Worth: Groundbreaking Women Issue

NEXT-GEN GIVING TRENDS MEASURING DEI: WHAT’S THE HOLDUP?

50 EQUALIZING THE CRYPTO CRAZE

Women Changing The World

Singer-songwriter Jewel is blazing a trail as a groundbreaker in the mental health space.

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Amanda Gorman, Mary Barra, Meghan Markle, Deb Haaland, Chloé Zhao and more!

It may seem like just a flight, but it is far more than that. Each journey is the culmination of careful planning, flawless execution, and an unbridled passion to provide the best in world-class customer service. It is in each friendly handshake with the industry’s best pilots and it is in the calm that takes over as you settle into your seat aboard a perfectly appointed aircraft, all Owned and Operated by NICHOLAS AIR. Our commitment to provide the ultimate in private aviation experiences stretches back 25 years and yet each day, our team works diligently to refine every detail. From the personalized attention to our commitment to providing the highest quality aircraft to the Most Refined Set of Private Flyers, the NICHOLAS AIR team is solely focused on one mission--- yours.

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All aircraft are owned and operated by NICHOLAS AIR . NICHOLAS AIR and INNOVATIVE PRIVATE AIR TRAVEL are registered trademarks ®2022 NICHOLAS AIR. All rights reserved.

C ON T E N T S |

2022

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How to measure meaningful progress of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

The important role of employee resource groups in creating inclusive workplaces.

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Over 50 women breaking barriers and changing the world for the better.

One founder’s advice for women who want to be entrepreneurs, based on her own entrepreneurial journey.

Making DEI a Business Imperative

50 Groundbreaking Women

Crafting Company Culture

Separating the Glitter From the Glue

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P H OTO B Y M A D I S O N F E N D E R

EDITION 01

Fly Happy - Fly Breeze Airways 16 Nonstop Cities from Sea to Shining Sea

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C ON T E N T S

24 Sound Mind: Q&A With Jewel The singer-songwriter on prioritizing wellbeing and happiness.

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The Female Disruptors Creating the Future of Fashion These leaders are charting a course for a decidedly more sustainable and inclusive industry.

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Sustainability Never Looked This Good Four fashion brands working to elevate textile production to be more sustainable and transparent without sacrificing style.

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Can Breeze Make Flying…

Breezy?

Departments 10

Masthead

IMPACT

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Chrissy Fichtl

EDITOR’S LETTER CONTRIBUTORS BUSINESS Health TRAVEL

JetBlue founder David Neeleman’s new airline aims to connect communities in a powerful way.

Cove r P hoto by DA NA TR IP PE

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TECH CRYPTO ART

20 Questions

P H OTO C O U R T E S Y O F C A R LY L E & C O .

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Jim McCann CHAIRMAN

Josh Kampel CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

Carolyn Disbrow C H I E F O P E R AT I N G O F F I C E R

James Ledbetter CHIEF CONTENT OFFICER

EDITORIAL E D I TO R I A L D I R E C TO R S E N I O R E D I TO R A S S O C I AT E E D I T O R C R E AT I V E D I R E C T O R CO N T R I B U T I N G E D I TO R E D I T O R AT L A R G E CO N T R I B U TO R S

Emily Cegielski Micki Wagner Eva Crouse Nicole Dudka Mike Gianakos Richard Bradley Bonnie Azoulay, Lauren Buonomo, Madison Fender, Tara Jaye Frank, Paige McCullough, Lauren McGoodwin, Chadner Navarro, Chris Roberts, Arick Wierson

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E DITOR ’ S LE T TE R

W

hen I was eight years old, I had my entire life planned out: I was going to be an actress/ chemist, who would discover a cure for cancer while headlining Broadway’s next hit musical.

After achieving those goals, I would go on to become America’s first female president. No biggie. I was certain that this career trajectory was not only possible, but also inevitable. I even illustrated a book about all of this for a second-grade class project; as they flipped through my drawings and misspelled captions, my incredibly supportive parents told me that I could achieve anything if I worked hard enough. The only caveat?

My mom explained that they hoped—and as a girl, I should

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hope too—that a woman would be elected president long before I reached the 35-year-old age requirement necessary to run for America’s highest office.

Twenty-three years later, and we finally have a woman of color as vice president, but still no estrogen permeating the Oval Office. I, for one, have since learned that chemistry, acting and politics are not the right fields for me, but that conversation with my mom about a female presidency and the need for representation has stuck with me. Even though I was able to see myself in a role that has only been held by men at such a young age, that is not the case for most; the intrepid dreams of my youth were the result of white, upper-middle-class privilege. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve worked hard to translate the skills that I do have into ways of uplifting and honoring women, people of color, the LGBTQ+ community and all underrepresented voices who are helping create a more inclusive and equitable society.

One of my favorite projects that I’ve ever had the pleasure of undertaking throughout my career is, without a doubt, Worth’s annual Groundbreakers List (see

page 36). Each year, we recognize and celebrate 50+ women who’ve broken barriers and created impact the year prior, and getting to share their stories and acknowledge their accomplishments is liberating. It feels like, in a very small way, we can at least do our part to drive diversity, equity and inclusion forward.

But there’s still a lot of work to be done. Over the past two years, we’ve had to grapple with a global pandemic, racial reckonings, widening income inequality and the climate crisis, to name just a few stressors. In addition to telling the stories of incredible women, in this issue, we’re looking at how businesses can measure meaningful and sustainable DEI progress (see page 30), the exciting and increasingly expanding world of femtech (see page 28) and how founders/investors are helping equalize access to crypto (see page 90). There are so many areas and industries where women and people of color are not just underrepresented but completely overlooked. There are so many global issues competing to be front and center right now. There are so many systemic injustices that affect all types of people every single day. Thankfully, the world is full of smart, innovative and eager leaders looking to do their part. Working together to make equality a priority for all would be a great start.

— Emily Cegielski E D I TO R I A L D I R E C TO R

I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y LY N D O N H AY E S

Tell a Story, Make a Difference

CONTRIB UTORS

Chadner Navarro New Jersey-based travel writer Chadner Navarro has swung over a gorge in South Africa, taken a bite of grilled snake in Cambodia and cried down a ski slope in Switzerland. For nearly a year during the COVID-19 pandemic, he lived in Denver, where he learned about the work Rachel Smith was doing at newly opened hotel-meets-members club The Clayton. “They’re really turning the members-only concept on its head by making it more inclusive and less exclusive,” Navarro says.

