Practice Director - Data and AI

The Business Week Experience celebrates 50 years. September 10, 2026 Building business bonds. by Nathaniel Miller Natalie Moreno (B.B.A. '17, M.B.A. '21) is expecting to feel a full-circle moment in the Atrium of the Alkek. B. Business Building in October. As a Global Training Enablement Manager at Rackspace Technology and scheduled guest speaker for the annual Business Week Experience, she will join a select group who have experienced the event as both a student and presenter. The annual Business Week Experience, held at the St. Mary's University Greehey School of Business, originally started as Business Week. Founded in 1976 by Brother Paul Goelz, S.M., Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Management and Dean Emeritus, his goal was to bring the business world to the classroom. This year is a special one: the annual event will be celebrating its 50th anniversary. This year's event is scheduled for Tuesday, Oct. 27, through Thursday, Oct. 29. Through changes, adaptations, a redesign and renaming, the heart of Goelz's mission has always been about bringing business experts to the students. "We figured out the secret recipe for students' professional development through this signature program," said Rowena Ortiz-Walters, Ph.D., Dean of the Greehey School of Business. "We're graduating leaders who are working and leading our institutions and our organizations in San Antonio and making a huge impact. Hopefully, we have 50 more years of that." Classroom to boardroom experience. For decades, Business Week followed a simple, but effective, format: classroom engagement, sessions with local professionals, a keynote speaker and a concluding dinner. Records from the Greehey School of Business actually show a dinner, then an awards banquet, predating the multi-day event by at least three years. It didn't take long for Business Week to turn students into active participants. In 1980, all University undergraduates were invited to write an essay about how the event was building better partnerships. The winner received $750 and had their essay printed in the business section of the San Antonio Express-News. The biggest change to the event came in 2020, showing how the Greehey School of Business was dedicated to the core Marianist value of adapting to change. The beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic uprooted traditional norms. Instead of canceling, the event moved online, helping students prepare for a new virtual workforce. In 2021, Ortiz-Walter's first year as dean, Business Week underwent a redesign, with an official announcement made in 2022. Ortiz-Walter saw the importance of the event to the Business School's community. "We couldn't do this for 50 years if it wasn't focusing on students' professional development," she said. For the 2026 event, the Business Week format will be tweaked again to resemble a business conference. Students will be expected to attend in proper business attire and learn how to navigate check-ins and networking. Those who need clothing assistance can utilize the Rattler Wardrobe - an on-campus closet that loans professional clothing to business students. Signature events, such as the La Quinta Keynote Lecture, moderated panels and workshops will continue to be focal points of Business Week. New interactive events, like the Rattler Pit - a Shark Tank-inspired event in which University and high school students will pitch ideas to a panel of judges - will be added to the agenda this year. Attendees will also have a chance to attend Speed Networking, meeting with industry leaders, similar to speed dating, allowing students to network and work on their elevator pitches. Jurica Professor of Accounting Kent Royalty, J.D., LL.M., who celebrated 40 years at St. Mary's in 2026, said Business Week has always been student-focused. "Business Week provides a valuable opportunity for students and faculty to connect with and learn from business leaders," Royalty said. "As a professor, I am continually inspired and moved by the professional, academic and service contributions of our students." From student to speaker. Education was always important to Moreno and her family. Her father came to the United States as a child in the 1960s after the Cuban Revolution. He wished to see his children achieve the American Dream. Moreno attended private, Catholic schools from grade school through high school. St. Mary's was a no-brainer for the San Antonio native when it was time for her undergraduate and graduate studies. "When it came time to get my master's, I was looking at different programs and thought, 'Why am I looking at different universities when I went to the best one that I know?'" Moreno said. As a student, the thrill of dressing in business attire and networking at the annual event was an exciting opportunity, one that didn't feel like classes. Free food, she jokes, was also an enticing perk. It connected her classroom instruction with real-world scenarios, even preparing her for a career outside her Marketing bachelor's degree. Working at Rackspace, Moreno finds and develops internal talent. This means directing them toward training and certifications that will help them advance in their careers. It makes sense that helping others comes naturally. Without the lessons on how to navigate the various aspects of business culture, she wouldn't have the confidence to take risks. "St. Mary's prepared me to reinforce something a past manager told me, which was to treat your role like you're the CEO of your job," she said. "Because I was exposed to so much of the business world, I feel prepared to take on a bit of everything." Tell us what you think:

Why is Rackspace Technology stock surging today? Published Sep 10, 2026, 07:34 AM (C) Reuters. Investing.com - Rackspace Technology stock surged 12.4% in pre-open trading today after the company announced it has joined the NVIDIA Cloud Partner Program, a strategic move that will allow it to deliver NVIDIA Blackwell-powered accelerated computing to regulated enterprises and government customers. As part of the announcement, Rackspace introduced its Institutional Sovereign Pod, an AI infrastructure architecture that integrates NVIDIA's latest Blackwell GPU platform with Palantir's Foundry and AIP software within a governed private cloud environment. The partnership represents a meaningful strategic repositioning for Rackspace, which has been trading well off its 52-week high of $8.60 and as recently as earlier this year touched a 52-week low of $0.393. Combining two high-profile technology brands - NVIDIA and Palantir - under a sovereign AI infrastructure offering gives the company a differentiated product aimed at clients in heavily regulated sectors such as defense, finance, and government, where data sovereignty requirements limit the use of public cloud alternatives. An insider "sell to cover" transaction by the company's CHRO earlier this week, executed purely for tax withholding purposes under a pre-established trading plan, carries no negative signal for the stock. The broader market provided little assistance to today's move, with the NASDAQ composite slightly lower and the S&P 500 essentially flat, confirming that the rally is entirely driven by Rackspace-specific news rather than sector-wide or macro tailwinds. Taken together, the NVIDIA Cloud Partner Program membership and the launch of the Institutional Sovereign Pod gave investors a concrete, forward-looking growth narrative, triggering a sharp pre-market rerating of the stock toward $3.641 - a level that still leaves meaningful room relative to its 52-week high. -4.58 (-2.05%) Real-time Data · 11:58:39 · USD Should you invest $2,000 in NVDA right now? ProPicks AI evaluates NVDA alongside thousands of other companies every month using 100+ financial metrics. Using powerful AI to generate exciting stock ideas, it looks beyond popularity to assess fundamentals, momentum, and valuation. The AI has no bias - it simply identifies which stocks offer the best risk-reward based on current data with notable past winners that include Super Micro Computer (+185%) and AppLovin (+157%). Want to know if NVDA is currently featured in any ProPicks AI strategies, or if there are better opportunities in the same space?

Rackspace Technology has joined NVIDIA's Cloud Partner Program and announced plans to launch NVIDIA Blackwell-powered AI infrastructure targeting regulated enterprises and governments. The company will offer an Institutional Sovereign Pod, combining NVIDIA Blackwell architecture with Palantir Foundry and AIP in a managed environment. The infrastructure aims to give organisations control over their data, models and AI environments whilst maintaining performance for production workloads. Rackspace will provide forward-deployed engineering and managed operations. As an NVIDIA Cloud Partner, Rackspace will support NVIDIA technologies across enterprise AI infrastructure layers, with competencies in compute, networking, visualisation and NVIDIA Enterprise Software. The partnership strengthens Rackspace's position as what CEO Gajen Kandiah calls a "governed operator" for production AI systems. The solution targets organisations requiring data residency, governance, security and compliance controls whilst deploying AI at scale.