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AI inspired many employers to take a wait-and-see approach to hiring in 2025, but new data suggest they’ll be returning to the market in search of certain skills in 2026. According to Upwork’s In-Demand Skills 2026 report, demand for AI-specific proficiencies have more than doubled on the freelancer platform over the last year. But at the same time, nearly half of employers also say they’re also putting a premium on human skills, like creativity, emotional intelligence, resilience and innovation. “When we look at the fastest growing skills in terms of demand, AI is all over it. That’s not surprising,” says Dr. Gabby Burlacu, licensed organizational psychologist an…

Below, Brad Stulberg shares five key insights from his new book, The Way of Excellence: A Guide to True Greatness and Deep Satisfaction in a Chaotic World. Brad is on faculty at the University of Michigan. He is a performance coach and regularly contributes pieces about sustainable excellence to the New York Times. His work has also been featured in The Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic, among many other outlets. He serves as co-host of the podcast excellence, actually. What’s the big idea? What if excellence isn’t about winning, talent, or perfect conditions? Lasting performance and real fulfillment live in our curiosity, resilience, and love of the process…

Integrity, understood as a disposition to behave in prosocial, ethical, and principled ways rather than corrupt or self-serving ones, is among the strongest and most consistent predictors of job performance and leadership effectiveness. The reason is far from mysterious. Leadership, whatever its context, is a collective enterprise. No meaningful goal, from building empires to running companies, has ever been achieved alone. Across history, not just in humans but also other animals, cooperation has depended less on raw power than on trust. Ancient trading societies flourished precisely because reputation constrained behavior: merchants in Phoenician city-states, mediev…

Picture a memory from childhood, one that feels real and nostalgic, but somehow just out of grasp: perhaps a family trip to the beach, or a moment mid-swing on the playset, or an afternoon spent hunting for four-leaf clovers. Now, imagine that you could bottle that golden moment into a fragrance. One scientist at MIT, Cyrus Clarke, is working to do just that. Alongside a team of fellow researchers, Clarke has developed a physical machine called the Anemoia Device, which uses a generative AI model to analyze an archival photograph, describe it in a short sentence, and, following the user’s own inputs, convert that description into a unique fragrance. The word “an…

For Americans with conventional work schedules, Monday holidays are often a blessing. However, despite the extra weekend day, these observances can also sneak up on you and be confusing. Today (Monday, February 16) is Presidents’ Day, which is officially known as Washington’s Birthday. In this story, we’ll break down what exactly is open and closed on the day that we celebrate all the commanders in chief. Before we get into all that, let’s look at the history of the day and how it came to be. What does George Washington have to do with it? George Washington, the first president of the United States, has everything to do with Presidents’ Day. The holiday evolve…

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. With apologies to T.S. Eliot, some CEOs are finding that February, not April, may be the cruelest month. In recent weeks, Workday, PayPal, and The Washington Post parted ways with their chief executives, suggesting that high CEO turnover, which reached record levels in recent years, may con…

After more than a decade of planning, an overlooked side of the ski haven of Aspen, Colorado, will soon be revamped into a new base village. Named Chalet Alpina and covering two-and-a-half city blocks, the development will build a new modern ski lift that is closer to the city’s downtown and flank it with a luxury hotel and residences, a restaurant and ski museum inside relocated historic chalet buildings, and a broad new public plaza. The project, which broke ground last fall, is situated at the loading point of the 1937 tow line that was the city’s first mechanized route up the mountain. Remnants of the steel lift that replaced it a decade later will be preserve…

In the United States, it’s one of our annual holidays today, Presidents’ Day, which celebrates the dozens of American presidents we’ve had over the centuries. But on the other side of the world, an even larger holiday is kicking off: Chinese New Year. Here’s what you need to know about the festival and its importance to the millions of Chinese Americans in the United States. What is Chinese New Year? Chinese New Year, also known as the Lunar New Year or, in China, the Spring Festival, is an annual holiday that marks the beginning of the new lunar year. Unlike many Western holidays, the lunar new year does not have a fixed date. Instead, it typically falls on the fu…

