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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. At the Exceptional Women Alliance (EWA), we enable high level women to mentor each other for personal and professional happiness through sisterhood. As the nonprofit organization’s founder, chair, and CEO, I am honored to interview and share insights from some of the thought leaders who are part of EWA. This month I introduce to you Emily Moorhead, president of the Henry Ford Jackson Hospital. …

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. There’s no question that artificial intelligence has taken the world by storm. However, as the initial excitement over the technology fades, we find ourselves in a new phase of thoughtful exploration. There are many innovative AI startups that have captured the world’s attention; however, many organizations still struggle to develop a clear roadmap to take full advantage of this transformative t…

I don’t know about you, but I usually cringe when I get my weekly Screen Time Report. Did I really spend that much time online? Turns out, I’m pretty average. According to DataReportal’s 2025 Global Overview Report, adults worldwide clock in about six hours and 38 minutes on digital devices each day. While being average is comforting, I know I could benefit from more time unplugged. Yet, the thought of a full digital detox feels scary. “It’s very hard to completely disconnect yourself,” says Cristiano Winckler, director of digital marketing for Somebody Digital, a digital marketing agency. “But anything in excess is going to have negative consequences. The quest…

Between the rise of quiet quitting, the evolution of hybrid work, and concerns about artificial intelligence, we live in tumultuous times. In order to retain talent, it’s important for leaders to adapt to the changing needs of their employee population. This is a particularly large challenge at the moment since it requires understanding and supporting very different groups. There are currently five different generations from all walks of life in the workplace. They have a wide range of preferences when it comes to money management, lifestyle, and retirement goals. Finding ways to better understand and engage with the needs of unique employee segments can enhance …

Design industry leaders trust artificial intelligence less than they did a year ago, and many see the world as an increasingly uncertain place. These are a few of the most striking takeaways from the 2025 State of Design & Make report from the design and engineering software maker Autodesk. This third annual design industry outlook is based on surveys and interviews with 5,594 industry leaders, futurists, and experts across industries including architecture, engineering, construction, and operations, design and manufacturing, and media and entertainment. Leaders from what Autodesk calls the “design and make” industries were asked to report on a wide range of t…

The death of Pope Francis has been announced by the Vatican. I first met the late Pope Francis at the Vatican after a conference called Saving Our Common Home and the Future of Life on Earth in July 2018. My colleagues and I sensed something momentous was happening at the heart of the church. At that time, I was helping to set up the new Laudato Si’ Research Institute at the Jesuit Hall at the University of Oxford. This institute is named after the pope’s 2015 encyclical (a letter to bishops outlining church policy) on climate change. Its mission is rooted in the pope’s religiously inspired vision of integral ecology—a multidisciplinary approach that addresses soc…

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. The pandemic fully exposed global supply chains’ vulnerabilities and inefficiencies. While most brands were agile enough to shift strategies to address the uncertainties of the time, many prioritized speed and cost to meet the pressures of the moment, at the expense of long-term adaptability, resilience, and flexibility post-pandemic. Today, new supply chain pressures like tariffs, trade w…

Artificial intelligence has rapidly started finding its place in the workplace, but this year will be remembered as the moment when companies pushed past simply experimenting with AI and started building around it, Microsoft said in a blog post accompanying its annual Work Trend Index report. As part of this shift, Microsoft is dubbing 2025 the year of the “Frontier Firm.” “Like the digital native companies of a generation ago, they understand the power of pairing irreplaceable human insight with AI and agents to unlock outsized value,” Jared Spataro, CMO of AI at Work at Microsoft, said in the post. These so-called Frontier Firms will be built around “on-dem…

A video game once synonymous with one of the most disastrous launches in history has not only redeemed itself, but will be getting a proper second act. Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt Red announced in an earnings call Wednesday that the company is at work on a follow-up to the futuristic role-playing title, which was released in late 2020 and universally criticized for being unfinished, glitchy and at times unplayable. CD Projekt Red said that the conceptual phase is complete and pre-production has begun on the “next big game set in the Cyberpunk universe,” which it is calling Cyberpunk 2 for now. The company expects the game’s development to take four to five…

Recently, after decades of paying high fees for the aging photo-sharing site Flickr, I finally moved all my images to Google Photos. It saved money and offered advanced features, like very accurate search results. But uploading years of pictures triggered the dreaded warning that I was approaching the storage limit of my Google account, which also holds Gmail, documents, spreadsheets, and other files. Cloud storage (be it Google Drive, iCloud, or Dropbox) is just one more in a growing list of subscriptions we all face, such as video and music streaming services, online magazines or newspapers, newsletters, Patreon sponsorship, and often just the right to keep using so…

As March Madness takes over this week, how many people are filling out NCAA brackets — and why? A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows what share of Americans typically take a shot at bracket predictions and their motivation for joining in the madness. The survey found that about one-quarter of Americans fill out a men’s March Madness bracket “every year” or “some years.” But what about the women’s tournament? High-profile NCAA women’s basketball games have closed the gap with men’s tournaments in terms of viewership and there is more money flowing in and around women’s sports in general; women’s teams will now be paid t…

