3 Houston innovators to know this week

who's who

This week's roundup of Houston innovators includes Chris Howard of Softeq, Stephanie Hertzog of Sodexo, and Moody Heard of Buildforce. Courtesy photos

Editor's note: In the week's roundup of Houston innovators to know, I'm introducing you to three local innovators across industries — oil and gas, tech development, and construction staffing — recently making headlines in Houston innovation.

Chris Howard, CEO of Softeq

On this week's episode of the Houston Innovators Podcast, Softeq Founder and CEO Chris Howard shares how he's focusing on supporting the Houston innovation ecosystem. Photo courtesy of Softeq

A sign of a blossoming innovation ecosystem is when experienced and successful founders turn their focus to supporting emerging startups. That's what Chris Howard, who founded his tech company over 20 years ago, is looking to do with a new innovation lab and more in the works.

"I want to give back as an entrepreneur and a Houstonian," Howard says on this week's episode of the Houston Innovators Podcast. "I really want to leverage Softeq's expertise in order to help these companies grow in the same way that we've been doing for a couple of decades now."

Howard shares more about the Softeq Innovation Lab and how COVID-19 has affected his business and technology in general on the episode. Click here to read more and stream the episode.

Stephanie Hertzog, CEO of Sodexo

Stephanie Hertzog is hoping the future workforce of her company and others within the energy industry better reflects the city's diverse populations. Photo courtesy of Sodexo

Ever since taking the helm at Houston-based Sodexo Energy Resources North America, CEO Stephanie Hertzog has been intentional with prioritizing diversifying the workforce of the company. In a Q&A with InnovationMap, she notes on how the energy industry has been known as pretty homogeneous, especially within the gender divide. But things are changing.

"And we need to all be focusing on getting more of not only diversity, but inclusion as well," she says. "It's not just about hiring a diverse group, it's about making those people feel included when they get here and having them want to stay and be a part of our industry." Read more.

Additionally this week, Hertzog expands on her call for the energy industry to diversify in a guest column for InnovationMap. Click here to read it.

Moody Heard, CEO of BuildForce

Houston-based Buildforce is developing a technology to better connect contractors and the trade professionals they employ. Photo courtesy of Buildforce

A Houston innovator is tapping into tech to disrupt a booming industry in Houston, Texas, and beyond .Buildforce is a construction staffing app that aims to more efficiently connect contractors to skilled workers in trades ranging from electrical, mechanical, and plumbing to flooring, concrete, painting, and more.

The company raised a $1.5 million pre-seed round led by Houston-based Mercury Fund and is led by CEO Moody Heard.

"Our key insight is that providing a superior service to construction employers starts with providing a superior experience for tradesmen and women," Heard says in a news release. "Talent is the greatest finite resource in construction in Texas. In order to deliver talent to our contractor partners, we've created a job placement experience that is simple, friendly, and transparent. That's something people in the construction trades aren't used to, and has helped us grow incredibly quickly over the past several months." Click here to read more.

Stephanie Hertzog, CEO of Houston-based Sodexo, shares how she's embracing diversity and innovation within the energy industry. Photo courtesy of Sodexo

Houston CEO talks augmented reality, diversity, how it will all play a role in the energy transition

Q&A

When Stephanie Hertzog first started her role as CEO of Houston-based Sodexo Energy & Resources North America in the fall of 2019, she was on the road every week visiting some of the facility management company's 100 million customers.

"I actually had a conversation with my assistant in early March, and said, 'Okay, our goal is that by April, I not be on the road every week. Let's try to get this to at least every other week,'" she recalls. Shortly after, the world changed, and by March 10 she halted all travel and was forced to lead her company to innovate in more ways than one.

"When we think about innovation, we often think about technology, but we've had to innovate so much in the last 12 months, in how we do everything," she says. "We've really asked a lot of our teams over the last year in regard to having to rethink how they do things and be innovative and adapt."

To Hertzog, it's this adaptation and innovation she's seen in the last year that will allow her industry to support an energy transition and, as she says, "preserve" beyond the pandemic and inevitable future downturns.

InnovationMap talked with Hertzog about the importance of adaptation in the energy industry, new technologies that Sodexo has implemented in that effort, and how a diverse workforce plays a role in all of it.

InnovationMap: Why is it important for the energy industry to continue to adapt and be innovative?

