About Ascend
Ascend is the training platform built by Rise Solutions, a company founded by natural gas industry professionals with decades of experience spanning trading, logistics, accounting, risk management, and ETRM technology. Ascend exists to bridge the gap between academia and the energy workforce.
The Problem We Solve
New hires in the natural gas industry, regardless of their academic background, typically require 6 to 9 months of on-the-job learning before becoming productive contributors. Companies invest significant time and resources ramping up employees who lack practical industry knowledge.
At the same time, the industry tends to place professionals in narrow functional roles. A scheduler who only schedules. An accountant who only settles invoices. They never develop an understanding of how the broader business connects. This creates knowledge gaps that compound over entire careers. Ascend was built to solve both problems.
Our Philosophy: Asset From Day One
Ascend compresses the traditional 6-9 month ramp-up to near zero. The curriculum teaches the entire natural gas value chain end to end, from the moment a resource is extracted from the ground to the moment it is consumed by an end user. Students don't just study one function; they learn how supply, logistics, and demand connect across every layer of the business.
This isn't theory-only learning. Ascend provides hands-on access to the same ETRM platform used by Rise Solutions' commercial clients, where students enter real transactions, schedule gas movements, reconcile volumes, and see how physical operations translate into financial results. The same work they'll do on the job.
Breaking the Silo Effect
The natural gas industry has a well-known problem: the Silo Effect. Companies place employees into narrow functional roles early in their careers (trading, scheduling, accounting, compliance) and they rarely develop a view of how the full business operates. A scheduler may never understand how their nominations affect the P&L. An accountant may never see how a deal flows from execution to settlement.
Ascend deliberately breaks this pattern. Every module is designed to connect to the ones around it, building a complete picture of how the industry works from production through distribution. Professionals who understand the full value chain make better decisions, communicate more effectively across teams, and become the people their organizations turn to when it matters most.
Built on Proven Expertise
Rise Solutions has served the natural gas industry for decades. Their ETRM platform powers day-to-day operations for local distribution companies, public utilities, midstream marketers, and gas management firms, covering everything from deal capture and scheduling to risk management, compliance, and financial settlement.
Beyond software, Rise is the team that top industry players call when they face complex operational problems. That deep cross-functional expertise, built over decades of hands-on work with clients of every size, is the same expertise that powers every module in Ascend.
University Partnership
The Rise team has been involved in the University of Houston's Energy Trading Systems course for close to two decades. Offered through the Bauer College of Business to both undergraduate and graduate students, the course has consistently produced graduates who enter the workforce ready to contribute from their first day, not after months of on-the-job training.
Multiple members of the Rise team are actively involved in the course, and students work hands-on with the same ETRM technology used by Rise's commercial clients. Ascend takes that same proven curriculum and makes it accessible to professionals and organizations everywhere, not just those in a Houston classroom.