Houston innovator: 3 reasons you should incorporate estate planning to your company benefits

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Why you should be offering your employees estate and legacy planning tools. Photo courtesy of The Postage

As priorities for employees have shifted as part of the Great Resignation the need for non-traditional benefits has continued to arise. Employees are expecting their personal and family wellness to be at the core of what their employers are offering. This is a big consideration when deciding to stay or leave a company. While HR professionals and employers are realizing they need to re-evaluate their benefits and how they keep top talent, there’s one key benefit that is typically missed that is a life necessity for all, estate and legacy planning.

Given today’s uber competitive talent market, there’s an opportunity for companies to embrace new benefits that go beyond the typical and support vital needs, such as financial wellness and estate planning. Taking the next step by providing and connecting employees with the right resources can make all the difference. Estate and legacy planning goes beyond creating a will, it’s about end to end care of life and legacy. It helps transition wealth and wisdom across generations. It handles your affairs, finances, your digital assets, protects your children and pets, and ensures your wishes are carried out if you are temporarily unavailable or permanently incapable of handling them. It’s as critical and as necessary as insurance yet is not typically included as a key employee benefit.

Why should you add estate and legacy planning as part of your employee benefits? Here’s the top three reasons to consider:

1. Create value for your employees and their families

Financial wellness and security are the utmost important for employees. In fact, it’s one of the most-valued benefits, based on a recent survey Morgan Stanley found that 90 percent of employees want their company to prioritize financial benefits. Are you going to be one of the 95 percent of HR executives that plan to do so? If so, there are multiple ways that a company can help its employees to build wealth and protect their financial security through traditional benefits such as retirement savings plans, health insurance, voluntary life, and disability insurance, and more. But additional benefits like estate and legacy planning should be a part of this assortment of benefits that support protecting employees and their families’ finances - by helping them build and protect their financial and personal legacies.

Employers can show that they value and support their employee’s financial success and security by providing tools and resources that make it simple to handle these historically daunting tasks and keep them organized throughout life, which allows employees to have peace of mind for their families’ future, financial and beyond.

2. Stand out among your competitors

Most employers do not provide legacy and estate planning services. Only 12 percent of employers provide these types of benefits, yet over 72 percent of those who are not offered estate planning services by their employer, would be interested in using them if offered. That’s a huge percentage of your employee population that would benefit from this service while differentiating you from other employers and provide an opportunity for your company to show just how much you value your employees’ futures.

3. Show you care about your employees

More people have begun to self-reflect on what is truly important to them as a part of the Great Resignation. Now, employee desires have evolved beyond a high salary with decent benefits. Employees want to feel valued beyond the work they do, and even further than that, they need an environment where their career, their loved ones, and their own being is supported. These psychological needs are translating into demands for companies to provide more thoughtful employee benefits packages.

A study conducted by Morgan Stanley shows how perceptions of employees and HR executives alike have transformed, with 9 in 10 HR executives saying their company needs to do a better job helping employees understand how to maximize their financial benefits. Proving to your employees that you care about them beyond the ‘now’–beyond simply providing short-term benefits that exclusively affect them in the present day–leverages your company’s commitment to caring for your workers.

For people that struggle with organizing their property and wealth, estate planning can help visualize their total net worth. However, benefits that not only anticipate employees’ future financial needs but also organize their family network will drive continual engagement within your company and prove genuine care for your workers. For example, The Postage helps people plan their legacy. On top of estate planning, customers also have the ability to store and document important life events and memories, or even utilize our message planning feature where they can send timely notes to their family at a future date.

Employees want to feel valued beyond their work and taking the steps to help them build physical and financial legacies for both themselves and their loved ones will put your company one step ahead of everyone else. It is time for estate planning to join the conversation for employee benefits packages and helping employees proactively plan their future could be the cornerstone of attracting and retaining diverse talent.

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Emily Cisek is the founder and CEO of The Postage, a tech-enabled, easy-to-use estate planning tool.

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Pharma giant considers Houston for $1B manufacturing campus

in the works

Another pharmaceutical giant is considering Houston’s Generation Park for a manufacturing hub.

According to a recent filing with the Texas Jobs, Energy, Technology and Innovation (JETI) program, Bristol Myers Squibb Co. is considering the northeast Houston management district for a new $1 billion multi-modal pharmaceutical manufacturing campus.

If approved, the campus, known as Project Argonaut, could create 489 jobs in Texas by 2031. Jobs would include operations technicians, engineering roles, administrative and management roles, production specialists, maintenance support, and quality control/assurance. The company predicts annual average wages for these positions to be around $96,000, according to the filing.

The project currently includes the 600,000-square-foot facility, but according to the filing, Bristol Myers Squibb “envisions this site growing in scale and capability well beyond its opening configuration."

The Texas JETI program offers companies temporary school property tax limitations in exchange for major capital investment and job creation. E.R. Squibb & Sons LLC applied for a 10-year tax abatement agreement in the Sheldon Independent School District.

The agreement promises a $ 1 billion investment. Construction would begin in 2027 and wrap in 2029.

