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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. In recent weeks Modern CEO has published predictions for 2026 from CEOs across industries and a list of books that can help leaders get ready for the year ahead. We invited readers to share their own prognostications and book recommendations. (Respect to the author who endorsed her own book…

Almost lost and nearly forgotten, a sculpture by one of the most noted mid-century modernist designers has been given a meticulous restoration and a starring place in the new headquarters of General Motors in downtown Detroit. Designed by artist Harry Bertoia and first installed in 1970, the sculpture is made of two clusters of long steel wires intertwined like twigs in a bird’s nest. Stretching 26 feet in height, the sculpture is now hanging in the atrium of a newly built 12-story mixed use building in Detroit that’s the home of GM’s new global headquarters. GM, which has featured Bertoia’s work in other company properties since 1953, spent an undisclosed sum of mone…

If one of your New Year’s resolutions was to spend less time on devices and get more “cultured,” the Metropolitan Opera is here to help—even if you don’t find yourself in New York City. On Saturday, January 24, 2026, at 1 p.m. ET in select theaters, it will premiere a special “Live in HD” presentation of its recent production, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Let’s take a look at the plot and the artists involved, before we get into more details on the logistics of how to see it. What is ‘The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay’ about? Although this work is considered a modern opera, the action in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay …

Traveling soon? If you’re planning on flying domestically, starting February 1, which is next Sunday, you may have to pay an extra fee at airports across the U.S. if you haven’t yet gotten your TSA-approved Real ID yet or don’t have another compliant form of ID (see list below). The policy, which the Department of Homeland Security launched in May, requires travelers to have an updated Real ID-compliant driver’s license or another approved form of ID in order to pass through airport security checkpoints and board flights. If you are one of the estimated 6% of U.S, travelers that still don’t have a Real ID or another acceptable form of documentation, you may be cha…

Traveling soon? If you’re planning on flying domestically, starting February 1, which is next Sunday, you may have to pay an extra fee at airports across the U.S. if you haven’t yet gotten your TSA-approved Real ID yet, or don’t have another compliant form of ID (see list below). The policy, which the Department of Homeland Security launched in May, requires travelers to have an updated, Real ID-compliant driver’s license, or other approved form of ID, in order to pass through airport security checkpoints and board flights. If you are one of the estimated 6% of U.S, travelers that still don’t have a Real ID, or another acceptable form of documentation, you may be …

In the world of earnings reports and pitch decks, the ultimate goal of our current AI boom is usually called something like artificial general intelligence (AGI), superintelligence, or—if you’re really nerdy—recursive self-improving AI. But in the real world, we’re all just looking for the Enterprise computer: a digital assistant you can talk to that doesn’t just fully understand you, but can do things for you instantly. The last couple of months have seen a lot of progress on this front. While I was at CES, I attended Lenovo’s keynote, which unveiled Qira, an always-on AI that will be built into its devices going forward. As I wrote about at The Media Copilot, the in…

America is on the cusp of its first major winter storm of the new year. Dubbed Winter Storm Fern, the storm is expected to begin today and last until at least Monday. As Fast Company previously reported, the nor’easter is expected to affect as many as 230 million Americans as it moves from the Southwest to the Mid-Atlantic states, then continues eastward toward New England. The storm’s progression over 72 hours is expected to dump snow and ice on significant portions of the country, with major cities including St. Louis, Chicago, Memphis, Nashville, Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. expected to receive significant accumulation. …

In the early 1980s, the National Basketball Association (NBA) faced a crisis. Television ratings were plummeting—the 1981 NBA finals were among the lowest of all time. Spurred by failing franchises, low game attendance, and declining corporate sponsorships, the league’s cultural relevance in the United States waned. Then in 1984, the league responded with a structural shift that would change the culture of sports for decades to come. “ We came together with the collective bargaining agreement where the players and the owners would work together to grow the game and expand the game and the values that we established in the Players Association,” says NBA legend and cur…

A reader asks: Two years ago, I began managing Craig, who had been doing the same tasks day in and day out for a decade. He hadn’t adapted to new technology, best practices, or industry trends. My first order of business was to coach him and challenge him to grow and learn. For more than a year, we built up a great trajectory. People saw how much his work improved and commented on it frequently, and said he seemed revitalized in many ways. His progress gave me a lot of hope that he could become good at the modern demands of his role. Then about six months ago, Craig suddenly reverted to his old patterns. It was as if the prior year of progress got completely wiped…

Shares in Intel Corporation (Nasdaq: INTC) are plunging in pre-market trading this morning. The stock price fall comes after the chipmaker reported its Q4 2025 earnings after the closing bell yesterday. But it’s Intel’s forecast, rather than its latest results, that seems to be driving the stock price’s fall. Here’s what you need to know. Intel reports Q4 earnings Yesterday, Intel reported its Q4 2025 and full fiscal 2025 results. For its full fiscal 2025, the company reported $52.9 billion in revenue. That compares with the $53.1 billion in revenue the company brought in during its fiscal 2024. But what investors were mainly interested in were the company’s Q4…

