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A recent New York Times headlineDid Women Ruin the Workplace?sparked a firestorm across social media. Alison Moore, CEO of Chief, the prestigious network for senior women executives, is pushing back on this notion with data and nuance. Drawing from an exclusive nationwide survey of women leaders, Moore unpacks how evolving career paths are being misread, the impact of market disruption, and why women-centered spaces remain vital. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scalepodcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. The environment that you’ve come into with the Trump White House is kind of heightened; discussions about diversity are heated. The term DEI has become kind of a negative. How do you frame what Chief is about in this kind of climate? There’s certainly more scrutiny on things today perhaps than there were in the past, but I think at the end of the day, there’s a desire for creating better, stronger leaders, better outcomes, better decision-making, more agile thinking. While there are different contexts being held and conversations being held around DEI and the nuances of that, the truth is when you cut through the big headlines, the realities remain the same, which is supporting leadership at a time of high velocity of change is always beneficial, and we happen to build that in a way that supports women leaders, and I think there’s a lot of support for that. Chief recently published a report in partnership with Harris surveying over a thousand senior level women, and it pointed to a sort of changing definition of maybe ambition and success, a shift away from playing it safe toward bolder career moves, which was in some ways more optimistic and more empowering than I’d expected. There had been a slew of articles that had come out focusing on changes in the workforce and finding the negative nugget in there to kind of put that on blast. And I’m not denying that there aren’t those factors at hand, but the she-cession is coming, women are being dumped out of the workforce. The return to office doesn’t work for all women in the polarity that we’re in today of big headlines being the only definition. We lose all nuance. And so for us here, I come in February and I’m looking at this incredibly energetic Chief membership and thinking, “This is what I’m seeing. I’m seeing people reacting and responding to change in ways that are innovative and curious and thought-provoking, this level of optimism that’s sitting in Chief, that they’re communicating together.” This is not just Chief telling women to be optimistic, this is the energy that you’re feeling from conversation. And so the genesis of this poll was how do we validate that? And so in the women that we surveyed, they’re citing that they’re more ambitious now than ever, and in fact they’re energized by the professional growth ahead because they feel like they can have more optionality and more of a hand on the wheel of their own career design than what they used to have. This is where that metaphor of the ladder and the stay rung to rung to rung and keep the course and stay the path and then something happens at the top. Everyone can see that’s not necessarily the case anymore. How much of the boldness do you think might be economy driven? I noticed that over 80% of the executives cited market disruption as a motivator. It’s almost like disruption is, I don’t know, forcing action? I think the economy is certainly always going to be a factor, but it’s also like, look at industry consolidation. You can look at what’s happening in the media business, you can look at what’s happening across retail. You can look at what’s happening in every vector and AI, which has a through line all the way across all of these industries, and a common thread of this duality of opportunity and threat of change. Is that rung as a metaphor again, for just career direction, not necessarily the corporate ladder as much as it is just the up a ladder? Is that the right path for me? Do I want other options? Do I want different kinds of flexibility? Do I have the sort of tools at my fingertips to actually do that? And that is what happens at Chief and that’s what’s been very interesting for me to see and come back actually from a founding membership in 2019 to where we are today. Women are building, scheming, meaning business is scheming, partnering, collaborating differently now. I think the lids off on a lot of that stuff for women. And so you do feel the optimism coming out in this survey, even though I think there’s a pragmatism and recognizing it is coming from disruption, but disruption does bring opportunity. So much of Chief is built around in-person connection and community, but in-person it’s so hard to scale. And I know when I was talking to your predecessor, Carolyn, she talked about the potential to have a LinkedIn-like product and a Masterclass-like product and a dating-app like product. How do you think about todays digital tools for community versus the IRL experiences? Where do you balance those things? What I think about Chief today, and I think that was a very accurate description that Carolyn gave when that started. I think we’ve morphed into this space where there are a couple of different components. There are intimate experiences. By that, I mean small space experiences where you talk and