To land the historic job as the first Egyptian, Arab, and African woman to go to space, Sara Sabry trained and researched every morning before her full-time tech job and didn’t see daylight for years. The grind to space isn’t for the faint of heart—and it’s a reality check, she suggests, for work-life balance-loving Gen Z. In an exclusive interview with Fortune, she shares the brutal routine that helped her defy a “0.0%” chance of becoming an astronaut.
Sara Sabry became the world’s first Egyptian astronaut after flying to space on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket on Aug. 4, 2022—marking the first time an Arab or African women has ever gone to space, all before even turning 30.
It’s a common childhood dream, but one that few realize. For starters, you need access to a plane just to rack up the 1,000 flight hours required to apply to programs like NASA.
For Sabry, the mission was even more impossible. She wasn’t born into a country with a space agency. There were no astronauts who looked like her. And she didn’t have elite connections or deep pockets.
So to get her foot in the door, the then 28-year-old had to wake up at 4:30 a.m. to squeeze in early-morning training and bioastronautics research, all before reporting to her full-time job as CTO of a Berlin-based tech startup by 9 a.m.
Then after work, she’d work some more on her own start-up and space training—and it’s the kind of gruelling discipline she says young people today shouldn’t shy away from if they want to unlock their dreams.
“Back then it was, it was really, really, it was really tough,” she recalls in those early days of her career, speaking exclusively to Fortune during her stay in London for the 2025 American Express Leadership Academy. “You would wake up at night, and then you would go back at night, so you barely see the daylight ever.”
She says that she’d tackle the most important tasks of the day before 10 a.m., when others start to trickle online.
“I see a lot of young people now they’re wanting to take the easy route without working so hard. But the truth is, you have to make sacrifices. You have to put yourself through a lot of discomfort,” Sabry adds. “Of course, it’s not easy to wake up 4:30 a.m. every morning and be completely isolated from the world, right? But it goes to show that you can really transform your life—and you have so much control over your life.”
Sabry says the experience radically shifted how she viewed limitations tied to class, geography, and identity.
She didn’t have the passport, the platform, or the privilege, but she pushed through anyway. And in doing so, proved what’s possible when ambition is backed by relentless effort.
“It changed the way I see things now. Having gone to space and having done the thing that was impossible, honestly the likelihood of that happening was around 0.0%, unless I changed my nationality.”
She beat the odds—and over 7,000 other applicants for that Blue Origin flight—to make history.
Now, she’s made it—but still pulling 13-hour days and has a jet-setter schedule
Despite finding success, you still won’t find Sabry kicking up her feet.
On top of being an astronaut, the now 32-year-old is also the executive director of Deep Space Initiative—a nonprofit she founded to make space more accessible—co-founder of the Egyptian Space Agency’s Ambassador program, and is completing a PhD in aerospace engineering. She is also conducting research on the engineering of the next generation of planetary spacesuits at the NASA-funded Humanspaceflight lab.
If that wasn’t enough, Sabry is building new ventures and growing a speaking career that’s taking her around the world. And with such a packed, jet-setting schedule, she’s learned to adapt her rigid routine into something more flexible. But that doesn’t mean she lies in.
“I haven’t lived in a one place in three years,” she says. “I have to live out of my suitcase, so you have to adapt.”
Nowadays, Sabry starts her day at around 6 a.m. with a workout, before responding to emails and doing “admin stuff.”
“It’s not 4:30 a.m. anymore, because I have to work late these days,” she explains, adding that the time difference for international calls she has to take while often based in Egypt pushes her work schedule back, bringing her total workday to 13 hours.
“My first meeting is at 9 a.m. and my last meeting is from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. so I can’t be waking up too early,” Sabry continues. Eight hours of sleep is non-negotiable—and so is having every task for the day blocked out in her calendar.
“Because I’m balancing a PhD, two companies, my public speaking, and more, I think it’s really about scheduling. As soon as tasks are scheduled in my calendar, I don’t have to think about them,” she adds.
“It’s so easy to get distracted when you’re working on other things, and you think, ‘Oh I have to work on my research or I have to answer emails.’ But no, emails are going to stay in the inbox until the scheduled time for me to be looking at emails. Sometimes, of course, you have to do urgent things. But the things that are not super urgent? You pre-schedule.”
Eyes on the prize: The cure for exhaustion
If you feel exhausted just reading about Sabry’s routine, let alone copying it, she says there’s only one way to survive it: become obsessed by your mission.
Sabry said she had no other choice because the alternative was not giving it all and risk not achieving her dream.
“It was always this fight,” she explains. “I was never going to be given an opportunity. Having grown up knowing that things are just not going to be given to me, I never expected anything. It makes you work so much harder. But I never really resented it, or felt like, ‘Oh, I’m doing too much,’ because that was just the necessary thing to do to move forward. There was no other option.”
And she says having a packed schedule helped her move forward with her goals because she didn’t even have time to think about anything else.
“Most of the day you’re in the dark, but you’re so consumed by it—having that focus and not having time to look at what’s going on in different places was really, really key,” she tells Fortune.
“So being so consumed and having just a really packed schedule, and knowing that I was investing in myself. When you’re working on things that you know are towards your purpose, it just gives you so much peace.”
Ultimately, she’d only be kicking herself today if she knew there was an extra hour or two in the day that she hadn’t used to push herself forward.
“If I wasn’t doing everything that I can and I could do more, then I wouldn’t feel at peace. Then I would kind of go through like the other rabbit hole of, you know, being kind of like extra tough on yourself. So by doing so much, it gave me peace.”
As remote work lingers, employees are doubling, even tripling, their paychecks by secretly juggling multiple full-time jobs—and not even having to pull overtime. The overemployed workers Fortune spoke to are working up to five jobs and pulling in more than $725,000 a year, all within a standard 40-hour week.
If you’ve grown suspicious of your coworker’s away status on Teams or their refusal to turn their camera on during meetings, there’s a chance they might be trying to earn two salaries at once—and fit it all into a normal workweek.
The practice went viral on social media last month when a single software engineer was found to be working at multiple Silicon Valley startups at once, prompting other companies to check whether they had fallen victim to similar deceitfulness.
However, holding down more than one gig at a time—sometimes even up to five—may be bigger than some companies expect. After all, the continued prevalence of remote work has made it more challenging for employers to know exactly what their workers are up to.
“If you’ve worked in corporate America, it is a lot of fluff and not a lot of substance,” said one worker who spoke anonymously with Fortune. They currently work three gigs, making about $725,000 altogether.
At one point, they were balancing five roles total, something they said has been made possible by AI productivity enhancement, with new tools making it easier than ever to send emails, compile meeting notes, and draft deliverables—and get it all done under relatively normal work hours.
“At this point it kind of became a game to me, how many jobs can I do at once and stay sane?” they recalled.
Maxing out on jobs certainly paid. off. While juggling five at once, they estimated bringing in more than $1 million a year.
“I have zero loyalty to a corporation,” they added.
No regrets about taking work from others
Fortune spoke to a second worker who currently holds two jobs in the healthcare technology industry. And despite being a full-time worker making a combined amount of nearly $250,000, they are able to get all the work completed within 40 hours. They don’t have concerns over taking jobs away from those struggling in today’s rocky job market.
“They’re hiring me for my knowledge and my expertise, not for hours worked,” they told Fortune.
And while holding more than one job may raise eyebrows next time you have to put your work history on a resume, they said they will just write the best full-time role they had at a current period to avoid having to answer for holding two jobs at once. However, the demand for talent in the healthcare tech industry has not made it much of an issue.
“I don’t go look for jobs, jobs come and look for me,” they said. “To be honest, I don’t remember the last time I went to apply for a job. And since 2017, I’ve had four different positions.”
In fact, they said they got so many recruitment offers from firms trying to snatch up talent, the companies practically enabled overemployment behavior.
Holding more than one job might be legal, but some people like Lewis Maleh, CEO of executive recruitment agency Bentley Lewis, don’t recommend people emulate the behavior.
“If someone is doing a full-time perm job and being paid accordingly, they should not be doing another full-time perm role unless the company is OK with it,” Maleh previously told Fortune. “I don’t think it’s ethical and will cost you down the road if you get found out. If you are doing a few part-time gigs, that’s of course a different story.”
A trend that might continue, but maybe not for long
Though both of the sources Fortune spoke with are fully-remote employees, some users on the overemployment Reddit community have deemed it possible to secretly work at a second job while on site elsewhere. But by and large, working multiple full-time jobs has been enabled by the ability to work from home.
Despite calls for workers to return to the office from large Fortune 500 companies like JPMorgan Chase, remote work is still common. In fact, 33% of all workers worked from home in 2024, down just slightly from 35% in 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s latest American Time Use Survey.
Remote work has stuck around far more than Jerry Jacobs, professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, expected—but now bosses are slowly getting better at gauging workers’ productivity realities.
“The longer (remote work) lasts, the more I think people will get used to this as just being, you know, one way that people work,” Jacobs tells Fortune. “And I think the longer it lasts, the more you know, people are going to get good at managing it.”
And as a result, he doesn’t expect the trend of having multiple full-time jobs to carry on—but rather something people are experimenting with.
“It’s hard to convince people on your first job, that you’re really doing your job, if you’re spending a lot of your time and energy on your second job,” he adds.
Similarly Lonnie Golden, a professor of economics and labor–human relations at Penn State University Abington, believes working more than one full-time job has the potential to grow, but it remains to be seen what that will actually look like.
“The question is, will the ethics, the productivity, the rules and regulations catch up with this?”
Holding multiple full-time jobs may sound impossible, but these overemployed remote workers are managing to squeeze in two to three jobs within a regular workweek—no overtime needed.
US officials have opened an investigation into Jack Smith, the former special counsel who led two federal criminal cases against President Donald Trump, US media reported Saturday.
The Office of Special Counsel told The New York Times it was investigating Smith for potentially violating the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal workers from engaging in political activity while on the job.
Republican Senator Tom Cotton had reportedly asked the agency to investigate whether Smith’s actions had been designed to influence the 2024 election.
The agency, which monitors the conduct of federal employees, did not immediately respond to request for comment by AFP.
Smith was appointed special counsel in 2022, and charged Trump with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 election and mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House.
Trump denied both charges and sought to frame them as politically motivated, accusing the Justice Department of being weaponized against him.
Neither case ever came to trial, and the special counsel — in line with a Justice Department policy of not prosecuting a sitting president — dropped them both after Trump won the November 2024 presidential election.
Smith then resigned before Trump could fulfil his campaign pledge to fire him.
The Office of Special Counsel operates separately from special counsel offices at the Department of Justice, such as the one headed by Smith.
The prosecutorial decisions made by Smith do not typically fall under its remit, according to the Times.
It cannot lay criminal charges against Smith but could refer its findings to the Department of Justice, which does have that power.
The most severe penalty under the Hatch Act is termination of employment, which would not apply to Smith as he has already resigned.
Since taking office in January, Trump has taken a number of punitive measures against his perceived enemies.
He has stripped former officials of their security clearances and protective details, targeted law firms involved in past cases against him and pulled federal funding from universities.
Last month the FBI opened criminal investigations into its former director James Comey and ex-CIA chief John Brennan, two prominent Trump critics.
Days later Comey’s daughter Maurene — a federal prosecutor who handled the case of notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who has been repeatedly linked to Trump — was abruptly fired.
OPEC+ has agreed in principle on another bumper oil production increase for September, according to a delegate, completing the revival of a halted supply tranche as the group moves to reclaim global market share.
Saudi Arabia and its partners plan to ratify the addition of 548,000 barrels a day for next month when they hold a video conference on Sunday, the delegate said. The increase would complete the reversal of a 2.2 million-barrel cutback made by eight members in 2023, and includes an extra allowance being phased in by the United Arab Emirates.
