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Today, Apple is holding its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). While WWDC is historically a developer-focused conference, where programmers who create iPhone, Mac, and iPad apps can attend online sessions to learn about Apple’s latest software technologies, it is also an event that draws significant interest from consumers and the media. Thats because Apple kicks off each WWDC with a keynote presentation, in which the company showcases its upcoming softwarethe operating systems that power its devices, including the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV, and more. These operating systems will be previewed for the first time today before they become available to the general public in the fall. Fast Company has a detailed report on the software announcements and features that Apple is expected to make at todays WWDC25 keynote. All of the companys operating systems are expected to get a visual design overhaulthe most radical in years. The operating systems Apple is expected to reveal include iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS 26, tvOS 26, visionOS 26, and watchOS 26. You can see those announcements by watching the WWDC25 keynote when Apple broadcasts it later today. Heres how. What time is Apples WWDC 25 keynote? Apples 2025 Worldwide Developers Conference keynote takes place today, Monday, June 9. The keynote starts at 10 a.m. Pacific Time. Heres how that time translates into times in other time zones around the world: Hawaii Standard Time (HST): 7 a.m. Pacific Time (PT): 10 a.m. Mountain Time (MT): 11 a.m. Central Time (CT): 12 p.m. Eastern Time (ET): 1 p.m. BST (British Summer Time): 6 p.m. CET (Central European Time): 7 p.m. EEST (Eastern European Summer Time): 8 p.m. MSK (Moscow Standard Time): 8 p.m. IST (Indian Standard Time): 10:30 p.m. ICT (Indochina Time): 11 p.m. CST (China Standard Time): 1 a.m. (June 10) JST (Japan Standard Time): 2 a.m. (June 10) AWST (Western Australia Standard Time): 2 a.m. (June 10) AEST (Australian Eastern Standard Time): 3 a.m. (June 10) NZST (New Zealand Standard Time): 5 a.m. (June 10) How can I livestream Apples WWDC 25 keynote? Apple offers a variety of ways for you to watch its WWDC25 keynote. Heres how: On Apple.com here. On YouTube here. On the Apple TV app on the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, Windows PC, or other supported device here. You can also watch the WWDC25 keynote right here on FastCompany.com. Weve embedded the WWDC25 YouTube stream on this page below.
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Moderna CEO and cofounder Stéphane Bancel probably never imagined hed look back on March 2023 as the good old days. Then, he merely had to go before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee and take a spitty dressing-down from Senator Bernie Sanders over the price of Modernas COVID vaccine. The company was held up as a poster child for corporate greed. For a U.S. pharma executive, though, that was more or less business as usual. Today, the situation is anything but. With the confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent anti-vaxxer, to be the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services this February, once-fringe medical theories have been escalated to the level of policy, throwing established scientific and regulatory norms into doubt. Among drugmakers, perhaps none is worse situated to absorb the D.C. vibe shift than Moderna, which is now being targeted not for its pricing but for its one and only product: mRNA-based vaccines. Kennedy has shown a particular distaste for mRNA vaccines, such as those that were rapidly developed by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech in response to the global outbreak of COVID-19. During the height of the pandemic, Kennedy petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to revoke authorization for COVID-19 vaccines and not approve any future ones, saying that the risks of adverse reactions and death werent adequately studied. These vaccineswhich have been safely administered to billions of people around the world and in 2021 alone saved at least an estimated 14.4 million lives worldwidehave been the subject of conspiracy theories and misinformation since they were first authorized for emergency use in late 2020. Among the debunked claims of critics: the vaccines can alter a persons genome; they contain microchips or tracking devices; They cause something dubbed turbo cancer. Several states, including Florida, Kentucky, South Carolina, Idaho, and Texas are considering laws that would severely limit or ban the use of mRNA vaccines. Louisiana and Texas have already ended mass vaccinations and any promotion of the vaccines. Now, Kennedys HHS is taking action against Modernas signature product. In the past month alone, the CDC has revised its public health recommendations for COVID-19 vaccines, the FDA altered its vaccine approval process, and the government canceled a $766 million contract with Moderna to develop new vaccines against pandemic threats including H5N1 avian influenza. Taken together, these moves have effectively knee-capped Modernas business. Theyve also jeopardized public health, and spread uncertainty across the burgeoning landscape of next-generation