Why this Houston innovator isn't afraid of AI coming for her job

Guest Column

The advent of AI pushes us humans to acquire new skills and hone our existing abilities so we can work alongside these evolving technologies in a collaborative fashion. Image via Getty Images

Over the past 10 years of my career, I have been afforded unique opportunities to work in many roles across the healthcare industry. This includes stints in HR, sales, marketing, and operational roles at a myriad of organizations including small start-up companies, hospital networks, and even my own single-member LLC.

The uncertainty of the job market is ever evolving with close to 200,000 tech workers being laid off last year alone. The rise of AI is changing the employment structure across all industries which is why I feel fortunate to have a plethora of experiences and skills to pull from.

There is mounting concern about AI taking away our jobs, but in reality, we have been living harmoniously with AI tools for quite some time (think – spell check or autocorrect on your text messages). In many instances, we appreciate the benefits that AI brings including automation of repetitive tasks, data entry, and increased efficiencies. Don’t get me wrong, AI is certainly being exploited in some use cases like deepfakes so it is essential to stay vigilant. Overall, I am optimistic about AI improving healthcare, an area where we are experiencing significant financial strains, an overburdened workforce, and clinician shortages.

The advent of AI pushes us humans to acquire new skills and hone our existing abilities so we can work alongside these evolving technologies in a collaborative fashion. AI augments human capabilities rather than replacing us. I believe it will help our society embrace lifelong learning, creating new industries and jobs that have never existed before. These are some reasons why I am not worried about AI eliminating my job in the near future:

AI does not have human skills

AI may be able to beat humans at intelligent tasks like chess, yet prowess such as communication, teamwork, leadership, and emotional intelligence are increasingly important and difficult to automate. According to LinkedIn, the most in-demand skills for professionals are all uniquely human abilities, working in tandem with AI to drive organizational success. In addition, many jobs require some level of creative thinking, making them less susceptible to automation.

AI is not a physical being

Even after living through a global pandemic where many jobs existed only virtually, there is no replacement to the physical being or human touch. Technology can fill a lot of gaps but sitting face to face with another human being is not one of them. In fact, Forbes reported that 90 percent of companies will return to the office in 2024. There will always be power in bringing people together, whether one-on-one meetings, team gatherings, or company wide events.

AI alone cannot implement change

Technology is only as powerful as the people who use it. Sometimes, the hardest part of innovation is not adopting new technology or implementing different protocols but simply getting people to change. Nonetheless, adaptability has proven time and time again to be one of the strongest human traits. Change takes time and trust, both of which AI cannot solve on its own.

While working on this article, I wanted to see what the AI expert thinks and asked “Should I be worried about AI taking away my job?” Here is what Chat GPT responded:

While there is potential for AI to automate certain jobs, it also creates opportunities for new roles and enhances productivity. The key to mitigating the risk is to stay informed, continuously learn, and adapt to new technologies. Emphasizing uniquely human skills and exploring how AI can be a tool rather than a replacement can help secure your place in the evolving job market.

I appreciate Chat GPT’s confidence that humans and AI can co-exist. The future is already here.

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Arielle Rogg is the principal and founder of Rogg Enterprises, a Houston-based company providing digital marketing for health care innovators.

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While crafting a personal or company brand, it is important to connect your business idea to your purpose and passion. Photo via Getty Images

Houston expert shares tips for enhancing personal, company branding

GUEST COLUMN

Every business, whether a single member consultancy, a small startup, or a large corporation, owns a brand. One can think of a brand in a number of different ways — a recognizable logo, a catchy name, an inspirational tagline, or even a feeling one gets when using a certain product or service.

At its core, branding begins with values. Whether you are building a personal brand or a company brand, it is essential to ascertain your purpose and passion and then connect it with your business idea.

In this article, I am going to walk you through tips on building a personal and company brand.