“For example, a small surcharge added to every F&B check goes towards local charitable initiatives, embedding the club into the community rather than setting it apart from it.” Navarro has written for the likes of Travel + Leisure, the New York Post and Bloomberg.

Bonnie Azoulay Bonnie Azoulay Elmann graduated from FIT in 2017. She worked at Vanity Fair, Brides and SheKnows before becoming a full-time writer and freelancer. She’s written for publications such as Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, Elite Daily and more. Bonnie specializes in SEO writing with a focus on health. She’s an avid mental health advocate who continuously shares her own story and others in the pursuit of destigmatizing mental illnesses.

Q: What inspired you to become a storyteller?

A: My fourth-grade teacher gave me my first writing assignment, and I’ve been hooked ever since. She and other female writing teachers believed in my talent and gave me the confidence to become a professional writer.

Q: What impact do you hope your stories will have?

A: I hope my stories will break barriers and stigmas. I hope my voice amplifies the voices of others who aren’t typically heard or seen.

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Tara Jaye Frank

Q: What are some tips you would give to other writers?

Tara Jaye Frank is an equity strategist who has advised and educated thousands of Fortune 500 executives across multiple industries on how to create an equitable workplace. The author of two books, her latest is The Waymakers: Clearing the Path to Workplace Equity with Competence and Confidence, which launches May 2022. Before founding her culture and leadership consultancy, Frank spent 21 years at Hallmark Cards, where she served in multiple roles, including vice president of multicultural strategy and corporate culture advisor to the president. Tara’s work, fueled by a deep belief in the creative power and potential of everyone, is focused on equity and building bridges between people, ideas and opportunity.

A: Not everyone will agree with or like your writing. That’s OK—keep going. You’ll find your audience.

Continue to write even when it feels like no one is reading your work.

Q: What are some of your fa-

“Writing this article reinforced my certainty that the time to make meaningful progress to more diverse workforces, more equitable outcomes for employees and more inclusive workplace cultures is NOW. For decades, there has been no shortage of activity from good intentions and aspirations—yet no significant advancement. Pre-pandemic, the blame for this lack of progress was too little time and too few resources. Now, two years in, companies are facing more complex business challenges—from rethinking value propositions and reinventing supply chains to shifting to remote or hybrid work. Add in the employees’ experience with social strife and stress, and galvanizing people to do something new is even harder. How can we possibly prioritize DEI now? Reality begs the question—how can we afford NOT to? The journey to creating an equitable workplace is beyond a vision, a metric or a box-checking exercise—it is the lifeblood of our future.”

A: I’m particularly interested in writing about mental health and topics that are considered to be taboo. I like to write about what everyone’s thinking but won’t say out loud. Opening up about my own mental health has given me the opportunity to connect with others and help them feel less alone in their struggles.

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vorite topics to cover and why?

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BUSINESS

What It’s Like to Be a Female Entrepreneur in Countries With Wide Gender Gaps

BY BONNIE AZOULAY

A

ccording to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2021, it will take 135.6 years to close the gender gap worldwide. Researchers have seen significant progress over the last few years in regards to the gender gap in economic participation and opportunity, but not nearly enough. Even so, women are becoming skilled professionals at record numbers. But income disparities are still in effect, and there’s a lack of women in leadership positions. Women workers and entrepreneurs in some countries, including Pakistan, Egypt and India are more affected than others.

Despite these adversities, many women are becoming entrepreneurs and leaders in countries with wide gender gaps. Malala Yousafzai, for example, is widely known for getting an education, which is against Taliban rules in Pakistan. Unfortunately, they shot her for promoting education for girls.

If getting an education can get you shot in the head, you can imagine what it’s like for women to start their own businesses in countries with sizable gender gaps.

Ahead, learn about women who’ve become entrepreneurs even with everything stacked against them. *Some of these women’s last names have been omitted to protect their privacy.

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Yamini Bhat Cofounder and CEO of Vymo, an AIbased personal sales assistant and fast-growing enterprise startup Country: Bengaluru, India India’s country-wide female literacy rate is 70.3 percent, considerably lower than the global average of 82.7 percent. A much smaller percentage of this group joins the economic workforce, with 79 percent of Indian women (aged 15 years and older) not even seeking work.

Bhat identifed a need for a sales productivity overhaul in her time as a McKinsey Consultant. In 2013, she cofounded Vymo to help on-thego sales teams be more productive.

Vymo has seen tremendous growth in recent years, more than doubling its revenue each year.

With the rise of India as a global development hub for SaaS, more of the female population could enter the workforce, focusing on skill-building in high-demand areas (cloud computing, dev, analytics, QA, etc.).

“But in order for these opportunities to become viable options for women, workplaces need to be consciously sensitive to aspects that matter in making women successful,” Bhat says. “This includes welldefined part-time programs, flexible options and recognition for output, not hours.”

Still, Indian culture emphasizes familial support. “This has to become our strength in enabling our women to play a bigger role in the workforce if they choose to,” Bhat concludes.

To Truly Appreciate NICHOLAS AIR… Come Aboard!

The private aviation company offers a tailored experience.

BY WILLIAM P. HOGUE

I

n 1997, a young pilot named Nicholas “NJ” Correnti, founded an “aviation company” with one four-passenger plane and no staff. As NJ puts it, “I was the pilot, the customer service agent, the accountant and the flight attendant.”

Fast forward 25 years: NICHOLAS AIR now operates some 24 passenger jets, has access to over 9,000 airports nationwide and employs over 150 people. And NJ is still running things, albeit as company CEO. Now you, the private aviation consumer, might say, “Colorful founding stories are interesting, but why should I care?”

Because the two principals upon which NJ founded the company— safety and a personally customized flying experience—still guide and inspire its founder and employees.

As to safety, in its 25-year history, NICHOLAS AIR has not experienced a single serious safety issue or incident.

Not one. Why? For starters, NICHOLAS AIR owns, operates and is incredibly detailed-oriented

when it comes to the maintenance on its planes. Private aviation flight brokers fly whatever planes are available. In addition, any NICHOLAS AIR plane that you board is no more than five years old on average. You could say that NICHOLAS AIR replaces its planes about as frequently as most people replace the family car.