Stephanie Hertzog: Oftentimes, the energy industry gets viewed a bit as being old school. We, as an industry, have really embraced technology for decades now. And I really think that it's what's allowed us to continue to survive during all of the down cycles.

In today's age, where we have renewables growing their percentage of the market, and there's a lot of enhanced enthusiasm around carbon reduction efforts. And technology will be at the forefront of that energy transition. Technology is going to be a big part of how we continue to provide affordable energy for the foreseeable future.

IM: You're originally from the Houston area. How has it changed and what makes you excited for Houston's future?

SH: I'm most excited about Houston and most proud of Houston in that we've always been a very diverse and international city. I think a lot of that has been driven over the years by energy business, bringing in people from all over, but we also have a high immigrant population. And I think that diversity has really led us to be entrepreneurial. Thinking about innovation and technology, having that diversity of thought and opinion has helped us to continue to be a leader in that space over time. We've always been a large city ever since I was young, but we're continuing to grow. And we're seeing more and more people transplanting here from other parts of the country. And I think that's exciting to see us getting more diversity in our economy as well.

IM: Why is it important — from a business perspective — to have a diverse workforce?

SH: There's a lot of research on this topic. It's very clear that businesses that have more diverse leadership teams outperform those that don't, and so having diversity in the room leads people to ask different questions, to have more discussion and to have more questioning of the status quo.

IM: What has been the most impactful adaptation in your industry in recent years?

SH: It's really been embracing software technology. The mobile aspects of being able to get data on your phone has really allowed us to put in a lot of systems that have allowed us to, for example, better track tasks and make sure that things get done to optimize janitorial cleaning schedule. There's a lot of stuff that we used to do on paper at a site that we now do electronically, which allows us to compare site versus site and see not just how well can that site do, but how well is that site doing versus other sites. It's all about doing what we do really well and as efficiently as possible.

We have a recent innovation that we've been working on: augmented reality glasses that allow someone on an offshore platform, for example, to wear the glasses and someone back in Houston in an office tower to see what that person is seeing almost through their own eyes. That is an example being able to get things done faster. I don't have to physically travel someone to the platform, I can just be able to get them in real time. And so there are a lot of things like that. It opens up all new worlds.

IM: Why is augmented reality an especially useful tool in the energy industry?

SH: We already discussed from an efficiency standpoint of being able to get the expertise on site without physically having to get out there. But another aspect of that is the safety element. We always try to keep as few people on site as possible, just because these environments inherently have some amount of safety precautions that we have to take. Some of the things are as simple as to be able to actually get out to an offshore platform, you have to have been helicopter trained. But also, Heaven forbid, something should happen on that platform you want the least amount of people out there as possible.

IM: Did the pandemic play any role in terms of expediting the adaptation of these technologies?

SH: Yes. We were looking for better ways to do anything remotely that we could. That was everything from these glasses to just straight up video conferencing. We normally do a safety walk in-person, but how can you do a safety walk remotely? So I think any opportunity, we had to try to enhance the experience of being there, but not being there — everything got escalated.

IM: In light of Women's History month, why is it important for the energy industry to focus on inclusion of women as it moves forward?

SH: I think the business case is the same as we discussed earlier: better outcomes, more success if we have diversity at all levels in the energy space. And it's really important in energy, because we've been bad at this. Particularly around the gender dynamic, if we look at the highest levels in the energy space, there's just not historically been a lot of representation of women there. We're starting to make some inroads, but we still have a long way to go. Part of it's been a pipeline issue. A lot of the leaders of energy businesses are engineers. Women are now coming out of undergraduate around 40 percent of chemical engineers, so we're getting we're getting close to having parity there – but overall engineering is still only 20 percent female. And from that first manager position and on up, there are big gaps where we lose women along the way.

We're not keeping up with the pace that we've been putting women into the business for a long time. Companies have got to make some real effort here. Certainly the year that the United States had around some of the racial divide, I think that's an important topic for us to be talking about. And we need to all be focusing on getting more of not only diversity, but inclusion as well. It's not just about hiring a diverse group, it's about making those people feel included when they get here and having them want to stay and be a part of our industry. From a Houston perspective, we continue to be a big part of the economy here. And so if we're not getting it right, then Houston's going to struggle.

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This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

As Women's History Month wraps up, it's time to reflect on the enabling diversity and inclusion in the workplace as a driver of innovation. Photo via Getty Images

Houston expert: Now is the time to diversify your workforce in the name of innovation

Guest column

Pop quiz: What's the best way to introduce and nurture a culture of innovation in your organization?