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. Before there was Apple, Medtronic, or Tesla, there was General Electric (GE). Created in 1892 from the combination of Thomas Edison’s Edison General Electric and two other competitors, the American conglomerate was once the most powerful, valuable, and inventive company in the world. …

Nvidia indulged all your artificial intelligence fantasies on Tuesday at what was being called the “Super Bowl of AI.” The chip giant’s GPU Technology Conference (GTC) was held at the SAP Center in San Jose on Tuesday, and it was—you guessed it—all about AI. Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang made several large announcements during a two-hour keynote, with plenty of meat to keep AI-hungry consumers and businesses happy. That includes partnerships with large automakers to build autonomous vehicles and even personal AI supercomputers that sit right on your desktop. Here are some of the key announcements from Huang’s keynote: GM partnership: General Motors…

Behind some of the most recognizable iconography in the world, from American presidential campaign logos to New York City subway signage and Apple keycaps, is one Swiss designer and a textbook he published in 1949. You’ve probably never heard of either. Walter Käch was a calligrapher and educator at the Zürich School of Arts and Crafts in the late ‘30s and ‘40s. During this time, he published a simple manual, called Lettering, which laid out his approach to crafting letterforms, letting students learn about proper technique and trace and copy letters directly inside the book. Experts have credited Lettering for popularizing the idea of type families and directly inspi…

I was taught that hard work would get me ahead, would ultimately pay off, and would get me promoted. But several years ago, when I was passed up for yet another promotion, I was angry and devastated because I was convinced that I had deserved that promotion. How could I not have been promoted after all the hard work I had been doing? A mentor I reached out to finally confided this to me, “Yes, you are working hard. But you are working on the wrong things. You need to be working on things that get you visibility.” I was doing lots of work, but with little visibility. I didn’t realize that only focusing on working hard was the quickest way to not get promoted. Even…

Technology Transformation Services (TTS), a high-tech consulting group housed within the General Services Administration (GSA), is tasked with helping agencies modernize their internal systems and public-facing websites. In the past, the group has had the resources and personnel to create innovative new solutions: for example, building Login.gov, a single sign-on system for secure access to government services, along with Cloud.gov, the government’s cloud hosting environment. But now, with Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) at the helm, the group faces a rapidly shrinking headcount and mandate, says a source within the GSA. Two DOGE opera…

Because hiring staff is typically a time-consuming and costly process, many companies are now opting to interview multiple candidates at once. The Society for Human Resource Management reported that group interviews have become increasingly popular among employers. For applicants, this changes the interview experience significantly. Instead of fielding questions about your résumé in a one-on-one setting, you’ve now got to vie for a role alongside other applicants and take part in real-world workplace scenarios designed to showcase your leadership skills. Tech companies and brands such as Disney, Starbucks, and The Gap are choosing to adopt the trend. Not only can…

Ever get a feeling that something isn’t right? An internal voice that is trying to tell you something? It could be your intuition bubbling up. Or maybe it’s anxiety. Or both. Learning to tell the difference between anxiety and intuition can help you determine if that feeling is something you should listen to or address in another way, but it’s easy to confuse the two. “People have become disconnected from their emotions, beliefs, and self-confidence,” says intuitive life coach Tammy Adams. “They have so much doubt within themselves that they don’t listen to their own intuition. People veer off with fear and live more in anxiety than they do in confidence.” Your gu…

Welcome to Pressing Questions, Fast Company’s workplace advice column. Every week, deputy editor Kathleen Davis, host of The New Way We Work podcast, will answer the biggest and most pressing workplace questions. Q: How can I get my boss to stop emailing me in the middle of the night? A: This dilemma is closely related to the question of how to say “no” at work without feeling guilty and how to push back if your workload is too much. All are part of setting boundaries, but in an uncertain job market, drawing firm lines between work and personal time can feel more fraught. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t set boundaries. In fact, the most valuable, creative, product…

Most companies operate like one-sided cubes—what the world sees is curated and polished, but the rest remains hidden, even to the people inside. Strategy becomes surface-level. Teams chase goals without grounding. Leaders lead without alignment. In a world growing more complex and emotionally disoriented, that’s not just unsustainable—it’s dangerous. It’s time for a Strategy Renaissance. We need to move beyond sterile planning cycles and rediscover the human heart of strategy. In this new era of work, meaning isn’t a bonus feature—it’s your sharpest edge. The Great Divide Between Strategy and Meaning We have long treated strategy as the realm of numbers a…

When the electric car startup Rivian was set to release its first vehicle in late 2021, the company made the unconventional choice. Instead of a more conventional neutral tone, it manufactured a significant amount of its initial production run in a custom color the company called Launch Green. It was a decision that ran counter to almost every color trend and automotive industry sales report, and one that’s come to shape the way the company builds out one of the most unique color palettes in the car business. “Everybody buys black, white, or gray. Pretty much every single brand, they’re going to have that. And it doesn’t matter if you’re in the U.S., you’re in China, …