corporate relocation and expansion projects. Getty Images

Report: Houston ranked No. 2 in the country for corporate relocation, expansion projects landed in 2019

big business

In Texas, Houston rules the corporate relocation and expansion kingdom.

Site Selection magazine ranks Houston second among large U.S. metro areas for the number of corporate relocation and expansion projects landed in 2019. That's up two spots from the previous year's ranking.

On the new list, published in the magazine's March issue, Houston replaces Dallas-Fort Worth in the No. 2 spot among metros with at least 1 million residents, pushing DFW down to No. 3. Austin takes the No. 6 spot.

Last year, Houston landed 276 projects that met the magazine's ranking criteria. With 416 projects, Chicago earned the No. 1 spot. Dallas-Fort Worth scored 261 projects in 2019, while Austin snagged 95.

Qualifying projects for Site Selection's rankings must have a minimum investment of $1 million, create at least 20 new jobs, or involve at least 20,000 square feet of new space.

A couple of notable Houston corporate relocations or expansions in 2019 were:

"This latest ranking is more evidence of Houston's strength as a destination for corporate relocation and investment," Bob Harvey, president and CEO of the Greater Houston Partnership, says in a March 3 statement. "Our low cost of doing business, access to quality talent, and pro-growth mentality continue to make Houston an attractive place for companies across the country and around the world looking for expansion and relocation opportunities. Our strong, diverse economy is a big part of what makes Houston a great global city."

Commercial real estate services company Colliers International notes that Houston is one of the country's most competitive cities for corporate relocation and expansion.

"Houston's ability to foster continued expansion in future-growth industries responsible for generating high-quality, well-paid jobs across all business sectors has placed it in the top tier among U.S. cities," Colliers International says. "With its numerous business advantages, Houston is well positioned to successfully compete in today's global marketplace."

Among those advantages, Colliers says, are:

  • Two major airports
  • Massive seaport
  • Extensive rail and road infrastructure
  • 90 foreign consulates

In February 2019, René Lacerte, founder and CEO of Bill.com, said the Palo Alto, California-based company picked Houston for its first U.S. outpost following an "extensive national search." Bill.com settled on Houston because of its talent pool, quality of life, and business-friendly environment, he said.

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner has said the Bill.com expansion represents a "another great example of Houston's building momentum as a leading digital tech hub."

A second example is Amazon Web Services' July 2019 expansion in Houston. Kris Satterthwaite, the company's Gulf Coast enterprise sales leader, praised the city as "a fantastic place to live and work," and as having "a strong local economy that we look forward to investing in and growing together [with]."

The Houston-DFW-Austin trifecta of top-performing markets for corporate relocation and expansion in 2019 helped propel Texas to win Site Selection's Governor's Cup Award for the eighth consecutive year.

In accepting the award, Gov. Greg Abbott called Texas "the most dynamic economy in the nation."

"Texas' skilled, diverse, and ever-expanding workforce drives our booming economy," Abbott said. "I want to thank all of our local, regional and statewide economic development teams for their work to expand economic opportunity in Texas, as well as the companies that continue to invest and create more jobs throughout the Lone Star State."

Where are all those new Newstonians coming from? Texas. Photo by Scott Halleran/Getty Images

Houston named on a new list of most popular places to move to in the U.S.

Still booming

A new study shows Texas' major metros are some of the hottest places to move to in the U.S. — and Houston tops them all.

Real estate site CommercialCafe recently looked at "metro-to-metro" migration to see which areas are "winning" in terms of new residents, and a trio of Lone Star cities appears in the top five.

With an average net gain of 32,821 residents, Houston ranks third overall. Dallas-Fort Worth, with an average net gain of 30,639, follows at fourth. And Austin, with an average net gain of 26,733 people, is fifth. (The migration data was based on U.S. Census yearly average estimates for 2013-2017.)

"Among the three Texas metros on our list, Houston saw the largest population increase through metro-to-metro migration," says the report.

So where are these new residents coming from? Elsewhere in Texas. Houston gained the most new residents from DFW (16,306), followed by Austin (9,304) and San Antonio (7,443).

Those are also the most popular locations for Houston residents to move to. On average, more than 15,000 Houston residents relocated to DFW, followed closely by Austin (14,082) and San Antonio (8,692).

Houston's growth "is visible in Space City's many business districts, which added almost 18 million square feet of office space between 2013 and 2017, according to Yardi Matrix data," says the report. "This amount surpasses that of any other metro in the top 10. The Houston housing market is also on the upswing. The number of housing units here increased by an average of 2.1 percent — or 52,841 units — each year."

Outside of Texas, the report shows that folks are flocking to Phoenix (No. 1) and California's Inland Empire (No. 2).

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.

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Houston health care institution secures $100M for expansion, shares renderings

fresh funding

Baylor College of Medicine has collected $100 million toward its $150 million fundraising goal for the college’s planned Lillie and Roy Cullen Tower.

