Here are three of the latest updates on new hires and promotions from these Houston organizations. Photos courtesy

It's been a busy year so far for Houston organizations — three of which have made new appointments to their leadership.

In this round up of movers and shakers in Houston innovation, a venture capital firm names its newest principal, an astronaut gets a leadership role here at ground control, and a VR studio snags a leader to steer its growth.

Joe Acaba, chief of NASA's Astronaut Office at Johnson Space Center

Joe Acaba was promoted to a new role and will be responsible for crew assignments for future spaceflight missions. Photo via NASA

NASA tapped Joe Acaba as its chief of the Astronaut Office based in Johnson Space Center in Houston. He's served on multiple spaceflights and is a former U.S. Marine and former educator. According to NASA, he's the first person of Hispanic heritage selected to lead the office.

Acaba replaces Drew Feustel, who spent two years as deputy chief and has been acting chief of the office since NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman left the post late last year.

"Joe is an experienced space flyer and a proven leader, and he will undoubtedly inspire the next generation of NASA astronauts," says NASA Administrator Bill Nelson in a news release. " As we build on the International Space Station’s unparalleled success in low-Earth orbit with our eyes on the Moon and then Mars, Joe will play an integral role in ensuring our NASA astronauts are prepared for the challenges ahead."

Acaba, who spent a total of 306 days in space, has already supported the astronaut office in a few of roles, including director of operations in Russia and chief of the Vehicle Integration Test Office. In this new role, he will be oversee astronaut resources and operations and help develop astronaut flight crew operation concepts. Additionally, Acaba will make crew assignments for future spaceflight missions, including astronauts assigned to fly on Artemis missions.

“Our Johnson Space Center team congratulates Joe Acaba on his selection to chief of the Astronaut Office. We wish him well as he takes on this new and exciting leadership role,” says NASA Johnson Space Center Director Vanessa Wyche.

Samantha Lewis, partner at Mercury Fund

Samantha Lewis was promoted to partner at Mercury Fund. Photo courtesy of Mercury Fund

Samantha Lewis was promoted to partner from principal at Houston-based venture capital firm Mercury, per her LinkedIn. She previously was the investment director of investor network GOOSE Capital before joining the Mercury team just over two years ago.

Last year, Lewis — who also served on the board of two Houston-founded startups, Syzygy and Topl — was named a member of the Class 27 of the Kauffman Fellows Program, a group of global innovation investors.

Lewis is focused on what she calls the "power theme" at Mercury, which includes fintech, blockchain, web3, and more. She told InnovationMap on a recent episode of the Houston Innovators Podcast that these industries have been hit in particular within market uncertainty.

Bob Kleinhample, senior vice president of growth at HTX Labs

Bob Kleinhample joins HTX Labs at a time of strategic growth. Photo courtesy of HTX Labs

Virtual reality studio HTX Labs has named Bob Kleinhample as the company’s senior vice president of growth. He has more than 15 years leading business efforts in the tech space. A 20-year Army veteran, Kleinhample will oversee all aspects of HTX Labs' growth — including business development, product strategy, and marketing.

“Bob brings the right balance of market knowledge and product strategy, in combination with the commitment to bring immersive training and simulation to the warfighter, to really drive our EMPACT offering into the market,” says Scott Schneider, CEO and co-founder of HTX Labs. "We’re very excited to be adding this incredibly important role to our organization and having Bob lead these efforts as we expand the usage and adoption of EMPACT across the Department of Defense."

The appointment comes after the startup raised $3.2 million in its first outside capital round.

“Last year we secured funding from Cypress Growth Capital for the sole purpose of accelerating the growth of our EMPACT platform and our customer base, and we immediately began a search for the right person to lead these growth efforts," Schneider continues. "After performing an extensive search, we are fortunate to have connected with Bob Kleinhample who is coming on board to lead our company’s growth efforts“.