While safety is job number one, NJ says, “Every mission needs to be tailored to the specific person.” And for you to truly appreciate that tailoring—that is, the NICHOLAS AIR experience—for the moment, let’s imagine…

You have a family of four—mother, father, teenage daughter, grade school age son. Based upon a friend’s recommendation, you decide to fly with your family on NICHOLAS AIR. (No surprise since 83 percent of new sales come from member referrals.)

Next, you call to make your reservation and speak to a NICHOLAS AIR dedicated Personal Travel Representative who describes the company’s three jet card options. (BLUE is aircraft specific; PA R T N E R C O N T E N T

RISE is deposit based with hourly rates; LITE is designed for those with exceptional schedule flexibility.) You choose the BLUE Card, meaning you will actually choose which of NICHOLAS AIR’s five aircraft types you will fly on.

The day of the flight, as your family enters the cabin, the plane’s pilots are there waiting to welcome each person in your family—by name. (NICHOLAS AIR President, Peder von Harten, says all crew and pilots go to charm school in addition to their aircraft training programs.

Like a real charm school.)

Once inside, you notice not only how luxurious the interior is, but also how new it feels. (Remember those “young” jets.) You also notice how remarkably clean the interior is. (Crews drive to airports to “detail” NICHOLAS AIR planes that land.)

While settling in, you see the crew paying special attention to your children, clearly making an extra effort to put them at ease, including offering them the snacks they like that you had mentioned to the Personal Travel Representative; the representative also alerted the crew ahead of time that they are “nervous flyers.”

You also told the representative that your family likes room temperatures a bit cooler than the usual. And as you ready for takeoff, you notice that, in fact, the interior of the plane is nice and cool.

Before your flight, your son was very excited when you told him he could interact with the pilots. Based on the representative’s instructions, while airborne, the crew, unprompted by you, brings your son into the cockpit.

In short, your flight, per NJ, was “tailored” for you and your family. And after this experience, you begin to understand why the likes of Nicole Kidman, who could easily afford her own jet, instead chooses NICHOLAS AIR. As a “brand ambassador,” Kidman has said that NICHOLAS AIR “feel[s] like family.” And she says that for two reasons: One, just like you and your imaginary family, Kidman feels the safest that a passenger can feel on an airplane. Two, as was the case with your imaginary flight, each one of Kidman’s actual NICHOLAS AIR flights is tailored to be a perfect fit.

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BUSINESS

Dina Abdul Majeed Founder of 360Moms, an online bilingual health and parenting platform/mobile app aimed to revolutionize the digital support offered to mothers Country: Jordan The Middle East has the lowest female labor force participation worldwide, at an estimated 20 percent in 2019. “Although the female literacy rate is 80 percent in the region, I believe many factors affect this, including lack of work flexibility, employer discrimination and social norms,” Abdul Majeed says.

Globally, female entrepreneurs face unequal access to funding compared to men to grow their businesses. Research shows that more than 85 percent of global venture capital goes to startup ventures founded or led by men.

360Moms provides experts across a range of topics to generate accessible content for moms. The company empowers mothers to create a better future for their children.

After tripling their revenue this year, Abdul Majeed is now looking at expanding internationally. Her investors include Expert DOJO, and they were recently accepted into Google’s accelerator program.

85 percent of global venture capital goes to startup ventures founded or led by men.

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Mariam

Asmaa

Founder of a livestock business, with the help of a microfinance organization in Egypt, working with Kiva, an international nonprofit with a mission to provide financial access for all

Founder of a sewing business, with the help of a microfinance organization in Egypt working with Kiva

Country: Egypt

Asmaa is a 33-year-old woman living in Beni Suef, Egypt. She and her ex-husband were having difficulty making ends meet and providing for their children. So, Asmaa joined the Together Association for Development and Environment (TADE) and requested a loan through Kiva to fund a sewing business.

Her products became popular due to her modern fabrics and unique designs. Her husband, however, became threatened by her success and economic empowerment. As a result, he divorced her and left their two children.

Asmaa now lives with her parents and continues to run her sewing business. This allows her to provide for her children without giving up on the career she worked so hard to build.

She faces daily harassment from the men in her community, including those she works with closely.

Asmaa has chosen to challenge the traditions in her community and actively teaches her children to respect women.

She has become a strong voice in her community and fights to provide a stable life for her children.

In the future, she hopes to have a clothing line of her own and to inspire young girls in her community who are interested in starting a business.

Mariam, a 23-year-old woman, lives in Minya, Egypt with her parents and three siblings. Because of her family’s financial situation, it has been difficult for Mariam to complete her education. While living in Egypt, she has faced the gendered customs that discourage female education and equal rights.

Even so, Mariam’s biggest dream growing up was to complete her education as a way to empower herself both socially and economically. With encouragement from her mother, Mariam decided to apply for a microloan and joined a program that taught her how to raise and fatten rabbits to be sold to traders in her community.

Mariam secured a loan through Kiva to fund her livestock project.

She relayed all of her installments on time and successfully raised enough money to provide for her family and put herself through two years of nursing school.

Mariam faced harsh judgment and harassment from men in her village, as it’s rare to see a woman doing this work or to be in this industry at all. Despite these barriers, Mariam continued to foster her business with fierce determination and is a role model to other women in her community.

Country: Egypt

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H E A LT H

How to Maintain Your Health When Starting a New Company Three experts recommend ways for new entrepreneurs to best take care of themselves while launching their companies.

BY MICKI WAGNER

A

few months ago, I was at a women’s networking event where bestselling author and motivational speaker Gabrielle Bernstein was speaking. During the Q&A portion, where women were asking for advice, one entrepreneur raised her hand. She knew her cofounder was not properly taking care of herself while they were working on launching their business. With her business partner sitting right next to her, she asked how her cofounder could look after her health during such a stressful and timeconsuming period. To be completely candid, I don’t remember what Bernstein’s answer was; I just remember thinking, “I wonder how many other entrepreneurs struggle with maintaining their health during the founding of their company?”

And so here we are, dear reader. Worth spoke with Dr. Jonathan Leary, founder and CEO of Remedy Place, Claire Siegel, founder and CEO of Flourish, and Audra Gold, founder and CEO of Vurbl, about how early-stage entrepreneurs can best look after themselves. Here are the nine practices they recommend.

