What's on Your Mind?

Across nearly four decades as a teacher, principal, superintendent, funder, and now leader of a large education nonprofit organization, the experience that most shaped my view of learning wasn’t a grand reform or a shiny new program. It was a Friday physics lab in Brooklyn. My students predicted a graph that couldn’t exist—a vertical line for velocity and time. What followed was confusion, debate, trial, and error. And then discovery: Velocity requires both displacement and time. That brief struggle taught me, the teacher at the time, more about how learning really happens than any policy memo ever has. That moment endures because it represents what school should unl…

A funny thing happened after I stopped using Clicks, the keyboard case that effectively turns an iPhone into an oversized Blackberry: The phone by itself suddenly seemed punier. I mean that in terms of both size and mightiness. Because while Clicks’ four rows of physical keys stretch an iPhone to comical length, they also add a bunch of powerful shortcuts for getting things done. My typing hasn’t gotten any faster with Clicks, but things like copying, pasting, and switching between apps has become more efficient. The first Clicks keyboard cases launched a year ago, with tech YouTuber Michael Fisher and Crackberry blog founder Kevin Michaluk co-founding the company…

When it opened in 2001, watchmaker Timex’s new headquarters building in Middlebury, Connecticut, was an architectural wonder. Its all-glass walls and open floor plan put the entire 275-person company in one big, light-filled workspace, covered by a swooping arched roof. It was a radical embrace of the ideals of openness, collaboration, and anti-hierarchical social interaction. On top of all this, the award-winning building had one additional—and unique—feature: a hole in the top that shines sunlight down on an ancient time-marking device known as a meridian line. Covering the building at the time, Fast Company noted “the building itself is a watch.” But now the buildi…

Congratulations! You’ve just closed a funding round or hit a major milestone in your company’s journey. Now, it’s time to share this exciting moment with the world. As a founder or company leader, you know how important it is to communicate major news to investors, partners, customers, and other stakeholders. But the steps you take when developing your communications strategy can make or break its true impact. Here is your communications playbook for developing a well-planned strategy that ensures your next milestone attracts the attention of media, employees, partners, and those who matter most. 1. Establish your North Star. As a first order of business, y…

An often-overlooked competitive advantage in business isn’t your technology stack, market share, or even your talent pipeline—it’s your leadership team’s customer obsession. As someone who recently merged marketing, customer success, and renewals under one umbrella, I’ve experienced how customer obsession can transform an organization. However, from the C-suite to entry-level roles, we’re all navigating complex responsibilities, deadlines and metrics. These competing priorities make it easy to lose sight of what truly matters to the business: the customers who make our work possible. By putting customers at the heart of every decision, regardless of the role, y…

This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. NotebookLM is the most useful free AI tool of 2025. It has twin superpowers. You can use it to find, analyze, and search through a collection of documents, notes, links, or files. You can then use NotebookLM to visualize your material as a slide deck, infographic, report— even an audio or video summary.Subscribe How to set up a notebook Pick a purpose. Start a new notebook for a work project or a learning goal. Examples: I created a notebook to organize materials for the new online bilingual MA program we’re developing at the CUNY…

A hot new high-stakes competition show went viral on the internet this week that had fans placing bets, joining fantasy leagues, tweeting live updates, and posting daily recaps. But it wasn’t Love Island or Survivor. It was the conclave. The conclave is the Catholic Church’s traditional process for picking a new pope. It involves sequestering dozens of cardinals in an locked-down Sistine Chapel for an indefinite period, during which time they use a series of votes to elect a new pontiff. After each ballot, an old-fashioned system is used to let the world know whether a pope has been chosen: If the decision has not been made, black smoke issues from the Chapel’s chimn…

When Katie Hammel arrived at her company’s offsite in Cabo San Lucas, she expected the usual formula: long meetings, awkward icebreakers, and a packed agenda that left little room to breathe. What she experienced instead was something different—a thoughtfully curated, empowering, and inclusive retreat. “There was a little wrap-up at the end of each day,” says Hammel, director of content at travel rewards booking platform Point.me. “At first I thought it was going to be kind of corny, and I actually ended up really loving it. Hearing what surprised people, what they learned—it just really crystallized the day.” Hammel, who’s attended nine retreats while working at …