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NASA signs on latest tenant for new Exploration Park campus, now underway

space hub

Exploration Park, the 240-acre research and commercial institute at NASA's Johnson Space Center, is ready for launch.

Facilities at the property have broken ground, according to a recent episode of NASA's Houston We Have a Podcast, with a completion date targeted for Q4 2026.

The research park has also added Houston-based KBR to its list of tenants. According to a news release from the Greater Houston Partnership, the human spaceflight and aerospace services company will operate a 45,000-square-foot food innovation lab at Exploration Park. KBR will use the facility to focus on customized food systems, packaging and nutrition for the low Earth orbit economy.

“Exploration Park is designed for companies in the space ecosystem, such as KBR, to develop, produce, and deploy innovative new technologies that support space exploration and commerce,” Simon Shewmaker, head of development at ACMI Properties, the developer behind Exploration Park, said in the GHP release. “This project is moving expeditiously, and we’re thrilled to sign such an innovative partner in KBR, reflecting our shared commitment to building the essential infrastructure of tomorrow for the next generation of space innovators and explorers.”

NASA introduced the concept of a collaborative hub for academic, commercial and international partners focused on spaceflight in 2023. It signed leases with the American Center for Manufacturing and Innovation and the Texas A&M University System for the previously unused space at JSC last year.

“For more than 60 years, NASA Johnson has been the hub of human space exploration,” Vanessa Wyche, NASA Johnson Space Center Director, said in a statement at the time. “This Space Systems Campus will be a significant component within our objectives for a robust and durable space economy that will benefit not only the nation’s efforts to explore the Moon, Mars and the asteroids, but all of humanity as the benefits of space exploration research roll home to Earth.”

Texas A&M is developing the $200 million Texas A&M Space Institute, funded by the Texas Space Commission, at the center of the park. The facility broke ground last year and will focus on academic, government and commercial collaboration, as well as workforce training programs. ACMI is developing the facilities at Exploration Park.

Once completed, Exploration Park is expected to feature at least 20 build-to-suit facilities over at least 1.5 million square feet. It will offer research and development space, laboratories, clean rooms, office space and light manufacturing capabilities for the aerospace, robotics, life support systems, advanced manufacturing and artificial intelligence industries.

According to the GHP, Griffin Partners has also been selected to serve as the co-developer of Exploration Park. Gensler is leading the design and Walter P Moore is overseeing civil engineering.

Houston cleantech co. plans first-of-its-kind sustainable aviation fuel facility

coming soon

Houston-based Syzygy Plasmonics announced plans to develop what it calls the world's first electrified facility to convert biogas into sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).

The facility, known as NovaSAF 1, will be located in Durazno, Uruguay. It is expected to produce over 350,000 gallons of SAF annually, which would be considered “a breakthrough in cost-effective, scalable clean fuel,” according to the company.

"This is more than just a SAF plant; it's a new model for biogas economics," Trevor Best, CEO of Syzygy Plasmonics, said in a news release. "We're unlocking a global asset class of underutilized biogas sites and turning them into high-value clean fuel hubs without pipelines, costly gas separation, or subsidy dependence.”

The project is backed by long-term feedstock and site agreements with one of Uruguay's largest dairy and agri-energy operations, Estancias del Lago, while the permitting and equipment sourcing are ongoing alongside front-end engineering work led by Kent.

Syzygy says the project will result in a 50 percent higher SAF yield than conventional thermal biogas reforming pathways and will utilize both methane and CO2 naturally found in biogas as feedstocks, eliminating the need for expensive CO2 separation technologies and infrastructure. Additionally, the modular facility will be designed for easy replication in biogas-rich regions.

The new facility is expected to begin commercial operations in Q1 2027 and produce SAF with at least an 80 percent reduction in carbon intensity compared to Jet A fuel. The company says that once fully commercialized the facility will produce SAF at Jet-A fuel cost parity.

“We believe NovaSAF represents one of the few viable pathways to producing SAF at jet parity and successfully decarbonizing air travel,” Best added in the release.

