New virtual tutoring platform launches for Houston students, by Houston students

too cool for school

A group of Houstonians have launched a virtual tutoring platform for students in Kindergarten through eighth grade. Image via teachingtogive.org

Seven local high schoolers took lessons from their own schooling challenges in 2020 to launch a free, virtual tutoring program last month with the goal of helping younger students close learning gaps of their own during this unprecedented academic year ahead.

Dubbed Teaching To Give, the project matches kindergarten through eighth grade students with honor roll high schoolers from Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, Strake Jesuit, and Bellaire High School for 30- to 45-minute teaching sessions in core subjects, languages, debate, and arts via Zoom.

Kinder HSPVA sophomore Weillison Hsu, who now serves as president of Teaching to Give, first proposed the idea to fellow piano major and Vice President Hayden Miller at the end of the 2019-20 school year. The 15-year-olds are bright, talented, and artistic, but their freshman years had not come without challenges: First, several of their teachers were required to take a leave of absence, leaving them with long-term substitutes. Then COVID-19 hit, making traditional learning impossible.

It took time to adjust, Miller says, but eventually he and his peers found their stride in the tech-based schooling style that Houston Independent School District has been following for months. Still, they feared the transition for younger students had not been as smooth.

"We have been used to that independence, where in elementary school, and middle school even, you do a lot hands on and in person," Miller says. So, they decided to help in a way that was safe, affordable, and approachable.

"During these times, it's just not possible to make sure that everyone is fully striving," Miller says. "We wanted to make it as easy as possible for parents to use us and to have a stress-free environment, to provide a successful education and set up."

Today, Teaching to Give has held more than 100 free web-based tutoring sessions for kids around the city in subjects from science to piano. They ask on-boarding students to complete a personality and learning style questionnaire and place them with one of their 29 tutors who they predict will work best with for their subject matter and interests. Miller says the minor age difference has allowed their sessions to have real impact.

"It provides a more relatable experience," he says. "A lot of the time we'll have the same interests as our students. We can use that to foster mutual excitement for the subject material."

Still, the group is learning how to teach in a virtual setting as they go.

"It really forces you to think of how you say things to get the result that you want," Miller says. "I think we will all come out of this as better communicators."

Miller, Hsu, and the five other board members — Lina Wu, Amy Park, Fiona Condron, Rushil Chetty, and Ashley Chu — plan to continue to focus on virtual tutoring sessions even after the pandemic ends and limitations on in-person learning lift. Again pulling from their own experience, they know that virtual options can provide big benefits for busy parents and students like themselves.

And in the meantime, they're hoping to start partnerships with a few local lower schools, are accepting applications for additional tutors, and are raising awareness for their new initiative, Project Pencil, which will donate art supplies to the Gregory-Lincoln Education Center in the Fourth Ward.

"Art is something that is universal. It takes away the stress of learning. Also, art lessons and music lessons are very expensive," Miller adds. "We wanted to incorporate that into our classes because that's what our biggest strengths lie in. We wanted to share that passion and provide a way to spread more unity between people. Art has a way of doing that."

Teaching to Give founders (Weillison, Hayden and Lina) virtually meeting with Thomas Porter, HISD Magnet Coordinator for Gregory Lincoln. Image courtesy of Teaching to Give

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Houston expert: Top three ways to make cybersecurity a business decision

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For companies big or small, scaling your revenue securely is about building people, processes, and technology to help you deliver your value to market in the most efficient way possible. But shifting cybersecurity as a cost to an investment takes a shift in thinking.

Here are three tips to make cyber a business decision for your company.

Don’t fail at digital transformation. Whether you’re considering a digital “initiative” to stay ahead of competitors, reduce operational expenditure when possible, or simply drive efficiency to customer value delivery, transforming how you’re doing business should rest upon a foundation of security across your existing people, process, or technology. An effective cybersecurity program should drive confidence to your team to expand your tooling, processes, or delivery mechanisms with confidence. The alternate reality is you shift a working process to incorporate new technology, and something fails or breaks, causing frustration of your team and fewer dollars in the door. Here are a few tips that will help you make sound business investments in technology:

  1. New technology or system can introduce new cyber risks to your company. As a result, it is good practice to balance the value gained with the risks absorbed. Establishing a “new product” risk vs reward process will reduce ad hoc purchases and introduce more sound thinking to your team’s decisions.
  2. New technology purchases will come with vendor onboarding but beware of the challenges you face when those implementation or training hours run out. Ask for additional support hours as part of your purchase so that you’re always able to call a help desk for real support.

Secure design reduces long-term costs. Regardless of your business type, if some type of cyber-attack could affect your business outcome(s) — be it your product, the loss of sensitive customer data, theft of intellectual property, or disruption to service delivery — consider investments in your cyber program an investment towards the cost of future business operations.

For instance, manufacturers across virtually every sector continually balance “secure design” with efficiency/cost as they compete in the market. Their challenge: estimating future recalls and product “updates” to be paid for by future operational expenditure. The same can be applied to unforeseen downtime of a critical inventory, payment capture, or website system. In both cases, here are two tips to shift cyber from a “security cost” to a “business” mindset:

  1. Work with your security vendors to develop a long-term strategy rather than quoting an “install and leave” project. Security vendors are businesses too. They will respond positively if you tell them you will offer longevity in return for payment over time. 
  2. Amortize your costs this year into next year's costs of goods. If you can negotiate monthly or quarterly payments with your security vendors, adding 30-60 days of net pay dates, you’re already starting to shift security improvements realized tomorrow to costs you pay next quarter.

