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The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. Across industries, a new era of climate innovation is accelerating. The momentum is visible in the data: Global clean energy investment surpassed $2 trillion for the first time in 2024, double the amount invested in fossil fuels. While solar panels, wind turbines, and grid-connected batteries often grab the headlines, the low carbon economy is growing in far more corners than many realize. …

The internet can be a great place to learn random life hacks and cry over anglerfish. But what about when it comes to managing your money? According to new data from Intuit Credit Karma, 77% of Gen Z and 61% of millennials are turning to social media for financial advice. Millennials mainly seek out YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram for information, while for Gen Z, TikTok has emerged as an unlikely hub for financial advice, under the hashtag FinTok. Here, content creators such as @YourRichBFF and @JohneFinance have combined followings of millions with videos that offer tips on everything from credit card rewards to flight costs to 401ks, crunched into less than a minu…

A driver drove a car into a labor union demonstration in central Munich on Thursday, injuring 30 people including children, authorities said. Officials said it was believed to be an attack. The suspect, an Afghan asylum-seeker, was arrested. The incident follows a series of attacks involving immigrants in recent months that have pushed migration to the forefront of the campaign for Germany’s Feb. 23 election. Participants in a demonstration by the service workers’ union ver.di were walking along a street at about 10:30 a.m. when the suspect’s Mini Cooper overtook a police vehicle following the gathering, accelerated and plowed into the back of the group, police sa…

Alphabet Inc’s Google is close to deciding on locations in its key market of India where it will open its first physical retail stores outside the United States, three sources familiar with the matter said. Google counts India as a key growth market, where it has committed to investing $10 billion. It currently has only five physical stores, all in the United States, which sell its products such as Pixel phones, watches, and earbuds. It is aiming to mirror a retail approach that helped Apple Inc. rake in billions of dollars in the past two decades by showcasing its own products. Apple has 500 plus stores worldwide. Google is in advanced stages of finalising lo…

For the first time since 1984, the airline Korean Air is updating its charmingly retro look to new branding that’s better suited for the modern era. The rebrand, designed by the global creative consultancy Lippincott, includes a new wordmark, refreshed logo, and pared-down color scheme. It’s set to debut across Korean Air’s operations and on the livery of its aircraft in the coming weeks. The rebrand comes just a few months after Korean Air officially completed merger negotiations with Asiana Airlines, South Korea’s second-largest airline. The two companies will become one mega-airline. [Image: Korean Air]As Korean Air begins to integrate Asiana Airlines’ operations with …

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Zillow economists have developed an economic model called Zillow’s Market Heat Index, which measures the competitiveness of housing markets across the U.S. This model analyzes factors such as home price changes, inventory levels, days on market, and buyer demand to generate a score indicating whether a market is hot (favoring sellers) or cool (favoring buyers). A higher score indicates a hotter metro-level housing market where sellers have more power. A lower score indicates a colder metro-level housing market where buyers have more power. Accord…

Within Walmart, employees known as merchants make decisions about which products the company carries online and in stores, as well as pricing for those items. Naturally, the job involves plenty of data analysis, with merchants breaking down sales numbers by product category, sales channel, region, brand, item characteristics, and other factors. But manually running all of those reports and examining results using tools like Excel can be time-consuming, especially when merchants need to run multiple reports. “You can see how these reports can become time-consuming when analyzing customer behavior across so much data,” says Brian Knapp, senior vice president for mer…

As the Super Bowl clock ticked just below three minutes left in the game, Eagles wide receivers A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith picked up the giant Gatorade cooler, snuck behind head coach Nick Sirianni on the sideline, and hit him with the traditional shower celebration. It was probably one of the best ads of the Super Bowl, and it wasn’t even a commercial. And yet, it still told a story about how close the ties are between this brand and one of the most significant moments in sports. This year, Gatorade celebrates its 60th anniversary since Dr. James Cade first concocted his formula to keep the Florida Gators football team hydrated. Gatorade chief brand of…

Eric Migicovsky has barely started working on a successor to the Pebble smartwatch, and he’s already talking about being finished with it. Eight years ago, Migicovsky shut down the smartwatch startup he founded, having sold its software assets to Fitbit, which later became part of Google. But all this time, he and thousands of Pebble die-hards have continued to wear their watches, aided in part by a community that’s kept Pebble’s app store and core services alive. Last month, Migicovsky persuaded Google to make Pebble’s software open source, and now he’s started a company to build new watches. (They won’t be called Pebbles, though, since Google still owns the name.) While…

