Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

As the global migrant crisis continues to dominate our airwaves, Welcome.US has triggered a dramatic impact on U.S. immigration, resettling 800,000 refugees across all 50 states. The organization’s cofounder and CEO, Nazanin Ash, shares how her team developed an effective and efficient model, unlocking a nonpartisan community of 2 million volunteers, supported by corporate partnerships with the likes of Meta, Google, and Uber. 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 Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s to…

Stocks rose in morning trading on Wall Street Friday and further trimmed losses from earlier in the week for several major indexes. The S&P 500 jumped 0.8%, adding to gains made on Thursday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 283 points, or 0.6%, as of 10:05 a.m. Eastern. The Nasdaq jumped 1% and is now on track for a weekly gain. Technology stocks with an focus on artificial intelligence once again led the market. Nvidia jumped 3.4% and Broadcom rose 2.4%. Oracle rose 7% on news that it, along with two other investors, had signed agreements to form a new TikTok U.S. joint venture. Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX each get a 15% share in the popular social video pla…

Before food influencers were deep-frying Chipotle burritos, putting an entire serving of mac and cheese on their Chick-fil-A sandwich, and making McDonald’s hash browns into ice cream sandwiches, there was another food-hack-slash-Frankenfood that ruled the internet: the quesarito. This week, Taco Bell brought it back to its official menu. The quesarito is exactly what its name implies: a fully loaded burrito that, instead of being wrapped in a regular tortilla, has been lovingly sealed inside a giant quesadilla. It’s the epitome of fast-food gluttony, and as of December 18, it’s back in Taco Bell stores for a limited time for $6.70 (and a relatively modest 570 calorie…

It’s hard to tell AI news from AI hype at the best of times, but the most recent surge around agents, triggered by many developers embracing Claude Code a couple of months ago, feels like something different. With the viral freakout over Moltbook, the agent social network, and the Super Bowl ad slap fight between OpenAI and Anthropic, AI has escalated to a new level of mainstream attention. Everyone’s forgotten about the AI bubble and is instead dancing around the AI “inflection point,” when AI in general and agents in particular begin to take over huge swaths of knowledge work, with massive consequences for the economy and the workforce. The recent sell-off of SaaS s…

It might surprise people that my husband and I pay a financial planner, given that I spend a lot of time on financial, tax, and investment planning at work. However, hiring a planner has delivered a return that can’t be quantified: peace of mind. Here are some key reasons we pay for financial advice. 1) We wanted a second opinion on a few important decisions. I wanted a different perspective on less-familiar subjects, such as handling employer stock, and whether we needed long-term care insurance. We could have confronted both issues on our own, but having professional guidance helped us move forward more confidently. 2) We found a business model that makes sense for …

In special education in the U.S., funding is scarce and personnel shortages are pervasive, leaving many school districts struggling to hire qualified and willing practitioners. Amid these long-standing challenges, there is rising interest in using artificial intelligence tools to help close some of the gaps that districts currently face and lower labor costs. Over 7 million children receive federally funded entitlements under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which guarantees students access to instruction tailored to their unique physical and psychological needs, as well as legal processes that allow families to negotiate support. Special education…

Ikea bed, Ikea sheets, Ikea towels, Ikea desk, Ikea chairs, Ikea curtains, Ikea light fixtures, Ikea trashcans, Ikea clothes hangers, Ikea side tables, Ikea throw pillow, Ikea clock. This is the rough inventory of a room in the world’s only Ikea hotel—the Ikea Hotell in its Swedish spelling—located in Älmhult, Sweden, the same small town where Ikea was founded in the 1940s and where its headquarters still sits. I stayed a night in this very Ikea hotel recently during a reporting trip to Älmhult for a story about (surprise, surprise) Ikea. As one would expect, the lobby, amenity spaces, and hotel rooms themselves are outfitted entirely with Ikea furnishings—Fröset chai…

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m 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 received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. Long before the The President administration tapped Elon Musk to cut federal costs and headcount via the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), business leaders and politicians have been trying to find ways to make government leaner, less bureaucratic, and more like a well-run corporat…

It looks like a standard shipping container. But a metal box at a London factory is aimed at solving one of the shipping industry’s biggest challenges: how to cut CO2 emissions on cargo ships. The tech, from a startup called Seabound, can capture as much as 95% of the CO2 emissions from the exhaust on ship. The company is now preparing to install a set of the containers on a cargo ship in its first commercial deployment after years of development and pilot tests. “The shipping industry is one of the last hard-to-abate sectors,” says 30-year-old CEO Alisha Fredriksson, who cofounded the company in 2021 after working as a consultant and seeing the need for a new…