In his new book Ding Dong: How Ring Went from Shark Tank Reject to Everyone’s Front Door, Ring founder Jamie Siminoff pulls back the curtain on the chaotic, often absurd reality of building one of the most recognizable consumer tech brands of the last decade. The following excerpt captures one of the book’s most pivotal moments: the high-stakes, borderline-reckless gamble to secure the name “Ring.com,” a decision that nearly emptied the company’s bank account, tested the patience of his investors, and set the stage for a brand that would soon reshape home security. eBay.com. Half.com. Cars.com. Shop.com. Toys.com. And yes, Nest.com. So many great four-letter domain na…

In Hollywood, actors do not wait half a year to get paid. Under SAG-AFTRA contracts, residuals are distributed within 30 to 60 days of the union receiving payment from studios. That is the standard in one of the world’s most complex entertainment ecosystems. Meanwhile, in the creator economy, worth $250 billion and growing, creators are still waiting 90, 120, sometimes even 180 days for money they have already earned. If actors can rely on 30 to 60 days, why can’t creators? They are the directors, the producers, the talent of the digital age. Yet they are treated like unsecured creditors. It is not just unfair. It is destabilizing the entire ecosystem. That is…

For most leaders these last five years have been ones of great volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Political dynamics, economic shifts, massive layoffs, strategy pivots, technology disruptions, and more are shaping how we lead and what we can accomplish together. Leading through uncertainty is no longer a mere possibility, it’s core to the job description. Times of uncertainty call for fast executive decision-making with limited information, “good enough” risk assessment, and repeated pivots. I know this because I led a global philanthropy network while the world shut down in 2020. During those initial months, I relied less on staff input to determine…

In his reflections on the 2025 Wall Street Journal CEO Council summit held in December, WSJ Leadership Institute president Alan Murray noted that CEOs are not actually preoccupied with AI, tariffs, or geopolitics. Instead, they’re focused on something far more fundamental: people and culture. How do you build an organization that can adapt, collaborate, and innovate amid persistent volatility? That instinct is correct. Yet one of the most effective tools for strengthening culture and developing talent remains surprisingly underused—skills-based volunteering (SBV). In a world shaped by geopolitical conflict, climate disruptions, pandemic aftershocks, and unpredicta…

When my teenage son developed mysterious symptoms, I followed the same path anyone else would: I put his health in the hands of a team of medical professionals. Multiple myeloma is a rare blood cancer. It is so uncommon in 17-year-olds that it doesn’t appear on diagnostic checklists. Despite having no clear starting point to work from, my son’s doctors worked their way to an accurate diagnosis through a process of trial and error, bouncing ideas off each other and testing and discarding hypotheses until they could tell us what was wrong. The process felt inefficient and uncertain at a time when I wanted fast answers and cast-iron guarantees. But this messy and distinctive…

There’s an old myth that Inuit cultures have as many as a hundred words for snow. I remember learning about it in school, and there was just something wonderful about the idea that people’s perceptions can be so deeply rich and different. I guess that’s why, although it has been debunked many times, the story keeps getting repeated. There is also a lot of truth to the underlying concept. As anybody who has ever learned another language or lived in a different culture knows, people’s perceptions vary widely. In The WEIRDest People In The World, Harvard’s Joseph Henrich documents how important and interesting these differences can be. So if the Inuit snow myth hig…

We were promised empathy in a box: a tireless digital companion that listens without judgment, available 24/7, and never sends a bill. The idea of AI as a psychologist or therapist has surged alongside mental health demand, with apps, chatbots, and “empathetic AI” platforms now claiming to offer everything from stress counseling to trauma recovery. It’s an appealing story. But it’s also a deeply dangerous one. Recent experiments with “AI therapists” reveal what happens when algorithms learn to mimic empathy but not understand it. The consequences range from the absurd to the tragic, and they tell us something profound about the difference between feeling heard and…