RNA-based therapeutics. Moderna can ill afford an unfavorable regulatory environment, much less an administration seemingly bent on its destruction. The company, which declined to make executives available for this story, took in $3.2 billion last yearless than half of the year priorat a net loss of $3.6 billion. For the first quarter this year, it brought in $100 million at a $1 billion loss. Although Moderna launched an RSV vaccine last year and is developing a personalized cancer immunotherapy, almost all of its money still comes from sales of COVID-19 shots, which are steadily declining. And with its entire technology under attack, Modernas future looks anything but certain. Going all in on mRNA While most pharma companies have grown by establishing franchises in particular diseases, Moderna has always been all-in on Bancels conception of a biotech platform company. The entire premise is right there in its ticker symbol: mRNA. The promise of the technology is appealing. Older vaccines typically consist of weakened or killed viruses, or parts of viruses, to mimic an infection and elicit an immune response. These vaccines are grown in eggs or cell cultures, purified, and mixed with adjuvants that help them work in the body. Historically, developing vaccines in this way has taken anywhere from 5 to 10 years. But mRNA vaccines dont require any viruses, or eggs. Instead, they work by delivering into the body genetic instructions, in the form of mRNA molecules, that cells use to manufacture a protein called an antigen, which induces an immune response. The original COVID vaccine contained mRNA instructions to produce a signature spike protein found on the surface of the coronavirus. Because mRNA is digitallike DNA, it encodes a series of nucleotide letters (A, U, G, C)creating new mRNA vaccines is a relatively simple matter of rearranging these letters to create a different antigen. mRNA is made in an egg- and cell-free manufacturing process, and once the sequence for a vaccine has been selected, it can be manufactured in as little as a few weeks. This speed and flexibility are what enabled the development of a working vaccine for COVID within a year of its discovery. And it is why many experts in infectious disease believe mRNA vaccines are an essential tool in responding to future pandemic threats. Bancel has been banking on mRNA not only as a vaccine platform but also as a breakthrough way of treating cancer and other diseases. Until last year, though, Moderna had brought just one product to the market: the Spikevax vaccine for COVID-19. In 2021, the company sold 807 million doses, pocketing $17.7 billion. The companys stock soaredin 2021, Modernas market cap hovered around $200 billion, surpassing legacy drugmakers including GlaxoSmithKline, Amgen, and Merck. But demand for the vaccines has abated quickly. In 2022, Moderna had $18.4 billion in vaccine sales. In 2023, the year the public health emergency was declared over and the federal government phased out paying for the vaccine doses, Modernas sales were less than $7 billion. Last year, they more than halved yet again. Modernas second commercial product, an mRNA vaccine for Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) was approved by the FDA in May 2024, for people 60 years and older. Marketed as mRESVIA, it had total 2024 sales of $25 million. At the start of this year, Modernas stock was down about 90% from its pandemic peak. Modernas cash reserve, meanwhile, has dwindled from $18.2 billion at the end of 2022 to $8.4 billion today. Last fall, Bancel announced a plan to cut R&D spending by $1.1 billion by 2027 and to shelve five early-stage programs. This January, he said at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference that the company would cut $1 billion in spending this year alone, and find another $500 million in cuts next year. As Moderna, which was founded in 2010, grew from 800 employees pre-pandemic to 5,600 full-time global employees at the end of 2023, it gained a reputation as a tough workplace that burned through talent. Even so, its recent departures have signaled a company in turmoil. Since late 2023, when chief commercial officer Arpa Garay left the company less than two years after joining from Merck, his former duties have been split between Bancel, covering sales and marketing, and Modernas president Stephen Hoge responsible for commercial pipeline strategy and medical affairs. In November 2024, Hoge took charge of sales, as well. Stephen and Stephane will go down with the ship, says a former employee speaking on background. Theyre a $10 billion company nowhow does that save them? Theyre in a really bad position. Others are jumping. This February, CIO Brad Millerwhod been driving the companys tech-driven insights for just over two yearsretired at age 52, as Moderna downsized its digital departments by about 50 employees, or 10%. Pharma folks took notice in March, when Kate Cronin, whod led marketingsince 2021, left the company and a month later joined Medtronic Diabetes. When Kate Cronin left, I thought, thats the rat leaving the sinking ship, says another industry insider. Multiple employees in communications roles have also recently left the company. Keeping up with the FDA and CDC Modernas pipeline includes vaccines for everything from shingles to