Long-time innovator reflects on Houston ecosystem development, shares why he's bullish on human performance

houston innovators podcast episode 251

Jon Nordby's career has been focused on cultivating a culture for innovation, and now he's focused on human potential technology opportunities. Photo courtesy

In his role overseeing startup accelerators for MassChallenge, Jon Nordby started noticing one industry vertical stood out in terms of success and opportunities: Human potential. Now, Nordby is a founding member of an investment firm looking for those opportunities.

Nordby, who served in various leadership roles at MassChallenge — including managing director and head of ecosystems — said he started realizing the opportunities within the organization's space and sports tech programs.

"What we realized over a couple of years running the program was that sports tech as a theme was too limiting," Nordby says on the Houston Innovators Podcast. "We were finding really great technologies, but we were limited at the market size of teams and leagues to deploy those technologies."

"Over the course of that program, we found that the things that were related more to human health and performance tended to out perform all of the other things related to sports tech — like media, entertainment, gambling," Nordby continues. "Still really great markets for those technologies, but we found a lot more traction for human performance."

Nordby joined the team at Anthropy Partners, which exists to support early stage technologies that are advancing human mental and physical performance, a little over a year ago.

Defining human performance, Nordby says he thinks about it in terms of the hardware and software of a human, or physical and cognitive abilities — and how both sides of the equation work together.

"Some of the early investments that we've made have been in three realms — sensing, data, and analytics," Nordby explains, sharing examples from the Anthropy portfolio companies.

While Nordby jokes that his interest in human performance might confuse people who know him to be not particularly athletic, his other current roles fall more in line with his career history. A three-time startup founder, Nordby worked for the Greater Houston Partnership at the time the organization launched Houston Exponential. He left GHP to lead strategy for HX before transitioning to MassChallenge. All throughout these roles, Nordby has a front row seat for witnessing what it takes to develop innovation ecosystems.

He co-founded the Anthropy's nonprofit efforts for developing innovation ecosystems, called Anthropy Constructive. This year, he founded EconWerks, a for-profit company that advises entities on creating sustainable innovation efforts.

Nordby says he's "seen where things go wrong when people with really great intentions but not a lot of exposure or pattern recognition to ecosystem development are making investments or decisions on how those ecosystems need to develop."

Usually, Nordby explains, it's an economic development or ill-informed investment decision. But wrong moves can devastate a potential startup hub.

"Typically, when an investment is made and it doesn't pan out the way they think it should, there's typically a five to eight-year cycle of no more investments being made," Nordby says on the show. "When you think about the long-term effect that has on an innovation economy — an eight-year gap where you're not investing in startups — that's a problem."

Nordby thinks back to the goal setting Houston did several years ago, and reflects on how the ecosystem locally has evolved over the years.

"The goal we always set internally was to create a culture of innovation and to have the spirit of innovation permeate through the city," Nordby says. "Between 2016 when we started that initiative and that work until now, that culture is wildly different. ... The ecosystem has come a very, very long way in terms of attracting and encouraging founders."

Healing Hands is a collection of art by caregivers made to process their mentally exhausting jobs. Photo by Tre’Voy Kelly & Company

Houston Health Museum's new exhibit merges art and mental wellness

art of healing

Caring for the sick can be mentally exhausting. A new gallery of artwork at Houston’s Health Museum, created by caregivers including family members, nurses, and others in the care delivery sector, highlights these challenges.

“This program came to fruition thanks to the generous support of Unlikely Collaborators, who helped build the infrastructure for arts programming at The Health Museum,” Rose Tylinksi, the Museum’s Healing Arts Manager, tells CultureMap. “The Museum had already begun integrating art into their exhibits and community outreach with the focus on Human Health.

"Mental health and healing are important parts of human health, so we wanted to incorporate a program that impactfully addressed this through the intersection of the arts, medicine, and culture," she continues. "The arts, including music, dance, painting, writing, and more, are potent drivers of health and healing, fostering mindfulness, expression, and community. In fact, the health benefits of participating in the arts are comparable to those of regular exercise.”

“Healing Hands: A Collection of Caregiver Expressions on Mental Wellness” marks the museum’s further expansion into the arts, alongside their renowned interactive science exhibits focused on the human body and medical technology. Tylinski has organized workshops, "Paint and Process" events, and other gatherings to help caregivers articulate their struggles.

One example from the gallery is a series of short poems written by a caregiver that explores the various difficult conversations the creator often has with patients. Writing and reading poetry is a common method of helping doctors, nurses, and other caregivers process their experiences. Studies have shown that creating poems can ease feelings of grief and loneliness, both often associated with caregiving.

“It is designed to speak both to the struggles and wellness of our mental health,” says Tylinksi. “The art tells us about the fears, joys, and sacrifices that come with taking care of others. Art is used as a tool to process those experiences.”

Other pieces on display involve traditional visual art pieces.

“Healing Hands” will be on display at the Health Museum through February 2025 and is included in general admissions. For those interested in participating as artistic creators, keep an eye on the Health Museum website for announcements about workshops and events related to the creation of the art.

Founded in 1969, the Health Museum is a unique and quirky institution that consistently offers interesting explorations of the physical and mental human condition. It is the only Smithsonian-affiliated museum in the Museum District and provides experiences like allowing children to crawl through a giant colon to learn about the digestive system and interact with video game versions of humanity’s internal fauna. Despite its often whimsical nature, the Health Museum maintains a first-rate collection and consistently offers intriguing exhibits.

