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

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

  1. Give all employees a VR headset
  2. Mandate every team leader offer one new idea per quarter
  3. Add the word "innovate" to the organization's mission statement
  4. 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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Rice University MBA programs rank among top 5 in prestigious annual report

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Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business MBA programs have been ranked among the top five in the country again in The Princeton Review’s 2025 Best Business Schools rankings.

The university's MBA program in finance earned a No. 3 ranking, climbing up two spots from its 2024 ranking. Finance MBA programs at the University of Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business and New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business were the only ones to outrank Rice, claiming No. 2 and No. 1 spots, respectively.

Rice's online MBA program was ranked No. 5, compared to No. 4 last year. Indiana University's Bloomington Kelley School of Business' online program claimed the top spot.

“These rankings reflect the commitment of our faculty and staff, the drive and talent of our students and the strong support of our alumni and partners,” Peter Rodriguez, dean of Rice Business, said in a news release. “They are exceptional honors but also reminders — not just of our top-tier programs and world-class faculty and students but of our broader impact on the future of business education.”

Rice also ranked at No. 6 for “greatest resources for minority students."

The Princeton Review’s 2025 business school rankings are based on data from surveys of administrators at 244 business schools as well as surveys of 22,800 students enrolled in the schools’ MBA programs during the previous three academic years.

"The schools that made our lists for 2025 share four characteristics that inform our criteria for designating them as 'best': excellent academics, robust experiential learning components, outstanding career services, and positive feedback about them from enrolled students we surveyed," Rob Franek, The Princeton Review's editor-in-chief, said in a press release. "No b-school is best overall or best for all students, but to all students considering earning an MBA, we highly recommend these b-schools and salute them for their impressive programs."

Rice's finance program has ranked in the top 10 for eight consecutive years, and its online MBA has ranked in the top five for four years.

Rice and the University of Houston also claimed top marks on the Princeton Review's entrepreneurship rankings. Rice ranks as No. 1 on the Top 50 Entrepreneurship: Grad list, and the University of Houston ranked No. 1 on Top 50 Entrepreneurship: Ugrad. Read more here.

Houston named ‘star’ metro for artificial intelligence in new report

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A new report declares Houston one of the country’s 28 “star” hubs for artificial intelligence.

The Houston metro area appears at No. 16 in the Brookings Institution’s ranking of metros that are AI “stars.” The metro areas earned star status based on data from three AI buckets: talent, innovation and adoption. Only two places, the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley, made Brookings’ “superstar” list.

According to Brookings, the Houston area had 11,369 job postings in 2024 that sought candidates with AI skills, 210 AI startups (based on Crunchbase data from 2014 to 2024), and 113 venture capital deals for AI startups (based on PitchBook data from 2023 to 2024).

A number of developments are boosting Houston’s AI profile, such as:

Brookings also named Texas’s three other major metros as AI stars:

  • No. 11 Austin
  • No. 13 Dallas-Fort Worth
  • No. 40 San Antonio

Brookings said star metros like Houston “are bridging the gap” between the two superstar regions and the rest of the country. In 2025, the 28 star metros made up 46 percent of the country’s metro-area employment but 54 percent of AI job postings. Across the 28 metros, the number of AI job postings soared 139 percent between 2018 and 2025, according to Brookings.

Around the country, dozens of metros fell into three other categories on Brookings’ AI list: “emerging centers” (14 metros), “focused movers” (29 metros) and “nascent adopters” (79 metros).