The latest hike caps a dramatic shift from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its partners from defending prices to opening the taps. Their pivot has cushioned oil and gasoline futures against geopolitical tensions and strong seasonal demand, offering some relief for drivers and a win for President Donald Trump, but could swell a global supply surplus anticipated later in the year.
OPEC+ had already tentatively agreed at last month’s meeting to finish the 2.2 million-barrel revival. Traders may now shift focus to the next layer of halted output, which amounts to 1.66 million barrels, and is formally scheduled to remain offline until the end of 2026.
“With the anticipated sunsetting of the 2.2 million barrel-a-day voluntary cut, we expect the producers to hit the pause button while they assess market conditions and broader macro factors,” said Helima Croft, head of commodity strategy at RBC Capital LLC.
OPEC+ sent oil prices crashing to a four-year low in early April when it announced a sudden acceleration in its plan to unwind the current tranche of cuts, while markets were still reeling from Trump’s dramatic “Liberation Day” tariff announcements. The alliance has followed with a series of bumper monthly increases, and sped up even further in July.
Crude prices have clawed back losses as demand strengthened over the summer, with Brent futures in London trading just below $70 a barrel on Friday — down 6.7% this year. However, analysts have warned the market faces a mounting surplus later this year, as supplies increase and slowing global growth weighs on demand. Benchmark retail gasoline prices in the US even edged lower last month.
The decision comes against the backdrop of threats by Trump to target Russian oil exports by putting secondary tariffs on buyers of its supplies unless there is a swift ceasefire in the war in Ukraine.
A disruption to Russian flows would threaten to drive up crude prices, and run counter to Trump’s repeated call for cheaper oil, as he pushes the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates.
Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak made a rare visit to Riyadh on Thursday to discuss “cooperation between the countries” with Saudi Arabian Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman. The two countries have jointly led OPEC+ since its creation almost a decade ago.
For all of AI’s promise, most companies using it are not yet delivering true value—to their customers or themselves. With investors keen to finally see some ROI on their AI investments, it’s time to stop generalizing and start thinking smaller.
Instead of building epic models that aim to accomplish all feats, businesses looking to cash in on the AI gold rush should consider pivoting towards focused models that are designed for specific tasks. By attacking a singular problem with a fresh solution, innovators can create powerful, novel models that require fewer parameters, less data, and less compute power.
With billions upon billions of dollars being spent on AI engineering, chips, training, and data centers, a smaller form of AI can also allow the industry to progress more safely, sustainably, and efficiently. Furthermore, it is possible to deliver this potential in various manners— through services atop commodity generalist models, retrieval-augmented systems, low-rank adaptation, fine-tuning, and more.
What’s so bad about big AI?
Some tech enthusiasts may cringe at the word “small,” but when it comes to AI, small does not mean insignificant, and bigger is not necessarily better. Models like OpenAI’s GPT-4, Google’s Gemini, Mistral AI’s Mistral, Meta’s Llama 3, or Anthropic’s Claude cost a fortune to build, and when we look at how they perform, it’s not clear why most businesses would want to get into that game to begin with.
Even as big players monopolize the field, their sexy, headline-making generalized foundational models seem to perform well enough on certain benchmarks, but whether this performance generalizes to actual value in terms of increased productivity or similar remains unclear.
In contrast, focused AI that answers specific use cases or pain points is cheaper, faster, and easier to build. That’s because successful AI models rely on high-quality, well-managed, and ethically sourced data, along with an understanding of how all that data impacts model performance. With this challenge integral to why over 80 percent of AI projects fail, training a more focused model requires fewer parameters and much less data and compute power.
This is not an argument for green AI but for bringing some realism back into the AI hype cycle. Even if the model itself is a large proprietary one, the tighter the focus, the smaller and more manageable the number of possible outputs to consider becomes. With less token length, models optimized for a specific task can run faster and be highly robust and more performant, all while using less data.
Delivering small AI does not need to be constraining
With AI in agriculture already valued at more than $1 billion annually, innovators like Bonsai Roboticsare unlocking new efficiencies by optimizing the technology to tackle specific use cases. Bonsai employs patented AI models, powerful data, and computer-vision software to power autonomy systems for plucking and picking in harsh environments. While Bonsai’s algorithms rely on massive datasets that are being continuously updated, with its narrow focus, this physical AI trailblazer was tapped as AgTech Breakthrough’s Precision Agriculture Solution of the Year.
Even Big Tech players are working to focus their AI offerings with smaller, more powerful models.
Microsoft currently uses OpenAI’s GPT-based technology to power Copilot, a suite of smaller AI tools built into its products. These models are more focused on software, coding, and common patterns, allowing them to be more easily fine-tuned than the general ChatGPT and better at generating personalized content, summarizing files, recognizing patterns, and automating activities via prompts.
With OpenAI projecting big returns when it releases PhD-level ChatGPT agents, the ideal is that one day, we will all have our own agents—or AI assistants—that use our personal data to act on our behalf without prompts. It’s an ambitious future, notwithstanding the privacy and security concerns.
While the jump from where we are now to where we could be going seems to be a huge one, building it piece by piece is a clear, lower-risk approach than assuming a massive monolith is the answer.
AI innovators who home in on specificity can build a growing, nimble team of expert models that increasingly augment our work instead of one costly, mediocre assistant who is fat with parameters, eats massive data sets, and still doesn’t get it right.
How small AI will keep the bubble from bursting
By creating lighter computing infrastructures that focus on the right data, businesses can fully maximize AI’s potential for breakthrough results even as they cut down the immense financial and environmental costs of the technology.
Amid all the hype around AI and the behemoth Big Tech models fighting for headlines, the long arc of innovation has always relied on incremental, practical progress. With data at the heart of the models that are indeed changing our world, small, focused AI promises faster, more sustainable, and cost-effective solutions—and in turn, offers both investors and users some much-needed ROI from AI.
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
In 2025, CEO turnover in the United States is shattering prior records and shifting the very nature of executive leadership. According to fresh data from executive placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the number of CEO departures at U.S. companies increased to 207 in June—a 23% jump from May’s 168. While this represents a 12% decrease from the 234 departures logged in June 2024, the first half of 2025 tells a story of acceleration: A whopping 1,235 CEOs left their posts. That’s a 12% increase from last year and the highest year-to-date total since Challenger began tracking this data in 2002.
This wave of exits isn’t simply a statistical outlier, the firm says. More than ever, companies are relying on interim chiefs, and the short-term revolving door has become so common that the highest-paid corner office is increasingly looking like a “gig economy” job, Challenger says, adding: “2025 marks the rise of the CEO gig economy.”
CEOs as gig workers
Through June 2025, a staggering 33% of newly named CEOs had stepped into their roles on an interim basis, compared to just 9% during the same period last year. Many of these leaders, including veterans who navigated companies through the Covid-19 pandemic, are returning to guide firms on their own terms, choosing flexible, project-based tenures over the once-standard multi-year engagement.
“With growing uncertainty across the economy, shifting corporate values like DEI, the impact of tariffs, potential deregulation, evolving consumer behavior, and the rapid implementation of new technologies such as AI, identifying the right leader for long-term success has become increasingly difficult,” said Andy Challenger, labor and workplace expert at Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Interim roles offer both organizations and executives a strategic edge: companies gain agility and fresh perspectives swiftly; executives gain exposure and maintain flexibility.
The perils of the C-suite gig economy
There are real risks to a gig-like approach to the corner office. Teams led by an interim or short-term CEO may struggle with trust, long-term cohesion, and cultural stability. “When teams know their leader could leave at any moment,” Andy Challenger notes, “it’s harder to build lasting cohesion or trust.” Frequent leadership turnover can disrupt culture, diminish morale, and spark higher employee attrition—particularly if staff feel their voices aren’t heard or priorities are in constant flux.
Another sharp trend is the even split between internal and external interim CEOs: 53% were selected from within the organization, while 47% came from outside. When interim roles become permanent, internal and external candidates fare equally: 20% of each ultimately landed the role long-term.
The surge in CEO gig work contrasts with another shift: the lagging rate of new women CEOs. Only 25% of new CEOs appointed in 2025 are women, down from 28% last year.
Industries with surging turnover
Some sectors have been especially hard hit. The government/non-profit space leads (or trails), with 256 CEO exits through June—1.6% higher than last year’s 252 exits through the first half. The space has seen the highest turnover in both years.
Then there’s a big drop to technology, with 138 CEO departures through June, one of the highest monthly totals of the year; the turnover represented a 16% increase from 2024 as well. Health care/products saw 121 exits, a 20% increase from 2024. Hospitals, a subset, saw 68 departures, up 3%. Financial firms had 76 CEO exits year-to-date, a 29% increase year-over-year.
This upheaval reflects broad changes—uncertainty, rapid tech shifts, pressure on traditional leadership models—that are turning the CEO role into something more fluid, flexible, and, increasingly, temporary. In this era of “gig economy” leadership, both organizations and executives face new rules—and new risks—in navigating the future of the C-suite.
For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.
Dan Sheridan has worked at Brooks Running for over 25 years, and he’s been CEO for over a year now, but he says he’s still learning things every day from his own boss: Warren Buffett. The 95-year-old investing legend is famous as the “Oracle of Omaha” for his deep business acumen. You won’t see Sheridan disagree with that sentiment.
“We’re so fortunate,” Sheridan recently told Fortune‘s Leadership Next podcast, reflecting on Brooks’ status as a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway. “Our ownership structure may be the greatest in the world, right? We’re owned by—who I would call the GOAT of capitalism—Warren Buffett,” Sheridan remarked. “GOAT,” of course, stands for “greatest of all time,” an acronym from the sports world increasingly spreading to other walks of life.
The remark is more than a casual compliment. For Brooks Running, being part of the Berkshire Hathaway family has meant a rare degree of stability and confidence, especially in a retail world known for its fickleness and fast pivots.
Sheridan, a 25-year Brooks employee who took the reins as CEO in April 2024, fondly recalls his encounters with Buffett over the years, including the annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meetings. These gatherings, often a pilgrimage for investors and business enthusiasts, also became a time for Brooks to celebrate milestones with its famously hands-on owner.
Back in 2014, as Brooks marked its 100th anniversary, Buffett made a special trip to Seattle to commemorate the occasion. Speaking before Brooks employees, Buffett distilled his investing philosophy into a single, memorable challenge. “Berkshire focuses on the long term, and your jobs are simply this: to make sure the brand is stronger at the end of the year than it was at the beginning,” Sheridan recounted. The advice resonated deeply—and has continued to shape his outlook as a leader.
‘You have to do a thousand things to keep your brand strong’
At first glance, the maxim sounds simple. But as Sheridan points out, “The truth is, that’s a huge thing for us to do. You have to do a thousand things to keep your brand strong. You have to create great product. You have to keep your morale and your culture going. You have to keep your customers happy. For me in my leadership role, that’s how I think about it: Is our brand strengthening every season, in every market?”
This focus on gradual and consistent improvement echoes the Warren Buffett playbook, eschewing quick fixes and risky gambles for what Sheridan calls “investment, really hard decisions, and capability.” For Brooks, that has meant steady investment in innovation and technology, careful brand cultivation, and an unwavering connection to its core community of runners. But Sheridan is alert from something he learned from another Berkshire GOAT, Buffett’s long-time right-hand-man, Charlie Munger.
Mind your ABCs
Sheridan has adopted a leadership mantra learned at Munger’s heel: Avoid the “ABCs” of corporate decay. “He talks a lot about organizations avoiding the ABCs: arrogance, bureaucracy, and complacency.” For Sheridan, this is more than a cautionary tale; it’s a daily discipline.
“I approach things with low arrogance because I don’t know everything. So I’m super curious in how I approach people,” Sheridan said. He stresses the importance of humility and listening, aiming to foster an organization where questions are invited and learning is constant—echoing a central tenet of Munger and Buffett’s shared philosophy of lifelong learning.
