From nap research to diversity and inclusion, this entrepreneur is making Houston workers more productive

Featured Innovator

From opening Nap Bar and consulting corporations on diversity and inclusion to serving the city as an LGBT adviser, Khaliah Guillory is focused on productivity. Courtesy of Khaliah Guillory

Khaliah Guillory is an avid napper — and she's had to be. A multiple hat wearer and big proponent of side hustles, she's always piled responsibilities high on her plate.

Earlier this year left a corporate leadership position to open Nap Bar in Rice Village, but for years before that, she had her diversity and inclusion side hustle, KOG & Company. She works with companies — big and small — to integrate the best diversity and inclusion initiatives into the workplace.

"The intersection between KOG and Nap Bar and the common denominator is productivity and performance," Guillory says. "From a corporate standpoint — even when you think about diversity and inclusion — it all boils down to we want people who don't look like us or don't come from where we come from to be productive and perform well."

Guillory, who is this week's Pride Month Featured Innovator on InnovationMap, also serves on Mayor Sylvester Turner's LGBT Advisory Board.

InnovationMap: When did you know you wanted to be an entrepreneur?

Khaliah Guillory: I was 8 or 9 years old, and my family drank a lot of soda. Where I grew up in Port Arthur, Texas, you could go and trade in cans for change. I would go outside, line up all the cans, and step on them to crush them. I saw an infomercial about a can crusher. It made my business more efficient. That's when my entrepreneurial journey started.

IM: How did The Nap Bar come about?

KG: I have always been an avid napper. When I was in Kindergarten, and the teacher would say go grab your red or blue mat, I did it and I was out. I enjoyed naptime. In high school, I played basketball and I napped at the end of school. When I got into college, I played basketball at the University of Central Florida. My days would start at 5 am and wouldn't end until midnight. The only way I was able to graduate on time and maintain my grades for my scholarships was napping. It just continued throughout my professional career, and I started napping in my car.

One day, my wife and I commuted into the city — we live in the Sugar Land/Richmond area. We had about an hour and a half to spare. It was nap time, but it would be awkward with her in the car. She suggested Googling naps in Houston. She says, "We live in Houston, there's got to be a place where you could take a quick nap." There was no such place. She told me I should create it. That was April of last year.

IM: Then what did you do to get the ball rolling?

KG: The next day I surveyed all my friends and asked them if I was the only one out here napping. I quickly realized that I wasn't. Specifically, 52 percent of Americans, according to Amerisleep, admitted to napping at work. I committed to doing more research. I've committed 10,000 plus hours to researching the benefits to napping and the indicators of sleep exhaustion. Fast forward to November of last year, I transitioned away from my C-level position at a Fortune 500 company to really pursue Nap Bar.

IM: How’s business been?

KG: We just celebrated our 30th day of business a couple of weeks ago. We are already generating revenue. We are excited for what's to come. June is shaping up to be a real opportunity for us to be in the black, and July is shaping up to have a lot of events. We found that our biggest challenge is educating the masses on the benefits of taking a chill session in the middle of the day, and also educating on the indicators of what it's like to be sleep deprived.

IM: With KOG & Company, your other company, you’ve worked for years with large companies to help incorporate diversity and inclusion. How does that tie into your nap research?

KG: The intersection between KOG and Nap Bar and the common denominator is productivity and performance. From a corporate standpoint — even when you think about diversity and inclusion — it all boils down to we want people who don't look like us or don't come from where we come from to be productive and perform well. The best place for any corporation that has a philosophy or a vision of values and embraces corporate social responsibility is to acknowledge that people are going to be the heartbeat of their company.

IM: What do organizations — from startups to Fortune 500 companies — need to know about diversity and inclusion?

KG: The biggest thing is that from a culture standpoint, just simply hiring people to check a box isn't going to provide the desired ROI. It really, truly has to be embraced by the culture. If I am a business owner or corporation, and my goal is to have a diversity of talent, then I need to go where those people are. If I create and curate an environment with diversity and inclusivity, then going to recruit and then ask them what type of organization they want to work for and what it would look like — then go out and build that. And if they don't know where to start, they can hire me and I can hold their hand and give some real life experience. I've lived it as a banker, as a supervisor, and as a C-level executive.

IM: What’s surprised you about being on Mayor Sylvester Turner’s LGBT Advisory Board?

KG: I think what surprised me most about is that the city of Houston is really progressing and striving. It just makes sense. We're the most diverse city in the country, and I applaud Mayor Sylvester Turner for assembling the LGBT Advisory Board and for appointing me.

The city of Houston — and all the entities that fall under it from a government landscape — is desiring a journey to get more training and education. How do we educate on how to report a hate crime. How do we make sure that city employees are showing up to work and are 100 percent comfortable in their own skin. The biggest surprise I'd have to say is that the city has done an incredible job with the training. I walked away from the meeting learning things that I didn't even know about the LGBTQ community.

IM: What does Pride Month mean to you?

KG: Pride means to me being comfortable in my skin as I am, who I am. The month is a pleasant reminder to be "me" every day, all day. Pride month means my uniqueness is celebrated, not tolerated which should be the norm everyday; not just a month. Pride means being secure in the community — workplace, networking event, the gym, basically everywhere — and confidently say "my wife."

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Portions of this interview have been edited.

