Texas named a best state for remote work

work from home, y'all

A new list Texas at No. 6 among the best states for people seeking remote jobs. Photo vie Getty Images

Economic development boosters regularly tout Texas as a business-friendly state. Now, they can add another positive attribute: Texas ranks as one of the top remote-work-friendly states in the U.S.

A new list from the CareerCloud career platform puts Texas at No. 6 among the best states for people seeking remote jobs. Utah leads the ranking, followed by Colorado, the District of Columbia, Washington, and Virginia.

Helping lift Texas toward the top of the ranking is its No. 3 spot among the states projected to see the most growth (26 percent) in remote-friendly jobs from 2018 to 2028. Utah ranks first (41.7 percent) and Colorado ranks second (30.8 percent).

CareerCloud judged states on two other factors: broadband internet access, with Texas holding the No. 23 spot, and employment per 1,000 remote-friendly jobs, with Texas at No. 24.

These are the 14 jobs that CareerCloud deemed remote-friendly:

  • Accountant
  • Actuary
  • Computer network architect
  • Computer systems manager
  • Computer systems analyst
  • Database administrator
  • Information security analyst
  • Management analyst
  • Market research analyst
  • Marketing manager
  • Mathematician
  • Software developer
  • Statistician
  • Web developer

A list published last year by TheStreet, an investment website, backs up Texas' position in the CareerCloud ranking. The Street names nine places in Texas among the 30 best U.S. cities for remote work during the pandemic: El Paso, Plano, Garland, Corpus Christi, San Antonio, Austin, Fort Worth, Arlington, and Dallas. Houston didn't make the cut.

By contrast, not a single city in Texas appears on a list published by Money Crashers, a personal finance website, of the 20 best places in the U.S. to live and work remotely in 2021. Likewise, Livability.com leaves Texas cities off its list of the country's top 10 remote-ready cities for 2021.

A March 21 post authored by Tory Gattis, editor of the Houston Strategies blog and founding senior fellow at the Center for Opportunity Urbanism, makes the case for and against Houston as a remote-work hub.

Gattis lays out these factors in favor of Houston as a remote-friendly place:

  • Most affordable global city in the U.S., offering big-city amenities at a reasonable cost
  • Lots of Houston ex-pats who might come home to be closer to family and friends
  • Strong community culture for such a large, diverse city
  • Healthy immigrant ecosystem

According to Gattis, these are some of the unfavorable factors for Houston as a remote-friendly spot:

  • Not a classic "lifestyle" destination like Austin, Denver, or Miami
  • Big-city problems like traffic and crime
  • Climate susceptible to hurricanes, flooding, heat, and humidity

"Overall," Gattis writes, "I'd say we're likely to come out fairly well — not as good as the popular lifestyle cities, but much better than the unaffordable superstar cities like SF and NYC."

Could tapping into 401k investment be a gamechanger for Houston startup funding? Photo via Getty Images

Expert: New 401k investment options would spur Houston venture capital and innovation

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With fossil fuels facing an uncertain future, Houston is wisely pushing to further develop its innovation economy with initiatives like Houston Exponential and Rice Management Company's Ion, as well as the No. 1 ranked entrepreneurship programs at the University of Houston (undergraduate) and Rice (graduate).

Venture capital is both the critical fuel and limiting factor to expanding Houston's innovation ecosystem, but the vast majority of venture capital in this country is focused outside of Houston in places like Silicon Valley and Austin. How can we increase the local pool of venture capital focused on Houston?

A recent federal guidance provides the answer with a new option for adding dramatically to Houston's venture capital resources. On June 3rd 2020, the Department of Labor issued an information letter allowing 401k funds to invest in private equity, including venture capital. Houston has hundreds of thousands of employees contributing to 401k retirement plans, including those working at our 41 Fortune 1000 companies as well as other major employers like the Texas Medical Center hospitals. If even a small fraction of their savings could be channeled into Houston-focused venture capital funds (or funds of funds like the HX Venture Fund), it could add hundreds of millions of dollars to Houston's startup ecosystem.