“The proposed project reflects [Bristol Myers Squibb Co.’s] enduring commitment to bringing innovative medicines to patients and ensuring the long-term supply reliability they depend on,” the filing says. “The proposed project is purpose-built to support and manufacture medicines spanning multiple therapeutic areas and modalities, positioning the site as a long-term launch and commercial campus for decades to come. These medicines will provide therapies to the [Bristol Myers Squibb Co.’s] patients located in markets both nationally and internationally.”

The Fortune 100 company is considering 16 other cities for the new manufacturing facility in the Central and Eastern markets in the U.S. According to the Houston Chronicle, Bristol Myers Squibb Co is still in the “evaluation process” for its potential manufacturing site.

Last fall, Eli Lilly and Co. selected Generation Park for its $6.5 billion manufacturing plant. More than 300 locations in the U.S. competed for the factory. Read more here.

Houston health tech co. lands NIH grant for AI cancer prediction tool

fresh funding

Houston-based CellChorus and Stanford Medicine were recently awarded a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research grant for the company's AI platform to test how certain cancer patients will respond to therapies.

The funding comes from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health. According to a filing, the grant totaled just under $400,000.

CellChorus, which spun out from the University of Houston’s Technology Bridge, has developed TIMING (Time-lapse Imaging Microscopy In Nanowell Grids), which analyzes the behavior of thousands of individual immune cells over time and can identify early indicators of treatment success or failure.

The company will work with Stanford's Dr. David Miklos and Dr. Saurabh Dahiya, who have built the Bone Marrow Transplantation and Cell Therapy Biobank. The biobank manages and stores biological samples from patients treated at their clinic and in clinical trials.

"Predicting which patients will achieve durable responses after CAR-T therapy remains one of the most important challenges in the field,” Miklos said in a news release. “We aim to uncover functional cellular signatures that can guide treatment decisions and improve patient outcomes.”

The project will specifically profile cells from patients with relapsed/refractory large B-cell lymphoma (r/rLBCL). According to CellChorus, only about half of r/rLBCL patients who receive CAR-T therapy "achieve a durable, long-term remission." Others do not respond to therapy or experience relapse.

“The sooner we know whether a cancer therapy is working, the better. To maximize patient benefit, we need technology that can provide a robust and early prediction of response to therapy. The technology needs to be scalable, cost-efficient, and capable of rapid turnaround times,” Rebecca Berdeaux, chief scientific officer of CellChorus, added in the release. “We are excited to work with Drs. David Miklos and Saurabh Dahiya and their colleagues on this very important project.”

CellChorus has previously received SBIR grants from federal agencies, including a $2.5 million award in 2024 from its National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) and a $2.3 million SBIR Fast-Track award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences in 2023.

Houston museum showcases America's founding documents in rare exhibit

Experience History

As the United States prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday, Houstonians have a chance to see rare documents from the founding of the nation. Freedom Plane National Tour: Documents That Forged a Nation, presented by the National Archives Foundation, will be on display at the Houston Museum of Natural Science through Monday, May 25.

The collection includes a rare engraving of the original Declaration of Independence; official Oaths of Allegiance signed by George Washington, Aaron Burr, and Alexander Hamilton; a draft of the Bill of Rights; the Treaty of Paris, the documented that recognized America's independence from Great Britain; and the tally of votes approving the Constitution.

The National Archives specifically chose Houston as one of only eight cities in the country to host the exhibit as a means to help the documents reach a wider audience outside of the main hub of semiquincentennial events in New England and the Washington, D.C. area.

"One of the things we decided when we put the tour together because we wanted to be off the East Coast," said Patrick Madden, CEO of the National Archives Foundation, who was onsite for the exhibit's opening in Houston. "There's a lot of 250th celebration stuff happening in the original 13 colonies. How do we get it to major markets where larger numbers of people can see it? So in the case of Houston, obviously, [is a] major market in this part of the country, but also we've partnered with the museum twice before with National Archives exhibits, so we knew that they would be up to the task of handling the exhibit and the crowds."

The star of the collection is a rare engraving of the original Declaration of Independence. Secretary of State and future president John Quincy Adams commissioned 200 exact replicas of the document from engraver William J. Stone in 1823. Less than 50 now remain. Madden joyfully pointed out that there are errors in this document, a potent reminder that the men who forged a nation made mistakes.

"There's a couple of typos in it where they had to make corrections," said Madden. "So even the founders, you know, they're all human. That resonates because here these people are making this move against the most powerful nation in the world and putting their lives on the line for a country based on ideas."

Other impressive parts of the collection include official Oaths of Allegiance signed by George Washington, Aaron Burr, and Alexander Hamilton, as well as one of the drafts of the Bill of Rights. Many states would not ratify the Constitution until certain rights were included in the document, leading to Washington going on a national tour assuring state leaders enshrining protections was first on the list. The draft copy on display specifically shows the First Amendment in progress.

Houston is the fourth stop on the exhibition's tour, which will take the documents to Denver, Miami, Dearborn, and Seattle through the summer. Freedom Plane is just one part of a larger patriotic celebration at the HMNS, which includes a film series celebrating American science and culture and general Americana decoration throughout the main hall.

Admission to Freedom Plane is free to the public, but separate from general admission to the museum. Space is limited, and passes are available on a first-come, first-serve basis. Non-members should expect long waits or the possibility that the day's passes are sold out. Only museum members can reserve passes for specific times. Flash photography is prohibited due to the fragile nature of the documents.

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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

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