Personal Brand

Gary Vaynerchuk, successful entrepreneur and internet personality who built his personal brand on digital marketing, said “You have to understand your own personal DNA.” Here are some key points to consider when developing your personal brand:

Play to your individual strengths

You do not need to do everything! If you love writing, do a blog. If you prefer talking, focus on videos. If you can commit to posting online every day, take on social media channels like Instagram & Twitter.

Leverage your network

Networks are a powerful tool and most importantly, do not require you to spend loads of marketing dollars. It is a huge misconnection that branding is a cost center for all businesses. There are many ways to promote your brand without significant cost. Here are some simple ideas to get you started:

  1. Create an online presence (website, social media channels, blogs, etc.)
  2. Develop a content calendar and post/update regularly, at least once a week
  3. Read a lot and reach out to journalists who write in your industry
  4. Seek out speaking opportunities at conferences or apply for awards that recognize leaders like you – don’t shy away from nominating yourself!

Be well-rounded

Running your own brand can sometimes make work/life balance feel enmeshed, making you feel like you are losing your own identity. Don’t forget to diversify yourself. Volunteer at a charity or nonprofit of choice, share photos of your friends and family spending time together, get involved with a professional organization, and promote yourself.

Company brand

When building a company brand, it is essential to identify and understand your target audience by creating clear customer profiles. Commercial brands only succeed when they can connect their business and values to a customer. When I work on branding exercises with companies, I always start with a value proposition canvas. Once you clearly define the values and target market, these are some beneficial next steps:

Craft a cohesive vision and mission statement

A vision statement is aspirational or pie in the sky, alluding to what your organization will achieve in the future. A mission statement is definitional, describing your business objectives and how you will get there. Together, these succinct messages should help your customer fully understand what you are selling or offering.

Create a unique and consistent visual identity

A visual identity is what helps a brand stand on its own without needing someone to explain it. This can include a color scheme, fonts, logo – anything that will contribute to your company’s brand guidelines. Especially for companies in highly competitive markets like food & beverage, a recognizable visual identity can make or break a brand’s ultimate success.

Take your time

I recently listened to the How I Built This podcast episode featuring Bombas. I was amazed to hear that they tested over 100 fabric combinations for their first sock before finalizing it. Today, they are probably one of the most popular and recognizable brands in the sock business. Some companies need to launch right away but as long as you can learn, grow, and pivot when needed, time can be on your side. A quality product is better than a rushed product.

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Arielle Rogg is the principal and founder of Rogg Enterprises, a Houston-based company providing digital marketing for health care innovators.
A Houston expert weighs in on the importance of breaking down barriers for innovation. Photo via Getty Images

Why Houston needs to break down its industry barriers to advance innovation

guest column

Innovation has always been the driving force behind progress and development in every industry. It is the engine that propels growth, fosters competition, and improves people’s lives. The importance of innovation in every sector has grown exponentially in recent years with new ideas and technologies emerging faster than ever before. This explosion has led to innovation silos, where each industry is developing its own innovations and making progress in isolation from the others.

Houston has embraced the rise of innovation with gusto and is a prime city to break down industry specific silos. We proudly host the largest medical center and the energy capital of the world as well as the headquarters for the space race. The mayor’s office has shown a strong commitment to support rapid innovation growth, providing incentives and infrastructure for technology companies and talent to reside in Houston. Our city’s emerging innovation district has already shown huge promise with the Ion building and Greentown Labs providing a strong foundation to expand. Organizations uniting innovators across all industries like Pumps & Pipes could only exist in a city as diverse and accessible as Houston. Nonetheless, our community needs to band together to ensure innovation growth is inclusive of all industries to create an equitable approach to technology that will continue to benefit generations to come.

While innovation silos may have some benefits, such as competition and differentiation, they also have some significant drawbacks, including inefficiencies, redundancies, and missed opportunities. Industries can become so focused on their own innovations that they fail to see the potential for cross-industry collaboration. Many examples exist today where certain technologies or practices were once reserved for specific use cases and now have become mainstream. For instance, the use of the common GPS network for location and navigation services was originally pioneered by NASA, and hospital safety and quality checklists were derived from the airline industry. By soliciting more opportunities for innovation sharing, we can achieve faster growth, implement stronger and safer processes, and reduce repetitive and costly pilot testing in every industry from energy, health care, finance, social impact, and more.