Ambition is one of the most defining forces in human affairs—a psychological engine that propels individuals beyond the realm of survival into the arena of creation, disruption, and transformation, and significantly predicts educational attainment, career success, job performance, and income. At its core, ambition is the refusal to accept the status quo, the internal pressure to stretch personal limits and societal boundaries. In a way, the best way to understand ambition is as the inability to be satisfied with one’s accomplishments. Ambition fuels leadership by pushing individuals to take responsibility, imagine alternatives, and mobilize others toward a vision. Amb…

The latest employment numbers have dropped—and the job market still looks tough for workers. Today’s jobs report shares data from November, which was delayed due to the government shutdown that lifted last month. As jobs growth has slowed in recent months, the unemployment rate has climbed to 4.6%, up from 4.4% in September and the highest it has been in four years. Employers added only 64,000 jobs in November, and the market also shed 105,000 jobs the month prior. Wage growth has stagnated to a degree that hasn’t been seen since 2021. The jobs report seems to confirm what many workers are likely encountering as they try to navigate the current job market: Employ…

Within my family, I’m known as the “AI Guy” so naturally, my sister-in-law excitedly told me how she took a photo of her living room, uploaded it to ChatGPT, and saw a photorealistic rendering of her room with specific couches from Kohl’s and Wayfair that she could buy. While many businesses are encouraging employees to use AI more, they are forgetting that AI doesn’t just affect productivity; it’s also changing how we shop. Had my sister-in-law searched for “mocha leather couch,” she would have seen a laundry list of options in a Google search; however, she only saw two options through ChatGPT, and this new way of shopping is having a widespread impact on businesses…

Every December, something strange happens inside companies. Decisions that were stuck for months suddenly fly through. Projects get approved. Budgets get finalized. People stop debating and finally choose. Leaders usually chalk this up to “year-end energy” or “the holiday push.” That is an easy story, but it hides what is actually going on. December forces leaders into a tighter frame. There is less time to overthink, fewer acceptable choices, and clearer expectations. In other words, the environment is designed in a way that produces commitment instead of delay—even though for complex, novel strategic bets, the calendar alone is rarely enough. This isn’t holiday …

Twenty-four hours before the White House and Silicon Valley announced the $500 billion Project Stargate to secure the future of AI, China dropped a technological love bomb called DeepSeek. DeepSeek R1 is a whole lot like OpenAI’s top-tier reasoning model, o1. It offers state-of-the art artificial thinking: the sort of logic that doesn’t just converse convincingly, but can code apps, calculate equations, and think through a problem more like a human. DeepSeek largely matches o1’s performance, but it runs at a mere 3% the cost, is open source, can be installed on a company’s own servers, and allows researchers, engineers, and app developers a look inside and even tune t…

Delegation is supposed to get easier the higher you rise. In reality, it becomes challenging in a different way, Common delegation advice is helpful for first-time managers, who typically have trouble letting go. But for senior leaders, effective delegation looks different. It’s not about handing off tasks. It’s about leading through a paradox. They need to stay close enough to align and coach, but they also need to step back enough to empower and grow others. At this level, for many, the risk isn’t micromanagement, but over-detachment. When you’re too removed, you miss chances to align strategy, spot risks, or coach your leaders. Delegation is about managing …

Soon after Zohran Mamdani secured the Democratic nomination for New York City mayor, Amanda Litman posted a video selfie on TikTok. “The dinosaurs of the past, the boomers, the hostile managers, the assholes—they are behind us,” she preached to the camera. If viewers felt inspired to “run to take on the status quo,” they should head to her organization’s website and register. Though Mamdani is not affiliated with Litman’s eight-year-old nonprofit, Run for Something, his generational fight aligns with its purpose: to encourage young and underrepresented people to run for political office, including “hyperlocal” positions like city council and school boards. Litman …