see and share about leadership challenges that can be in a virtual experience, very rewarding, but in certain places and markets, we can make that happen in real life. It doesn’t have to be either-or, coaching, one-to-one coaching, so that happens on a virtual piece sometimes, that can be very rewarding, but if I’m going to have a cocktail party around other senior marketers, that should be at the clubhouse in real life. I’m about to go to LA this week for my eighth and then San Francisco in two weeks for the ninth. Nine ChiefXs this year, and this is where nine locations across the country, we’ve had members come, and it’s in real life, and they’re like rallies, and I get so much energy out of these things. It’s unbelievable. We have some speakers, some programming, but it’s really about this kind of connecting energy between Chiefs with other Chiefs, big corporate people talking to founders of small things, folks who are in transition, all senior leaders in various parts of their journey, and these large rallies are definitely IRL and then peppered between that are the right size virtual experiences. My next tranche of focus is really on the digital experience, the Chief app, the Chief digital experience in terms of, how do we make that as bes of a member companion? The networking piece, the connections piece, whether that was the LinkedIn analogy that Carolyn meant, that’s where that really comes to life, but it comes to life in service of a lot of in real life experiences across multiple use types. Many of the things that a woman leader is interested in are things that any leader is interested in. It doesn’t have to connect to the fact that it’s a woman, and then there are a tranche of things that may be more applicable to women than to men, although you could argue they’re applicable to everyone. I always struggled with this when we mentioned you being in Fast Company. It was for a package we did on the most creative people in business and there were men and women on it, and we didn’t do a most powerful women in business like Fortune did. But there is something different when women get together without men there that maybe as a man I don’t quite appreciate or I want to, but I don’t really know. Listen, I think for women in leadership roles, there is a place and a time for being together and learning from each other that’s just different. It’s additive. The conversations are because a woman’s career journey is tied to that 360 view of who they are in life, it just makes those conversations different, but not necessarily better. I’ve been in multiple coworking environments where it’s male, female, that’s all great too. I’m a big believer in the bothI really am.
Category:
E-Commerce
A powerful advisory group within the CDC voted Friday to overturn a longstanding precaution designed to protect newborn babies. If the change is approved by the acting director of the agency, the government will no longer universally recommend the hepatitis B vaccine at birth. The shot, which provides protection from the leading cause of liver cancer, has been standard practice for newborns since 1991. Fridays 8-3 vote is a milestone for Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who quickly began reshaping the public health agency to reflect his personal views on vaccines after being sworn in early this year. Kennedy has long been a prominent voice among anti-vaccine activists, a position that sparked broad concern that the CDC might break with scientific consensus around vaccines under his guidance. In August, the FDA narrowed its approval for the COVID vaccine to people 65 and older or those with underlying health conditions. In spite of the FDAs changes, many insurers said that they would follow previous guidance and cover the shots widely for anyone who wanted one In a press release following Fridays vote, the CDC defended its decision to support individual-based decision-making which would encourage parents and their doctors to opt into childhood vaccines based on the risk of infection. The committee will now only recommend the vaccine at birth for newborns born to mothers who test positive for hepatitis B. “The American people have benefited from the committee’s well-informed, rigorous discussion about the appropriateness of a vaccination in the first few hours of life,” CDC Acting Director Jim O’Neill said. Battle at the CDC O’Neill, an entrepreneur and investor with prior experience at HHS, was chosen for the post after the dramatic ouster of former director Susan Monarez, who was herself nominated by Trump. Monarez was fired after refusing to back Kennedys preferred changes to the agencys vaccine policy, prompting a wave of high profile resignations at the CDC. They are essentially trying to undo a lot of the science that has been settled for vaccine policies, Dr. Daniel Jernigan, former director of the CDC’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, said following the flurry of resignations. Former CDC Director Susan Monarez testified in the Senate in September, issuing grave warnings about Kennedys influence on U.S. health policy. Given what I have seen, if we continue down this path, we are not preparednot just for pandemics, but for preventing chronic health disease. And were going to see kids dying of vaccine-preventable diseases, Monarez said. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, also known as ACIP, has been a particular nexus of concern given Kennedys history of spreading vaccine misinformation. Kennedy fired all of the committees previous members earlier this year and installed new members friendlier to anti-vaccine policies. At the time, Kennedy stressed that the agency should care as much about every child who could be injured by one of these products as we do every child who could be injured by an infectious disease, referencing a talking point common in anti-vaccine misinformation. Doctors reject the CDC changes In spite of Kennedys claim that the remade panel would feature no ideological anti-vaxxers, its new members include vaccine skeptics and other members with no prior vaccine experience. The changes were consequential enough to prompt a lawsuit from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the largest professional association of pediatricians in the country. Pediatricians have seen firsthand the harm created by the disruptive and politicized decisions to overturn decades of evidence-based federal guidance on immunizations, AAP President Susan J. Kressly, M.D. said. These changes have caused fear, decreased vaccine confidence, and barriers for families to access vaccines. Fridays vote wont be official until the CDCs acting director signs the new recommendations, which is very likely to happen. At least one Republican expressed his concerns about the rollback to 30 years of U.S. vaccine policy on Friday, encouraging the acting director to reject the changes. Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, a physician who supported Kennedy to lead HHS, also called the ACIP totally discredited on X leading up to the vote. As a liver doctor who has treated patients with hepatitis B for decades, this change to the vaccine schedule is a mistake, Cassidy wrote on X. … Before the birth dose was recommended, 20,000 newborns a year were infected with hepatitis B. Now, its fewer than 20. Ending the recommendation for newborns makes it more likely the number of cases will begin to increase again.
Category:
E-Commerce
Its the first week in December. If you don’t already have the Christmas tunes blasting in the office, what are you waiting for? The debate over listening to music while at work, however, often divides offices. Some love to crank up the music while toiling away, and find silence to be deafening. Others can only listen to background music or instrumental playlists like coffeeshop jazz in the background or LoFi Girl, a genre featuring low-fidelity, calming beats. Some insist on complete silence. As the countdown to the holidays begins, Google searches for Christmas playlist 2025 have spiked this past week. But could listening to Mariah Carey or Michael Bublé on loop be sabotaging office productivity? A study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience found that pleasurable music triggers dopamine release, creating a natural high that can boost energy for mundane tasks. But while listening to music can boost focus and productivity, the BPM, or beats per minute, matter: Research has shown music with a tempo of 50-80 beats per minute is optimal for focus and productivity. When background music at a workplace is out of sync with what workers need to get on with their jobs, it can affect their energy, mood and even performance. So what does this mean for your favorite festive tunes? TopResume analyzed Spotifys most popular Christmas songs and ranked them by BPM to reveal the tracks most likely to derail office concentration in the final weeks of 2025. Bad news for Ariana Grande stans. Grandes Last Christmas takes the top spot as the most distracting Christmas song, with a 206 BPM. This comes in at over triple the recommended BPM of 60-80 for maintaining focus during tasks. Employees may also find Bing Crosby and The Andrews Sisters’ “Mele Kalikimaka (Merry Christmas)” and Shakin’ Stevens’ “Merry Christmas Everyone” somewhat distracting with a 203 BPM. Andy Williams’ “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” (202 BPM), another Ariana Grande Christmas classic, “Santa Tell Me” (192 BPM) are also best left for lunch break listening. On the other hand, Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” emerged as the most productivity-friendly holiday track, clocking in at just 67 BPM, the optimal tempo range for maintaining concentration. Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas To You)” and Whitney Houston’s “Do You Hear What I Hear?” tied at 73 BPM. The Vince Guaraldi Trio’s beloved “Christmas Time Is Here” comes in at 75 BPM. Festive favorite Ella Fitzgerald claims two spots with “Frosty The Snowman” and “Sleigh Ride,” both at 77 BPM. The end of the year is an especially demanding time for many professionals. Between wrapping up projects, juggling tighter deadlines, managing holiday commitments at home, and navigating the colder weather and shorter days, its easy for stress levels to creep up, Amanda Augustine, a certified professional career coach and the resident career expert for TopResume, says. Thats why its so important to create a festive atmosphere at work that doesnt sacrifice anyones focus. p>Thats not an excuse to be a Grinch and insist on silence (after all, its Christmas and noise cancelling headphones exist for a reason). Simply swap out Ariana Grande for Ella Fitzgerald in shared spaces and everyones happy. Maybe.
