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Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! 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 received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. From technological advances and geopolitical changes to workplace culture shifts and market pressures, 2025 has been a year of change, uncertainty, and disruption. I’m Gwen Moran, and for nearly three years as Modern CEO’s editor, I’ve had a front-row seat as Mansueto Ventures CEO and Chief Content Officer Stephanie Mehta talks to business leaders and experts to h…

Researchers at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology just invented a building material that could make construction projects stronger and more sustainable—and it’s based on the skeleton of an invertebrate that lives at the bottom of the ocean. The material, recently presented in the journal Composite Structures, was developed by RMIT University engineers. It’s inspired by the skeleton of the deep-sea sponge, whose lattice-like internal structures, which have been optimized over millions of years in the ocean, allow it to thrive thousands of feet underwater. The material’s unique structural properties make it simultaneously lightweight, strong, and extra resi…

CIOs are grappling with how to leverage AI, but most are asking the wrong question. It’s not about an “AI strategy.” It’s about a business strategy powered by AI. At Samsara, when we focused AI on clear business problems, we cut support chat volume by 59% with virtual agents, our IT help assistant auto-resolved 27% of tickets during the pilot, and engineers accepted about 40% of suggested code from AI code-assist, freeing teams to ship faster and tackle harder work. My takeaway is that if you treat AI as a separate initiative, you’ll chase tools. If you treat it as leverage on a business KPI, you’ll create impact. The VC Mindset: Investing in AI My philosophy on AI inv…

Few topics are simultaneously so celebrated and misunderstood as human potential. On the one hand, we have an influx of near-perpetual articles urging people to unlock or fulfill their own potential, saying essentially that anything else equates to failure. On the other hand, if we ask an average leader or HR professional how to define or explain potential, we are unlikely to get a logical, rational, or scientifically valid answer. And yet, there is a well-established science on human potential, with decades of empirical research resulting in replicable generalizations to predict and explain why some people perform better than others (across different work settings), a…

Earlier this month, Apple officially announced that it would be postponing the launch of some planned Apple Intelligence features to a later, unspecified date in the future. These features mainly revolved around an AI-supercharged Siri. The news of the delay sent the tech press into a frenzy, with many writers criticizing the company for failing to deliver on its promises. Additionally, people speculated that the delay of these features could impact iPhone sales this year. While the criticism is justified, I think the prediction that the delay will impact iPhone sales places too much faith in the appeal of AI. Apple delays new Siri AI features As noted by 9to5M…

JCPenney said it will close seven stores this weekend in California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and West Viriginia, according to USA Today, and will be running sales in those locations up until Sunday, May 25. It’s the latest set of JCPenney store closures since the long-struggling retail chain filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy back in May 2020 during the pandemic (it announced later that year it would close 200 of its 850 stores). The chain was then purchased by property managers Simon Property Group and Brookfield Asset Management. Fast Company has reached out to JCPenney for comment. Which JCPenney store locations are closing? …

These days, when you head to a shop to buy clothes, most brands package your purchases in a recyclable paper bag, which looks more eco-friendly than plastic. But behind the scenes—in back rooms that most customers never see—every single clothing retailer has enormous piles of flimsy plastic bags (sometimes called poly bags). These bags keep clothes clean as they travel across the complex global supply chain before arriving at the store. “We need to keep clothes in good condition as they move from factories to shipping containers to trucks,” says Candan Erenguc, chief operations officer at Anthropologie. Most local recycling facilities don’t have the equipment …

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Despite the popular image of a strong leader as one who makes bold decisions and sticks with them, great leadership actually requires adapting to changing circumstances. A course of action that seemed like a great idea on one day may be a clear losing proposition when additional information becomes available. A complexity with changing your mind as a leader is that your previous choices and plans affect a number of other people’s lives. People who work for you are currently working to implement the plan you laid out. Others, like clients or suppliers, may be planning future e…

LinkedIn just released its 2025 Grad Guide highlighting the fastest-growing cities, industries, and job titles for new workers with and without a bachelor’s degree. A variety of industries and professions made the list. However, the new data offers a few surprises when it comes to what grads and non-grads are pursuing most often, with many non-grads heading into careers that once required college degrees—and many graduates in fields that don’t. When it comes to where young professionals are moving post-college, the Sun Belt states, including Tucson, Dallas, Tulsa, Knoxville, and Chattanooga, are turning into hot locations for new graduates to get to work. Entry-level n…

Open almost any newspaper, scroll through LinkedIn, or listen to the latest business podcast, and you will encounter a familiar theme: the return of the strong leader. From “wartime CEOs” to hard-charging founders and authoritarian coaching styles in elite sports, and the virtues of “hands on” leaders, there is a growing narrative that command-and-control leadership is not only back, but necessary. The appeal is intuitive. When the world feels volatile and uncertain, decisiveness offers comfort, and centralized authority promises clarity. But, is this resurgence real, or are we simply observing a handful of highly visible cases amplified by media and investor attention? …

DoorDash, the ubiquitous U.S. food delivery app, has agreed to acquire British rival Deliveroo for 2.9 billion pounds ($3.9 billion) in cash, expanding its business in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. San Francisco-based DoorDash will pay 180 pence ($2.40) for each Deliveroo share, 29% more than the closing price on April 24, the day before the offer was announced, the companies said in a joint statement before the London Stock Exchange opened for trading on Tuesday. The deal is DoorDash’s second major international acquisition in three years as the company expands from its traditional base in the U.S., Canada and Australia. After the purchase of Deliveroo, and …