Give all employees a VR headset
Mandate every team leader offer one new idea per quarter
Add the word "innovate" to the organization's mission statement
Actively recruit, hire and support a more diverse workforce

If you didn't answer D, you have some research to do. A trove of recent research shows an undeniable link between workforce diversity and innovation, not to mention better overall results. From McKinsey to the Boston Consulting Group to HBR the data keeps coming.

For instance, Deloitte found organizations with more inclusive cultures are both significantly more innovative and twice as likely to meet or exceed financial targets than their counterparts. My own company, Sodexo, commissioned a study that found gender-balanced teams contribute to better outcomes across the board, including innovation.

Beyond the hard evidence, pure common sense tells us when we open our doors to people with different perspectives and life experiences, we also welcome new ideas. Diverse teams encourage diverse thinking, new solutions and agile implementation. There's a reason that Great Place to Work calls diverse and inclusive teams "the engines of innovation."

At the same time, innovation has become essential in our current economic climate. If this past year has taught us anything, it's that we need to be nimble and ready to think differently at a moment's notice.

As we close out another Women's History Month, we are rounding out a year that has been a collective setback for women in the workplace, in particular. Millions of women have left the labor market during the global pandemic and it's unclear how many will return and what professional repercussions they will face.

This comes as our industry was already woefully lacking gender parity. According to a 2019 Catalyst study, there were fewer women in oil and gas than almost any other major industry. The group found women accounted for only 22 percent of employees, 17 percent of senior level roles and one percent of top leadership.

In other words, the pandemic has given us even more work to do — both in recruiting women and a more diverse employee base in general. We need to do so if we are to transform into the future-oriented industry our customers need us to be.

The news is not all doom and gloom, however. An eye-opening McKinsey report about our industry, "Oil and gas after COVID-19" argues that the global pandemic "will be a catalytic moment and accelerate permanent shifts in the industry's ecosystem, with new future opportunities." The authors lay out several potential avenues for successful organizations, including the ability to "create the organization of the future," by recruiting a new blend of talent that will bring innovative ideas.

This is a watershed moment to rethink how we recruit and hire. We can look more broadly at what we look for and from which fields we recruit. We can consider how different ideas and perspectives can help us forge paths toward our future.

We have the data to fuel the changes we need. We also have the data to offer us the cautionary tale of not changing. As the McKinsey report put it: "The opportunity to lead has never been better—separation between market leaders and laggards will be increasingly sharp."

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Stephanie Hertzog is the CEO of Houston-based Sodexo Energy & Resources North America.

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Announcing the 2026 Houston Innovation Awards finalists

Inspirational Innovators

InnovationMap is proud to reveal the finalists for the 2026 Houston Innovation Awards.

The sixth annual Houston Innovation Awards program returns in an all-digital format this fall to honor the best of Houston's innovation ecosystem, including startups, entrepreneurs, mentors, and more.

Finalists were determined by our esteemed panel of judges, comprised of past award winners and InnovationMap editorial leadership.

The panel reviewed applications across 10 prestigious categories to determine our finalists. They will select the winner for each category, except for Startup of the Year, which will be chosen by the public via online voting launching later this month.

We will announce the honoree of our annual Trailblazer Award in the coming weeks, then stay tuned as we unveil all of this year's winners on InnovationMap.com in mid-November.

Get to know our finalists in more detail through editorial spotlights leading up to the winner announcement. Without further ado, here are the 2026 Houston Innovation Awards finalists:

Minority-founded Business

Honoring an innovative startup founded or co-founded by BIPOC or LGBTQ+ representation:

AI Made Fun
Deep Anchor Solutions
HEXAspec
Prana Surgical
Torres Orbital Mining Inc.