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E-Commerce
Frank Gehry, who designed some of the most imaginative buildings ever constructed and achieved a level of worldwide acclaim seldom afforded any architect, has died. He was 96. Gehry died Friday in his home in Santa Monica, California, after a brief respiratory illness, said Meaghan Lloyd, chief of staff at Gehry Partners LLP. Gehry’s fascination with modern pop art led to the creation of some of the most striking buildings ever constructed and brought him a measure of worldwide acclaim seldom afforded any architect. Among his many masterpieces are the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles; and the DZ Bank Building in Berlin, Germany. He also designed an expansion of Facebooks Northern California headquarters at the insistence of the companys CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. Gehry was awarded every major prize architecture has to offer, including the fields top honor, the Pritzker Prize, for what has been described as refreshingly original and totally American work. Other honors include the Royal Institute of British Architects gold medal, the Americans for the Arts lifetime achievement award, and his native countrys highest honor, the Companion of the Order of Canada. Years after he stopped designing ordinary-looking buildings, word surfaced in 2006 that the pedestrian Santa Monica mall project that had led to his career epiphany might be headed for the wrecking ball. Gehry admirers were aghast, but the man himself was amused. Theyre going to tear it down now and build the kind of original idea I had, he said with a laugh. Eventually, the mall was remodeled, giving it a more contemporary, airy outdoor look. Still, its no Gehry masterpiece. Gehry, meanwhile, continued to work well into his 80s, turning out heralded buildings that remade skylines around the world. The headquarters of the InterActiveCorp, known as the IAC Building, took the shape of a shimmering beehive when it was completed in New York Citys Chelsea district in 2007. The 76-story New York By Gehry building (now known as 8 Spruce), once one of the worlds tallest residential structures, was a stunning addition to the lower Manhattan skyline when it opened in 2011. That same year, Gehry joined the faculty of his alma mater, the University of Southern California, as a professor of architecture. He also taught at Yale and Columbia universities. Not everyone was a fan of Gehrys work. Some naysayers dismissed it as not much more than gigantic, lopsided reincarnations of the little scrap-wood cities he said he spent hours building when he was growing up in the mining town of Timmins, Ontario. Princeton art critic Hal Foster dismissed many of his later efforts as oppressive, arguing they were designed primarily to be tourist attractions. Some denounced the Disney Hall as looking like a collection of cardboard boxes that had been left out in the rain. Still other critics included Dwight D. Eisenhowers family, who objected to Gehrys bold proposal for a memorial to honor the nations 34th president. Although the family said it wanted a simple memorial and not the one Gehry had proposed, with its multiple statues and billowing metal tapestries depicting Eisenhowers life, the architect declined to change his design significantly. If the words of his critics annoyed Gehry, he rarely let on. Indeed, he even sometimes played along. He appeared as himself in a 2005 episode of The Simpsons cartoon show, in which he agreed to design a concert hall that was later converted into a prison. He came up with the idea for the design, which looked a lot like the Disney Hall, after crumpling Marge Simpsons letter to him and throwing it on the ground. After taking a look at it, he declared, Frank Gehry, youve done it again! Some people think I actually do that, he would later tell The Associated Press. Ephraim Owen Goldberg was born in Toronto on February 28, 1929, and moved to Los Angeles with his family in 1947, eventually becoming a U.S. citizen. As an adult, he changed his name at the suggestion of his first wife, who told him antisemitism might be holding back his career. Although he had enjoyed drawing and building model cities as a child, Gehry said it wasnt until he was 20 that he pondered the possibility of pursuing a career in architecture, after a college ceramics teacher recognized his talent. It was like the first thing in my life that Id done well in, he said. He went on to earn a degree in architecture from the University of Southern California in 1954. After serving in the Army, he studied urban planning at Harvard University. His survivors include his wife, Berta; daughter, Brina; sons Alejandro and Samuel; and the buildings he created. Another daughter, Leslie Gehry Brenner, died of cancer in 2008. By John Rogers, Associated Press