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This article originally ran on EnergyCapital.

Houston company ranks No. 13 worldwide on Forbes Global 2000 list

World's Biggest Companies

More than 60 Texas-based companies appear on Forbes’ 2025 list of the world’s 2,000 biggest publicly traded companies, and nearly half come from Houston.

Among Texas companies whose stock is publicly traded, Spring-based ExxonMobil is the highest ranked at No. 13 globally.

Rounding out Texas’ top five are Houston-based Chevron (No. 30), Dallas-based AT&T (No. 35), Austin-based Oracle (No. 66), and Austin-based Tesla (No. 69).

Ranking first in the world is New York City-based J.P. Morgan Chase.

Forbes compiled this year’s Global 2000 list using data from FactSet Research to analyze the biggest public companies based on four metrics: sales, profit, assets, and market value.

“The annual Forbes Global 2000 list features the companies shaping today’s global markets and moving them worldwide,” said Hank Tucker, a staff writer at Forbes. “This year’s list showcases how despite a complex geopolitical landscape, globalization has continued to fuel decades of economic growth, with the world’s largest companies more than tripling in size across multiple measures in the past 20 years.”

The U.S. topped the list with 612 companies, followed by China with 317 and Japan with 180.

Here are the rest of the Texas-based companies in the Forbes 2000, grouped by the location of their headquarters and followed by their global ranking.

Houston area

  • ConocoPhillips (No. 105)
  • Phillips 66 (No. 276)
  • SLB (No. 296)
  • EOG Resources (No. 297)
  • Occidental Petroleum (No. 302)
  • Waste Management (No. 351)
  • Kinder Morgan (No. 370)
  • Hewlett Packard Enterprise (No. 379)
  • Baker Hughes (No. 403)
  • Cheniere Energy (No. 415)
  • Corebridge Financial (No. 424)
  • Sysco (No. 448)
  • Halliburton (No. 641)
  • Targa Resources (No. 651)
  • NRG Energy (No. 667)
  • Quanta Services (No. 722)
  • CenterPoint Energy (No. 783)
  • Coterra Energy (No. 1,138)
  • Crown Castle International (No. 1,146)
  • Westlake Corp. (No. 1,199)
  • APA Corp. (No. 1,467)
  • Comfort Systems USA (No. 1,629)
  • Group 1 Automotive (No. 1,653)
  • Talen Energy (No. 1,854)
  • Prosperity Bancshares (No. 1,855)
  • NOV (No. 1,980)

Austin area

  • Dell Technologies (No. 183)
  • Flex (No. 887)
  • Digital Realty Trust (No. 1,063)
  • CrowdStrike (No. 1,490)

Dallas-Fort Worth

  • Caterpillar (No. 118)
  • Charles Schwab (No. 124)
  • McKesson (No. 195)
  • D.R. Horton (No. 365)
  • Texas Instruments (No. 374)
  • Vistra Energy (No. 437)
  • CBRE (No. 582)
  • Kimberly-Clark (No. 639)
  • Tenet Healthcare (No. 691)
  • American Airlines (No. 834)
  • Southwest Airlines (No. 844)
  • Atmos Energy (No. 1,025)
  • Builders FirstSource (No. 1,039)
  • Copart (No. 1,062)
  • Fluor (No. 1,153)
  • Jacobs Solutions (1,232)
  • Globe Life (1,285)
  • AECOM (No. 1,371)
  • Lennox International (No. 1,486)
  • HF Sinclair (No. 1,532)
  • Invitation Homes (No. 1,603)
  • Celanese (No. 1,845)
  • Tyler Technologies (No. 1,942)

San Antonio

  • Valero Energy (No. 397)
  • Cullen/Frost Bankers (No. 1,560)

Midland

  • Diamondback Energy (No. 471)
  • Permian Resources (No. 1,762)
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A version of this article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.