Female-founded Business

Honoring an innovative startup founded or co-founded by a woman:

Adair
ARIX Technologies
Bairitone Health
FlowCellutions
ParaDocs Health

Energy Transition Business

Honoring an innovative startup providing a solution within renewables, climatetech, clean energy, alternative materials, circular economy and beyond:

Capwell Services
FlowCellutions
Hertha Metals
Mars Materials
Solidec

Health Tech Business

Honoring an innovative startup within the health and medical technology sectors:

Bairitone Health
InformAI Inc.
Prana Surgical
Skybound MedTech

Deep Tech Business

Honoring an innovative startup providing technology solutions based on substantial scientific or engineering challenges, including those in the AI, robotics and space sectors:

Casimir
Focis AI
Machine Saver Inc.
Square Robot
Venus Aerospace

Startup of the Year (People's Choice)

Honoring a startup celebrating a recent milestone or success. The winner will be selected by the community via an online voting experience:

Fluxworks
IronLattice
Lumino
Progress Report
Rosarium Health
Thread
TokenRoster

Scaleup of the Year

Honoring an innovative later-stage startup that's recently reached a significant milestone in company growth:

Erock
Hertha Metals
Venus Aerospace

Incubator/Accelerator of the Year

Honoring a local incubator or accelerator that is championing and fueling the growth of Houston startups:

Activate
Impact Hub Houston
MarMo Innovation

Mentor of the Year

Honoring an individual who dedicates their time and expertise to guide and support budding entrepreneurs:

Al Danto, Rice University
Eric Rubenstein, New Climate Ventures
Jeremy Pitts, Activate
Joe Alapat, Liongard
Kyle Judah, Rice University's Liu Idea Lab for Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Rachel Bickham, Bickham Services Unlimited LLC

Trailblazer Recipient

To be announced

Q&A: TIME100 AI honoree Angle Bush on building Houston’s artificial intelligence future

AI builder

Angle Bush, founder and CEO of Black Women in Artificial Intelligence, has a running question for her organization's members: Are you in the lab?

For Bush, inquiry isn’t philosophical. Learning about artificial intelligence is one thing. But building with it? Developing products, solving problems and creating a stake in the emerging AI economy? That’s another thing entirely—and exactly the point.

Bush’s own path into AI began in 2019 with an unlikely project: a robot named Usher, designed to bring her hot cocoa. She went down what she calls “YouTube University” to figure out how to build it and kept encountering another subject: artificial intelligence. Her curiosity eventually led her to a Houston AI event, where she noticed something missing.

She didn’t see a full reflection of herself, prompting a bigger question: If AI was becoming a transformative force, who would have a role in shaping it? Her answer became the premise for what came next: There couldn’t be an AI revolution without Black women.

Bush never finished Usher. Instead, she built Black Women in Artificial Intelligence, which has grown into a global organization with members across five continents.

Six years after launching BWIAI, the Houston founder was named to the 2026 TIME100 AI, TIME’s annual list recognizing 100 of the world’s most influential people in artificial intelligence.

The recognition is significant, but Bush is focused on what comes next: moving people beyond AI literacy and adoption and into creation—turning ideas into deployed products, building economic opportunity and ensuring more people have a hand in shaping the technology.

That mission brings Bush back to Houston, where she sees an opportunity to build on the city’s entrepreneurial culture while advancing conversations around responsible and ethical AI.

InnovationMap spoke with Bush about her TIME100 AI recognition, her push to get more people building with AI, Houston’s role in the technology’s future and her simple message: Get in the lab.

InnovationMap: What accomplishment at BWIAI are you most proud of?

Angle Bush: This past March, 11 of our members designed and deployed products and services utilizing artificial intelligence. For me, that's what we want to do. We're looking for builders. I continually ask our members: Are you in the lab? What are you building?

We have members here in Houston who built a conference app designed to help people better understand and navigate the conference experience. We also have Shonda and Shalisha Witherspoon, The Digital Twins, who created a patent assistant to help individuals interested in creating a patent for their product or service.

For me, watching those women move dreams from notebooks to deployment is more important than anything else. Notebooks are designed to hold your dreams, but not keep your dreams.

For NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conference, if you wanted to participate as part of the Black Women in AI delegation, you had to build something. You couldn't just give me a concept and say, “Hey, Angle, I'm building ABC.” No. I needed you to design it, build it and deploy it. That will continually be one of the things I'm most proud of.

IM: Why is building so important to you?

AB: I've been saying that from the beginning because I tell people all the time: I can talk all day. We can have this conversation all day. But at the end of the day, are we building? What is the result?

Conversation is great. It can provide insight. But we have to put our hands on products. We have to put our hands on the APIs. We have to put our hands on that knowledge and ask, What do we do with it?

After you learn it, what are you doing with it? Are you going to create an app that helps your family? Are you creating an app that allows you to be part of the AI economy in a way that you can control? We're all going to be part of the AI economy at some point based on our careers and everything else. But what part of it can you control?

IM: What's next for Black Women in Artificial Intelligence?