The $100 million in gifts include:

  • A total of $30 million from The Cullen Foundation, The Cullen Trust for Health Care, and The Cullen Trust for Higher Education.
  • $12 million from the DeBakey Medical Foundation
  • $10 million from the Huffington Foundation
  • More than $45 million from members of Baylor’s Board of Trustees and other community donors, including the M.D. Anderson Foundation, the Albert and Margaret Alkek Foundation, and The Elkins Foundation.

“The Cullen Trust for Health Care is very honored to support this building along with The Cullen Foundation and The Cullen Trust for Higher Education,” Cullen Geiselman Muse, chair of The Cullen Trust for Health Care, says in a news release. “We cannot wait to see what new beginnings will come from inside the Lillie and Roy Cullen Tower.”

The Baylor campus is next to Texas Medical Center’s Helix Park, a 37-acre project. Rendering courtesy of BCM

The Lillie and Roy Cullen Tower is set to open in 2026. The 503,000-square-foot tower is the first phase of Baylor’s planned Health Sciences Park, an 800,000-square-foot project that will feature medical education and research adjacent to patient care at Baylor Medicine and Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center on the McNair Campus.

The Baylor campus is next to Texas Medical Center’s Helix Park, a 37-acre project that will support healthcare, life sciences, and business ventures. Baylor is the anchor tenant in the first building being constructed at Helix Park.

“To really change the future of health, we need a space that facilitates the future,” says Dr. Paul Klotman, president, CEO, and executive dean of Baylor. “We need to have a great building to recruit great talent. Having a place where our clinical programs are located, where our data scientists are, next to a biotech development center, and having our medical students all integrated into that environment will allow them to be ready in the future for where healthcare is going.”

In the 1940s, Lillie and Roy Cullen and the M.D. Anderson Foundation were instrumental in establishing the Texas Medical Center, which is now the world’s largest medical complex.

“Baylor is the place it is today because of philanthropy,” Klotman says. “The Cullen family, the M.D. Anderson Foundation, and the Albert and Margaret Alkek Foundation have been some of Baylor’s most devoted champions, which has enabled Baylor to mold generations of exceptional health sciences professionals. It is fitting that history is repeating itself with support for this state-of-the-art education building.”

The Cullen Foundation donated $30 million to the project. Rendering courtesy of BCM

5 most popular innovation stories in Houston this week

what's trending

Editor's note:Another week has come and gone, and it's time to round up the top headlines from the past few days. Trending Houston tech and startup news on InnovationMap included overheard advice from corporates to startups, a rising hub for innovation at UH, and more.

University of Houston plans to build new central campus innovation hub

The University of Houston will construct a new hub for innovation on its main campus. The building is planned to be adjacent to the M.D. Anderson Library. Photo via uh.edu

Over a year ago, the University of Houston got the greenlight from the state of Texas to create a central hub for innovation on campus, Ramanan Krishnamoorti, vice president of energy and innovation at the University of Houston, tells InnovationMap.

“We asked the state two years ago for appropriations to create an innovation hub at the University of Houston,” Krishnamoorti says on this week's episode of the Houston Innovators Podcast. “We are now in the process of creating an innovation hub central to the campus at the University of Houston."

While the project is still in its early stages, the university has revealed some details on the building, which is slated to open in 2025 next to the M.D. Anderson Library on UH's main campus. It will be around 70,000 square feet and will house a makerspace, the Cyvia and Melvyn Wolff Center for Entrepreneurship, the Energy Transition Institute, innovation programs, and Presidential Frontier Faculty labs and offices. Read more.

Overheard: What Houston corporates are looking for from startups

At its annual Activation Festival, the Ion hosted a conversation about the relationship between corporates and startups. Photo courtesy of Shannon O'Hara/the Ion

Hundreds of innovators from Houston and beyond flocked to the Ion's annual Activation Festival, and one of the topics discussed at the series of programming was the relationship between corporates and startups.

One of Houston's points of pride is having the third most Fortune 500 companies headquartered here, but how can the city's innovation ecosystem take advantage of that market? And, on the other side of it, how can corporates make the most of Houston innovators?

At a panel on May 17 entitled "Corporate-Startup Partnerships: How to Build Them, Sustain Them, and How They’re Key to Fast-Tracking Innovation and Growth," three corporate leaders explained how they navigate relationships with startups and how cultivating these opportunities is key to the future of business. Read more.

Houston bank opens new innovation hub within its location in The Woodlands

The new space allows for Amegy Bank employees as well as North Houston innovators to work collaboratively. Photo via Amegy Bank

Amegy Bank renovated it banking center in The Woodlands to add a hub for innovation, technology, and entrepreneurship.

The office, located at 4576 Research Forest Dr., now houses a refurbished space from The Cannon, a co-working and entrepreneurship hub with locations across Houston. The Cannon creates and manages spaces where startup founders, business owners, investors, and more can meet on common ground to collaborate on their entrepreneurial endeavors.