Sheridan’s intolerance for bureaucracy is equally strong. “I often say I’m allergic to bureaucracy … even in nonprofits or school committees that I’m asked to be on, my first question is, ‘Is there a lot of bureaucracy in this organization?’ I can’t function in that. I don’t know how to function in it. And so, Brooks is a place where there’s low bureaucracy,” Sheridan remarked.
This approach has helped keep Brooks nimble—despite its size and growing global reach. Complacency, the third danger, is ever-present at market leaders like Brooks. “I think every organization can rest on your history, and we’re not immune to that at Brooks,” Sheridan acknowledged.
Brooks breaks forward
Brooks Running currently holds the No. 1 position in performance-running shoes in both the U.S. and Germany, and has seen record-breaking growth in international markets—posting a 15% jump in global revenue in the first quarter of 2025, with surges as high as 221% in Asia Pacific and Latin America. But Sheridan is adamant: “In every other market, we’ve got a lot of room to grow.”
Brooks has been on a growth tear in recent years, posting $1.2 billion in revenue for 2023, with North America accounting for the lion’s share. Sheridan played a key role in navigating the company through everything from global supply-chain disruptions to the changing dynamics of consumer taste in the sporting-goods arena. Now, with a fresh mandate from both Buffett and the board, Brooks is looking to expand further overseas, especially in China and Europe.
That growth, according to Sheridan, depends on ruthlessly avoiding complacency and focusing on daily execution. Brooks’ recent expansion—from Olympic athlete partnerships to surging popularity in China and Europe—has been fueled by this mindset.
“We're owned by who I would call the G.O.A.T. of capitalism: Warren Buffett.”
On the latest episode of #LeadershipNext, @brooksrunning CEO Dan Sheridan shared the best piece of advice he’s received from investing legend and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett.
The CEO’s leadership style, shaped by nearly three decades at Brooks, has also been marked by a willingness to “keep your head above the clouds, but your feet in the mud,” Sheridan said earlier this year. For Sheridan, balancing a high-level vision with hands-on operational focus is crucial in leading a brand through rapid industry changes, fierce competition, and expanding global complexity.
For Brooks Running, the “GOATs of capitalism” at Berkshire Hathaway aren’t just distant boardroom figures—they are active mentors whose business philosophy shapes every major decision. By embracing humility, slashing through red tape, and refusing to coast on past wins, Sheridan aims to write the next chapter in Brooks’ century-plus story—one defined by resilience, adaptability, and above all, staying hungry.
For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.
Congress created America’s central banking system with the Federal Reserve Act in 1913 and can amend the law to modify the Fed’s authority or mission. That’s as the Fed faces questions about its independence and role in the economy amid pressure from the White House to lower interest rates.
The White House’s relentless pressure on the Federal Reserve has kindled a debate on the central bank’s independence and role in the economy.
While President Donald Trump has backed off earlier suggestions that he would fire Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, he continues to demand lower interest rates.
The surprise announcement Friday that Governor Adriana Kugler will step down next week, well ahead of her expected departure in January when her term on the board of governors expires, gives Trump an early start on picking Powell’s replacement.
The president has already said he would nominate a new chair who would lower rates. That’s despite the continued resistance from Powell and most other policymakers to keep rates steady as Trump’s tariffs make their way through the economy and put upward pressure on inflation.
Amid the standoff between the White House and the Fed, Congress has the power to modify the central bank’s authority and mission.
Wharton finance professor Jeremy Siegel highlighted this potential last month, when he told CNBC that Powell may need to resign in order to preserve the Fed’s long-term independence.
His reasoning: if the economy stumbles, then Trump can point to Powell as the “perfect scapegoat” and ask Congress to give him more power over the Fed.
“That is a threat. Don’t forget, our Federal Reserve is not at all a part of our Constitution. It’s a creature of the U.S. Congress, created by the Federal Reserve Act 1913. All its powers devolve from Congress,” Siegel explained. “Congress has amended the Federal Reserve Act many times. It could do it again. It could give powers. It could take away powers.”
In fact, Siegel’s fears may be realized. The economy has flashed sudden warning signs, most notably Friday’s shocking jobs report that showed payroll gains were much weaker than previously thought.
Economists at JPMorgan even cautioned that the report flashes a recession alert as it suggests a sharp decline in labor demand from businesses.
Amending the Fed’s dual mandate
Congress’ leverage over the Fed is not lost on lawmakers. At an Axios event this past week, Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, was asked if the Federal Reserve Act needs to be changed or updated.
“There’s a lot of things that we should talk about,” he replied. “For example, should the Federal Reserve be paying interest rates to banks for their overnight deposits? I think that’s a legitimate question that we need to examine a little bit more.”
In addition to paying U.S. banks interest on their reserves, he pointed out that the Fed pays foreign banks to hold money in America, adding “I don’t know that that’s a good plan. Maybe it needs to be lowered.”
Moreno also flagged the Fed’s dual mandate of full employment and price stability, which was established in 1977 when Congress amended the Federal Reserve Act.
He said Congress should take another look at the Fed’s mission, suggesting the mandate should be modified to target maximum employment “at the highest possible wage.”
As for the other piece of the dual mandate, Moreno also said “we need to make certain that we understand what they’re looking at when it comes to inflation.”
As an example, he noted Powell’s failure to hike rates sooner during the pandemic, when there was a supply shock and a spike in demand from all the stimulus. He also pointed to the Powell’s current reluctance to lower rates despite no indications yet that tariffs have caused a big spike in inflation and while taxes are coming down.
“So it’s, ‘how do you analyze this?'” Moreno explained. “And I think he’s looking at from a very political lens. He should be looking at from a very apolitical lens.”
For his part, he also told Axios earlier in the conversation that he “absolutely” believes in central bank independence but added that Powell could be legitimately fired for being “extraordinarily incompetent.”
Fed independence
Of course, the Fed isn’t completely devoid of any political influence. The president nominates and the Senate confirms members the board of governors, including the chair and vice chair. The Fed chair also must testify before Congress regularly and gets grilled by lawmakers.
At the same time, the Fed was structured to be somewhat insulated from political pressures. Governors have 14-year terms that expire on a staggered scheduled, preventing a single president from completely revamping the board all at once.
Governors also can’t be removed for policy disagreements and can only be ousted “for cause,” which has been interpreted to mean gross neglect of duty or malfeasance.
Regional Fed presidents are also not politically appointed, and the Fed funds its own operations without appropriations from lawmakers.
That’s why Fed independence is a tricky concept, Michael Pugliese, senior economist at Wells Fargo, told Fortune, as it largely derives from a mix of laws, norms, informal agreements and traditions.
“It’s not like there’s an independence clause,” he said. “It’s more that the structure itself is built a little bit independent of the political system.”
Pugliese thinks it’s highly unlikely Congress will amend the Federal Reserve Act to allow for more explicit influence from the White House.
That’s because Democrats wouldn’t go along with it, and Republicans probably wouldn’t get rid of the filibuster rule in the Senate to immediately erode the Fed’s independence, he said.
“Getting rid of the filibuster would probably open the door to tons and tons and tons of other policy discussions on a lot of different issues, not just the Federal Reserve Act.” Pugliese explained. “The filibuster has stuck around as long as it has because both parties have had reasons and cause to not change it. And maybe that changes one day, but I would be very surprised if the thing that changed it was the Fed.”
The weak jobs report for July and steep downward revisions for prior months revealed a sharp decline in labor demand that’s suggestive of a recession, JPMorgan warned. Elsewhere in the data, an increase in unemployment among college graduates as well as a decline in staffing at business services firms could be hints that AI is impacting jobs.
The jobs report that delivered a stunning wake-up call to Wall Street on Friday also contained a recession signal and more indications that AI is weighing on employment.
Payrolls grew by just 73,000 last month, well below forecasts for about 100,000. Meanwhile, May’s tally was cut from 144,000 to 19,000, and June’s total was slashed from 147,000 to just 14,000, meaning the average gain over the past three months is now only 35,000.
To be sure, the weak jobs numbers do not mean there are mass layoffs. Other datasets like weekly jobless claims and monthly job-turnover surveys back that up. At the same time, wages and workweeks are still rising.
“But the comfort garnered from this news is dominated by a sharp hiring slowdown sending a stall speed alert,” JPMorgan economists wrote in a note late Friday.
In particular, hiring in the private sector has slowed to an average of just 52,000 in the last three months, with sectors outside health and education stagnating.
Coupled with the lack of any signs that unwanted separations are surging due to immigration policy, this is a strong signal that business demand for labor has cooled, they explained.
“We have consistently emphasized that a slide in labor demand of this magnitude is a recession warning signal,” JPMorgan added. “Firms normally maintain hiring gains through growth downshifts they perceive as transitory. In episodes when labor demand slides with a growth downshift, it is often a precursor to retrenchment.”
For now, the overall economic numbers still show expansion, albeit at a slower pace. GDP rebounded more robustly than expected in the second quarter, hitting 3%, though a metric that strips out the impact of foreign trade and looks instead at final domestic demand indicated slowing. And for the third quarter, the Atlanta Fed’s GDP tracker points to growth decelerating to 2.1%.
JPMorgan also warned the depressed pace of job growth is unlikely to sustain income gains or consumer confidence, which has bounced back in recent months.
Meanwhile, the broader U-6 gauge of unemployment—which includes people who haven’t looked for work recently but are still interested in finding a job as well as people who are involuntarily working part time and would prefer a full-time role—has climbed by 0.4 percentage points this year.
By contrast, the headline unemployment rate has barely changed, bouncing in a tight range between 4% and 4.2% for more than a year.
Until Friday’s shocker, that has helped give the impression that the job market has been resilient in the face of steep tariff hikes from President Donald Trump.
“We think job creation is no longer appropriately described as solid,” JPMorgan said. “Together with building drags from the trade war, this week’s news supports our view that the Fed is moving closer to easing.”
A separate note from JPMorgan also highlighted more details buried in the jobs report that suggest AI is having an impact on the labor market.
For example, payrolls at professional and business services firms have been trending lower and fell by 14,000 last month.
In addition, the unemployment rate for college-educated workers rose to 2.7% from 2.5%, while the overall unemployment rate ticked up to 4.2% from 4.1%.
“New entrants appear to have accounted for an unusually large share of the increase in the unemployed last month,” JPMorgan said.
That follows earlier alarms about the use of AI reducing the need for entry-level jobs, a critical stepping stone for recent college graduates looking to launch their careers.
Uncertainty causes companies to delay major decisions, including hiring, in the face of an unpredictable policy environment, which has been whipsawed by Trump’s on-again, off-again trade war.
“This risk aversion is particularly damaging for those at the start of their careers, who rely on a steady flow of entry-level openings to get a foot in the door,” he wrote.
As a student in western New York’s rural Wyoming County, Briar Townes honed an artistic streak that he hopes to make a living from one day. In high school, he clicked with a college-level drawing and painting class.
But despite the college credits he earned, college isn’t part of his plan.
Since graduating from high school in June, he has been overseeing an art camp at the county’s Arts Council. If that doesn’t turn into a permanent job, there is work at Creative Food Ingredients, known as the “cookie factory” for the way it makes the town smell like baking cookies, or at local factories like American Classic Outfitters, which designs and sews athletic uniforms.
“My stress is picking an option, not finding an option,” he said.
Even though rural students graduate from high school at higher rates than their peers in cities and suburbs, fewer of them go on to college.
Many rural school districts, including the one in Perry that Townes attends, have begun offering college-level courses and working to remove academic and financial obstacles to higher education, with some success. But college doesn’t hold the same appeal for students in rural areas where they often would need to travel farther for school, parents have less college experience themselves, and some of the loudest political voices are skeptical of the need for higher education.
College enrollment for rural students has remained largely flat in recent years, despite the district-level efforts and stepped-up recruitment by many universities. About 55% of rural U.S. high school students who graduated in 2023 enrolled in college, according to National Clearinghouse Research Center data.That’s compared to 64% of suburban graduates and 59% of urban graduates.