HIV, as well as therapeutics for cancer and rare diseases. But near-term, its hopes had been riding on a new, improved COVID vaccine, along with a first-of-its-a-kind combination COVID-flu vaccine. In the last couple of weeks, though, those hopes have been tempered, if not crushed, by changes at the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which taken together could dramatically limit who will get access to such vaccines moving forwardand determine whether companies like Moderna will continue to make them at all. On May 31, Moderna had a partial win when the FDA approved its next-generation COVID-19 vaccine, called mNEXSPIKE. But unlike its predecessor, which is licensed for use for all individuals 12 years of age and older, regardless of health-risk statusit was authorized for use only for people aged 65 and older, or aged 12 to 64 with a qualifying medical condition. (The FDAs delayed approval in May of a non-mRNA COVID vaccine made by Novavax had the same restrictions.) People aged 65 and older account for the majority of COVID vaccines, and benefit the most from their protection. In previous years, as long as updated COVID shots showed evidence that they generated a comparable immune response to the previous years version, the FDA approved them for use for most people. Now, to get approval for anyone under 65 and without an underlying medical condition, vaccine makers will have to show additional safety and efficacy data from randomized controlled trials. (The FDA and its advisers had previously considered it unfeasible to run such trials quickly enough.) Calling for robust, gold-standard data on persons at low risk,” the new requirements were put forth without the usual input from independent outside advisers. Between 100 million to 200 million Americans (of a total population of 347 million) would be eligible for COVID vaccines under the new approach, according to an estimate cited by FDA commissioner Martin Makary and Vinay Prasad, director of the FDAs Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. But the changes in the approval processas a new, highly transmissible COVID subvariant has been detected in California, heightening the risk of a summer wavecould leave a lot of people unprotected in the 20252026 season. On June 3, Kennedy announced on X that Moderna had agreed to a true placebo-controlled trial of the new vaccine; its not yet clear how that will impact availability of the 20252026 vaccine. Moderna declined to comment in response to Kennedys statement on X. Further clouding the vaccination landscape is new CDC guidance about who should get an annual COVID booster. On May 28, Kennedy announced he was rescinding the governments recommendation that pregnant women and healthy children get COVID immunizations. Without this recommendation, health insurersincluding Medicaidwill not likely cover the cost of the vaccine. A couple of days later, the CDC partially contradicted Kennedy, advising that kids continue to get the vaccinebut only in consultation with a healthcare provider. It offered no additional guidance for pregnant women, who have higher risk for health complications from COVID. Meanwhile, Moderna has voluntarily withdrawn its application for approval of its new combo flu/COVID vaccine after the FDA requested more efficacy data. Moderna expects to have additional data this summer, but it declined to share a target date for resubmitting its application. Shutting down avian flu research Perhaps the biggest recent blow to Modernas prospects came last week, when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services terminated a contract with the company to develop vaccines against several strains of flu with pandemic potential, including the highly pathogenic avian flu viruses H1N1 and H7N9. Moderna had won the contractoriginally worth $176 million but expanded in the last days of the Biden administration by another $590 millionon the belief that mRNA vaccines would be a critical part of any future pandemic response. Andrew Nixon, director of communications at HHS, told STAT that the agency had ended the contract because continued investment in Modernas H5N1 mRNA vaccine was not scientifically or ethically justifiable. The same day that news came out, Moderna shared data from its phase 1/2 trial of its avian flu vaccine, showing that three weeks after the second dose, nearly 98% of participants reached antibody levels considered protective. In a statement, Bancel wrote: “While the termination of funding from HHS adds uncertainty [ . . . ] we will explore alternative paths forward for the program. The scientific communitys reaction to HHSs moves has ranged from befuddlement to outrage. This MAHA approach to killing vaccine technologies for ideological reasons and nothing to do with vaccines is both foolish and deadly. It weakens our nations biosecurity, says Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, codirector of Texas Childrens Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, and codeveloper of the low-cost COVID vaccine Corbevax. It also reinforces my view that the MAHA movement is little more than an economic stimulus for the very corrupt wellness and influencer industry. We learned both from Ebola in Democratic Republic of Congo and COVID-19 that the single most important lesson of pandemic