As we count down to the last days of the year, we are looking ahead to what may be one of the next big work trends of 2026: shift sulking. Read on to find out what it is, and what to know about it heading into the new year. What is shift sulking? “Shift sulking is the moment when hourly workers arrive already depleted because the conditions surrounding their work—unpredictable schedules, inconsistent hours, and rising demands—are simply unsustainable,” says Silvija Martincevic, CEO of Deputy, a workforce management platform for hourly workers. “Because millions of shifts run through our platform every week, Deputy sees this deep-seated strain in the data we…

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba‘s cloud business unit has launched its second data center in Dubai, it said on Tuesday, nine years after its first, as it expands its global cloud computing services to meet growing demand. Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and artificial intelligence division, said in a statement the launch was part of the technology major’s pledge to invest 380 billion yuan ($53 billion) over three years. No financial details were disclosed in Tuesday’s statement. “The Middle East’s advantageous position in fast-tracking AI adoption and its collaborative ecosystem are crucial enablers for private and public sector companies to thrive,” said E…

Grocery Outlet is joining the ranks of retailers planning to shutter storefronts this year. The discount grocery store chain announced its fourth-quarter and full 2025 fiscal year results on Wednesday, along with a plan to close 36 stores. This move to close stores follows a previous restructuring plan concluded in the second quarter of fiscal 2025, another attempt to “improve long-term profitability” and optimize growth. The company reported an increase in net sales, but an operating loss of $234.8 million and a net loss of $218.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2025. The optimization plan, which is expected to be largely completed during fiscal year 20…

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m 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 received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. When I was a young professional in the 1990s, I didn’t aspire to be a CEO. (I was a business journalist focused on getting more challenging editorial assignments.) And even if I had wanted to run a company, I wouldn’t have known how to cobble together the necessary experiences to qualify fo…

Hundreds of millions of people consult artificial intelligence chatbots on a daily basis for everything from product recommendations to romance, making them a tempting audience to target with potentially below-the-radar advertising. Indeed, our research suggests AI chatbots could easily be used for covert advertising to manipulate their human users. We are computer scientists who have been tracking AI safety and privacy for several years. In a study we published in an Association for Computing Machinery journal, we found that chatbots trained to embed personalized product ads in replies to queries influenced people’s choices about products. And most participants didn’…

Move over, figure skating and ice hockey: There’s a new Olympic sport taking to the slopes in Milano Cortina. The sport—called ski mountaineering, or, colloquially, “skimo”—is the first entirely new sport at the Winter Olympics since 2002. As its name suggests, skimo combines elements of both skiing and mountaineering, requiring competitors to climb their way up a mountain slope before descending back down. It’s a more rugged take on the winter sport genre that involves rougher terrain than a cross-country or alpine ski course, requires athletes to change their own gear mid-race, and balances both technical skill and endurance. A total of 36 athletes will be comp…

Fraud remains a huge issue, with reports increasing 25% between 2023 and 2024, according to recently released data from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). That amounted to consumers losing more than $12.5 billion to various frauds and scams. Those eye-popping figures are what spurred AT&T to beef up its fraud-prevention smartphone application, ActiveArmor, with a slate of new features, says Matt Bailey, AT&T’s AVP of product management and development. And interestingly enough, the app will also provide protection for your physical property—including your credit and debit cards and even your driver’s license. On Wednesday, AT&T announced the five…

A little known security feature on iPhones is in the spotlight after it stymied efforts by U.S. federal authorities to search devices seized from a reporter. Apple’s Lockdown Mode recently prevented FBI agents from getting into Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s iPhone. Agents seized the phone, as well as two MacBooks and other electronic devices, when they searched Natanson’s home last month as part of an investigation into a Pentagon contractor accused of illegally handling classified information. But the FBI reported that its Computer Analysis Response Team “could not extract” data from the iPhone because it was in Lockdown Mode, according to a court filing. …

When Greg Giczi retired in February, his company threw him a party. Giczi had spent 12 years as president and general manager of WNIT-TV, a public television station based in South Bend, Indiana. Public broadcasting isn’t known for lavish budgets, so the party took place at the studio—a “big, open space with dramatic lighting,” Giczi describes. There were appetizers, wine, and beer, as well as heartfelt speeches. A huge snowstorm hit that night. But that didn’t stop a roomful family, coworkers, and others from coming out to celebrate Giczi; one person traveled over two-and-a-half hours. The board knew Giczi had been eyeing some electronics, so they gave him a “ni…