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Dr. Jonathan Leary Recommends: GETTING YOUR MINDSET RIGHT “The healthier you are, the better that you shine and people mirror you. So, if you show up and you’re stressed out, you’re agitated, people are going to show up that same way. I found that first, getting your mindset in the morning, whatever it takes…It’s about being present and then showing up every single day the way that you want everyone else to show up around you. And it’s contagious. If you walk into a room and you’re happy and you’re smiling and you’re so inspiring and motivating, people are going to mirror that. And I think [for] any entrepreneur, people need to realize that it starts with them.”

Self-Care is a Necessity Put your own mask on before assisting others.

BY HOLLY PARKER

T

ime. It’s the most precious commodity there is. When you think about it, it’s limited in quantity.

We can’t buy more, earn more or turn back the clock. That’s why we need to use our time wisely because life can, and often does, change in an instant.

My dad was the most important and influential person in my life. For as long as I can remember, he loved to impart his profound wisdom…often. At the time, his life lessons could feel harsh and weren’t easy for me to comprehend.

But my dad knew what he was doing; he was planting seeds.

Growing up, I was taught that thinking about yourself was being selfish— even self-obsessed. That idea was drilled into me. One time at my own birthday party, I stood first in line to play pin the tail on the donkey. My dad shook his head and said, “back of the line my dear. You are the host. The host always goes last.”

“But it’s my birthday!” I cried.

“Back of the line!” He repeated sternly.

And when I stood my ground, he sent me to my room. It was my seventh birthday, and I spent it in my room.

And so, I learned a hard, but important, lesson. While it’s nice to be a caretaker, there is nothing more important than taking care of your needs, too.

It took me many years to understand that good manners are one thing and self-preservation is something else.

Self-care is the oxygen and the true foundation for any relationship. It’s

Back on the Market

By Holly Parker Forefront Books hollyparker.com

so important to take time for yourself—time to think, time to learn, time to grow, time to heal. It’s a necessity.

Without it, you can lose yourself.

Some people don’t do well with change. They’d rather switch jobs when things get hard, move from one relationship to another or just run away rather than cope with their mess. Boy, do I get that. You see, not long ago, my father unexpectedly passed away. We were headed to Costa Rica to enjoy a family vacation over the holidays. At the time, I worried it could be our last trip together, as my parents were getting on in years and traveling was becoming difficult for them. I had no idea the vacation would never happen, as my father had an aneurysm on the flight to meet us.

As they say, “The knockout punch is always the one you never see coming.”

And this one definitely took me down.

But it didn’t take me out.

I cried. A lot. I stayed in bed more than I should have. I poured myself into work whenever I could muster the energy and mindset to be present.

And I found solace in the love and support I received from my husband and twin boys.

PA R T N E R C O N T E N T

What I needed to do though was face my grief—and that scared me. How would I ever get over this loss?

I had been through breakups, a divorce, even a devastating friend divorce—all of which were painfully hard. I understood the power of losing someone I loved. But I had never felt anything quite like losing my dad. My mentor. My hero.

I get it. When you’re feeling so bad, finding anything to divert your attention from your chaos can seem great.

Who doesn’t want to be distracted from their pain? However, if you take the bait and follow that temporary distraction, there is usually a massive price to pay. When life gets hard, we can’t put our fingers in our ears and pretend it isn’t happening any more than we can turn back time. Like it or not, ready or not, you are in it. How we manage life’s challenges will always dictate the outcome. But not as much as ignoring it. Eventually, it manifests into something much worse. And then, you really have to pick up the shattered pieces of your heart. There are times to cut corners and times you can’t avoid doing what must be done.

Even when it’s hard.

I understood processing this loss would take time. And I also knew that with every passing day, I was nurturing the pain more than the healing—paying high interest wishing for time I’d never get back. There would be some good days and bad. And I allowed myself to have both. Eventually, I realized, “This is life, and this, too, would eventually pass.” I kept reminding myself of this, saying it over and over in my head, until one day, my pain and sadness were no longer my predominant thoughts.

Gradually, I began feeling like the old me—laughing with my boys and getting back to center.

“Slow and steady wins the race.” This is another message my dad repeatedly echoed when I was a child. He drilled the value of long-term goals over shortterm gains into my consciousness. And for this, I am truly grateful. An early warning from wiser souls trying to pass down words of wisdom: Always do the work. It’s well worth it.

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H E A LT H

FUELING YOUR BODY PROPERLY AND INTENTIONALLY “Everything that I ingest, I look at it as either fueling or fighting disease. Am I enhancing my performance or am I working against it? I always I tell my patients, or I tell anyone that I’m now mentoring, ‘look at everything you put in your body. Is that going to make what you’re doing better or worse?’

And, you know, if you’re drinking too much or eating bad food, it’s going to slow you down. And every minute and every hour counts. Also, the healthier you are, the more creative you’re going to be, the more likely you’re going to have a deeper connection with other people, you’re not going to have this brain fog and be tired. You have endurance to keep going, so nutritionally, it’s really, really important.”

Claire Siegel Recommends: DETERMINING YOUR NON-NEGOTIABLES “What are the one to three things you can do to support your mental, physical and emotional health? This will look different from person to person, and even season to season. Take a few minutes and reflect on the small habits that’ll have the biggest impact on your overall wellness.

For me, it’s sleep and hydration.

If I am well-slept and hydrated, I’m far better equipped to handle what the day throws at me.”

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PRIORITIZING SLEEP QUALITY AND QUANTITY “Entire books have been written about the impact of sleep on our mental and physical health, but for founders, in particular, I like to highlight one important finding: According to the National Sleep Foundation, one of the best predictors of job-related burnout is sleeping less than six hours a night. If sleep is a struggle for you, check out Andrew Huberman’s toolkit for sleep and see which sleep hygiene habit(s) you can implement.”

TALKING TO SOMEONE “Starting and leading a company can be really lonely, and many people around you are not going to understand the highs and lows that come along with entrepreneurship. The best thing I’ve done for my mental health and sense of belonging is to seek support from people who get it. I work with an executive coach once a week, and I have a small group of founder friends both [in real life] and online. These relationships are invaluable—whether they’re celebrating the good times or offering wisdom and a listening ear through challenges.”