Tax filing season is in full swing, and while preparing your taxes can often be filled with stress, misplaced documents, and worries about proper filing, this year, there may be a silver lining. According to analysts, many Americans may get larger refunds in 2026 due to The President’s 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill legislation. Last year, the average refund was $3,167, but, given there are a number of new changes and deductions, experts say many Americans are looking to get back an additional $1,000 or more. Overall, that could come out to around $90 billion more dollars in tax returns. Here are the biggest changes that could boost your tax refund this year: No tax…

After 50, too many women reduce their working hours, become trapped in lower-quality jobs, or exit the labor market altogether. Part-time employment becomes more prevalent as women age. The gender gap widens. For women, this means lower lifetime earnings and significantly smaller pensions. Many are calling this phenomenon the “menopause penalty”—a midlife equivalent of the motherhood penalty. And indeed, research suggests that women’s earnings drop in the years following a menopause diagnosis. But while menopause clearly plays a role, there is a risk in attributing these economic setbacks too narrowly to biology. Doing so not only oversimplifies women’s lived realitie…

On January 23rd, outside an elementary school in Santa Monica, California, a Waymo vehicle hit a child. That’s what we know for sure. It sounds shocking, horrifying even. And it’s already giving plenty of groups cover to demand that California revoke Waymo’s license to operate its cars. But the details matter. And once you start digging a bit, the scary headline about a kid struck down by a heartless robot clearly isn’t the whole story. In fact, accidents like this provide a lens through which to improve both human and robot driving—and even save lives. Braking Hard The specifics of the incident in Santa Monica are still coming out. As it does…

Most of us assume bullying is something we age out of by middle school, high school at the latest. By the time you’re a professional—especially one with credentials, experience, and a résumé you worked hard for—you expect a baseline of mutual respect. And yet. If you’ve spent enough time in workplaces, on boards, or in other community organizations, you’ve probably had that moment where your stomach tightens in a meeting and you’re not entirely sure why. A comment lands sideways. A tone shifts. Someone interrupts you for the third time. You walk away replaying the exchange, wondering whether you imagined it or whether something subtle but unmistakable just happene…

Gabriela Flax spent the first part of her career working in tech as a product manager. And while every day was different and varied, there were aspects of it that were causing her burnout. “I’ve always really enjoyed the product marketing aspect of my work,” she says. “I really like talking to end-users about ‘Hey, this is how this thing helps you’ and how to articulate that.” However, she wasn’t able to work on it as much as she would have liked. At the same time, Flax was in her 20s, living in London, and had stopped drinking alcohol. She began posting her journey in social media, talking about bars and places that were non-alcohol related. Flax recalls, …

If you stop by the “as-is” section at one of Ikea’s U.S. stores, you might now find a vintage table from the 1980s. The company recently started accepting older products in its Buy Back & Resell program, which gives customers store credit for bringing back used items, and then offers them for sale to other customers. Since launching as a pilot in the U.S. five years ago, the program—still the only one of its kind at a major furniture retailer—has steadily expanded, underscoring the demand for circular options. The program “is our opportunity to bring our products back into the store from our customers to keep them out of landfill,” says Mardi Ditze, sustainabi…

Too many years ago, I remember slotting a 3.5-inch disk into my PC. With my allowance, I’d bought $5 video game design software from a catalog. And as I looked at the terminal, lost without some familiar GUI . . . my coding efforts died. Game design became an abstract concept even as I became a game journalist—a topic sketched in notebooks, theoretically discussed, critically observed. That was, until I loaded Moonlake AI. With $30 million in funding from investors including Nvidia, AIX, Google’s Chief Scientist Jeff Dean, and YouTube founder Steve Chen, the 15-person startup founded by two Stanford PhD students dreams of building complete games—from first person shoo…

The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, a protege of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and two-time presidential candidate who led the Civil Rights Movement for decades after the revered leader’s assassination, died Tuesday. He was 84. As a young organizer in Chicago, Jackson was called to meet with King at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis shortly before King was killed and he publicly positioned himself thereafter as King’s successor. Jackson led a lifetime of crusades in the United States and abroad, advocating for the poor and underrepresented on issues from voting rights and job opportunities to education and health care. He scored diplomatic victories with world leaders, and through…

