Partnership Institute
Company description
The Partnership Institute, LLC builds educational simulations — video, animation, virtual reality, and eventually augmented reality — aimed primarily at healthcare communication training, on the premise that clinical skills are taught in labs but communication skills need practice too, especially since pandemic-era rule changes let simulation time count as clinical hours. Its animation is built at a higher fidelity than most competitors in the space (the application specifically cites lip-sync and facial expression quality as a differentiator against its main identified competitor, Mursion), with plans to eventually incorporate NVIDIA's Omniverse platform and AI. The company took part in the Emerging Industries cohort of Startup Texas in 2023, sponsored by the Brownsville Community Improvement Corporation (BCIC) in partnership with UTRGV's Entrepreneurship and Commercialization Center (ECC), and later graduated into Startup Texas's SBIR/STTR Accelerator track, a partnership between BCIC and the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) that helps startups prepare federal SBIR/STTR research grant applications.
Founder Douglas Best is a nurse with ICU, ER, and NICU experience at Valley Baptist and Valley Regional, and a former Director of Medical Continuing Education at the University of Texas at Brownsville. His background spans teaching in the military and vocational schools, consulting with the federal prison system in Mexico and nursing programs in Sri Lanka, eight years as a corporate trainer at Humana Government, and local public service as a City Councilman, Mayor Pro Tem, and EDC president in Pleasanton, Texas. Co-founder Anita Best holds a business degree from UT Brownsville and has worked in financial aid, rehabilitation advocacy, and medical billing/coding; together the couple also created "Movie Gift," a Brownsville program that takes special-needs children to the movies each Christmas.
The company has since grown into four working divisions: 101Train (a video-optimized learning management system supporting more than 50 languages), Iron Knee Studios (video and animation production), PiSquares (business development and research strategy arm), and Sea of Shows (animation-and-live-performer entertainment shows staged mostly in South Padre Island and Port Isabel). The Partnership Institute also serves as the minority partner and operational management team for Architex Labs, a medical research company that has repositioned part of its operations to Brownsville while continuing research in Houston and San Antonio.
Founders: Douglas Best and Anita Best
Program: 2023 StartUp Texas Accelerator - Emerging Industries cohort; continued into the 2024–2025 Startup Texas SBIR/STTR Accelerator (with Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station)
Links and socials
Website: thepicorp.com
LinkedIn (company): linkedin.com/company/the-partnership-institute-llc