Audra Gold Recommends: EATING HEALTHY “The importance of eating very healthy is overlooked by a shocking amount of people I have met.

Eating healthy is essential to staying both mentally and physically healthy, no matter how much exercise you do. There is no way around it. No shortcuts. Discipline when it comes to what you put in your body is everything.”

MOVING YOUR BODY OFTEN AND STANDING UP AT YOUR DESK “This can be as simple as using a stand-up desk and stretching a few times a day. I like doing planks to maintain [my] core, and it’s a low time-spent-to-results type of exercise. Go on walks) and/or bike rides when you can to break up the day.”

PARTING ADVICE FOR BUSY PEOPLE: “The saying is trite but true: You cannot pour from an empty cup,” Siegel says. “To take care of your business, your team and your family, you have to take care of yourself first. This is an important mindset shift to really internalize and believe. From there, keep it incredibly simple,” she says. “Focus on the one or two non-negotiable daily practices that will have the biggest impact on your overall health— and do them most days.”

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Not Your Grandpa’s Members Club In Denver, Rachel Smith turns the membersonly club on its head.

BY CHADNER NAVARRO

I

n 2022, when inclusion and diversity are more critical than ever, it’s only natural to question whether we still need members-only clubs, where exclusivity remains a premium selling point. For Rachel Smith, formerly the membership director at Clayton Members Club & Hotel, which opened in Denver’s tony Cherry Creek neighborhood last May, it is exactly this moment that makes them ripe for an upheaval. “We’re seeing just how important community is,” says Smith, who has recently taken on a consulting role at Clayton and other members club concepts around the country. “I see so much potential in these clubs because I’m an ardent fan of what a community can become with a little organization.”

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Smith cut her teeth overseeing membership, events and creative programming for the likes of Soho House and Sotheby’s. But she first discovered the uplifting power of community when she was selling jewelry online in the mid-aughts, competing against the likes of Barneys for the attention of affluent shoppers. The now-shuttered shop, which Smith had founded with her mother, became the entity around which 55 clients developed a tightknit community. “These women formed a traveling support group for each other,” Smith says, adding that being part of it was the most moving thing she’s done. “It showed me how community can help people.”

All of this informs the work Smith is doing at Clayton, where she hopes to chip away at the old practices of members-only clubs. For instance, membership here isn’t based on self-selecting criteria like profession, income or network. It’s built on five pillars: curiosity, fun, authenticity,

P H OTO B Y J I M E N A P E C K

T R AV E L

( TO P L E F T ) - P H OTO C O U R T E S Y O F C A R LY L E & C O . ; ( TO P R I G H T ) - P H OTO B Y N I A L L C L U T TO N ; ( B OT TO M L E F T ) - P H OTO B Y C H R I S T I A N H O R A N P H OTO G R A P H Y ; ( B OT TO M R I G H T ) - P H OTO C O U R T E S Y O F T E S S E R A E

generosity and inclusion; each potential member has to embody them to be accepted. For Smith, a modernday club should be more than just a place where you host meetings or sip after-work whiskey. The space should instead be defined by its members’ ability to create culture that upholds those pillars. Anyone who aspires to do so can be a Clayton member, even if they can’t afford the full price of membership. “Maybe you’re gonna do DJ sets, moderate events or teach a class,” Smith says, regarding how someone might be able to make up what they can’t pay.

“It’s equally important to have people who want to be active members.”

She also didn’t want Clayton to become a secret space that fails to interact with the city around it. Denver’s diversity is championed within the walls of the club: There’s a local advisory and curatorial board that counsels on Clayton initiatives and charity collaborations. The walls feature art by Denverites like Ron Hicks and his thought-provoking oil paintings. And the space itself is used for everything from dance parties and bazaars that spotlight local creatives to documentary screenings about the trans experience and consultation sessions with lawyers for anyone (member or not) who needs it. For Smith, this community-first ethos means that the people of Denver should benefit from Clayton, too, because, yes, members-clubs used to be exclusive places, but they don’t have to be. “To be wrapped up in yourself, not recognizing your impact on the people around you, that’s something in the old model of members clubs that we can leave behind.”

“I see so much potential in these clubs because I’m an ardent fan of what community can become with a little oranization.”

-RACHEL SMITH

The Next Generation of Members-Only Clubs Move over, Soho House! Clayton Members Club & Hotel is just one of many club-hotel hybrids that are sweeping the hospitality industry. Here are four more to check into.

CARLYLE & CO AT ROSEWOOD HONG KONG Rosewood’s first foray into this category aims to shake off the stuffy reputation private clubs have enjoyed for centuries without sacrificing overthe-top luxury. This 25,000-squarefoot sanctuary perched over the hotel dedicates spaces for music, games, wine and a tailor. There’s also a private floor that houses eight individually designed bedrooms exclusively for members and their guests.

THE CURTAIN AT MONDRIAN SHOREDITCH A 24-hour gym, a coworking lounge that transforms into an event venue at night, an atmospheric old-world bar and a rooftop hangout with a pool are just some of the amenities at this Goddard Littlefair-designed East London hotspot, which resuscitates the 2017 hotel-cum-club of the same name. Of-the-moment happenings like cabarets and wellness workshops fill up the social calendar.

THE BRITELY AT PENDRY WEST HOLLYWOOD At the Britely, renowned designer Martin Brudnizki cloaks every inch in his signature style of color and excess; Wolfgang Puck oversees the dining program; there’s a lounge for live events and a stylish bowling alley. Sadly, hotel guests rarely have access to any of it, including the breathtaking (and potentially vertigo-inducing) yoga sessions on the helipad.

TESSERAE AT THOMPSON BUCKHEAD In Atlanta’s newest club, you’ll want to be invited to one of the “secret suppers,” during which an intimate group of strangers are treated to networking events, from chef’s dinners to film screenings and rousing panel discussions. Local philanthropy is also a major focus here. In addition to donating a percentage of membership fees to three charities, the team at Tesserae is committed to volunteer work.

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I M PA C T

Next-Gen Giving Here are three ways hyper-connectivity has helped redefine what it means to give.

