Q&A: Newly named Houston corporate energy, chemicals leader on navigating dynamic energy transition sector

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Teresa Thomas, newly named vice chair and national sector leader for energy and chemicals at Deloitte, shares her vision in an interview. Photo via LinkedIn

Deloitte is undergoing a leadership shift — and this evolution for the nearly 200-year-old company directly affects its Houston office and the energy transition line of business.

Earlier this year, Teresa Thomas was named vice chair and national sector leader for energy and chemicals at Deloitte. Based in Houston, she will also serve as an advisory partner and leader in Deloitte & Touche LLP's Risk & Financial Advisory energy and chemicals practice. She succeeds Amy Chronis, partner at Deloitte LLP, who will continue to serve within the energy and chemicals practice until her retirement in June 2024.

In an interview with EnergyCapital, Thomas shares a bit about what she plans on focusing as she takes on her new role.

EnergyCapital: As you transition into your new role, how would you describe your focus and priorities?

Teresa Thomas: I am excited about what lies ahead for the energy and chemicals sector. The sector is moving into the new year with strong production and a focus on returning value and achieving efficiency. The sector is innovating with new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, including generative AI. that can capture value from data to transform and reinvent business processes and optimize the workforce.

The mission for my leadership role is to grow our practice by serving our clients with world-class solutions; venture into new innovative areas that exceed the changing needs in our sector; and attract, retain, and develop the best talent across Deloitte’s four businesses. I am bullish about the sector's role in leading on the forefront through the energy transition, pioneering innovative technologies and solutions that will help solve some of society’s most pressing issues, and contributing unique and differentiated ideas to help transform the energy and chemicals sector to meet global demands in a sustainable and profitable way.

EC: How is Deloitte navigating the trends and progression of the energy transition? What are clients’ expectations, and how does the company plan to stay a step ahead?

TT: At Deloitte, we proactively navigate the dynamic landscape of the energy transition with a strategic, collaborative, and innovative edge. Our extensive global presence and diverse partnerships, spanning industries, regions, and academic institutions, keep us abreast of emerging trends, regulatory shifts, and technological advancements. Client expectations are evolving towards sustainable practices, and we respond by providing innovative solutions that align with their goals.

Our commitment to staying a step ahead involves continuous investment in talent development and innovative technologies. Central to our strategy is taking ownership of pivotal marketplace issues and adeptly guiding clients through the intricacies of their business challenges. Through harnessing our extensive expertise that cuts across our four business, we aim to create growth opportunities and offer innovative solutions.

EC: Energy companies have been known to more slowly adopt and adapt to new technologies. Is that changing?

TT: We believe the energy and chemicals industries is at the forefront of adopting cutting-edge technologies to bolster operational efficiency, increase productivity, reduce costs, and advance safety and sustainability measures. From bringing new materials to consumers, pioneering offshore operations, transforming shale resources into one of the most competitive resources, to developing new and sustainable molecules, the industry has highlighted its adaptability. The industry continues to be a leader of groundbreaking technologies including the development of biofuels, biomaterials, carbon capture, hydrogen production, and more.

Additionally, energy companies are increasingly leveraging digital technologies, including GenAI to enhance operational efficiency, optimize resource management, and drive innovation across various segments of the industry. From interpreting seismic data and predicting reservoir behavior, to employing carbon analytics and tracking GHG emissions, the industry is transforming its operations and contributing to a more sustainable and efficient energy landscape. While there is much more to be done, we remain confident that the energy industry will continue to help lead the way in innovation.

The oil and gas industry has been increasingly investing in clean energy over recent years, wherein the clean energy investments by the oil and gas industry as a share of their upstream capex quadrupled between 2020 and 2022. Yet, this clean energy investment remains less than 2 percent of the overall clean energy investments made in 2022.

After having outperformed the broader S&P 500 by over 45 percent since 2021, the oil and gas industry faces a threefold mandate:

  1. uphold financial stability,
  2. sustain high dividends, and
  3. augment investments in low-carbon ventures.

