Rice University - Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management

Rice University

Social Systems Architect focused on education, organizations, and cities

Houston, Texas, United States

Launched the beSomeone mobile app - an 'Instagram of project-based learning' ‌where‌ students‌ ‌can‌ ‌show‌ ‌off‌ ‌their‌ ‌work,‌ ‌track‌ ‌their‌ ‌growth,‌ ‌and‌ ‌promote‌ ‌their‌ ‌favorites‌ ‌to‌ ‌be‌ ‌incorporated‌ ‌into‌ ‌the‌ ‌curriculum. More at <a href="https://www.besomeone.app/">https://www.besomeone.app/</a>

Talent Unbound PBC

Founder

National think tank lead by noted urbanist Joel Kotkin dedicated to promoting upward social mobility in cities.

Urban Reform Institute - A Center for Opportunity Urbanism

Founding Senior Fellow

Worked to revolutionize K-12 education out of the industrial age with an impact-investing loan fund to launch high-quality, low-cost private microschools (<120 students) in churches and elsewhere with innovative approaches built around personalized mastery-based eLearning, social-emotional character development, community engagement, citizenship, and challenging project-based learning to develop real-world 21st-century skills like entrepreneurship, lifetime self-learning, design thinking, and collaborative problem solving.  EDventure 2017 shark tank winner ($150k).

Microschool Revolution PBC

Developing a high-tech network of high-performance, personalized private microschools affordable to the middle class. Combines the best elements of eLearning, home schooling, and traditional schooling for a 21st-century education with an emphasis on project-based learning, Socratic dialogues, and eLearning by students with a high degree of autonomy and self-management. Accepted into the inaugural class of Rice University's Owlspark accelerator program and sponsored by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. Won second place at a Rice University business school "owl tank/shark tank" startup pitch competition. Pilot school Talent Unbound opened Fall 2014 in northwest Houston (<a href="http://www.TalentUnbound.org">www.TalentUnbound.org</a>) and now has a second campus in Katy, TX.

Coached Schooling and Talent Unbound (now Acton Academy Champions)

Co-Founder

Team looking to re-purpose the Astrodome as the world's largest technology museum - including Smithsonian-affiliation - to inspire students into STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) fields to address the 14 Grand Challenges of Engineering for the next century.  Part of a larger economic and talent development and tourism strategy for Houston to become the "Washington DC of applied STEM", with a complex of STEM-based museums and tourist experiences similar to the Smithsonian Mall.

National Innovation and Technology Museum

Mentored a team of Rice engineering summer interns at the City of Houston through the Rice Center for Engineering Leadership.  Run like a McKinsey team with a focus on "open source government" and coming up with innovative solutions to the City's technology challenges.  Co-author of the paper "Considering a New Information Architecture for the City of Houston".

Lecturer, School of Engineering

Taught business strategy to a summer class of MBA students.

Houston Baptist University

Adjunct Faculty in Strategy, Graduate School of Business

OpenTeams was web-hosted collaborative software to enable Organization 2.0: less bureaucratic, more innovative, more adaptive, and more engaging - operating more like the Silicon Valley ecosystem internally, with more transparency to get the right talent to the right opportunities at the right time.On a technical level, OpenTeams reinvents the wiki in an easy-to-use 3-pane interface like Outlook email and newsfeed readers that people are familiar with, making it far easier for non-techies to learn and use. On a functional level, OpenTeams has the flexibility to be used for project collaboration, blogging, social networking, community building, and knowledge management, but its main use is as an innovative initiative development environment, where people can post an idea and collaboratively develop it with a self-organizing team, eventually finding executive sponsorship and execution.Managed both onshore and offshore development teams.  Developed all marketing materials, including a booth at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston.  Ongoing small enterprise management.“Five Enterprise 2.0 Startups to Watch” –Information Week“Takes the icky out of wiki.” –ZDNet

OpenTeams LLC

Founder, President, and Social Systems Architect

Web site where people could pose questions/challenges and give 'gratitude tokens' to the best answers/solutions.  Similar business model later succeeded as Quora and Yahoo Answers.

Gratitude.net

Technology startup of Rice engineering alumni dedicated to improving the cost, quality, & cycle time of lightweight/high-strength aerospace composites and plastics to meet automotive industry requirements, resulting in better safety, fuel efficiency, and an order of magnitude cost reduction in tooling for new models.  Handled all non-technical aspects of the business, including financial and business planning.  Worked under three different $2M/3-year NIST ATP federal research grants.

Stewart Automotive Research, LLC

Co-Founder and Vice President

Technical leader of electronic commerce activities for AMVESCAP and all of its subsidiaries globally, including the AIM and INVESCO mutual fund companies, with a combined total of 4000 employees and $250 billion in assets under management.  Worked with the director from marketing to develop Internet, intranet, and extranet strategies.  Managed a 20+ person department to implement those strategies.  Hosted six web sites and a global intranet from our data center in Houston.  Speaker on Extranets at the IDG Internet Commerce Expo in San Francisco (6/98).  Series 7 financial industry training.

AMVESCAP

Electronic Commerce Technical Manager

Strategic management consulting with a focus on information technology.·Guided a large pharma client through a $100 million Year 2000 systems project to come in on schedule and under budget with minimal risk·Conducted a comprehensive process and systems reengineering study for a retail energy marketer, including gas and risk management systems selection·Designed an IT-related new business entry strategy for a major telecom client, including analysis and selection of a best-fit  acquisition candidate·Redesigned the trading process for a large energy marketer, with a focus on creating an architecture for an integrated multi-commodity trading system strategy along with a multi-year transition plan·Conducted an applications architecture diagnostic for a large credit card bank, including the mapping of applications and processes, an assessment of functionality gaps and constraints, and recommendations of application portfolio enhancements to provide new strategic capabilities.

Tory Gattis

Tory Gattis