BY EVA CROUSE

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illennials and Gen Z might seem as though they belong to the most self-obsessed generation in history, but in reality, they are poised to earn a different reputation altogether—the most philanthropic. Like their parents, the youth of today have a strong sense of morality, they simply act on it in a different way. The term “next-gen giving” represents a cultural shift toward a more involved form of philanthropy, one that extends beyond charitable donation and demands greater awareness and accountability for everyday actions.

CONNECTION IS CRUCIAL As technological natives who grew up with a handheld connection to millions of people, millennials and Gen Z have been exposed to an exponentially larger community than their predecessors. This increased exposure has resulted in a fortified sense of moral justice and responsibility, not just within their own physical communities, but on a national and even global scale. Organizations know that social media is where they will reach millions of next-gen philanthropists, and they cater to them on these platforms. Likewise, content creators promote impactful charities and organizations, asking their viewers to get involved in a variety of ways—that could be by signing a digital petition, making a small donation or sharing a post, among many other things. Additionally, social

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justice movements take social media by storm, sharing ways to help with millions of users.

A prime example of this is the GoFundMe account shared in the wake of George Floyd’s murder to help support his family’s legal and travel fees—in just 24 hours, 50,000 people had raised $1.8 million to support the fund, and just two weeks later, that number had grown to $13.7 million. Because of the connectivity, resources and exposure provided to the next generation of philanthropists from an early age, they have the ability to make an impact now, regardless of their net worth or income; and as most philanthropists would agree, once your eyes are opened to the impact you can have, stopping doesn’t feel like an option.

LOUD, CONSCIOUS CONSUMERS Beyond raising awareness and money online, the next generation of philanthropists is aware of their economic influence. As a generation of conscious consumers, they take an interest in where their products come from, how they are made and what impact they have on the environment. Connectivity plays an important role here as well, as lists of Black and women-owned businesses are circulated at large. Aligning purchasing habits with their strong sense of moral values is a natural step for next-gen philanthropists— however, the battle between cheap, one-click purchasing and their sense of duty to the environment is one to watch as the two things most dear to them—convenience and impact— come to a head.

AN ARMY OF ACTIVISTS Lastly, next-gen philanthropists have lived through many events that have contributed to a generational sense of urgency and need for activism. From the 2008 economic crash, global climate change, the Black Lives Matter movement and #MeToo to COVID-19, the insurrection and global political unrest, change—and calls for change—have become the norm. While Gen Z has been criticized for their perceived inclination to talk about issues without fully understanding the steps required to generate real change, it cannot be denied that they have established themselves as a generation that will not stand for injustice—and they don’t do anything quietly. An example of this is the protest that took place outside the COP26 summit in November. There, tens of thousands of activists took to the streets of Glasgow to call for leaders to do more and push for “system change, not climate change.” While the next generation is by no means the first to call for change, technology has given them both the tools to connect and organize themselves into cohesive groups, and a very effective megaphone.

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TECH

Femtech Faves

BY EVA CROUSE

Femtech—a term coined by Ida Tin, cofounder and CEO of the period-tracking app Clue—refers to the movement to create products, services and software designed to support women’s health. Things like women’s cycles, libido, menopause and reproductive journey are all natural aspects of women’s health that are traditionally viewed as taboo topics. This can lead to a sense of isolation among many women who may not know whether something they are experiencing is normal or not. That is where femtech comes in. Connecting women to resources and each other, as well as providing science-backed insights and analytics, the femtech industry is providing women with the help needed to supplement traditional care.

AVA FERTILITY BASIC Ava is the first FDA-approved wearable fertility tracker. After wearing it overnight, the device syncs to your phone each morning via Bluetooth and provides you with daily updates on the timing of your five-day fertility window with 89 percent accuracy, according to Ava. This allows you to stay informed and increase your chance of pregnancy. Additionally, Ava may be covered by your insurance if you have fertility benefits through your employer, so be sure to check whether the purchase of this device is included in your health plan.

ELVIE PUMP This wearable breast pump allows mothers to discreetly pump anywhere, anytime. Marketed as a silent, wearable, electric hands-free pump that fits in your bra, Elvie is empowering women to be able to maintain their pumping routine while carrying on with their own busy schedule. The Elvie Pump comes with many different features including two modes and 14 different intensity levels; syncing the pump(s) to an app on your phone, you can even save your preferences for an easier experience. Additionally, through the “insights” feature on the app, you can track your pumping and quickly learn what works best for you. With the choice to purchase a single or double pump, the ability to recharge in just two hours via micro-USB and all the features Elvie has to offer, this pump is empowering women to take charge of their breastfeeding journey in new and innovative ways.

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CLUE

AVA F E R T I L I T Y B A S I C : P H OTO C O U R T E S Y O F AVA ; E LV I E P U M P : P H OTO S C O U R T E S Y O F E LV I E ; C L U E : P H OTO C O U R T E S Y O F C L U E ; W O M A N I Z E R C L A S S I C 2 : P H OTO C O U R T E S Y O F W O M A N I Z E R ; K N I X P E R I O D U N D E R W E A R : P H OTO C O U R T E S Y O F K N I X

Clue is a free period tracking app that, in addition to tracking your cycle, allows you to input all of your symptoms, such as headache, cramps, mood, energy level, cravings, breakouts, ability to focus, motivation and more. The more information you log in the app, the more accurately it can predict your next cycle and all the delightful side effects that go along with it. Clue also has an option for a premium subscription called Clue Plus; with Clue Plus, you can enjoy benefits such as a monthly cycle review, the ability to plan six months ahead with more period predictions, access to curated articles and resources, as well as Clue birth control (coming in 2022).

CARIA: MENOPAUSE & MIDLIFE

KNIX PERIOD UNDERWEAR

Providing functions like expert support, community, symptom tracking and analytics, Caria is the premier menopause app. Believing that menopause, as a natural and significant part of every woman’s life, should be supported rather than disregarded, Caria is working to educate and assist those going through this experience. Developed with leading women’s health experts, Caria provides its customers with many avenues of support, such as self-guided programs designed to target your symptoms, a forum through which you can ask a community of people going through the same thing all of your burning questions and so much more. The app is available for free, providing you with basic options, or there is a premium option available for $9.99 a month.