College can make a huge difference in earning potential. An American man with a bachelor’s degree earns an estimated $900,000 more over his lifetime than a peer with a high school diploma, research by the Social Security Administration has found. For women, the difference is about $630,000.
A school takes cues from families’ hopes and goals
A lack of a college degree is no obstacle to opportunity in places such as Wyoming County, where people like to say there are more cows than people. The dairy farms, potato fields and maple sugar houses are a source of identity and jobs for the county just east of Buffalo.
“College has never really been, I don’t know, a necessity or problem in my family,” said Townes, the middle of three children whose father has a tattoo shop in Perry.
At Perry High School, Superintendent Daryl McLaughlin said the district takes cues from students like Townes, their families and the community, supplementing college offerings with programs geared toward career and technical fields such as the building trades. He said he is as happy to provide reference checks for employers and the military as he is to write recommendations for college applications.
“We’re letting our students know these institutions, whether it is a college or whether employers, they’re competing for you,” he said. “Our job is now setting them up for success so that they can take the greatest advantage of that competition, ultimately, to improve their quality of life.”
Still, college enrollment in the district has exceeded the national average in recent years, going from 60% of the class of 2022’s 55 graduates to 67% of 2024’s and 56% of 2025’s graduates. The district points to a decision to direct federal pandemic relief money toward covering tuition for students in its Accelerated College Enrollment program — a partnership with Genesee Community College. When the federal money ran out, the district paid to keep it going.
“This is a program that’s been in our community for quite some time, and it’s a program our community supports,” McLaughlin said.
About 15% of rural U.S. high school students were enrolled in college classes in January 2025 through such dual enrollment arrangements, a slightly lower rate than urban and suburban students, an Education Department survey found.
Rural access to dual enrollment is a growing area of focus as advocates seek to close gaps in access to higher education. The College in High School Alliance this year announced funding for seven states to develop policy to expand programs for rural students.
Higher education’s image problem is acute in rural America
Around the country, many students feel jaded by the high costs of college tuition. And Americans are increasingly skeptical about the value of college, polls have shown, with Republicans, the dominant party in rural America, losing confidence in higher education at higher rates than Democrats.
“Whenever you have this narrative that ‘college is bad, college is bad, these professors are going to indoctrinate you,’ it’s hard,” said Andrew Koricich, executive director of the Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges at Appalachian State University in North Carolina. “You have to figure out, how do you crack through that information ecosphere and say, actually, people with a bachelor’s degree, on average, earn 65% more than people with a high school diploma only?”
In much of rural America, about 21% of people over the age of 25 have a bachelor’s degree, compared to about 36% of adults in other areas, according to a government analysis of U.S. Census findings.
Some rural educators don’t hold back on promoting college
In rural Putnam County, Florida, about 14% of adults have a bachelor’s degree. That doesn’t stop principal Joe Theobold from setting and meeting an annual goal of 100% college admission for students at Q.I. Roberts Jr.-Sr. High School.
Paper mills and power plants provide opportunities for a middle class life in the county, where the cost of living is low. But Theobold tells students the goal of higher education “is to go off and learn more about not only the world, but also about yourself.”
“You don’t want to be 17 years old, determining what you’re going to do for the rest of your life,” he said.
Families choose the magnet school because of its focus on higher education, even though most of the district’s parents never went to a college. Many students visit college campuses through Camp Osprey, a University of North Florida program that helps students experience college dorms and dining halls.
In upstate New York, high school junior Devon Wells grew up on his family farm in Perry but doesn’t see his future there. He’s considering a career in welding, or as an electrical line worker in South Carolina, where he heard the pay might be double what he would make at home. None of his plans require college, he said.
“I grew up on a farm, so that’s all hands-on work. That’s really all I know and would want to do,” Devon said.
Neither his nor Townes’ parents have pushed one way or the other, they said.
“I remember them talking to me like, `Hey, would you want to go to college?’ I remember telling them, ‘not really,’” Townes said. He would have listened if a college recruiter reached out, he said, but wouldn’t be willing to move very far.
The pilots of a U.S. Army helicopter that collided with a passenger jet over Washington in January would’ve had difficulty spotting the plane while wearing night vision goggles, experts told the National Transportation Safety Board on Friday.
The Army goggles would have made it difficult to see the plane’s colored lights, which might have helped the Black Hawk determine the plane’s direction. The goggles also limited the pilots’ peripheral vision as they flew near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
The challenges posed by night-vision goggles were among the topics discussed at the NTSB’s third and final day of public testimony over the fatal midair crash, which killed all 67 people aboard both aircrafts.
Experts said another challenge that evening was distinguishing the plane from lights on the ground while the two aircraft were on a collision course. Plus, the helicopter pilots may not have known where to look for a plane that was landing on a secondary runway that most planes didn’t use.
“Knowing where to look. That’s key,” said Stephen Casner, an expert in human factors who used to work at NASA.
Two previous days of testimony underscored a number of factors that likely contributed to the collision, sparking Board Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy to urge the Federal Aviation Administration to “do better” as she pointed to warnings the agency had ignored years earlier.
Some of the major issues that have emerged so far include the Black Hawk helicopter flying above prescribed levels near the airport as well as the warnings to FAA officials for years about the hazards related to the heavy chopper traffic there.
It’s too early for the board to identify what exactly caused the crash. A final report from the board won’t come until next year.
But it became clear this week how small a margin of error there was for helicopters flying the route the Black Hawk took the night of the nation’s deadliest plane crash since November 2001.
Army Colonel Andrew DeForest told the NTSB that “flights along the D.C. helicopter routes were considered relatively safe,” but some pilots in the 12th Battalion that flew alongside the crew that crashed told investigators they regularly talked about the possibility of a collision because of the congested and complicated airspace.
The American Airlines jet arrived from Wichita, Kansas, carrying, among others, a group of elite young figure skaters, their parents and coaches, and four union steamfitters from the Washington area.
The collision was the first in a string of crashes and near misses this year that have alarmed officials and the traveling public, despite statistics that still show flying remains the safest form of transportation.
‘Significant frustration’
NTSB members scolded FAA officials during Friday’s hearing, accusing them of saying the right things about safety in public while failing to cooperate in private. They said the FAA has repeatedly refused to provide information requested by investigators.
Board member Todd Inman said there was “significant frustration between what’s actually occurring” and “what’s being said for public consumption.”
Frank McIntosh, the head of the FAA’s air traffic control organization, said he would start working immediately to make sure the agency complies with the investigation. McIntosh also acknowledged problems with the culture in the tower at Reagan National, despite past efforts to improve compliance with safety standards.
“I think there were some things that we missed, to be quite honest with you, not intentionally, but I was talking about how certain facilities can drift,” McIntosh said.
Homendy told McIntosh she believes agency leaders are sincere about wanting to improve safety, but the solution must be more than just sending a top-down message of safety and also actually listening to controllers in the field.
Questions over lack of alcohol testing
Tim Lilley, an aviation expert whose son Sam was a pilot on the passenger jet, said he’s optimistic the tragic accident will ultimately lead to some positive changes.
“But we’ve got a long way to go,” he told The Associated Press.
Lilley said he was particularly struck by the FAA’s lack of alcohol testing for air traffic controllers after the crash.
“And they made a bunch of excuses why they didn’t do it,” Lilley said. “None of them were valid. It goes back to a whole system that was complacent and was normalizing deviation.”
Homendy said during Thursday’s hearings that alcohol testing is most effective within two hours of a crash and can be administered within eight hours.
Nick Fuller, the FAA’s acting deputy chief operating officer of operations, testified that the controllers weren’t tested because the agency did not immediately believe the crash was fatal. The FAA then decided to forgo it because the optimum two-hour window had passed.
Controller didn’t warn the jet
FAA officials testified this week that an air traffic controller should have warned the passenger jet of the Army helicopter’s presence.
The controller had asked the Black Hawk pilots to confirm they had the airplane in sight because an alarm sounded in the tower about their proximity. The controller could see from a window that the helicopter was too close, but the controller did not alert the jetliner.
In a transcript released this week, the unidentified controller said in a post-crash interview they weren’t sure that would have changed the outcome.
Additionally, the pilots of the helicopter did not fully hear the controller’s instructions before the collision. When the controller told the helicopter’s pilots to “pass behind” the jet, the crew didn’t hear it because the Black Hawk’s microphone key was pressed at that moment.
‘Layer after layer of deficiencies’
Jeff Guzzetti, a former NTSB and FAA crash investigator, told the AP that a combination of factors produced this tragedy, like “holes that line up in the Swiss cheese.”
Any number of things, had they been different, could have prevented the collision, he said. They include the Black Hawks having more accurate altimeters, as well as a key piece of locating equipment, known as ADS-B Out, turned on or working. In turn, air traffic control could have seen the problem earlier.
Just a few feet could have made a difference, Guzzetti said.
“It just goes to show you that an accident isn’t caused by one single thing,” Guzzetti said. “It isn’t caused by ‘pilot error’ or ’controller staffing.’ This accident was caused by layer after layer of deficiencies that piled up at just the right moment.”
Ex-official: FAA and Army share blame
Mary Schiavo, a former U.S. Department of Transportation Inspector General, told the AP that both the Army and the FAA appear to share significant blame.
The Black Hawks’ altimeters could be off by as much as 100 feet and were still considered acceptable, she said. The crew was flying an outdated model that struggled to maintain altitude, while the helicopter pilots’ flying was “loose” and under “loose” supervision.
“It’s on the individuals, God rest their souls, but it’s also on the military,” Schiavo said. “I mean, they just seem to have no urgency of anything.”
Schiavo was also struck by the air traffic controllers’ lack of maps of the military helicopter routes on their display screens, which forced them to look out the window.
“And so everything about the military helicopter operation was not up to the standards of commercial aviation … it’s a shocking lack of attention to precision all the way around,” she said.
Schiavo also faulted the FAA for not coming off as terribly responsive to problems.
“I called the Federal Aviation Administration, the Tombstone Agency, because they would only make change after people die,” Schiavo said. “And sadly, 30 years later, that seems to still be the case.”
National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy, on monitor left, swears-in the witnesses from left: Dan Cooper, Sikorsky Aircraft, Lance Gant, Federal Aviation Administration, U.S. Army CW4 Kylene Lewis, Steve Braddom, U.S. Army, and Scott Rosengren, U.S. Army, during the NTSB fact-finding hearing on Wednesday.
As Figma went public this week to much fanfare—and an almost instantaneous 250% stock pop—quite a few folks from Silicon Valley made money.
But the biggest winner in terms of immediate IPO proceeds is not any of the marquee Silicon Valley venture capital firms such as Index Ventures, Greylock, and Kleiner Perkins, who sold only small slivers of their stakes in the offering. Nor is it any of the Figma management team, including CEO Dylan Field, who have most of their equity locked in the company.
Instead, a Novato, Calif.-based charity took home the biggest payout. The Marin Community Foundation, located an hour north of San Francisco and focused on grantmaking around issues like education, health, economic opportunity, and environmental concerns, sold more than 13.4 million shares in the offering, making it the largest selling shareholder (Figma itself only sold 12.5 million shares).
As Figma initially priced its shares at $33 a pop, the Marin Community Foundation sold off its stake to the tune of more than $440 million. (If it had waited, of course, that stake would now be worth well over $1 billion.)
The charity received its shares in Figma over the summer from Evan Wallace, the company’s elusive cofounder, a source familiar with the matter told Fortune. This isn’t necessarily a common practice right before a company goes public, another source told Fortune, but is one that does crop up from time to time—a founder with a connection to a charity giving shares with upside. There are adjacent examples from the past, including Mark Zuckerberg in 2013 donating $1 billion in Facebook shares to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (though Zuck’s gift happened after Facebook’s 2012 IPO.)
A spokesperson for MCF described the foundation as “one of the largest community foundations in the U.S.,” adding “that a community foundation is a public charity that manages the philanthropy of individuals, families and institutions.” The spokesperson declined to comment on anything specific about the Figma gift, citing its privacy policy regarding individual donors or nonprofits.