Category:
E-Commerce
In South Korea several weeks ago, the U.S. and China came to a temporary agreement, in which theyll kick a rare-earth can down the road. The agreement took the form of a one-year pause in the dispute between the two nations over rare earth elements (REEs): China postponed imposing newly announced export controls on 17 different REEs and, in turn, the U.S. announced it would reduce certain tariffs on Chinese goods. For years, the United States and its allies have grappled with a troubling resource reality: China dominates the global supply of REEs and critical raw materials (CRMs)the essential ingredients of our digital age. From smartphones to electric vehicles, from solar panels to advanced weapons systems, our dependence on these materials has left the U.S. economically and strategically vulnerable. While this new deal provides a short-term relief from supply-chain stress, it also deepens the case that we cannot forever rely on Chinas good will or geopolitical timing. Rather than doubling down on negotiations and hoping for stable access, what if we could build a parallel, resilient, and circular system here at home? We actually can. Call it urban mining. ELECTRONIC WASTE Every year, millions of tons of electronic waste and batteries pile up in landfills or languish in drawersold laptops and broken phones, obsolete keyboards, and rusty routers. These discarded gadgets may be junk, but theyre also laden with circular ore. They contain cadmium, lithium, cobalt, and other valuable elements that can be extracted, refined, and reused. Recovery rates on materials in lithium-ion batteries, for example, can reach as high as 98% for cobalt, 95% for nickel, and 90% for copper and aluminum. According to recent studies, the amount of precious and rare metals embedded in global electronic waste is enough to supply many industries for decades. We can leverage that here. If properly recovered, the materials in our existing e-waste could sustain electric vehicle and other manufacturing needs for the next 70 years. Urban mining offers a domestic supply of REEs and CRMsone that doesnt depend on any single foreign states capricious decision to keep exporting. A NEW KIND OF SUPPLY CHAIN Urban mining is more than recycling. Its about re-engineering the supply chain, turning structurally excluded communities into decentralized resource hubs where waste becomes a renewable source of critical materials. Imagine a network of regional recovery centers across North America and Europe processing old electronics with advanced separation and extraction technologies. These urban hubs could feed the domestic market with a steady stream of critical materialsno freighters, no tariffs, no geopolitical strings attached. We know the great potential of this approach because the Circular Supply Chain Coalition (CSCC) has tested these efforts already. As the founding convener of the CSCC, my company, Pyxera Global, conducted a pilot effort in Tennessee with leading circular supply chain partners who know a thing or two about reverse logistics. Developing a robust urban-mining ecosystem could also create green jobs, boost local economies, and reduce our carbon footprint. More importantly, it would grant the countries in which the CSCC operates and its partners true mineral sovereignty. Instead of negotiating access to foreign mines, we could mine our own cities, transforming dependence into resilience. In that light, urban mining stands out as a strategic insurance policy. If we build capacity to recover and reallocate critical materials domestically, we reduce external providers bargaining power. We cant just dig our way out of this problem, nor do we have to. The minerals we need arent just buried deep in the earth. Theyre sitting in our homes, offices, and landfills, waiting to be reclaimed. Urban mining offers us a future of independence, innovation, and sustainability. The next gold rush isnt in them thar hills. Its in our landfills, garages, and junk drawers. Deirdre White is president and CEO of Pyxera Global.
Category:
E-Commerce