I am putting out a call to action to the Houston community to open your doors to cross-industry partnerships.

Engage in more open dialogue and information sharing outside your industry.

Attend events that bring together professionals from all industries for knowledge sharing and idea exchange. Many conferences, workshops, and meet-ups already exist to unite and recognize cross-industry communities within specific interest groups. In addition, startup accelerators, incubator programs, and collaborative workspaces provide unique environments that encourage spontaneous conversations and positive idea exchange.

Incentivize businesses, start-ups, and individuals who are willing to collaborate and share their ideas with others.

Knowledge sharing should be rewarded through recognition programs, awards, special partnership opportunities, and more. Professional organizations and leadership networks are a great place to turn to for connecting with like-minded individuals and identifying recognition opportunities that can promote the great work of experience sharing.

Commit investments in cross-industry research and development.

We need to create more incentives for researchers to work across different industries and apply their expertise to various fields. Examples like the Ion Prototyping Lab, a one-of-a-kind makerspace for all, and events at the upcoming Ion Activation Festival, including “Back to the Future of Innovation”, unite researchers with industry to encourage collaborative collisions.

In the end, breaking down innovation barriers is essential if we want to continue on this upward, fast-growth trend to improve our community and to make an impact in people’s lives across the world. We need to take action now to promote a more seamless cross-industry approach to knowledge sharing, collaboration, and research and development to create a better future for all.

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Arielle Rogg is the principal and founder of Rogg Enterprises LLC, a Houston-based company providing digital marketing for health care innovators.

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UH lands $4M NIH grant to study early signs of autoimmune disease

NIH funding

The University of Houston recently received a $4 million National Institutes of Health grant to support a 10-year longitudinal study to identify the earliest biological markers of autoimmune disease.

Led by Chandra Mohan, the Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Endowed Professor of Biomedical Engineering, the study aims to examine what causes Systemic Autoimmune Rheumatic Diseases (SARDs) and to identify targets for future treatments. The study will be carried out in collaboration with Dr. Karen Costenbader at Harvard Medical School, Boston.

SARDs include conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, Sjögren’s syndrome and systemic sclerosis—all are considered chronic diseases currently without a cure. Autoimmune diseases affect over 30 million people globally, according to UH.

SARDs occur when the body’s immune system attacks healthy, non-threatening tissues and organs. According to UH, in these diseases, the body often attacks nuclear antigens, creating anti-nuclear autoantibodies, which can be early detection signs for SARDs in more than 50 percent of patients, Mohan says.

Researchers will study blood samples and environmental exposure over the 10 years to better understand anti-nuclear autoantibodies.

“Collectively, these studies will help identify the genetic, environmental and cellular factors that are operative at the two steps of SARD development, namely the emergence of anti-nuclear autoantibodies and disease onset,” Mohan said in a news release. “ More importantly, these studies will highlight functional molecular pathways and mechanisms that may be operative at each step."

Mohan predicts that looking at SARDs’ shared characteristics, rather than each disease individually, could help identify more treatment methods.

“Individual SARDs have been examined in silos without an attempt to discern shared underlying features at the molecular level,” he added in the release. “Current understanding of the initial (and likely shared) origins of SARDs is only rudimentary but urgently needed to develop means for prevention and treatment.”

Earlier this year, UH also received an $11 million NIH grant to conduct a first-of-its-kind study of early language development in children ages 18 to 24 months. Read more here.

New Texas Stock Exchange officially begins trading in Dallas

Welcome to Y'all Street

Two-step aside, New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. The Dallas-based Texas Stock Exchange, nicknamed Y’all Street, just kicked off live trading with five stocks — and lots of Lone Star ambition.

“The Texas Stock Exchange aims to revitalize competition for [stock] issuers, establish the premier venue for listings, and create a world-class trading platform for all market participants,” the exchange says in a fact sheet.