Why Wallace made the gift to the foundation, and whether he has any personal connection to it, is not clear. Figma declined to provide a comment on behalf of Wallace, and Fortune was unable to reach him directly. Wallace and Figma CEO Dylan Field cofounded the company in 2012 after meeting as students at Brown University. Wallace stepped away from Figma in 2021 and has tended to stay out of the public eye.
The part of the charity that Wallace gave the shares to—the MCF Gift Fund—suggests that the Figma cofounder’s grant may involve a so-called donor advised fund, a tax efficient structure whereby a wealthy individual puts money into a non-profit and is then able to direct the funds to various causes. The Marin Community Foundation’s spokesperson said that the MCF Gift Fund “facilitates the acceptance of complex gifts that can be turned into philanthropic capital to enable donors to fulfill their philanthropic ambitions.”
But the Figma founder’s philanthropical move has a historical wrinkle that makes it even more interesting…
Before AI money there was oil money
Interestingly, the Marin County Foundation, which had about $2.8 billion in total assets at the end of 2024, is itself the product of a previous generation of big business—and of a bitter, years-long legal fight for control of the money.
The foundation’s history traces back to Beryl and Leonard Buck, whose wealth was linked to an investment in Belridge Oil. When Beryl Buck died in 1975 she gave the money to the San Francisco Foundation, with the wish that it be used for causes in Marin County, where she had lived in the tony town of Ross. But when oil giant Shell purchased the rights to Belridge Oil four years later for more than $3.6 billion, the value of the $7.6 million Buck Trust was suddenly worth $240 million ($1 billion in today’s dollars), and the SF Foundation became the 11th largest foundation in the U.S., according to a history on its website.
The problem, as the SF Foundation explains it, was that “we found ourselves in the uncomfortable position of granting tens of millions of dollars each year (far more than we granted to all other counties combined) to the wealthiest county in the Bay Area.”
Or as a story in the LA Times noted back then, one of the country’s most well-resourced charities was stuck looking for ways to spend all the money in the ‘hot-tub capital of America.’
Marin County, California is among the wealthiest in the U.S.
Doug Pensinger/Getty Images
When the Foundation went to court to seek permission to spend some of the money in other, needier parts of the Bay Area, a public firestorm ensued. The move was “characterized as a threat to the sanctity of wills and the health of philanthropy, and as an offense against capitalism, the American way of life, and God,” Yale Law School professor John G. Simon wrote of the affair. “Foundation personnel were said to be corrupt and dishonest and, in the language of a Marin County supervisor, ‘grave-robbing bastards.’”
In the end, the San Francisco Foundation lost its court battle, and a new organization—The Marin Community Foundation—was created in 1986 to administer the Buck Trust.
Now, 39 years later, the Marin County Foundation is getting another massive windfall. Whether Wallace is aware of the contentious and famous story behind the foundation he picked is a mystery. But, wittingly or not, the reclusive Figma cofounder has managed to put the foundation back in the headlines at the cusp of another historical moment in business history and wealth creation.
A Miami jury decided that Elon Musk’s car company Tesla was partly responsible for a deadly crash in Florida involving its Autopilot driver assist technology and must pay the victims more than $240 million in damages.
The federal jury held that Tesla bore significant responsibility because its technology failed and that not all the blame can be put on a reckless driver, even one who admitted he was distracted by his cellphone before hitting a young couple out gazing at the stars. The decision comes as Musk seeks to convince Americans his cars are safe enough to drive on their own as he plans to roll out a driverless taxi service in several cities in the coming months.
The decision ends a four-year long case remarkable not just in its outcome but that it even made it to trial. Many similar cases against Tesla have been dismissed and, when that didn’t happen, settled by the company to avoid the spotlight of a trial.
“This will open the floodgates,” said Miguel Custodio, a car crash lawyer not involved in the Tesla case. “It will embolden a lot of people to come to court.”
The case also included startling charges by lawyers for the family of the deceased, 22-year-old, Naibel Benavides Leon, and for her injured boyfriend, Dillon Angulo. They claimed Tesla either hid or lost key evidence, including data and video recorded seconds before the accident. Tesla said it made a mistake after being shown the evidence and honestly hadn’t thought it was there.
“We finally learned what happened that night, that the car was actually defective,” said Benavides’ sister, Neima Benavides. “Justice was achieved.”
Tesla has previously faced criticism that it is slow to cough up crucial data by relatives of other victims in Tesla crashes, accusations that the car company has denied. In this case, the plaintiffs showed Tesla had the evidence all along, despite its repeated denials, by hiring a forensic data expert who dug it up.
“Today’s verdict is wrong,” Tesla said in a statement, “and only works to set back automotive safety and jeopardize Tesla’s and the entire industry’s efforts to develop and implement lifesaving technology.” They said the plaintiffs concocted a story ”blaming the car when the driver – from day one – admitted and accepted responsibility.”
In addition to a punitive award of $200 million, the jury said Tesla must also pay $43 million of a total $129 million in compensatory damages for the crash, bringing the total borne by the company to $243 million.
“It’s a big number that will send shock waves to others in the industry,” said financial analyst Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities. “It’s not a good day for Tesla.”
Tesla said it will appeal.
Even if that fails, the company says it will end up paying far less than what the jury decided because of a pre-trial agreement that limits punitive damages to three times Tesla’s compensatory damages. Translation: $172 million, not $243 million. But the plaintiff says their deal was based on a multiple of all compensatory damages, not just Tesla’s, and the figure the jury awarded is the one the company will have to pay.
It’s not clear how much of a hit to Tesla’s reputation for safety the verdict in the Miami case will make. Tesla has vastly improved its technology since the crash on a dark, rural road in Key Largo, Florida, in 2019.
But the issue of trust generally in the company came up several times in the case, including in closing arguments Thursday. The plaintiffs’ lead lawyer, Brett Schreiber, said Tesla’s decision to even use the term Autopilot showed it was willing to mislead people and take big risks with their lives because the system only helps drivers with lane changes, slowing a car and other tasks, falling far short of driving the car itself.
Schreiber said other automakers use terms like “driver assist” and “copilot” to make sure drivers don’t rely too much on the technology.
“Words matter,” Schreiber said. “And if someone is playing fast and lose with words, they’re playing fast and lose with information and facts.”
Schreiber acknowledged that the driver, George McGee, was negligent when he blew through flashing lights, a stop sign and a T-intersection at 62 miles an hour before slamming into a Chevrolet Tahoe that the couple had parked to get a look at the stars.
The Tahoe spun around so hard it was able to launch Benavides 75 feet through the air into nearby woods where her body was later found. It also left Angulo, who walked into the courtroom Friday with a limp and cushion to sit on, with broken bones and a traumatic brain injury.
But Schreiber said Tesla was at fault nonetheless. He said Tesla allowed drivers to act recklessly by not disengaging the Autopilot as soon as they begin to show signs of distraction and by allowing them to use the system on smaller roads that it was not designed for, like the one McGee was driving on.
“I trusted the technology too much,” said McGee at one point in his testimony. “I believed that if the car saw something in front of it, it would provide a warning and apply the brakes.”
The lead defense lawyer in the Miami case, Joel Smith, countered that Tesla warns drivers that they must keep their eyes on the road and hands on the wheel yet McGee chose not to do that while he looked for a dropped cellphone, adding to the danger by speeding. Noting that McGee had gone through the same intersection 30 or 40 times previously and hadn’t crashed during any of those trips, Smith said that isolated the cause to one thing alone: “The cause is that he dropped his cellphone.”
The auto industry has been watching the case closely because a finding of Tesla liability despite a driver’s admission of reckless behavior would pose significant legal risks for every company as they develop cars that increasingly drive themselves.
Dillon Angulo, who was seriously injured in a Florida crash involving Tesla’s Autopilot driver assist technology, speaks to reporters outside the federal courthouse in Miami, Friday.
Berkshire Hathaway’s second-quarter results showed that the conglomerate remained a net seller of stocks and continued to accumulate cash. That period includes the head-spinning stock market plunge and rebound following President Donald Trump’s rollout of aggressive tariffs on “Liberation Day” in April.
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway largely remained on the sidelines last quarter, even as the stock market cratered on President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs and briefly presented steep bargains.
Second-quarter results released on Saturday revealed that the conglomerate was a net seller of stocks for the 11th straight quarter. Berkshire offloaded $6.92 billion during the quarter and bought $3.9 billion.
Meanwhile, Buffett’s cash pile kept getting bigger, hitting a fresh high of $344 billion at the end of June, up from $333 billion at the end of March. Berkshire also refrained from stock repurchases for the fourth consecutive quarter.
The legendary value-conscious investor has bemoaned the lack of good deals for years now. That includes possibilities for large acquisitions of companies that could be folded into Berkshire as well as major stock purchases for the portfolio.
At the same time, Buffett has also avoided knee-jerk moves, and the stock market saw a head-spinning plunge and rebound in April as Trump shocked Wall Street with his aggressive tariffs then put them on hold just days later.
During the selloff, the S&P 500 flirted with bear market territory, diving nearly 20% from its prior high. But the index has since shot back up to fresh records.
Still, the swoon also highlighted Buffett’s uncanny timing, as he appeared to anticipate a market downturn last year by selling $134 billion in equities in 2024—when the bull market was still raging.
The stock market swings also came as Buffett was contemplating a transition away from his leadership role. In May, he announced that his anointed successor, Greg Abel, should take over as Berkshire Hathaway CEO by the of the year.
While Buffett is expected to stay on as chairman, he may be staying away from dramatic moves to clear the decks for Abel, who had already been taking on a bigger leadership role before May.
Despite his aversion for major purchases lately, Buffett’s annual letter to shareholders in February reaffirmed his commitment to staying invested in stocks and companies, even as cash continued to mount.
“Berkshire shareholders can rest assured that we will forever deploy a substantial majority of their money in equities—mostly American equities although many of these will have international operations of significance,” he wrote. “Berkshire will never prefer ownership of cash-equivalent assets over the ownership of good businesses, whether controlled or only partially owned.”
Berkshire also reported that its operating earnings, which exclude the impact of its investments, fell 4% to $11.16 billion in the second quarter as insurance-underwriting results weakened. The company booked a $3.8 billion impairment on its Kraft Heinz stake as well, marking down its value to $8.4 billion.
The global financial system, or what we broadly refer to as TradFi (Traditional Finance), is a $30+ trillion behemoth. Its reach spans commercial banking, global banking assets, insurance, capital markets, wealth management, and asset servicing. It touches every person, business, and institution, underpinning how value flows through the world.
Meanwhile, DeFi (Decentralized Finance), despite being the most transformational innovation to hit financial services in decades, remains a mere rounding error in that picture. Depending on how you measure it, via Total Value Locked (TVL), DeFi token market cap, protocol revenue, or institutional activity, DeFi’s footprint barely scratches $150 billion on a good day. That’s less than half a percent of TradFi’s scope.
This is not a failure. It is a testament to just how early we are. Seen more optimistically, it is an opening that holds the blueprint for the future of finance.
Already, we’ve seen DeFi recreate core banking functions entirely on-chain, including borrowing, lending, insurance, trading, asset management, and structured products. And it’s working. Millions of users, thousands of developers, and hundreds of projects are coalescing around this future.
DeFi’s growth, however, has been largely inward-looking, driven by crypto-native users rather than institutional money. And despite DeFi’s rapid-fire innovation, leading TradFi figures have mostly elected to watch from the sidelines, or worse, confine themselves to dismissive skepticism.
This underscores the need for a bridge between the old and the new. TradFi must integrate with DeFi, not just observe it. Not to co-opt it, but to scale it. Fortunately, there is a precedent for such integration.