How would this work? While federal guidance does not allow direct private equity investments in 401k plans, it does allow private equity to be part of the mix in target date, target risk, or balanced funds offered. Imagine the creation of a "Houston Balanced Fund" focused on a portfolio of equities and bonds from Houston companies, local government bonds, and a 15 percent allocation to Houston-focused venture capital (the maximum allowed for illiquid assets). The fund would be a bet on a prosperous long-term future for Houston — something I think many Houstonians would enthusiastically add to their retirement portfolios. Once created, it could be added to the investment options in 401k employer plans all over the city.

As an example of the power of this model: if 100,000 employees — only 3 percent of 3 million jobs in the Houston metro — invested just $10,000 of their 401k portfolios into a Houston Balanced Fund with 15 percent allocated to venture capital, it would inject an additional $150 million dollars into the local venture capital pool to spur new innovations and companies that can be the future of Houston's economy — a 20 percent increase to the $715 million of venture capital invested in Houston in 2020. This new venture capital could be leveraged even more by focusing it on early-stage Houston startups that might have trouble attracting the attention of national VC firms. As they mature to Series B rounds and beyond, they should have no trouble bringing in capital from outside the region.

This is an opportunity for Houston to do something no other city has done — to be innovative with not just new ventures and technologies, but with how they're financed. We can be proactive pioneers fueling Houston's 21st-century innovation ecosystem.

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Tory Gattis writes the Houston Strategies blog and is a Founding Senior Fellow with the Urban Reform Institute – A Center for Opportunity Urbanism.
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Houston researchers develop dissolvable implant for targeted cancer drug delivery

cancer research

Researchers at Houston Methodist have developed a biodegradable implant that can be used to safely and consistently deliver drug treatments to tumors and then dissolve without the need for further surgery.

The implant is only the size of a grain of rice, but its potential is staggering. The biodegradable nanofibrous drug-eluting seed (b-NDES) works as a reservoir parked inside a soft tumor, where it can slowly release immune-stimulating drugs over time. This overcomes a consistent problem with drugs such as immune checkpoint inhibitors. Normal systemic administration sees comparatively little of the drug making its way to the tumor, with most of it circulating throughout the body. The b-NDES is like deploying a small guerrilla fighting force embedded in enemy territory, doing maximum damage to the entrenched tumor.

"To improve cancer treatment, we're trying to start a fire inside the tumor itself," Corrine Chua, associate professor in the Center for BioNanoengineering at Houston Methodist Research Institute, said in a news release. "By activating immune cells directly within the tumor microenvironment, those cells can then travel throughout the body and seek out cancer wherever it exists. The b-NDES platform was developed to help keep therapeutic drugs concentrated inside tumors while minimizing exposure to healthy tissues.”

Chua co-led the study with Alessandro Grattoni, chair and director of the Center for BioNanoengineering at Houston Methodist Research Institute.

The study included support from the Nancy Owens Breast Cancer Foundation and the National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute.

Chau and Grattoni used preclinical models of triple-negative breast cancer, an aggressive form of cancer that is estrogen receptor-negative, progesterone receptor-negative and HER2-negative. Because of the receptor negativity, some popular treatments like tamoxifen and trastuzumab are ineffective. Chemotherapy has been shown to be the best course of action.

The b-NDES implant is deployed alongside radiation drugs. It keeps the drugs focused on the tumor, reducing the amount of harmful side effects typically seen when drugs are circulated more widely in the body. In 60 percent of the models, tumors were eliminated and did not cause side effects beyond the tumor site. Once the drugs have been deployed, the implant breaks down naturally.

While promising, more research will have to be done to expand use to other tumor types.

"Although the study focused on triple-negative breast cancer models, the approach could have broader applications for solid tumors," Grattoni added in the release. "It could potentially be used in cancers where there is a tumor lesion accessible for placement, including pancreatic or lung cancers."

New Houston platform Same Day Reels launches for on-demand content creation

In The Moment

If an event doesn't happen on Instagram, did it even really happen? In today's social media-driven age of branding and audience engagement, the answer increasingly is no.

Houston entrepreneur Karen De Amat is looking to fill the online content creation needs of companies with her new venture, Same Day Reels, which launched in early August. It will serve as a platform to connect companies and brands with talent that can help turn an event into a viral moment as it is happening.