preparedness is to keep many vaccine technologies in play, because you cannot predict ahead of time which ones might rise to the top. There are currently three licensed H5N1 vaccines (made by GSK, CSL Seqirus, and Sanofi) that are either made in eggs or grown in cell culture. None are commercially available, though the government has been adding to its stockpile. Even so, getting an up-to-date version of these vaccines ready for broad distribution would take many months. An mRNA-based vaccine, in contrast, could be matched to the most recently circulated variant of the virus and manufactured rapidly. Other drugmakers, including GSK-Curevac and Pfizer, have been working on mRNA vaccines for avian flu. Its unclear what will happen to these programs now. Joe Payne, CEO of San Diego-based Arcturus Therapeutics, says that his company continues to have full support from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), which has committed up to $63 million to help advance the company’s avian flu vaccine. (Arcturus’s version uses self-amplifying mRNA, a new technology that works at lower doses than first-generation mRNA vaccines like Modernas.) This April, Arcturus received FDA Fast Track designation for the vaccine, which is currently being tested in a phase 1 trial. Arcturus has also developed a self-amplifying mRNA COVID vaccine with CSL Seqirus, which the companies aim to submit for FDA approval later this year. There’s been a desire in the scientific community and regulatory agencies to identify lower-dose alternatives, says Payne. The new FDA guidance, he says, is a positive development for us, because it’s a fair, balanced and professional communication on their COVID policy, where a couple months ago [under Trump], there was a lot of uncertainty. mRNA in the MAHA crosshairs The long-term bet on Moderna rides almost entirely on its individualized cancer therapy, mRNA-4157, which its developing in conjunction with Merck. While sometimes called a personal cancer vaccine, mRNA-4157 doesnt actually protect you from getting cancer, but instead trains the immune system to attack an existing tumor, using custom-made mRNA that encodes antigens specific to each persons cancer. The company has high hopes that the therapy can be used to treat multiple kinds of cancers. In Phase 2 trials, the therapy cut the risk of recurrence or death in advanced melanoma (after surgical resection) by 65% when combined with Mercks drug Keytruda, compared with Keytruda alone. Moderna also has trials underway or enrolling for its use in treating high-risk melanoma, non-small cell lung cancer, invasive bladder cancer, and adjuvant renal cell carcinoma. While these personalized treatments could be very lucrative for the company, they wont be easy to scale quickly. And the timeline for FDA approval is uncertain, depending on trial results and regulatory review. The melanoma study isnt expected to be fully complete until 2030, and the FDA has not been supportive of accelerated approval. Whether Moderna can hang on that long is an open question. In the meantime, a host of researchers and well-funded biotechs developing second- and third-generation therapies using mRNA and related technologies are quietly holding their breath, feeling that, for now, Kennedy and his lieutenants are concerned almost exclusively with examining the use of mRNA in protective vaccines for healthy people. Using mRNA for treating cancer and rare diseases seems to be a different story. In the past year or so, researchers at the University of Florida and Memorial Sloan Kettering have published promising results from small studies of personalized mRNA-based therapeutic vaccines for glioblastoma and pancreatic cancer, respectively. The next wave of mRNA is with inhaled mRNA and intravenously dosed mRNA to treat really serious and fatal rare disease conditions, says Payne at Arcturus. And that’s where we’re getting the warmest support from the new administration. There is a general belief that science will prevail, says another CEO of a venture-backed company focusing on therapeutic uses of self-amplifying mRNA. But there is anxiety from the uncertainty. Uncertainty is not good for anything. Perhaps no company knows that better than Moderna.
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Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! Im Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you’re reading this newsletter on the website, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. For the first Modern CEO newsletter, published in January 2023, I contacted executive recruiter Jana Rich to talk about the importance of creative leaders in businessa theme Ive explored a few times as generative artificial intelligence (gen AI) and other technologies threaten to commoditize many aspects of work. So, when Rich recently announced that she has stepped away as planned from Rich Talent Group, the firm she founded in 2014 after 12 years at Russell Reynolds Associates, I asked her to reflect on her experiences during the last decade. Edited excerpts follow: Why did you start Rich Talent Group? It was for two primary reasons. One was I really lovedand still loveworking with founders who are to some degree building their first leadership team, their first board. And I didnt feel like that was particularly