Consider BlackRock’s game-changing embrace of Bitcoin ETFs in 2023–2024 (and later ETH). It didn’t just lend legitimacy, it unlocked institutional access at scale. Today, BlackRock has become the single largest TradFi driver of crypto adoption. It manages over $87 billion in spot Bitcoin ETF assets and $10 billion in ETH ETFs.
BlackRock is also leading in DeFi-adjacent areas. Its BUIDL fund, a tokenized U.S. Treasury fund issued mostly on Ethereum via Securitize, holds over $2.4 billion, almost 10% of the $25 billion tokenized asset market on-chain. It’s a direct example of TradFi using DeFi infrastructure without compromising regulatory standards.
Meanwhile, JP Morgan’s Kinexys division is working to bring financial assets on-chain. It has tested on-chain FX, repo, and tokenized bonds using permissioned DeFi liquidity pools. It is building infrastructure that mimics DeFi mechanics while staying within institutional compliance rails. This isn’t a crypto experiment; it’s the beginning of institutional DeFi.
Then there is Fidelity, long known for its crypto-forward stance, which is quietly expanding its digital assets platform and exploring staking, custody, and tokenized financial products. It has the trust of pension funds and family offices—the very cohort most likely to embrace DeFi once it’s wrapped in a familiar product interface. Fidelity could lead by building regulated DeFi index products or permissioned vaults for clients.
Goldman Sachs and BNY Mellon are also making moves with pilot projects to tokenize money market funds, with fast settlement and interoperability across digital networks. Goldman’s private blockchain and BNY’s LiquidityDirect are testing tokenized fund redemptions, a gateway to replicating DeFi yield mechanics inside TradFi.
UBS, Citi, HSBC, and Standard Chartered have participated in tokenized bond issuances, on-chain settlement pilots, and custody infrastructure projects. These banks are particularly well-positioned to onboard emerging-market clients and sovereign wealth with DeFi-wrapped TradFi products.
Not every TradFi sector, though, is equally ripe for a shift to DeFi. The two verticals where adoption is most likely to break through are the Asset Management and Treasury Markets, as well as the Securities Lending and Repo Markets.
Tokenized treasuries, like BlackRock’s BUIDL, are just the beginning. Expect asset managers to create programmable yield products, combining DeFi vault strategies with real-world assets (RWAs). This is attractive for institutions sitting on large cash balances, because DeFi-native strategies offer higher yields and transparent collateralization.
On the Lending and Repo side, DeFi can enable instant, auditable, and programmable collateral exchanges with reduced counterparty risk. JPMorgan’s experiments in tokenized repo trading are just the start. A permissioned version of Aave or Morpho could gain traction here.
Just as crypto exchanges wrapped peer-to-peer transactions in slick UX, TradFi needs to wrap DeFi in user-friendly and compliant interfaces.
That’s the blueprint for TradFi and DeFi collaboration. TradFi doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel. But it can add polish, regulatory clarity, and scale to existing DeFi primitives. Custodians can integrate liquid staking. Banks can offer tokenized money market funds on-chain. Asset managers can issue yield-bearing DeFi vaults with KYC wrappers.
All of the ingredients are in place. For now, TradFi has the balance sheets and DeFi has the blueprints. The future belongs to those who build the bridge.
As an aeronautics grad student at MIT in the 2010s, Brian Yutko was obsessed. He’d work deep into the night mining “black box” data and destination codes buried in antiquated computer languages like Fortran for obscure flight stats. He wowed his thesis advisor with his work on fuel efficiency. Among Yutko’s findings: Airlines could reduce pollution by 7% by flying planes at slightly slower speeds, and by 33% by mothballing old models sooner. But Yutko didn’t just study planes—he loved flying them. Yutko, his advisor, and fellow PhD students relished zipping up and down the East Coast on rented Cessna 170s that they would take turns piloting to conferences and blithe sojourns for picnic lunches in the country.
Fast-forward a decade and suddenly Yutko has a much bigger fleet at his disposal. In May Boeing named Yutko, 39, chief of commercial airplanes product development, the arm tasked with incorporating engineering advances that improve today’s models, and taking a leading role in designing and bringing to market all-new aircraft at Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA), the company’s largest division. With this year’s revenues clocking at an annualized rate of around $45 billion, if measured on its own, that unit would rank around 100th on the Fortune 500.
Though Boeing’s litany of safety concerns and union turmoil have dominated the headlines for several years, behind the scenes there are glimmers that things are changing one year into new CEO Kelly Ortberg’s tenure. Ortberg secured a hard-won contract with the machinists’ union following a 54-day strike; reached a deal with the DOJ to avoid criminal prosecution for the crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 passengers and crew; won a contract initially valued at $20 billion over Lockheed to develop the Air Force’s next-gen fighter jet; and worked closely alongside the FAA to gradually raise production of the 737 Max, the bestseller whose production the regulator severely constrained since the notorious door-plug blowout over Portland early last year. He also avoided big risks by raising $21 billion in fresh capital, ensuring that Boeing harbored the cash reserves for weathering the tough times. But it’s the appointment of Yutko, though it has gone largely unnoticed, that may speak eloquently about where Boeing is headed.
“I’m biased, but my take is that Brian’s appointment is a real indication that Boeing is returning to prioritizing engineering and product innovation,” R. John Hansman, Yutko’s PhD advisor and director of the MIT International Center for Air Transportation, told Fortune. (Boeing declined to make Yutko or other managers available for this story. Yutko, however, sent a message that read in part: “Because I’m just getting my feet wet in this new role and drinking from a firehose a bit, I’ll follow the comms team lead on this one.”) Adds Gary Gysin, the founding CEO of Wisk, where Yutko served on the board before taking the helm: “One guy won’t fix everything, but he’ll help attract more like-minded younger people who will be more aggressive on the tech front.” Several sources I spoke to said that Yutko’s leadership and technical skills could take him a long way at Boeing.
Of course, that will certainly depend on how Yutko helps Boeing navigate the flight ahead—a period in which the company is in the early stages of exploring what could be a $25 billion bet on a brand-new plane, something that the aerospace giant only does once every few decades. Legendary aerospace analyst Richard Safran summarizes the promise and peril Yutko’s facing as this: “He’s a classic MIT, somewhat brilliant guy. Who hasn’t demonstrated he knows how to make money yet.”
Boeing at a crossroads
Boeing is at a critical juncture. The seeds of its current problems date back to the late 1990s following its acquisition of rival McDonnell Douglas. Before that giant tie-up, Boeing had boasted a culture dominated by engineering excellence that elevated product quality and safety far above profit-making. Though Boeing remained a wellspring of innovation, the McDonnell ethos took over, and was accelerated by a parade of CEOs who seemed to prioritize shareholder value above all. From 2010 to 2018, Boeing radically reduced headcount and R&D as a share of sales, and returned over 100% of its cash flow to shareholders via buybacks and dividends. Over those eight years, its stock delivered annual returns of nearly 30%, beating the likes of Apple and Microsoft.
But the fatal Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes in late 2018 and early 2019 exposed how far Boeing had veered from the quality obsession and production safeguards that were hallmarks of its storied past. (You can read this author’s cover story on Boeing’s descent here.)
Now Ortberg’s plan to gradually raise the severely depressed production of its cash cow Max is showing green shoots, but to ensure dominance in the next decade, Boeing’s top chance at besting Airbus is designing and successfully commercializing a totally new and disruptive 737 successor. “Boeing’s not in a good place from a product portfolio standpoint,” says a former executive at a large Boeing supplier. “They haven’t been for four to six years. The new plane can’t be a me-too. When you’re behind, you need to be aggressive. They have to come up with something that’s a real crowd-pleaser for the airlines. And they have to develop the new plane right on schedule to restore their credibility after the delays on the 787,” the last all-new plane that arrived three years late in 2011.
Much of this will fall to Yutko. To say it’s a tall order is an understatement, but as interviews with colleagues, peers, and friends show, he has again and again surprised those around him. His unlikely rise to the Fortune 500 began in Northeastern Pennsylvania coal country. His hometown’s the tiny village of Buck Mountain nestled near the foothills of Locust Mountain, a hikers’ favorite roamed by white-tailed deer and black bears. Decades ago, one of the biggest draws for this corner of Appalachians was its rowdy annual beer fest. This region comprising historic Schuylkill County holds the world’s largest deposits of anthracite black carbon, but the industry’s decline decimated the local economy. Since the 1930s, Schuylkill has lost around a third of its population, and its often-crumbling homes at a median of $165,000 rank among the nation’s cheapest. Less than 20 miles from Yutko’s alma mater, Mahanoy City High School—where in 2022 he delivered the keynote address to the graduating class of 49, the smallest in its history—sits a virtual ghost town where a coal seam fire has been burning for over 60 years. Brian’s ancestors migrated over a century ago from Eastern Europe to the area’s then-bustling company towns, and generations of Yutkos have worked in the coal trade.
Yutko’s dad ran a shop that changed springs for coal mining trucks, and Brian worked alongside him as a kid. “When Brian got his master’s at MIT, I invited his parents to dinner,” remembers his mentor Hansman. “It was the first time his father had ever been out of the state, and the first time his mother had left the county.”
Yutko and his two brothers were the first in the family to attend college—the younger a project engineer at a large power and metals company who also volunteers as a high school wrestling coach in the area, as does the youngest—all three honed clinches and armlocks on the mats at Mahanoy. At Penn State, where Yutko graduated in 2004, he majored in aerospace engineering and developed a love for jerry-rigging airborne vehicles from everyday materials. In a recent Reddit post, he recalled joining “a project that designs and builds a sailplane” and getting assigned to “weld out metal chromoly tube fuselage … because I knew how to weld.” Yutko didn’t mention whether he learned the metal-bending skills at the family workplace, but jested: “I’m positive my welding wouldn’t pass proper inspection.”
At MIT, Hansman demanded that his PhD candidates pursue work that wasn’t just theoretical, but would improve the way airplanes fly and operate so that the next wave would show big strides in curbing emissions and lowering noise. “You think of MIT as teaching heavy math, nerdy kinds of things,” says a fellow program member. “But Hansman was very applied and practical.” Hansman was also a super-tough taskmaster who, as this Yutko classmate avows, “didn’t suffer fools gladly” and would put his doctoral candidates through “a tear down and rebuild mill.” Glancing at a piece of research, he’d charge, “This is wrong” or “This is BS,” mainly as a test for prompting students to vigorously push back. Once the presenter on the griddle “defended their position to the death,” they could often persuade their revered leader.
For years, in addition to their Cessna-piloting adventures, Yutko joined Hansman and Yutko’s best friend, NASA astronaut and engineer Woody Hoburg, on motorcycle sojourns on their rented BMW 1200 rigs between Christmas and New Year’s to exotic corners of the globe, from the deserts of Morocco to the valleys of Peru. During COVID, Yutko and Hoburg, a former rescue climber in Yosemite, camped in Red Rock Canyon near Las Vegas to practice their technical skills deploying lines and harnesses. On foot, Yutko has braved the race to the summit of Pikes Peak, a grueling contest that scales 7,800 vertical feet.
A slim six-footer, his brown hair close-cropped, Yutko in his Wisk incarnation favored T-shirts and jeans. At work, he can be intense and demanding. “He and I are both ‘A’ types, and we had quite a few battles,” says ex–Wisk boss Gysin, who adds that Yutko “would really dig in on an issue” and relentlessly hammer home his position, a stance he learned in the Hansman crucible at MIT. “I have a number of non-consensus views on a number of topics,” Yutko admitted in a recent podcast. Yet Gysin says that despite their dustups, he and Yutko “are friends to this day.”
According to fellow students and colleagues, Yutko’s as likable as he is doggedly determined. Marvels Hansman, “We’d go to a bar on the Moroccan coast on our motorcycle trips, and Brian would make friends with all the guys in the bar,” says Hansman. “He’s just magnetic.”