However, the central challenge lies in scaling the energy transition while maintaining profitability and shareholder value.

EC: The chemicals sector, in particular, seems ripe for disruption with new and developing alternative materials on the scene. What do you expect to see from this industry in 2024?

TT: There is a chemicals and material transition taking place as companies are pushed to develop more sustainable, lower-carbon materials. And given that 96 percent of all manufactured goods are touched by chemistry, this transition could also be transformational. Over the next year, we expect chemical companies to continue positioning themselves for this high-tech, low-carbon future in three notable ways.

  • First, we expect companies to increase automation and digitalization to improve productivity and accelerate innovation.
  • Second, we see companies continuing to invest in circular solutions, whether it's designing materials for a sustainable end-of-life or using renewable feedstocks.
  • Third, we expect some companies to lean into the new chemicals and materials needed to support the energy transition.

EC: As a Houstonian, what do you see the city’s role amidst the future of energy?

TT: Houston is a top global city, driving transformational change and a convener to an ecosystem of players that are leading the charge in the energy transition through biofuels, biomaterials, and advanced methods for carbon capture and hydrogen production.

Although not a native, I did find the energy and chemicals sector early in my career which brought me to this dynamic city. Houston’s advanced network of partners are working together toward creating innovative solutions that are accelerating the advancement of a lower carbon future.

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This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

This article originally ran on EnergyCapital.

Houston is expected to see a 1.9 percent rise in office jobs this year. Getty Images

Houston listed among top cities expected to see office job growth

new hires

Texas cities — including the Houston area — will see a slew of new office jobs this year, according to a new projection.

Commercial real estate services company CBRE predicts Houston will see a 1.9 percent rise in office jobs this year compared to last year. That ranks Houston as the No. 4 spot for anticipated office-job growth in 2020 among U.S. markets with at least 37.5 million square feet of office space. Office jobs include those in the tech, professional services, and legal sectors.

"Tech, talent, and low taxes continue to fuel Texas' rising status as an inevitable, leading force in the U.S. economy," Ian Anderson, Americas head of office research at CBRE, says in the release. "2020 will be another year where companies and people from around the country relocate to the Lone Star State, leaving most of the rest of the country in envy of the growth in Dallas, Houston, and Austin."

Dallas only narrowly outpaced Houston in the ranking coming in at No. 3 with 2.1 percent expected growth. Austin, however, is the big Texas winner with an expected 2.6 percent rise in office jobs this year compared with last year. That puts Austin in first place on the ranking, edging out San Francisco for the top spot in CBRE's forecast, published January 9. The company predicts a 2.5 percent increase in San Francisco office jobs this year versus last year.

Personal finance website WalletHub recently ranked San Francisco and Austin third and fourth, respectively, on its list of the U.S. best cities to find a job.

"It's not surprising that the forecast for Austin is extremely bright, and we expect that technology companies and professional firms will still drive the demand for more [offices]," Troy Holme, executive vice president in the Austin office of CBRE, says in a January 22 release.

In November, Austin's unemployment rate decreased to 2.5 percent from 2.6 percent in October and 2.7 percent in September, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. Austin's jobless rate in November was the third lowest among the state's metro areas; Dallas-Fort Worth's rate was at 3 percent, while Houston's was at 3.6 percent.

CBRE says the growth of office jobs was more robust in the top U.S. markets last year than it is estimating for 2020. Dallas (5.7 percent) leads the 2019 list, followed by San Francisco (5.2 percent), Seattle (4.2 percent), Houston (3.7 percent), and Charlotte, North Carolina (3.6 percent).

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.

Backed by an Austin venture group, Navegate has opened a Houston outpost. Courtesy of Navegate

Digital supply chain tech company expands to Houston

New to Hou

A growing software company backed by Austin-based Next Coast Ventures has set its eyes on a new office in Houston.

Navegate, a digital supply chain technology and services for the middle market with headquarters in Minneapolis and offices in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Shanghai, announced its new offices in Houston and Kansas City as well as a the beta version of a new software platform. The company now has 100 employees across its six offices.