well aligned with the big firms. I dont think thats really where they spend their time and energy. And then, equally as important to me, was I wanted to do everything I could to find, identify, and promote women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ folks. I also felt, and still do feel, that is not a strong suit of the big firms. What were you seeing in Silicon Valley at the time? When we opened the doors in April of 2014, on day one, we had [as clients]and Im going to use the names that they were called back then versus what theyre called todayFacebook, Uber, Square, Airbnb, Pinterest, Dropbox, and Twitter. All of them. Day one. Why did they take a chance on a boutique? We had relationships, yes. But I truly believe they were all looking for a different approach. They wanted more creativity and a fresher approach to things. I look back and Im like, holy moly, that was a killer group of clients. What kind of searches did you do for them, and how were you different from the incumbents? Just to give you an example, we [recruited] Airbnbs first-ever chief marketing officer (CMO), Jonathan Mildenhall from Coca-Cola, who is Black and gay. We were different because we found someone who had never been in tech or high growth [but] who did have a global perspective and was uniquely passionate about belong anywhere (Airbnbs ethos and branding strategy). Relatively early, we were doing board work, which was unusual in that the presiding wisdom at the time was that board work is done by the biggest firms and the most senior [people in them]. We were a brand-new firm, but we built the first-ever board at Square, the first-ever board at Eventbrite, the first-ever board at Asana. From 2014 to today, how did your business change? Its hard sometimes for people to remember, but in 2014, very few people were talking about DEI. There were no heads of DEI. Those roles didnt exist. If anything, there might have been more junior-level positions that were focused on diversity recruiting. Every single year we would do an offsite, and we would ask one of our clients to come and be unscripted, to sit with us and tell us what we do well and not do well. How can we be better? In 2018, I remember it so clearly. Four years into the journey, this woman who is a Black woman, who was heading recruiting at one of the biggest tech companies, comes to the meeting. Ill never forget, she says, I think you really have to stop talking about DEI because its making you too much of a niche player, and its difficult for me to sell you [as a recruiter] to my big tech company. I cant be mad at her for telling us the truth, but after she left I don’t think Ive ever been in a room of people that I was tasked with leading where the morale was lower. I said to them, I know that each and every one of you have come to this team at Rich Talent Group because you care deeply about this mission. I dont fundamentally believe that its niche. It might be right now, but I didnt jump out of the safety and security [of Russell Reynolds] to build something I thought was going to be inconsequential or tiny. Then you jump forward to the murder of George Floyd and even beforehand. The demand for diversity increased dramatically during this time period. The challenge for us was to do our due diligence to ensure that the [client] was deeply committed to diversity as part of their mission versus merely trying to check a box. What do you make of corporate Americas retreat from diversity? It feels like [DEI] is happening but under the cover of the night or something. Were playing a little bit of a nomenclature game right now. Dont say “diversity” or “equity” or “inclusion,” but its okay to talk about “best teams” or “meritocracy.” Were changing words and, in the best possible scenario, were not changing efforts. Its sucking up a lot of energy that I wish could be just used for the betterment of these teams. Great recruiters should always focus on fully qualified candidates while looking outside the box to broaden the aperture for potential candidates. This is not only about hiring for diversity but also building the best teams. While there has been less emphasis on DEI, this is also a time when great companies are standing out because they are not backing down, such as Costco, for example. How should CEOs think about executive search going forward? Ive been in it for 30 years now, and one of the things I wish most for it is that [executive search] becomes as valued as a CEO relationship might be with McKinsey or Bain. I dont think its there yet, but I do think Ive seen a lot of positive change during a period of time whereby the right founder or CEO looks to a top-notch recruiter as a thought partneras somebody that understands the context of whats going on in the marketplace, the competitive set. The diversity name game How is your company framing diversity efforts today? Have you dismantled diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and if so, why? Please send your experiences to me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com. Id be excited to share your stories in a future newsletter. Read and hear more: changes in DEI Does changing the language of DEI protect companies? The wider impact of DEI change What comes after DEI?
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