Lishuai Li, a fellow PhD student under Hansman and now a professor at City University of Hong Kong, attests to Yutko’s gift for putting people at ease. “As an international student, I sometimes feel hesitant in social settings, so I’d sometimes be quiet. But Brian had a natural way of making everyone feel included.” Yutko is married, and he and his wife, who holds an MBA from Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business and previously worked as a White House advance aid, recently welcomed a son.
And Yutko’s funny. In interviews, he lampoons his own wonkish credentials by uncorking such quips as, “I’ll do a little systems engineering on your question.” As a PhD student, he coauthored a semi-satirical editorial that echoes 18th-century essayist Jonathan Swift’s tongue-in-cheek “A Modest Proposal.” The piece soberly calculates the dollars airlines could save if “they could provide incentives for passengers to go the restroom before getting on a flight.” The authors also get serious, extolling the fuel economies garnered by ditching such items as water bottles handed out by flight attendants, and replacing “flight bags” carrying heavy paper manuals, charts, and checklists with versions loaded on computerized tablets. The writing is so clever that, for this judge, it could have been penned by a professional pundit.
Hansman praises Yutko’s willingness to take chances when the potential payoff is big. “This is a guy who listens, who thinks things through, who assesses risk, but doesn’t have fear,” he observes.
Extra lift
After getting his PhD in 2014, Yutko split his time between MIT and Aurora Flight Sciences, an engineering firm that primarily created prototypes of unmanned, electric, and other next-gen planes, helicopters, and drones for the Department of Defense. At Aurora, he participated in a NASA design competition for a revolutionary, highly efficient commercial aircraft configuration called the D8. Boeing teams were competing on other models. Traditional aircraft design features a pressured tube for the passengers flanked by wings. But the D8 put two tubes side by side, which made the fuselage wider, enabling it to, in effect, become part of the wing and add to the lift. The design also placed the engines in the tail, which reduced turbulence from the fuselage. The D8 looked a bit like a shark, and won the moniker “Double Bubble.” Its edge: It could carry wings smaller and lighter than those of regular planes because of the extra lift provided by the reshaped fuselage. Those characteristics lowered drag big-time. The D8 was also originally conceived to fly at slightly lower than normal speeds, a key to saving fuel that Yutko had identified in his doctoral work.
Yutko tested D8 forerunners in a new wind tunnel donated to MIT by Boeing. The D8’s stupendous goal: lowering fuel consumption by 70%. The tech incorporated in the D8 is still a contender for the new wave of narrow-bodies, and the program would prove Yutko’s ticket to Boeing.
Yutko (left) with a model of Wisk Aero’s eVTOL (electric, vertical take-off and landing) autonomous air taxi at the Farnborough Airshow in 2022.
JUSTIN TALLIS—AFP/Getty Images
Yutko had caught the eye of then–Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun, who picked the rising star for personal mentorship as part of a Boeing program where top executives nurture future leaders. By early 2023 Yutko was ready for a new challenge, which presented itself when autonomous flying-taxi startup Wisk, (founded by Google cofounder Larry Page but majority owned by Boeing) needed a new CEO. Yutko moved to Silicon Valley for the job.
The Wisk rises like a helicopter; then six of its forward rotors tilt outward, and it flies like a plane. Yutko foresaw a network of “vertiports” at airports, topping highways and mounted on rooftops ferrying passengers up to 100 miles in what he widely praised as possibly “the next big leap in aviation.” Given the resistance of pilots’ unions and traffic controllers, and skepticism from regulators, for autonomous flight, it’s unclear when or if Wisk will reach the market. Still, Yutko continued to advance autonomous technology and added AI applications to simulate flight planning and patterns. Those improvements could potentially improve safety and testing on commercial planes.
Boeing’s next big bet
Of course, any decision on a new plane will fall to Ortberg and the Boeing board. Once they approve takeoff, the aircraft-maker typically taps two leaders to head a greenfield project, according to an executive who worked for a Boeing supplier: a program manager, and a lead project engineer. The program manager is tasked with hitting key milestones for schedule and costs, and reports to the business side. The lead project engineer is responsible for working with the supply base to optimize the plane’s design and development, and bring it to market. That person is part of the engineering team that, it appears, would work closely with Yutko as chief of commercial airplane development. “You can’t BS Brian on the engineering side,” noted one of his former colleagues.
What’s this airborne breakthrough likely to look like? The advantage to the super avant-garde models Yutko knows so well is that the airframes themselves promise tremendous gains in fuel efficiency and CO2 reductions. The D8 “Double Bubble” technology that Yutko labored on featuring the bulbous fuselage is still a leading candidate. Another potential winner is the so-called X-66, also known as the jawbreaker transonic truss-braced wing or TTBW. Conceived in-house at Boeing, and long supported by grants from NASA, the X-66 features extra-long, thin wings supported by diagonal struts, so that from the nose you’re looking at two triangles.
In April, Boeing scrapped pursuit of an X-66 demonstrator in partnership with NASA, but pledged to keep working on thin-wing technology. It’s not clear if the TTBW or another model will prove the winner, but Yutko has expressed openness to new aircraft configurations. “It’s really an open book,” says Hansman. Yutko will be leading the evaluation of all the technical and design options, including the use of alternative fuels and new engine technologies, as well as automation.
In October of 2024, Yutko gathered with many of Hansman’s former students to salute their beloved teacher’s 70th birthday with a series of lectures. Yutko took the stage for a presentation reviewing 210 years of aviation history. He started by recapping the first primitive, butterfly-shaped gliders, reminding the audience, “[I’m] as you all know … a future-thinker,” then spotlighted the “opportunity for new airplane shapes” and lauded the “Double Bubble … that came out of MIT” and “that I’m so passionate about.”
Boeing watchers may similarly hope that the storied company is entering a new era, too. And Boeing finally has what it needs, a visionary engineer who can pilot this lagging colossus towards winning the big one, the contest for the aircraft of the future.
From billionaire Bill Gates to former Meta exec Sheryl Sandberg, the world’s top performers all have one thing in common: They invest in their own potential, says Bill Hoogterp, the Fortune 500 career coach who’s worked with both. He recalls Gates blocking off an entire week to read in a cabin. “More and more leaders are doing the same thing,” he exclusively tells Fortune—and the sooner Gen Z copies them, the better for their careers.
Bill Hoogterp has spent decades advising celebrities, CEOs, and rising stars inside some of America’s most powerful boardrooms. Through his coaching firm, LifeHikes, he’s helped more than 700,000 professionals level up their communication and leadership skills—and personally worked one-on-one with “thousands” of executives, many of whom appear on Fortune’s most powerful lists.
And there’s one habit that Meta’s former chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, and his top power player clients share.
“I had this chat with Sheryl Sandberg, and we were joking around that we all need to be the CEO of our own potential,” Hoogterp tells Fortune.
The problem? “Almost none of us seems to want the job. We’re constantly kind of deferring to what the world wants and just reacting to everybody else.”
But what the top 1% do well, Hoogterp says, is they invest in themselves—and it’s something he says everyone should be doing if they want to elevate their careers. Especially Gen Zers, who are early in their careers and stand to gain the most by consistently backing their own growth.
“So think of it like this: You have a pot of money, a few $1,000, and you’re starting your career. You could sit it, put it under the mattress and pick it up, 30 to 60 years later,” he explains. “Or you can invest it in the bank and get interest on it every year. Which one would you rather do?”
Hoogterp says to imagine the return you’d expect from an investment—say 10%—and commit that percentage of your time to improving yourself each week.
“So if you are putting in 40 to 50 hours a week, that’s going to be about five hours,” Hoogterp explains. “Every week, you’re going to spend four or five hours on you. Now, whether that’s going to trainings, getting coaching, reading books, watching TED talks, it doesn’t matter. But take it seriously.”
“If you do that every week, your thousands of dollars are going to be worth tens of millions of dollars, whereas somebody else is going to wake up—they’re just as smart, they’re just as good people as us—but 20 years goes by, and they’re more or less in the same position, same mindsets, same place.”
“That interest compounded is based on you, investing in you.”
Books: Bill Gates’ way of investing in himself
If you don’t know where or how to start investing in yourself, Hoogterp suggests taking up reading.
“The top leaders in the world spend an hour a day reading,” he says, adding that they often start their day in the early hours of the morning with a book in their hands. But it doesn’t have to be a daily chore.
“I spent a little time with Bill Gates, and he found that there were a lot of books and articles, things he wanted to read and just didn’t have time,” he adds. “We all have that stack on our nightstand of books that we want to read but haven’t had time.”
So what did the billionaire Microsoft co-founder do? “He took a whole week, blocked everything off, went to a cabin and just read books. He said it was transformative to his life… In fact, Bill now does two weeks a year just reading.”
“More and more leaders are doing the same thing,” Hoogterp adds. “So finding time to really, just really go off the grid, give yourself time to think, but with a purpose—get through that stack of books you’ve been meaning to get to, or TED talks or articles, or a little bit of both.”
“And that is another way to think about how seriously the most successful people take their own learning and growth, whereas us less successful people, we’re just running through the motions. We’re trying to catch up.”
But I am not a reader, what can I do?
Unfortunately for those who prefer to watch videos rather than pick up a book, Hoogterp says reading really is the key here.
“You’ve got to give yourself a disparate diet for your mind,” he explains. “So you do want a mix of reading, whether it’s long form, books, or articles. Podcasts are great, but try to mix it up.”
“Reading is different because you retain almost 31% more when you read something than when you listen to it on audiobooks, because you’re actively processing versus passively processing.”
“And get the pen out, like when you were back in school writing notes in the margin of the book because you think it might be on the test. Oh, this makes me think this,” Hoogterp adds. “Your brain remembers you writing the words, which means you’re actively processing much deeper, much faster, much more powerfully.”
Finally, if you still can’t get the mojo to park some time aside and read, Hoogterp suggests joining a book club. Not only will it hold you accountable, but it’ll force you to dig deeper, ask better questions, and walk away with ideas you can actually use.
“You’re not just reading a book with other people, but you’re tackling it together,” he says. “What do you think about this chapter? Oh, that made me think this. I agreed with this. I didn’t agree with that.”
As recent college graduates face one of the toughest job markets in years, Berkeley economist and voluble Substacker Brad DeLong has a message for those struggling to land their first full-time gig: Artificial intelligence (AI) and automation are not to blame. Larger forces are at work.
DeLong, a professor at UC Berkeley and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, argued in a recent essay that the challenges confronting young job-seekers today are primarily driven by widespread policy uncertainty and a sluggish economy—not by the rapid rise of AI tools like ChatGPT or data-crunching robots. DeLong offered his analysis on July 23, roughly 10 days before the July jobs report stunned markets, revealing that the economy has been much weaker than previously thought for several months.
Prominent business leaders had also flagged troubling signs in the economy before the July jobs report dropped. IBM Vice Chair and former Trump advisor Gary Cohn went on CNBC a day before the jobs data, noting “warning signs below the surface.” Cohn said he pays close attention to the quits rate in the monthly JOLTS data, arguing that 150,000 fewer quits was an ominous sign of poor economic health.
DeLong sounded a prophetic note, writing that “policy uncertainty” over trade, immigration, inflation, and technology has “paralyzed business planning,” leading to a self-reinforcing cycle of hiring freezes. New entrants to the job market are bearing the brunt of the retreat to risk aversion. In other words, the college graduate class of 2025 is really unlucky.
The economist argued that the uncertainty causes companies to delay major decisions—including hiring—in the face of an unpredictable policy environment.
“This risk aversion is particularly damaging for those at the start of their careers, who rely on a steady flow of entry-level openings to get a foot in the door,” he wrote.
DeLong has sounded similar warnings of a slowdown for years. He talked to Fortune in 2022 about his theory of the economy starting to sputter from his book Slouching Towards Utopia. In 2025, he wrote, the big story in the jobs market is not actually AI, but something different.