AB: I want to continue our mission to educate, engage, embrace and empower Black women in AI. I want our organization to serve as an opportunity for women to build. How do we build? How do we understand how to build? How do we move beyond how we've been conditioned and start asking questions—not only of ourselves, but also the right questions of corporations?

Long term, I want us to continue building, and then I want us to pass that knowledge and insight down to the next generation. But I also want us to reach back to generations that may not have had this opportunity when they were younger. Maybe they were discouraged from going into STEM when they were younger. I want them to know that you can still build. It doesn't matter what your age is. It doesn't matter what college or university you attended. If you have an idea, we want to democratize AI so that you can build.

IM: BWIAI's story began in Houston. What role do you think Houston can play in the AI boom?

AB: First, I absolutely love Houston. I'm originally from Chicago and was raised in Saginaw, Michigan. But as they say, I got to Houston as quickly as I could. I think Houston has a great opportunity to position itself as a center of excellence for innovation. We have an entrepreneurial spirit and drive that I believe is unmatched.

And as much as we have entrepreneurs, we also have advocates who want to see the ethical use of AI. I think we'll see a rise in entrepreneurship. Houston is already building that ecosystem with the Ion and other entities coming into the fold.

As far as the mark Black Women in Artificial Intelligence will make in Houston, I think we'll bring a different perspective to the city's AI ecosystem. We'll make an impact on the entrepreneurial side, but also on the advocacy side when it comes to the responsible and ethical use of AI, which isn't always talked about.

IM: One of the biggest concerns surrounding AI is its potential to displace workers faster than people can acquire new skills. How should we be thinking about that?

AB: In full transparency, that's a tough question to answer because AI is moving so quickly. There are so many different models and so many different things happening that it can appear as though they're coming out of thin air.

For me, it's a matter of how we work with individuals so they can think more about the system than the model, because the models can retire. The impact this is going to have on communities globally is going to be an interesting dynamic. With the work we're doing at Black Women in Artificial Intelligence, this is our mitigation system: How can we bring individuals along so they can learn artificial intelligence and understand that there is a pivot—and it's not coming. It's happening right now, live.

How can we create an ecosystem where individuals get the training, support and understanding they need? For me, that's how we mitigate it: by creating a space where individuals can learn how to pivot.

IM: If readers take one thing away from this conversation, what do you want it to be?

AB: How important it is to be in the lab. It is important to start building today—not tomorrow, not next week, not next month. We have to be in the lab today. That's it.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

UTMB launches new department for space medicine, names inaugural leader

department launch

In space, no one can hear you scream—but they can hear you discuss your medical history and recent symptoms.

The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) announced last month that it would form a new Department of Aerospace and Exploration Medicine within its School of Public and Population Health under the leadership of Dr. Ronak V. Shah, who will serve as inaugural chair.

“Human exploration is changing rapidly, and the health challenges associated with distance, isolation, and limited resources are changing along with it,” Shah said in a news release. “Creating the Department of Aerospace and Exploration Medicine gives us an opportunity to build on decades of expertise at UTMB as we prepare for the future.”

The new department elevates UTMB’s existing Aerospace Medicine Division and provides "broader academic structure for expanding research, education, and collaboration across disciplines," according to the release. Shah was previously named director of the division in 2022 after serving as medical director of Johnson Space Center.

Space exploration in particular has a wide variety of highly specific medical side effects that are in need of the formalized study that the department will specialize in. For example, zero- and low-gravity environments cause everything from detached fingernails to flattened eyeballs. Even in modern, high-tech spacecraft, the human body feels the impacts of space.

It’s an area of medicine UTMB is uniquely suited for. Starting in the 1950s with NASA’s director of medical research Dr. Charles A. Berry, UTMB partnered with the blossoming era of exploration by monitoring astronauts. In 1993, UTMB and the NASA Johnson Space Center created the joint Aerospace Medicine Residency Program, which used bed facilities at the Galveston branch to simulate weightlessness. Wherever there has been a question about how flight and space affect health, odds are UTMB has been involved.

The Department of Aerospace and Exploration Medicine will launch several new initiatives soon. One planned for 2027 is an Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine Fellowship that will allow scientists to study the physiology of high-pressure flight.

“In the era of a growing global space economy, we are revisiting questions such as who is flying, what is their destination, what vehicle will get them there?” Shah added in the release. “The answers to these questions will drive what research is needed and how we train the next generation.”

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