The exchange — whose Texas-influenced nickname is a nod to New York City’s Wall Street — has collected at least $275 million in investments. The roughly 90 financial backers of TXSE include Bank of America, BlackRock, Charles Schwab, Citadel Securities, Dell Family Office, Fortress, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase.

Representatives of TXSE couldn’t be reached for comment. On its website, the exchange calls itself “the most well-capitalized equities exchange to ever be approved” by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Not to be outdone, NYSE has launched Dallas-based NYSE Texas and Nasdaq has expanded its presence in Dallas.

Y’all Street adds to Dallas-Fort Worth’s rising status as a major hub for financial services, with The Wall Street Journal naming North Texas the country’s second biggest financial hub after New York City.

“A homegrown national exchange means more jobs, more investment, and more growth opportunities for businesses and communities across the Lone Star State,” Gabriela von zur Muehlen, senior vice president and chief policy officer at the Texas Association of Business, told The Texas Tribune.

Bulent Temel, an associate professor of practice in economics at the University of Texas at San Antonio, told Texas Standard that TXSE “is going to boost the credibility of the Texas economy.”

Texas’ estimated gross domestic product (GDP), a yardstick for the size of an economy, climbed to a record-setting $2.9 trillion in 2025, making it the state with the second highest GDP after California. DFW’s estimated GDP in 2023 stood at $744.6 billion, eclipsing the GDP of many countries.

“The center of gravity for American capitalism is now headquartered in the Boom Belt,” Abbott proclaimed in April, referring to an 11-state region (including Texas) in the South and Southeast that’s seeing tremendous economic and population growth. “The Texas Stock Exchange is the natural extension of that capitalism. It ensures that capital markets will reflect the quadrant that is driving American growth.”

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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

Orion vehicle manager reflects on Artemis II, looks to 2028 moon mission

Q&A

Humanity is finally headed back to the moon after more than half a century. This year's launch of the Artemis II mission in the Orion spacecraft put four crew members in lunar orbit and tested the new ship developed by Lockheed Martin.

Everything went smoothly, safely returning astronauts home, but there is always room to improve. InnovationMap chatted via email with Orion vehicle manager Branelle Rodriguez, shortly after a talk at The Ion, for insight on how Orion might perform in the future as the next lunar landing approaches in early 2028.

InnovationMap: How satisfied are you with the way Orion operated on this past mission?

Branelle Rodriguez: Orion performed exceptionally well during Artemis II, successfully demonstrating critical spacecraft capabilities, including life support systems, displays and controls, and executing manual piloting operations. Artemis II brought humans back to the moon, achieving key exploration and scientific imagery, while validating systems essential for future Artemis missions.

IM: What is the most important thing you learned about improving Orion for the next mission?

BR: The Artemis II mission provided invaluable insights into crew operations and spacecraft performance in a deep-space environment. With every mission, NASA applies lessons learned to continuously improve Orion’s operations, validate design and ensure mission readiness. Artemis II offered our first opportunity to evaluate several new systems and gain a deeper understanding of what it is like for astronauts to live and work inside the spacecraft. The operational, technical and human factors data collected are being integrated across the program to refine future missions, reduce risk and enhance overall mission success.

IM: How has Orion helped the mission to explore space?

BR: Orion is one of NASA’s foundational elements for human deep space exploration—not only supporting the mission but serving as a core component of it. It is currently the only spacecraft capable of carrying crew on deep space missions and returning them safely to Earth from the high speeds required from the vicinity of the moon. No other spacecraft has the technology to endure the extremes that come with human deep-space travel, such as advanced environmental and life support, navigation, communications, radiation shielding, and the world’s largest ablative heat shield to protect the astronauts during reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. Orion has already taken astronauts to explore space farther than ever before—252,756 miles from Earth— and will carry crews to the moon on future missions to explore the lunar South Pole region. The astronauts’ observations, samples, and data collected on these future missions will expand our understanding of our solar system and home planet.

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This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

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