Your customers want you to have a great cyber program. Especially in regulated spaces like healthcare, defense, and other critical infrastructure sectors, there is a high chance your company’s cyber program must meet minimal cyber guidelines. Investing in the training, processes, and technology required to achieve some element of “compliance” is a must-have investment for doing business with big companies.

A mistake small companies make is allocating the minimal resources “reach the bar” without thinking about the risks. Employee turnover, scaling your business in new regions, and increasing purchase order sizes all carry a potential “new bar” you must reach on your cyber maturity. Building a cyber program initiative may help you increase sales. Imagine you say this in your next prospect meeting as you aim to win that big contract, “Additionally, we reviewed your cybersecurity supplier requirements online and are pleased to say we have certified documentation showcasing an evolving, continually improving cyber program that exceeds your requirements. We feel that adds to our differentiation.”

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Ted Gutierrez is the CEO and co-founder of SecurityGate, a SaaS platform for OT cyber improvement.

Overheard: What Houston corporates are looking for from startups

eavesdropping at the ion

Hundreds of innovators from Houston and beyond flocked to the Ion Houston'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.

Here are a few of the discussion's highlights.

“Investing in the startup community generally, you’re never going line of sight of where that value is going to come back. You can expect it — I’m not saying it’s altruism, it just comes back in forms that you might not appreciate.”

— Scott Gale, executive director of Halliburton Labs says, explaining that corporate contribution doesn't just have to be financial.

“Ask for advice, don’t ask for money. Show up. Be curious. If you think a corporate is the right potential customer for you, spend the time to try to understand what the people are, who the champions are, what motivates them, and what they need to do to be successful.” 

— Tom Luby, director of TMC Innovation says, noting that it's tried-and-true advice, but still important to remember.

“The person who takes the most risk is the lead adopter — the lead user. That person puts their assets and their name on the line.”

— Nazeer Bhore, global manager, tech scouting, innovation and ventures at ExxonMobil Technology and Engineering, says. “What we bring to the table for startups is all the resources we have — technical resources, assets, use cases, testing facilities, and, of course, funding. Irrespective of what stage you’re in, or how many adjacencies you are, we’re always happy to engage with you," he explains. "The key is for us is to be a lead user.”

“The opportunity for us is to be generalists across a lot of different spaces and then work with our specialists to take a deeper dive. We listen to the market and try to find things our corporate partners or entrepreneurs are interested in and then surround the with the type of things they need to be successful. In many case, talent and expertise are top of that list.”

— Luby says, explaining the nature of the TMC's various programs, from creating startup tech directly and supporting them through their accelerators and even seeding them through the TMC Venture Fund.

“What startups bring is a lot of different ideas — but startups are temporary organization that’s looking for a scalable and repeatable business model. And we’re not just interested in just the technology, but the business model.”

— Bhore says about what ExxonMobil looks for.

“The flywheel is spinning here in the city of Houston. The next five years are going to be incredibly exciting.”

— Gale says, explaining how much has changed in the past few years in Houston's innovation ecosystem.

Houston hospital awards third infusion of grant-funding to local nonprofits

funds granted

Houston Methodist has awarded $4.8 million to 50 Houston-area nonprofits as part of its Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Grant Program, the hospital announced this month.

The funds go toward "addressing the root causes of health inequities experienced by social, racial and ethnic minorities," according to the hospital. An estimated 51,000 Houstonians are expected to be impacted by these dollars.

Of the nonprofits selected, 24 are healthy neighborhood programs, 16 are educational empowerment programs and 14 are economic programs.

The grant program is broken up into two types of funding: The Social Equity Grant and the DEI Grant. Now in its third year, the program has for the first time selected recipients of the Social Equity Grant that all support economic empowerment.

"We know there is a direct correlation between economic stability and health outcomes," Ryane Jackson, vice president, community benefits at Houston Methodist said in a statement. "Without livable wages or employer backed insurance, access to health care can be limited. If we can help those in underserved communities obtain employment and increase their wages in a short amount of time, then we can provide immediate and meaningful change that can potentially be felt for years to come.”

Capital IDEA Houston is a local nonprofit that’s received the Social Equity Grant. The organization helps low-wage workers find living-wage careers. Capital IDEA plans to use the funds to support Black and Hispanic Women in health care professions and launch a pilot program that will assist women with an associate degree who are interested in pursuing a bachelor’s degree in nursing.

Another recipient, Compudopt, will focus on digital literacy training to low income African American and Hispanics, while Montrose Center will use the funds to support its Seniors Preparing for Rainbow Years program at the Law Harrington Senior Living Center. Other recipients include Avondale House, BakerRipley, Interfaith Caring Ministries, Kids Meals Inc., and the Tejano Center for Community Concerns. Click here to find a full list.

DEI is at the forefront of Houston Methodist's vision for the future of health care. In a recent interview with InnovationMap, Arianne Dowdell, vice president and chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer at Houston Methodist, shared how linked diversity and innovation are to her.

"I think we're in a very interesting time when we think about how health care looks. It's changing drastically and so people have a lot more options for where they choose to get their health care and who their providers are," she tells InnovationMap. "So I think that the thought of the patient comes first is really going to be the key of understanding how do we tackle health equity."

Since launching Houston Methodist's DEI Grant Program has awarded more than $11 million to 83 Houston-area nonprofits. Last year it awarded $4.6 million to 59 organizations. Click here to see who else has been awarded funding through the program.
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