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.

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Texas falls to bottom of national list for AI-related job openings

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For all the hoopla over AI in the American workforce, Texas’ share of AI-related job openings falls short of every state except Pennsylvania and Florida.

A study by Unit4, a provider of cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) software for businesses, puts Texas at No. 49 among the states with the highest share of AI-focused jobs. Just 9.39 percent of Texas job postings examined by Unit4 mentioned AI.

Behind Texas are No. 49 Pennsylvania (9.24 percent of jobs related to AI) and No. 50 Florida (9.04 percent). One spot ahead of Texas, at No. 47, is California (9.56 percent).

Unit4 notes that Texas’ and Florida’s low rankings show “AI hiring concentration isn’t necessarily tied to population size or GDP.”

“For years, California, Texas, and New York dominated tech hiring, but that’s changing fast. High living costs, remote work culture, and the democratization of AI tools mean smaller states can now compete,” Unit4 spokesperson Mark Baars said in a release.

The No. 1 state is Wyoming, where 20.38 percent of job openings were related to AI. The Cowboy State was followed by Vermont at No. 2 (20.34 percent) and Rhode Island at No. 3 (19.74 percent).

“A company in Wyoming can hire an AI engineer from anywhere, and startups in Vermont can build powerful AI systems without being based in Silicon Valley,” Baars added.

The study analyzed LinkedIn job postings across all 50 states to determine which ones were leading in AI employment. Unit4 came up with percentages by dividing the total number of job postings in a state by the total number of AI-related job postings.

Experts suggest that while states like Texas, California and Florida “have a vast number of total job postings, the sheer volume of non-AI jobs dilutes their AI concentration ratio,” according to Unit4. “Moreover, many major tech firms headquartered in California are outsourcing AI roles to smaller, more affordable markets, creating a redistribution of AI employment opportunities.”

Houston energy trailblazer Fervo closes $462 million Series E

Fresh Funds

Houston-based geothermal energy company Fervo Energy has closed an oversubscribed $462 million series E funding round, led by new investor B Capital.

“Fervo is setting the pace for the next era of clean, affordable, and reliable power in the U.S.,” Jeff Johnson, general partner at B Capital, said in a news release.

“With surging demand from AI and electrification, the grid urgently needs scalable, always-on solutions, and we believe enhanced geothermal energy is uniquely positioned to deliver. We’re proud to support a team with the technical leadership, commercial traction, and leading execution capabilities to bring the world’s largest next-generation geothermal project online and make 24/7 carbon-free power a reality.”

The financing reflects “strong market confidence in Fervo’s opportunity to make geothermal energy a cornerstone of the 24/7 carbon-free power future,” according to the company. The round also included participation from Google, a longtime Fervo Partner, and other new and returning investors like Devon Energy, Mitsui & Co., Ltd., Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Centaurus Capital. Centaurus Capital also recently committed $75 million in preferred equity to support the construction of Cape Station Phase I, Fervo noted in the release.

The latest funding will support the continued buildout of Fervo’s Utah-based Cape Station development, which is slated to start delivering 100 MW of clean power to the grid beginning in 2026. Cape Station is expected to be the world's largest next-generation geothermal development, according to Fervo. The development of several other projects will also be included in the new round of funding.

“This funding sharpens our path from breakthrough technology to large-scale deployment at Cape Station and beyond,” Tim Latimer, CEO and co-founder of Fervo, added in the news release. “We’re building the clean, firm power fleet the next decade requires, and we’re doing it now.”

Fervo recently won Scaleup of the Year at the 2025 Houston Innovation Awards, and previously raised $205.6 million in capital to help finance the Cape Station earlier this year. The company fully contracted the project's capacity with the addition of a major power purchase agreement from Shell this spring. Fervo’s valuation has been estimated at $1.4 billion and includes investments and support from Bill Gates.

“This new investment makes one thing clear: the time for geothermal is now,” Latimer added in a LinkedIn post. “The world desperately needs new power sources, and with geothermal, that power is clean and reliable. We are ready to meet the moment, and thrilled to have so many great partners on board.”

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This article originally appeared on EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

Baylor center receives $10M NIH grant to continue rare disease research

NIH funding

Baylor College of Medicine’s Center for Precision Medicine Models received a $10 million, five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health last month that will allow it to continue its work studying rare genetic diseases.

The Center for Precision Medicine Models creates customized cell, fly and mouse models that mimic specific genetic variations found in patients, helping scientists to better understand how genetic changes cause disease and explore potential treatments.

The center was originally funded by an NIH grant, and its models have contributed to the discovery of several new rare disease genes and new symptoms caused by known disease genes. It hosts an online portal that allows physicians, families and advocacy groups to nominate genetic variants or rare diseases that need further investigation or new treatments.

Since its founding in 2020, it has received 156 disease/variant nominations, accepted 63 for modeling and produced more than 200 precision models, according to Baylor.

The center plans to use the latest round of funding to bring together more experts in rare disease research, animal modeling and bioinformatics, and to expand its focus and model more complex diseases.

Dr. Jason Heaney, associate professor in the Department of Molecular and Human Genetics at BCM, serves as the lead principal investigator of the center.

“The Department of Molecular and Human Genetics is uniquely equipped to bring together the diverse expertise needed to connect clinical human genetics, animal research and advanced bioinformatics tools,” Heaney added in the release. “This integration allows us to drive personalized medicine forward using precision animal models and to turn those discoveries into better care for patients.”

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