Minnesota continues to be the beating heart of nationwide anti-ICE movements with The Day of Truth and Freedom. Today, January 23, hundreds of businesses across the state are closing their doors in protest after community groups, faith-based organizations and unions came together to call for an “economic blackout.” “Minnesotans are coming together in moral reflection and action to stand together against the actions of the federal government against the state of Minnesota,” a declaration reads on the organizing website, ICE Out of MN. The day-long protest follows a series of tragedies that stem from the Department of Homeland Security’s January 6 deployment of…

I like to say that my job as a charity auctioneer is the ultimate sales role. I stand onstage night after night encouraging people to give money, playing off the audience to push them to bid higher, in the name of charity. If there’s one thing the stage has taught me, it’s that flexibility is everything. The faster you can adapt and offer a solution, the more successful you’ll be whether you’re selling a product or an idea. Here are three of my favorite sales secrets. 1. THE POWER OF SUGGESTION One of the quickest ways to lose someone’s attention is to tell them how you think your product should work for them. If a donor has offered their mountain house as “the ult…

Hello again, and welcome back to Fast Company’s Plugged In. On January 16, Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak—known to all as Woz—received the James C. Morgan Global Humanitarian Award, an honor bestowed each year by the Tech Interactive, a science museum in San Jose, California. The ceremony and a conversation between Wozniak and comedian Drew Carey capped a gala event in which several organizations were named laureates for using technology to improve the world. Their creations include a brain-computer interface (BCI) that helps people with disabilities communicate, a forum that lets patients who have received BCI implants shape the technology’s best practices and eth…

For much of the modern corporate era, brand has been treated as surface area. A story told outward. A set of signals designed to persuade, attract, and differentiate. When companies spoke about brand, they were usually talking about perception: how they looked in the market, how they sounded, how they were received. That framing made sense in a world where markets moved a little more slowly, organizations were stable, and leadership could afford to separate strategy from culture, product from meaning, execution from belief. That world no longer exists. Today’s organizations operate in a state of near-constant volatility. Strategy shifts quarterly. Teams scale …

When I tell fellow tech executives that every employee at sunday, from our engineers to our finance team, must complete a restaurant shift before they can fully onboard, I usually get confused looks. “You mean like, shadow someone?” they ask. No. I mean they tie on an apron, take orders, run food, and yes, deal with the 15-minute wait for the check that our product was literally built to eliminate. It sounds extreme. It is extreme. And it’s also one of the smartest business decisions we’ve made. Here’s why: business is often removed from the industries we serve. We’re keeping that empathy right there. The Empathy Gap in Tech I’ve spent 25 years in the tech …

My daughter, Ivy, recently joined a swim club. As a former competitive swimmer, it’s been a delight to witness. Every time I take her to practice, I feel a wave of nostalgia that reminds me of all the many years I spent in the pool and all the many teammates I collected along the way. It excites me to think that she, too, will have her own experiences and life lessons, just as swimming taught me. But something peculiar struck me as I watched her practice: 45 minutes of their one-hour training was spent on the basics. Kick drills. Pull drills. All the essentials about swimming that we don’t think very much about, the foundational techniques that make for a good swimmer. …

Six families are suing TikTok after their children died emulating the so-called “blackout challenge” they had seen on the social media platform. The lawsuit alleges that TikTok’s algorithm exposed the teenagers, ages 11 to 17, to content that encouraged them to choke themselves to the point of passing out. Each of the children were found dead with some form of binding around their neck, hanging or otherwise attempting the challenge, according to the lawsuit. Filed in the Superior Court of the State of Delaware, the lawsuit names two TikTok legal entities and its parent company, ByteDance. ByteDance and one of the entities, TikTok LLC, are incorporated in Del…

Below, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein shares five key insights from her new book, The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us. Goldstein is an award-winning philosopher, writer, and public intellectual. She is the author of 10 books of acclaimed fiction and nonfiction and has held various visiting professorships and fellowships at elite academic institutions. Her first novel was The Mind-Body Problem. What’s the big idea? We all want to feel connected to others and know that we matter. The ways we go about making our lives matter shape who we are, the meaning we find, and the mark we leave on the world. Listen to the audio version …

So, you’ve finally done it. No more putting it off, pushing through the grind, waiting for a more opportune time once things settle down. Alas, you’ve mustered up the gall to cash in on your paid vacation time. Now you have several days strung together to travel, rest, or do whatever the heck your heart desires. I love that for you. But before you slam your work laptop shut and “Yabba dabba doo!” your ass out of the office, there’s one last thing. You’ve gotta leave behind a message letting folks know you’ll be gone. You need to draft an out-of-office message. Out-of-office notes tend to be pretty standard—courtesy auto-replies letting folks know you’re not workin…