Policy paralysis
So, what’s really keeping freshly minted graduates from clinching that all-important first job? DeLong cited Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s Amanda Mull and her theory about “stochastic uncertainty”—a cocktail of unpredictability around government policies, trade, immigration, and inflation. Companies aren’t firing; instead, they’re just waiting. And many are delaying new hires in anticipation of possible sudden shifts in tariffs, inflation rates, and regulatory environments. The result is a wait-and-see climate where employers, worried about future economic shocks, have selected caution over expansion. The holding pattern hits new entrants to the workforce especially hard.
While overall unemployment in the U.S. remains low, the situation is uniquely difficult for new graduates relative to the rest of the workforce. Citing economists including Paul Krugman, DeLong noted that while the absolute unemployment rate for college graduates isn’t alarming, the gap between graduate unemployment and general unemployment rates is at record highs. In the past, higher education reliably led to lower unemployment, but now recent grads are struggling “by a large margin” compared to previous generations.
As previously reported by Fortune Intelligence, Goldman Sachs has argued that the college degree “safety premium” is mostly gone. The team, led by Goldman’s chief economist Jan Hatzius, wrote: “Recent data suggests that the labor market for recent college graduates has weakened at a time when the broader labor market has appeared healthy.”
It also found that since 1997, young workers without a college degree have become much less likely to even look for work, with their participation rate dropping by seven percentage points.
The disappearing premium, charted.
Goldman Sachs
Mull cited an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York which found that tech and design fields, including computer science, computer engineering, and graphic design, are seeing unemployment rates above 7% for new graduates.
Why the AI hype misses the mark
Although the tech sector is buzzing about AI’s potential to replace junior analysts or automate entry-level tasks, DeLong urged caution in assigning blame. In his typical style, he noted, “there is still [no] hard and not even a semi-convincing soft narrative that ‘AI is to blame’ for entry-level job scarcity.” Hiring slowdowns, he pointed out, are driven by broader economic forces: uncertainty, risk aversion, and changes in how companies invest.
Here again, DeLong’s analysis rhymes and aligns with recent research from Goldman’s Hatzius. The bank’s quarterly “AI Adoption Tracker,” issued in July, found that the unemployment rate for AI-exposed occupations had reconciled with the wider economy, which contradicts fears of mass displacement. They also noted there have been no recent layoff announcements explicitly citing AI as the cause, underscoring that it’s contained to disruption of specific functions, not entire industries.
The unemployment rates are reconciling.
Goldman Sachs
Crucially, he argued, rather than hiring people, companies in the tech sector are splurging on “the hardware that powers artificial intelligence”—notably Nvidia’s high-performance chips—fueling a boom in capital investment while sidelining junior hires.
“For firms, the calculus is straightforward: Investing in AI infrastructure is seen as a ticket to future competitiveness, while hiring junior staff is a cost that can be postponed.”
Underpinning these trends is a shift away from any and all risk. Employers prefer to hire for specific short-term needs and are less willing to invest in developing new talent—leaving young applicants caught in a cycle where “just getting your foot in the door” is more difficult than ever. Incumbent workers, worried about job market uncertainty, are less likely to change jobs, leading to fewer openings and greater stagnation.
DeLong’s analysis harmonized with Goldman Sachs’ findings about the declining premium attached with a college degree:
“For the longer-run, the rise in the college wage premium is over, and a decline has (probably) begun.”
For decades, he continued, a college degree was a ticket to higher earnings, and the labor market rewarded those with advanced skills and credentials. In recent years, though, “this has plateaued and may even be falling.” The causes are complex, he added, but the takeaway: While degrees remain valuable, they are no longer the ever-ascending ticket to prosperity they once were.
These comments confirm the gloomy remarks of University of Connecticut professor emeritus Peter Turchin, who recently talked with Fortune about the declining status of the upper middle class in 21st century America. When asked where else he sees this manifesting in modern life, Turchin said, “It’s actually everywhere you look.
“Look at the overproduction of university degrees,” he said, arguing that the decreasing premium that Goldman and DeLong write about shows up in declining rates of college enrollment and high rates of recent graduate unemployment. “There is overproduction of university degrees and the value of a university degree actually declines.”
DeLong’s bottom line for recent grads: Blame a risk-averse business climate, not technology, for today’s job woes. And now that we know the economy may have been much more risk-averse in 2025 than previously, DeLong’s warnings are worth revisiting.
DeLong did not respond to a request for comment.
For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.
President Trump erupted on social media after the Federal Reserve held interest rates steady this week. The president called on the board to “assume control” and lower interest rates on the same day a Biden-appointed Fed governor announced her resignation. Experts say Trump’s understanding of the interest rate decision is misguided and a revolt against Powell is unlikely.
Fed Governor Adriana Kugler announced Friday she is stepping down from her position earlier than expected, giving President Donald Trump the chance to expand his influence over the central bank as he calls for a revolt against Chairman Jerome Powell.
In a post on Truth Social before Kugler’s announcement, President Trump took a jab at Powell, saying he must “substantially” lower interest rates, after the Federal Open Market Committee voted overwhelmingly to keep rates unchanged.
“IF HE CONTINUES TO REFUSE, THE BOARD SHOULD ASSUME CONTROL, AND DO WHAT EVERYONE KNOWS HAS TO BE DONE,” Trump added in the post.
Kugler said she would resign her position on Aug. 8, earlier than her expected departure in January when her term on the board of governors expires. She plans to return to Georgetown University as a professor this fall, according to a press release.
Kugler’s departure gives Trump a relished opportunity to nominate a voting member to the FOMC and expand his influence. The FOMC sets the federal funds rate that Trump has been saying needs to come down. The committee is made up of the seven governors who serve on the Fed board, the New York Fed president, and four rotating regional Federal Reserve bank presidents.
The FOMC meeting this week that kept rates unchanged between 4.25% and 4.5% saw the dissent of two Fed governors, Trump appointees Michelle Bowman and Christopher Waller.
It marked a rare break in what’s a typically unanimous vote, but it was far from a mutiny, said Michael Ashley Schulman, the chief investment officer of Running Point Capital Advisors.
Because interest rate decisions are decided by a simple majority vote by the FOMC’s 12 voting members, it’s possible Powell, who only gets one vote and no veto power, could be overridden. But it’s not likely, said Schulman.
“A handful of dissents shows the committee can grumble, but a successful revolt would need at least seven ‘nays’ against Powell, an inside-the-Fed version of turning the Succession board on Logan Roy,” he told Fortune, referring to the TV show about a corporate power struggle. “Odds remain low unless the data roll over hard or new appointees tip the balance.”
Trump’s attacks on the Fed and Powell have escalated in his second term. And his constant insistence on lower rates and previous threats to appoint Powell’s successor, have put pressure on the Fed to exert its independence.
Yet, Powell still has ways he can fight back against Trump’s influence, if he chooses to, said Mark Spindel, senior adviser at F/m Investments and a co-author of The Myth of Independence: How Congress Governs the Federal Reserve.
Powell has made clear he will serve out the remainder of his term as Fed chairman until it expires in May, yet Spindel notes Powell can also remain on the board of governors afterwards because his term on the board, which ends in 2028, is independent of his four-year term as chairman.
“Powell sticking around for a while after his chairmanship would be a scenario by which he could keep the president from attaining a majority of the board of governors, preventing all sorts of weird dynamics, and making communication by the incoming chair more difficult,” Spindel told Fortune.
Powell has repeatedly declined to say whether he intends to stay on as Fed governor after his term as chairman ends.
It’s also unclear how Trump will react if the Fed cuts rates. The economy has been largely resilient in spite of uncertainty caused in part by the threat of tariffs on major U.S. trading partners, but cracks have started to emerge. The U.S. economy added only about 73,000 jobs last month, and gains in June and May were revised down sharply, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The new numbers were so stunning they upended the earlier narrative that the labor market was remarkably shock proof, which has colored the Fed’s stance on rates.
In the press conference following the Fed’s decision to keep rates unchanged, Powell hesitated to guide toward a rate in the coming months. He struck a hawkish tone, according to a note by Bank of America’s macroeconomics team, putting a damper on investor hopes that the FOMC’s next meeting in September could bring a rate cut.
“It seems to me — and to almost the whole committee — that the economy is not performing as though restrictive policy is holding it back inappropriately,” Powell said.
Despite a widespread return-to-office push, loneliness among workers remains high. KPMG survey results published Tuesday found that 81% of employees value friendships at work as “critically important,” and a majority would even prefer to earn less to work with friends than earn more without them.
Workers crave companionship so much, in fact, survey results published Tuesday from audit, tax, and advisory firm KPMG show 57% would choose a role with a salary 10% below market value to work with friends over a job with a salary 10% over market without close friendships.
This “friendship premium” effectively values workplace relationships at 20% of someone’s salary, according to KPMG.
Meanwhile, 45% of people reported feelings of loneliness in the workplace, up nearly double from KPMG’s Friends at Work report from last year. And 81% of workers consider having workplace relationships as “critically important.”
This year, KPMG surveyed 1,019 full-time employees about the relative importance of salary, friends at work, work-life balance, learning opportunities, company culture, and how technology shapes employee experiences.
KPMG’s decision to explore workplace friendships was driven by the growing recognition that human connection is essential to business success, Sandy Torchia, KPMG U.S. vice chair of talent and culture, told Fortune.
“Our [2024] survey revealed that workplace friendships are an undervalued solution for addressing issues such as loneliness, burnout and disengagement—challenges increasingly evident in today’s workforce,” she said. “Our [2025] survey indicates that these issues not only persist but are becoming even more prevalent.”
Based on her work with clients, “a warm organizational culture will often rank higher for employees compared to simple monetary pay,” Szamet said. “Working in an atmosphere of trust and friendship can lead to greater commitment and staying longer with one company even if salaries are not at the stratospheric levels for one’s expertise.”
Erin Eatough, cofounder and chief science officer at advisory firm Fractional Insights, told Fortune this trend reflects a larger redefinition of value at work.
“People are no longer just optimizing for income—they’re optimizing for meaning, growth, and connection,” said Eatough, who uses psychological science while consulting Fortune 500 leaders. She earned her Ph.D. in industrial-organizational psychology from the University of South Florida.
“We see this in our diagnostics,” she continued. “Workers are increasingly seeking environments where they feel safe, connected, and respected. Friendship is often the most human expression of a culture that has gotten it right.”
A recent Fractional Insights survey also showed more than 50% of employees feel they have to “constantly look out for themselves at work.”
“That kind of chronic self-protection signals a breakdown of trust and belonging and it erodes motivation and innovation over time,” Eatough added. “Workplace friendships can act as a buffer against the loneliness epidemic.”
Meanwhile, workplace friendships often go beyond superficial connections. Friends can serve as support systems at important times like when an employee faces discrimination, harassment, or retaliation Szamet said.
Generational breakdown and AI friendships
KPMG’s survey results found Gen Z values workplace friendships the most out of all groups. Two-thirds of Gen Z would choose a role with the friendship premium, followed by 58% for baby boomers, 57% of millennials, and 55% of Gen Xers.
While friendships are valuable across all generations, younger workers rely more heavily on work friends to navigate mental health and burnout, Torchia said. They’re also more likely to view their work friends as “social connectors” and “confidants,” she added.
AI has also become a source of companionship—for better or for worse—for some workers. While 99% of workers reported they’re interested in an AI chatbot that could become a friend or trusted work companion, according to KPMG, 49% said the technology creates false connections and replaces deep conversations with superficial interactions. Torchia calls this the “great AI paradox.”
AI “can serve as a tool to help alleviate loneliness while also amplifying our hunger for authentic relationships,” she said. “The organizations winning are those leveraging emerging technology like AI to create more meaningful human interactions, not fewer.”
Eatough said the more we automate, the more precious and powerful human connections become.
“If we’re not careful, we risk designing sterile, extractive workplaces in pursuit of efficiency,” she said. But placing humans at the forefront of performance management, communication, and rewards can “create environments where both AI and authentic connection thrive side by side.”
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