“Amegy Bank has served the needs of business owners and families across Houston for over 30 years,” Amegy Bank-Houston President Dave Stevenson says in a news release. “The banking center’s refreshed design, with The Cannon onsite, will revolutionize North Houston’s access to localized financial resources tailored for entrepreneurs and small-to-mid-size businesses."Read more.

How this Houston-based studio is tackling billion-dollar problems with internal innovation

Anu Puvvada, KPMG Studio leader, shares how her team is advancing software solutions while navigating hype cycles and solving billion-dollar-problems. Photo courtesy of KPMG

In 2021, KPMG, a New York-based global audit, accounting, and advisory service provider, formed a new entity to play in the innovation space. The Houston-based team finds innovative software that benefit KPMG's clients across industries.

"We're really focused on transformative businesses that we can offer our clients in the next three to five years to solve fairly large problems," Anu Puvvada, KPMG Studio leader, tells InnovationMap.

Now, almost two years later, KPMG Studio has spun out its first company, AI-based security startup Cranium, which has raised $7 million in a seed round led by SYN Ventures with support from KPMG.

Established to advance internal innovation, KPMG Studio's technologies don't always get spun out into startups like Cranium, but with support of the team, the early-stage ideas receive guidance from the company's resources with the potential to be rolled into KPMG's suite of services for its clients. Read more.

Houston startup with revolutionary battery technology opens new labs

TexPower's founders — Board Chairman Arumugam Manthiram, CTO Wangda Li, and CEO Evan Erickson, respectively — celebrated the opening of the company's new lab space. Photo courtesy of TexPower

A Houston startup founded off research out of a Texas university has cut the ribbon on its new lab space.

TexPower EV Technologies Inc. celebrated the opening of its 6,000-square-foot laboratory and three-ton-per-year pilot production line at a ribbon-cutting event last week. The Northwest Houston site is located at 6935 Brittmoore Rd.

The new space will help the company further commercialize its cobalt-free lithium-ion cathode, lithium nickel manganese aluminum oxide (NMA). The technology is game changing for the electrification of the United States, including the rapid adoption of electric vehicles.

Currently, the country is experiencing a supply chain crisis, says Evan Erickson, co-founder and CEO of the company, at the event. Most of the world's cobalt, a material traditionally used in lithium-ion cathodes, is sourced primarily from the Congo and refinement is mostly controlled by China, he explains.

For these reasons, Cathodes are the most expensive component of lithium-ion batteries. But TexPower has a unique technology to solve this supply chain issue, and now with its new labs, is one step closer to commercialization of its materials. Read more.

Texas angel investor group expands to make impact in Houston

angels flying in

An angel investment network founded in Austin has announced its entrance into the Houston market.

SWAN Impact Network, which focuses on funding early-stage, impact-driven startups, announced that Houston will be its next market expansion. Founded in 2016, the organization expanded to Dallas two years ago. Now, SWAN is hitting the Bayou City and is actively looking for potential angel investors to join its network.

"Houston is the logical place for us to go because a lot of our deep expertise we developed is grounded around life science, health and wellness, and environmental," Bob Bridge, executive director of SWAN, tells InnovationMap. "There's a lot of people in Houston in the spaces where we've spent most of our time and money."

SWAN, originally founded as the Southwest Angel Network, has grown from several investors to over 80 across Texas. The investors, who meet virtually, range from former entrepreneurs, seasoned investors, and first time angels.

Valerie Tompson, who's serving as the Houston market lead, is an example of someone who was drawn to SWAN's mission, even though she had never invested in startups before.

"I was intrigued by the idea of being able to invest in companies that are making a difference in the world — and it's not a charitable donation," she says, explaining that joining a network allowed for her to learn the ropes and understand the process.

Bridge says they are looking to add 20 Houston investors over the next year. He says they are also interested in adding on volunteer analysts to help in the diligence work of the group. Whether you're a frequent investor or just interested in learning more, SWAN's door is open.

"We encourage new angels not to invest at first — go with us for a ride for six months, learn how we think about companies, see a bunch of companies pitch," Bridge says. "Once they start to get the comfort level up, then they can start making investors. We're very much about helping new angels get comfortable."

Currently, SWAN has two Houston startups — Scriptly Rx and Eisana — in its investment portfolio. In addition to the investor network, SWAN, a nonprofit organization, also has its SWAN Impact Philanthropic Fund that also invests in impact-driven businesses.

SWAN is hosting an event at the Ion on Wednesday, May 31, at 6 pm to celebrate its new Houston expansion, as well as to host a panel discussing impact investing. The event is free to attend, and registration is open.

Valerie Tompson, Houston chapter lead, and Bob Bridge, executive director, will be at the May 31 event. Photos courtesy of SWAN

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