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Rice University researchers unveil new model that could sharpen MRI scans

MRI innovation

Researchers at Rice University, in collaboration with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, have developed a new model that could lead to sharper imaging and safer diagnostics using magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI.

In a study recently published in The Journal of Chemical Physics, the team of researchers showed how they used the Fokker-Planck equation to better understand how water molecules respond to contrast agents in a process known as “relaxation.” Previous models only approximated how water molecules relaxed around contrasting agents. However, through this new model, known as the NMR eigenmodes framework, the research team has uncovered the “full physical equations” to explain the process.

“The concept is similar to how a musical chord consists of many notes,” Thiago Pinheiro, the study’s first author, a Rice doctoral graduate in chemical and biomolecular engineering and postdoctoral researcher in the chemical sciences division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, said in a news release. “Previous models only captured one or two notes, while ours picks up the full harmony.”

According to Rice, the findings could lead to the development and application of new contrast agents for clearer MRIs in medicine and materials science. Beyond MRIs, the NMR relaxation method could also be applied to other areas like battery design and subsurface fluid flow.

“In the present paper, we developed a comprehensive theory to interpret those previous molecular dynamics simulations and experimental findings,” Dilipkumar Asthagiri, a senior computational biomedical scientist in the National Center for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, said in the release. ”The theory, however, is general and can be used to understand NMR relaxation in liquids broadly.”

The team has also made its code available as open source to encourage its adoption and further development by the broader scientific community.

“By better modeling the physics of nuclear magnetic resonance relaxation in liquids, we gain a tool that doesn’t just predict but also explains the phenomenon,” Walter Chapman, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Rice, added in the release. “That is crucial when lives and technologies depend on accurate scientific understanding.”

The study was backed by The Ken Kennedy Institute, Rice Creative Ventures Fund, Robert A. Welch Foundation and Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Houston-area lab grows with focus on mobile diagnostics and predictive medicine

mobile medicine

When it comes to healthcare, access can be a matter of life and death. And for patients in skilled nursing facilities, assisted living or even their own homes, the ability to get timely diagnostic testing is not just a convenience, it’s a necessity.

That’s the problem Principle Health Systems (PHS) set out to solve.

Founded in 2016 in Clear Lake, Texas, PHS began as a conventional laboratory but quickly pivoted to mobile diagnostics, offering everything from core blood work and genetic testing to advanced imaging like ultrasounds, echocardiograms, and X-rays.

“We were approached by a group in a local skilled nursing facility to provide services, and we determined pretty quickly there was a massive need in this area,” says James Dieter, founder, chairman and CEO of PHS. “Turnaround time is imperative. These facilities have an incredibly sick population, and of course, they lack mobility to get the care that they need.”

What makes PHS unique is not only what they do, but where they do it. While they operate one of the largest labs serving skilled nursing facilities in the state, their mobile teams go wherever patients are, whether that’s a nursing home, a private residence or even a correctional facility.

Diagnostics, Dieter says, are at the heart of medical decision-making.

“Seventy to 80 percent of all medical decisions are made from diagnostic results in lab and imaging,” he says. “The diagnostic drives the doctor’s or the provider’s next move. When we recognized a massive slowdown in lab results, we had to innovate to do it faster.”

Innovation at PHS isn’t just about speed; it’s about accessibility and precision.

Chris Light, COO, explains: “For stat testing, we use bedside point-of-care instruments. Our phlebotomists take those into the facilities, test at the bedside, and get results within minutes, rather than waiting days for results to come back from a core lab.”

Scaling a mobile operation across multiple states isn’t simple, but PHS has expanded into nine states, including Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri and Arizona. Their model relies on licensed mobile phlebotomists, X-ray technologists and sonographers, all trained to provide high-level care outside traditional hospital settings.

The financial impact for patients is significant. Instead of ambulance rides and ER visits costing thousands, PHS services often cost just a fraction, sometimes only tens or hundreds of dollars.

“Traditionally, without mobile diagnostics, the patient would be loaded into a transportation vehicle, typically an ambulance, and taken to a hospital,” Dieter says. “Our approach is a fraction of the cost but brings care directly to the patients.”

The company has also embraced predictive and personalized medicine, offering genetic tests that guide medication decisions and laboratory tests that predict cognitive decline from conditions like Alzheimer's and Parkinson’s.

“We actively look for complementary services to improve patient outcomes,” Dieter says. “Precision medicine and predictive testing have been a great value-add for our providers.”

Looking to the future, PHS sees mobile healthcare as part of a larger trend toward home-based care.

“There’s an aging population that still lives at home with caretakers,” Dieter explains. “We go into the home every day, whether it’s an apartment, a standalone home, or assisted living. The goal is to meet patients where they are and reduce the need for hospitalization.”

Light highlighted another layer of innovation: predictive guidance.

“We host a lot of data, and labs and imaging drive most treatment decisions,” Light says. “We’re exploring how to deploy diagnostics immediately based on results, eliminating hours of delay and keeping patients healthier longer.”

Ultimately, innovation at PHS isn’t just about technology; it’s about equity.

“There’s an 11-year life expectancy gap between major metro areas and rural Texas,” Dieter says. “Our innovation has been leveling the field, so everyone has access to high-quality diagnostics and care, regardless of where they live.”

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