Kate Aronowitz tells me she first set out in graphic design because it felt like a discipline that helped her bring order to things. Many years later, she has a love-hate relationship with being labeled “a creative” because the creative process, as she sees it, is not just about art and design—it’s as much about solving problems as it is building things from scratch. She also believes everyone can be creative under the right circumstances. As portfolio operations lead at Google Ventures, Aronowitz has collaborated with some of the world’s most inspiring and hardworking founders. And now she has the opportunity to shape and inspire the next generation of students at S…

I like to say that I spend most of my life negotiating—and if you consider your own work and life, you just might feel the same. My career has been full of back-and-forth: I sat across tables negotiating agreements for Christie’s for over two decades as Global Managing Director of Strategic Partnerships; I stand on stages around the world as a charity auctioneer, negotiating prices up to maximize fundraising; and I founded a talent agency that requires me to negotiate pay and conditions on behalf of my clients. To top it all off, I’m a mom of three kids. Over the years, I have listened to many people unknowingly sink their own negotiations with a mistake as simple as…

“But what is death?” I am sitting down with Katrina Crawford and we are here to talk about the White Lotus Season 3 opening credits. Together with Mark Bashore, Crawford runs the creative studio Plains of Yonder, which has crafted the White Lotus main titles for every season so far. But that question about death wasn’t posed by me. It was posed by her. And it challenges us to reflect on the meaning of death, and the many ways to die. Since White Lotus season 3 premiered on February 16, the internet has been abuzz with theories and criticisms around who died and what the opening sequence means. In response, HBO has said: “You’ll get it soon enough.” So while we w…

The trope of the starving, broke artist has long maintained a place in the public imagination, even as it has morphed into idealized notions of “‘hustle” or “grindset.” “It’s cool to romanticize [that lifestyle] for a little bit and use it as part of your motivation,” says L.A.-based rising musician Gidi, “but at a certain point we gotta be able to see the fruits of our labor.” For many artists and songwriters, the fruits are there in the form of royalties—they’re just exceedingly difficult to harvest. In the labyrinthine world of the music industry, royalty collection is particularly complex. There are hundreds of music streaming platforms operating in hundreds of c…

When we think of climate change, we may consider extreme weather events – record-breaking heatwaves, heavy downpours and devastating floods. But have you considered that these changes could also increase your risk of exposure to certain viruses? We now live in world where extreme weather events are common. With the increasing frequency of prolonged rainstorms and heatwaves, climate change may raise the likelihood of being exposed to sewage-associated viruses in rivers, lakes and coastal waters. Intense rainstorms can also result in rainwater overloading urban sewer systems. As a result, raw untreated sewage is released into rivers, lakes and coastal waters. Newly …

America’s love of chicken might only be matched by its love of celebrities. Now, this unexpected combination is turning out to be key for restaurant chains hoping to win over loyal customers. Leading consumer behavior and market research company Circana recently released its annual “Definitive U.S. Restaurant Ranking,” providing insights on the 50 largest restaurant chains in the country. The report revealed that a collective $1 million was spent by consumers in restaurants every minute, with 2024 marking the fourth consecutive year of growth in consumer restaurant spending. It comes as more recent data shows a troubling start to 2025 for some chains. McDonald’s, …

We need to talk about AI. Have you noticed it often just isn’t—well, very intelligent? Already, we’ve lived through years of AI hype. We’ve watched companies pitch AI as a great tool for writing boring corporate emails. We’ve seen it shoehorned into all kinds of places it doesn’t belong. And it’s often just been bad. We’re all exhausted. So let’s cut through the fluff: The AI we’re about to go over is actually impressive. I’ve never felt that AI truly delivered—until now. I’m genuinely impressed—and I didn’t expect to be. If you’re intrigued, great! If you’re thinking, “We’ll see about that,” that’s also OK—don’t take my word for it. You truly need to try it y…

U.S. consumers often pay more for gluten-free products, yet these items typically provide less protein and more sugar and calories compared with gluten-containing alternatives. That is the key finding of my new study, published in the journal Plant Foods for Human Nutrition. This study compared gluten-free products with their gluten-containing counterparts, and the findings suggested that many perceived benefits of gluten-free products—such as weight control and diabetes management—are exaggerated. Currently, many gluten-free products lack dietary fiber, protein, and essential nutrients. Manufacturers often add supplements to compensate, but the incorporation of d…