Period underwear. Genius or kind of gross? This alternative to the classic pad, tampon or menstrual cup dilemma is changing the period game by providing people who get their period with a sustainable, low-maintenance way to manage their cycle. Knix period underwear is washable, can absorb the equivalent of 10 regular tampons and is made of super-soft, comfortable modal cotton fabric. With tons of styles and sizes to choose from, Knix offers an option for everyone.

WOMANIZER CLASSIC 2 Stigmas and stereotypes around sex toys are becoming a thing of the past, and it’s about time.

Understanding this, discretion may still be desired, and vibrator companies everywhere have got you covered. Offering everything from discrete packaging to practically silent devices, successful sex toy companies have their customers’ comfort in mind at every level of their product design. Womanizer is a leader in this arena with a perfect example being their new and improved Womanizer Classic 2.

With groundbreaking PleasureAir technology, the Classic 2 is the ultimate tool for logging some quality “me time.” This ultra-silent clitoral stimulator offers the perfect way to unwind in private and was designed as an improvement on the original Classic through the feedback of the expansive Womanizer MasterbaTEAM (which you can become a part of). One of the many ways the Classic 2 is an improvement on the original is the added Afterglow function, which delivers a “soft-ending” after an intense orgasm.

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DEI

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Making DEI a Business Imperative Creating (and measuring) meaningful and sustainable progress in diversity, equity and inclusion is easier than you think.

BY TARA JAYE FRANK

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DEI

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or decades, businesses have aspired to create more diverse workforces, more equitable outcomes for employees and a more inclusive workplace culture. We’ve hired consultants, read books, conducted surveys and studied best practices. We’ve invited underrepresented employees to form groups and councils so we might benefit from their insights and ideas. There has been no shortage of efforts and still we’ve failed to realize meaningful and sustainable progress. What’s more, some leaders have yet to formulate a clear and actionable point of view on what sustainable progress looks like. And, as Marian Wright Edelman once said, “You can’t be what you can’t see.”

What should we consider “meaningful progress” on DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), anyway? When asked for a definition, Denise Hamilton, founder and CEO of WatchHerWork, admits that while we are unlikely to eliminate discrimination in our lifetime, progress on DEI would include removing the institutional reinforcement of it.

“Meaningful progress will take, in part, changing policies, removing toxic bad actors—even if they are superstars in the organization—and applying intentional remediation of past harms.”

While that sounds good, we can all name companies that have implemented at least some of those ideas without much to show for it. Why is that? We’ve long blamed our stagnation on too little time and too few resources, and that was before a pandemic challenged everything we know about business and work. If we didn’t have the time and resources before, how can we prioritize DEI now, while we’re rethinking value propositions, reinventing supply chains and shifting to remote or hybrid work?

COVID-19 has created more complexity and added more stress to companies and employees alike. It’s admittedly hard to cultivate corporate culture remotely. Add the wear and tear from two years of nonstop change, and employees are less tolerant of workplace turmoil they may have been battling for years.

For Black and brown people, that turmoil includes microaggressions, trauma, isolation and masking, or altering themselves to fit in. It’s a lot.

Daisy Auger-Domínguez, chief people officer at Vice Media, states it plainly: “Black and brown people have had enough. They want real change. And they’re keeping score.”

If underrepresented talent is keeping score, U.S.-based corporations are losing. Though women enter the workforce at 47 percent,

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their careers progress, and there has been little change since the first Women in the Workplace report in 2015.

If you’ve been paying attention, you know that diversity and inclusion leads to better business results, because the world’s leading consultancies have been presenting the business case for years. In 2018, Boston Consulting Group found that companies with above average total diversity had 19 percent higher innovation revenues than companies that did not—and that diverse management boosted revenue by the same margin. In 2017, Cloverpop analyzed 600 business decisions made by 200 teams across a range of companies and found that business decisions made by diverse teams outperformed those made by individual leaders 87 percent of the time. In 2018, a McKinsey study revealed that 43 percent of companies with diverse boards saw significantly higher profits.

they comprise just 24 percent of C-suite roles, with women of color accounting for only 4 percent of top jobs, according to the latest Women in the Workplace report. from McKinsey and LeanIn.Org, In fact, every talent segment, other than white men, experiences a decrease in opportunity as

Percent of Time a Better Decision Is Made Wondering why diversity is key? Diverse teams make better decisions 87 percent of the time.

% of time a better decision is made Team average 66%

Type of team:

All Male

Gender Diversity

Age + Gender Diversity

Age + Gender + Geographic Diversity

58%

73%

80%

87%

These statistics are just the tip of the DEI-in-business iceberg.

Data, combined with the popular notion that “DEI is the right thing to do,” has inspired countless leaders to claim DEI as a business imperative. It’s an admirable declaration, but the evidence does not support the claim.

So, what’s happening? Why would an effort defined as a “business imperative” fail to produce results after years of trying?

In many cases, the DEI path many leaders have been traveling has been destined to fail.

This isn’t just pessimism. It’s simply acknowledging what any good leader already knows: True business imperatives do not rely on natural progression, town hall conversations or hopeful intentions. As we’ve all heard before, hope is not a strategy. And since COVID-19 has eliminated office pop-ups and social gatherings—where we once shared ideas without the pressure of an “impending Zoom”—it’s even harder to galvanize people to do something new.

WatchHerWork’s Denise Hamilton thinks COVID-19 may have done DEI a service: “I think any crisis reveals fault lines of frailty in systems. COVID-19 did that for culture work. Consequently, disparities have been more clearly revealed, which has given us an opportunity to address them.”

The first step is indeed to acknowledge that which we have failed to acknowledge—our companies are not diverse, equitable and inclusive. Not yet, anyway.

Being honest about your starting point is a crucial part of getting anywhere. But our push toward a more diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace will continue to meet resistance until we stop saying DEI is a business imperative and start treating it like one.

This is not rocket science, and yet, our discomfort with attaching goals and measurements to

Representation by Role, Gender & Race At every step up the corporate ladder, women of color lose ground to everyone else.

White women

Women of color

Men of color

White men

100%

80

30%

28

27

9 12 60

17%

24

7

22

5 12

20

4 13

13 15

17 17% 40

50 20

0

56

61

62

42 35%

Entry level

Manager

Senior manager/ director

Being honest about your starting point is a crucial part of getting anywhere.

DEI efforts has rendered countless leaders dazed and confused.