Dr. Drew Ramsey is a board-certified psychiatrist and psychotherapist. He is a leading voice in nutritional psychiatry and integrative mental health. He is a fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and the founder of the Brain Food Clinic and Spruce Mental Health. For 20 years, he was an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University. His book Eat to Beat Depression and Anxiety was an international bestseller, and his work has been featured by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Today show, NPR, and other outlets. What’s the big idea? The time to start working on positive mental health outcomes should not be when a mental health cri…

We all know the “Sunday scaries”—that creeping anxiety as the weekend winds down. But what you might not realize is that leaders experience it too. As a CEO, I’ve found that the best way to fend off Sunday dread is by fully unplugging. At least once a week, I do a digital detox, shutting off my devices to be fully present with my wife and kids. Sometimes, we turn on the radio and play board games; other times, we stay in pajamas and take on a new cooking or baking challenge. It’s our version of søndagshygge—the Danish idea of embracing cozy Sundays with tea, books, music, blankets, and other at-home rituals. While personal rituals can help, leaders can also p…

SpaceX’s Starlink orbital internet satellites are falling out of low earth orbit at an increasingly alarming rate, with one to two satellites now reentering Earth’s atmosphere every single day. According to Harvard-Smithsonian Center astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, that number will only go up as more satellites end their useful lifetime and the low earth orbit (LEO) constellation numbers skyrocket. This is as much a design problem as anything. While the numbers vary, right now there are around 10,200 active satellites in low earth orbit. Of those, about 8,475 are Starlinks. In other words, about 80% of all those satellites belong to Elon Musk’s company. By 2030, the E…

It’s sometime after midnight on a Monday morning when Zach unlocks his phone and starts scrolling for something to bet on. He’s 26, tucked into his childhood bed at his parents’ house in Washington, D.C. He moved back in after a stint in Las Vegas that didn’t go as planned. The NFL is done for the night. The NBA’s late games have wrapped. Mainstream sports are fast asleep. In FanDuel’s live betting tab, he finds a women’s tennis tournament streaming from somewhere in Southeast Asia. Two unranked, unknown teenagers, one boasting a 0–1 career record. Empty arena, no ball boys. Between points, the players jog to the fence to retrieve the ball themselves. He puts money on i…

Commuting in New York City can be a relentless sensory overload—the hustling, the pushing, the yelling, the ads whirling from every side. Getting to work can feel like a frantic race of people trying to escape the train station all at once. While the city hurtles past in a blur, Brandon Stanton has stopped to write it a love letter—on the walls of Grand Central itself. For the first time, the terminal and its subway station have been completely cleared of flashing advertisements and replaced with art. Brandon Stanton More than 150 digital screens now display thousands of portraits and stories from Stanton’s Humans of New York—the largest and most diverse colle…

Patagonia, the outdoor apparel company, is suing Pattie Gonia, the drag queen and environmentalist, for trademark infringement—a move the company says is necessary to “protect the brand [it has] spent the last 50 years building.” In a lawsuit filed in California federal court this week, Patagonia argues that Pattie Gonia’s name, particularly when used on apparel or in support of environmental sustainability, competes “directly” with the products and advocacy work core to Patagonia. Patagonia claims in its complaint that the overlapping names have already confused customers, and that a recent move from the drag queen to sell her own branded apparel goes against a…

News that Microsoft was reportedly planning to pause its carbon removal purchases has rocked the still-nascent carbon removal industry. The company helped drive the market: In fiscal year 2025 alone, it made deals with 21 companies around the world to remove a record 45 million tons of CO2. Those deals included new contracts with companies like Re.green, which is restoring a swath of the Amazon rainforest, and Vaulted, which removes carbon by burying organic waste. Last month, it added a contract with Liferaft, a company making biochar from agricultural waste in the Midwest. The industry uses a wide range of technologies to tackle one part of the climate challenge: at th…

For most of modern finance, one number has quietly dictated who gets ahead and who gets left out: the credit score. It was a breakthrough when it arrived in the 1950s, becoming an elegant shortcut for a complex decision. But shortcuts age. And in a world driven by data, digital behavior, and real-time signals, the score is increasingly misaligned with how people actually live and manage money. We’re now at a turning point. A foundational system, long considered untouchable, is finally being reconstructed by using AI—specifically, advanced machine learning models built for risk prediction—to extract more intelligence from existing data. These are rigorously tested, wel…

Michelle had barely knotted her apron strings before the day turned ugly. “When I told her I could only serve regular coffee—not the waffle-flavored one she wanted—she threw the boiling-hot pot at me,” she tells Fast Company, recounting one violent encounter with a customer. Working at a popular all-day breakfast chain, Michelle has learned that customer “service” often means surviving other people’s rage: “I’ve been cussed out, had hot food thrown on me…even dodged a plate thrown at my head,” she says. Lately, the sexual comments from male customers have gotten worse. (Workers in this story have been given pseudonyms to protect them from retaliation.) Still, she show…

In many states, you can get kicked out of your home if the local government thinks someone else will generate more tax revenue. The Takings Clause is a part of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and it says that if the government wants to take away someone’s private property, they have to do it in a way that’s fair. Most of us grew up hearing adults say that life isn’t fair. And they’re right—it isn’t. Neither is an authority forcing you to give up your property for whatever they think is fair. Courts have said the government can take your property if it’s for something that benefits the public, like building a road or a park. As if that could…