"Events move quickly, and social media moves even faster,” said De Amat. “Same Day Reels was built to help brands capture the moment while it still matters. We are creating a more efficient way for businesses and creators to work together. Brands need content faster, and creators need more opportunities to turn their talent into real work. Same Day Reels brings those needs together.”

The company is focused on adding livestreams and concurrent short video content to "activations, launches, fundraisers, grand openings, conferences, hospitality experiences, and private celebrations." Such content can significantly increase the visibility of a product or brand according to digital marketing brands like Wyzowl, whose data found 63 percent of people in 2026 prefer to learn about new products via short video.

Packages offered by Same Day Reels will include filming, editing, and publishing content within hours of the targeted event.

De Amat says that her content creation platform will be a way to preserve the excitement of events and launches by enshrining them with immediate social media-driven memories.

“Event content is no longer just something you post after the fact,” De Amat said. “It is part of how people experience, remember and share the moment.”

Previously, De Amat is also the founder and CEO of Social Behavior, an influencer marketing company she launched from her home in 2014. It quickly garnered an array of clients and thrust De Amat into the spotlight, including numerous appearances on Fox 26's The Isiah Factor. Influencer Marketing Hub named her one of the top CEOs of influencer marketing companies in Houston in 2025.

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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

Bristol Myers Squibb to build $2.3B Houston pharma manufacturing campus

coming soon

New Jersey-based pharmaceutical giant Bristol Myers Squibb Co. has officially named Houston as the home of its new state-of-the-art manufacturing site.

The 60,000-square-foot facility represents a $2.3 billion investment, according to a news release. It is expected to create 500 skilled jobs and will be located in Houston's Generation Park.

BMS first announced that it was considering Houston among 16 other cities for the facility in May. The new hub will manufacture small molecule, biologic and antibody-drug conjugates and is part of a $40 billion commitment to invest in the United States over five years. Construction is slated to begin next year, with the facility coming online in 2030.

"We're building the domestic manufacturing capabilities needed to deliver the next generation of medicines and support future scientific breakthroughs. Houston and the state of Texas offer the talent, infrastructure, and partnership needed to help bring that vision to life," Christopher Boerner, CEO and board chair of BMS, said in the release.

The new facility will feature a modular, multi-modal design, which will allow the company to reconfigure and add to its manufacturing capabilities over time. BMS says it expects the facility to "(grow) in scale and capability well beyond its opening configuration."

"Our decision to build this state-of-the-art manufacturing campus in Houston, Texas, reflects our confidence in the region’s ability to support a world-class, digitally advanced supply operation,” Karin Shanahan, EVP and chief supply chain and operations officer of BMS, added in the release. “This facility is designed to deliver the speed, quality, and reliability that patients depend on, combining flexible, modular manufacturing with advanced digital capabilities to ensure consistent supply across multiple modalities. It strengthens our ability to operate with resilience and positions us to reliably deliver medicines to patients today while adapting future demands.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott shared that the state has granted BMS a $4.89 million Texas Enterprise Fund (TEF) grant for the project. TEF grants, administered by the Texas Economic Development & Tourism Office, support business relocation or expansion projects that create "new, good-paying jobs in the community and attract significant new capital investment to the state." The development is also a qualified project under the Texas Jobs, Energy, Technology, and Innovation (JETI) program.

“Texas is a global hub for life sciences, where today’s innovations shape the future of healthcare,” Abbott said in a news release. “This $2.3 billion investment by Bristol Myers Squibb in the dynamic biotech ecosystem in Houston is a testament to the depth of our skilled workforce and the pipeline of talent coming through our nation-leading technical colleges and research universities. With lower operating costs and easy access to markets across the U.S. and the world, Texas drives affordability for consumers.”

"Bristol Myers Squibb’s announcement is a tremendous win for Texas and the Houston region, further reinforcing our position as a premier destination for life sciences and advanced manufacturing,” added Greater Houston Partnership President and CEO Steve Kean.

Last fall, Eli Lilly and Co. selected Generation Park, a 4,300-acre, master-planned commercial district near Lake Houston, for its $6.5 billion manufacturing plant. More than 300 locations in the U.S. competed for the factory. Read more here.

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