"At Navegate we have a concierge-level commitment to fulfilling our clients' needs," says Nathan Dey, CEO of Navegate, in a news release. "By establishing Kansas City and Houston offices, we're expanding our footprint to have physical locations in two critical freight hubs. These locations will provide further leverage for both existing and future Navegate clients in their efforts to build best-in-class supply chains."

James Blodgett will lead the Houston office as the key accounts manager. He has more than 35 years of experience in project cargo, according to the release, and notes how important Houston is as a market considering its connection to the port.

"As a hub for cargo and oversized shipments, I'm excited to leverage our new location to strengthen customer relationships as well as grow Navegate's base for project cargo," says Blodgett in the release.

The company has financial support in Texas already. Next Coast Ventures originally got involved with the company last October when Chicago-based Saltspring Capital led Navegate's financing round. Dey, who was previously managing partner at Saltspring Capital, became CEO and chairman of Navegate as part of the recapitalization.

"Nathan has only been CEO at Navegate for less than a year and he has already done an incredible job of reinvigorating the company's mission to be the industry leader in logistics, strategically growing their global presence and incorporating customer feedback into their platform," says Michael Smerklo, co-founder and managing director of Next Coast Ventures. "Navegate's newly-designed software and commitment to having their experts on the ground in these transportation hubs show their unwavering dedication to their customers — the exact type of hands-on, innovative approach to customer service and product iteration that we strive to invest in."

The company announced that Operations Manager Adam Daugherty will lead the new Kansas City location, and that it will be rolling out a new platform, called Navegate Emerald™. The new user interface is complete with intelligent new shipment tracking and management tools that work with supply chain collaboration. Navegate Emerald has four new applications that allows customization for customers to build their own solutions depending on their needs.

"As we celebrate our 50th year in business, Navegate Emerald has ushered in a renaissance of our technology and our business as a whole," says Dey in the release. "We're thrilled to be able to help add value to our more than 600 clients' processes and transform how they do business through the utilization of these digitally-enabled supply chain tools. The breakthrough business benefits they provide will allow for reduced supply chain costs, better working capital management, improved understanding of capital at risk and more seamless communication with all supply chain constituents.

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Houston startup secures $22.5M to innovate cell therapy to fight cancer

fresh funding

A promising cell therapy company has raised its latest funding round — to the tune of $22.5 million.

Indapta Therapeutics, which has a dual headquarters in Houston and Seattle, is a clinical stage biotechnology and next-generation cell therapy company focused on the treatment of cancer and autoimmune diseases. The company announced it has closed a $22.5 million round of new financing to accelerate the clinical development of its differentiated allogeneic Natural Killer cell therapy.

"This funding will enable us to generate significant additional data in our ongoing trial of IDP-023 in cancer as well as initial data from our first trial in autoimmune disease," Mark Frohlich, Indapta’s CEO, says in a news release.

Indapta has completed enrollment in the safety run-in portion of the Phase 1 clinical trial of IDP-023 in Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and Multiple Myeloma, according to the company. The patients received up to three doses of IDP-023 without and with interleukin (IL)-2.

Completing the round were current investors RA Capital Management, Bayer's impact investment arm Leaps, Vertex Ventures HC, Pontifax, and the Myeloma Investment Fund, the venture philanthropy subsidiary of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation. Earlier in December, Indapta announced a collaboration with Sanofi to explore the combination of its allogeneic g-NK cell therapy IDP-023 with Sanofi’s CD38 that targets the monoclonal antibody, Sarclisa (isatuximab).

"Preliminary results of IDP-023 in cancer are encouraging and we look forward to initiating our Phase 1 trial for multiple sclerosis in Q1 2025,” Frohlich continues. “This financing, together with our recently announced collaboration with Sanofi, highlights the promise of our differentiated platform.”

Also in August, Indapta announced a FDA clearance of its IND of IDP-023 in combination with ocrelizumab in progressive MS.


Mark Frohlich is the CEO of the Houston- and Seattle-based company. Photo courtesy of Indapta Therapeutics

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'

guest column

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.”

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