This should come as a shock to very few people, but Krispy Kreme doughnuts, which typically needs very little reason to give away its doughnuts, is giving away free doughnuts today. This time, the free doughnut giveaway is in honor of Fat Tuesday 2026. But there’s a catch. Here’s what you need to know. What is Fat Tuesday? Today (Tuesday, February 17) is Fat Tuesday, otherwise known as Mardi Gras. The holiday always falls on the final Tuesday before the Christian holy day of Ash Wednesday, which is the beginning of the Lent observance period. Traditionally, Christians refrain from eating certain foods during Lent, particularly rich and fatty ones. As a…

Hospital intensive care units are notoriously noisy, with medical equipment emitting alarms, beeps, and other alerts designed to grab the attention of overextended healthcare workers. That constant barrage can lead to what experts call alarm fatigue, causing stress and exhaustion for doctors and nurses who must distinguish between routine signals and those indicating a patient is in urgent distress. Patients, too, often struggle to rest amid the cacophony, even though sleep is critical to recovery. To Ophir Ronen, a serial tech entrepreneur who sold his IT alert-handling startup Event Enrichment HQ to PagerDuty, the problem sounded familiar. Ronen first encountere…

Today marks the start of the Year of the Fire Horse, which in Chinese tradition is all about action, boldness, and taking on new challenges. And what better way to celebrate a year that should be full of red hot, blazing energy than with a hand-crafted cowboy hat from Stetson? The color? Red, of course. The company, started by John Batterson Stetson in 1865, invented the cowboy hat. Today, it’s still known for embracing the spirit of the West with its quality hats, boots, and outerwear. And to mark the year of intensity, which hasn’t happened in 60 years, the brand is partnering with Gold House to turn an iconic cultural item—the cowboy hat—into a modern…

For the past decade—and really, for its entire 84-year history—the laundry detergent brand Tide has been trying to simplify the process of doing of laundry. From its original all-in-one powder to 1980s-era liquid soap to the 2012 introduction of the packet-based Tide Pod, the brand and its parent company Procter and Gamble have regularly reformulated the core product to accommodate the seemingly simple but highly diverse act of washing one’s clothes. “There are 55 unique steps we’ve identified in the laundry process,” says Marchoe Northern, president of North America fabric care at Procter and Gamble. “Our job is to continue to think about ways to solve today’s modern…

Nothing is certain, they say, but death and taxes. But a new idea from Meta could add social media to that list. The tech giant was granted a patent in December that would allow it to simulate a user via artificial intelligence when he or she is absent from the social network for extended periods, including, “for example, when the user takes a long break or if the user is deceased.” The patent covers a bot that could simulate your activity across Meta’s products, including Facebook, Instagram, and Threads—making posts, leaving comments, and interacting with other users. It could even, potentially, communicate directly with people via chats or video calls, the pate…

Variant, a generative design tool that promises endless UI exploration, recently introduced a feature most creative people and designers have used for decades: the eyedropper. In Variant, the tool picks vibes: It lets you click on one AI-generated interface and inject its aesthetic DNA—typography, spatial relationships, and color palettes—into another. After so much hype around “vibecoding” and its text-based imprecision, seeing a familiar, direct manipulation tool applied to generative AI feels great.​​ The new AI modality takes a nice step to close the gap between the impenetrable ways of large language model black boxes and the tools designers actually use with the…

The new year has so far not been kind to the share price of Big Tech stocks, particularly the so-called Magnificent 7. These seven companies—Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla—are America’s tech crown jewels. Combined, they have their hands in the hottest areas of tech, including artificial intelligence, mobile computing, chipmaking, and transportation. Yet all of these tech companies have seen their share prices decline since the beginning of the year. Here are some possible reasons why. The Magnificent 7 is seeing red in 2026 As of this writing, there isn’t a single Magnificent 7 stock in the green for 2026. Their year-to-date return…