“The DEI problem we’re trying to solve is, at its core, about addressing racial and gender dynamics, harm in the workplace and power imbalances. Organizations need clear policies, equitable and fair processes and accountability measures,” says Vice Media’s Daisy Auger-Domínguez.

We are goal-setters and goal-getters in any other context, yet this one trips us up. But if there was revenue or a profit-based business priority tied to your organizational health, how would you guarantee

Vice president

Senior vice president

C-suite

success? You would set clear goals, ensure accountable leadership, create thoughtful plans and define measurable criteria. If it sounds simple, that’s because it is.

We make it hard.

CLEAR GOALS Business leaders do not expect to achieve business performance without goals, but when it comes to DEI, many get stuck in the goal-setting process. Even those willing to take this step are not sure what their benchmark should be, how to define an end state or which elements of their DEI work can and should be measured. The short answer is, anything you aim to achieve can be measured, whether in numbers, participation, sentiment or outcomes.

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DEI HERE ARE A FEW WAYS TO THINK ABOUT GOAL-SETTING: • Establish an increase in representation of specific talent groups by a percentage, or in line with your consumer demographics, or to mirror population data.

• Declare pay and opportunity parity—across talent segments— as must-haves.

• Define the workplace culture you want to cultivate—in employee experiences and leadership behaviors—so that everyone recognizes what they should be moving toward.

Clear goals are as important to sustainable DEI progress as they are to any business priority. You cannot reach your destination if you don’t know where you’re going and what you aim to accomplish.

ACCOUNTABLE LEADERSHIP Can you imagine kicking off an enterprise-wide business initiative with a team of one or two? It’s hard to digest, but this is exactly how many companies have been treating DEI—expecting one person or a small team to help reconstitute their workforce and redefine their culture without the resources that lasting change requires: money, people, information and influence.

What’s more, we often forget to engage the middle.

“Managers play an important role in revolutionizing workplaces,” says Auger-Domínguez. “Most organizations operate from a top-down (the C-Suite) or bottom-up (junior talent) to launching wide-scale initiatives. I believe it’s the everyday actions of the often-overlooked mid-level manager that produce the most transformational organizational change.”

If we want to make real progress, the responsibility for DEI must belong to every leader and it must be resourced appropriately. A few

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ways we can share responsibility for DEI include accountability metrics and rewards, quarterly monitoring and multi-directional feedback.

SHARE RESPONSIBILITY FOR DEI: • Accountability metrics should follow goals and each leader should be held accountable to them. Rewards work, but corrective action is sometimes appropriate too.

• Reporting results to the CEO or to the board quarterly creates urgency and ensures sustained attention. Without monitoring, DEI progress takes a backseat to revenue, profit and customer priorities, often seen as the “real” business imperatives.

• Multi-directional feedback is a critical component of workplace culture evolution. There are toxic (or simply ineffective) leaders in every workplace. When we don’t gather feedback on every employee regularly, bad actors can inflict harm unchecked. And as is true in any systemic construct, toxicity always harms marginalized people the most.

THOUGHTFUL PLANS Most DEI strategies include action plans, but thoughtful plans are relevant to your company’s purpose, your proven (not assumed) employee experience and your business goals.

• Purpose: The value you provide externally in products and services should be available to your own employees too. If your company purpose is tied to social justice, for example, your internal policies and plans should be as just.

• Experience: Let your employee experience help you prioritize. If equal access to opportunity is a problem in the eyes of your talent, prioritize solutions to that problem.

• Business Goals: Your DEI plans should support your long-term business goals. If you aim to increase market share, your plans should connect marketplace trends and your workforce’s ability to meet emerging needs.

Do not build plans based on best practices. Clients always want to know what other firms are doing so they can do the same. This is understandable, but a shortcut that may turn out to be not so short. If your action plans are thoughtfully connected to your current reality, they are more likely to succeed.

MEASURABLE SUCCESS CRITERIA We can and should measure all three dimensions of DEI if we want to make sustainable progress. Diversity can be a proxy for representation but shouldn’t stop at counting heads. Equity can be measured in equal pay and opportunity but is also connected to appreciation as a recognition tool. And inclusion is about much more than making sure people can “bring their authentic self to work.” No matter how you choose to measure, remember the important part is to engage in, establish goals for and measure all aspects of DEI simultaneously.

Once we’ve established guiding principles for the work, such as why we’re doing it, how we define diversity and whom to engage and hold accountable, we can build on that foundation with actionable signs of progress.

MEASURING DIVERSITY: Measure representation against goals across intersections of race, gender, generation, tenure, leadership level and more, so you can glean a detailed picture of where your gaps are. Also measure progress on key steps along your talent journey, like how successfully you diversify your candidate slates or retention of diverse talent past the first three years.

MEASURING EQUITY: Equity is defined as equal access to opportunity, which translates to feeling valued and treated fairly.

People are most likely to stay at companies that treat them equitably. Since feeling valued is part pay, part opportunity and part appreciation for hard work, you can measure equity a few ways: Set pay equity goals and audit, measure opportunity by tracking promotion rates across talent segments and use surveys to track sentiment.

MEASURING INCLUSION: The fruit of a truly inclusive workplace culture is innovation, and the precursor to inclusion is psychological safety. Employees who feel psychologically safe are more likely to share ideas and raise concerns.

According to Catalyst’s 2019 study, people who feel different based on race or gender are less likely to be creative at work. A company where some cannot contribute fully and

freely will not only fail to achieve business results but will also struggle to retain top talent.

The biggest diversity, equity and inclusion mistake we make in our pursuit of progress is sequencing work that should be integrated. We focus on recruiting new employees without placing equal emphasis on keeping them.

We invest in equitable outcomes for communities without ensuring the same for our own employees.

And we portray our companies as caring and inclusive while our employees suffer in silence. The dissonance is deeply felt inside our own walls, and it is high time we treat DEI work as work—not as a box-checking exercise. It is the front on which we will continue to fight the talent war. So suit up, survey the land and make a game plan you can commit to because, with 87 percent of Gen Z stating that DEI are very important in the workplace, your future depends on it.

When it comes to DEI, many business leaders get stuck in the goal-setting process. Even those willing to take this step aren’t sure what their benchmark should be or which elements of their DEI work can and should be measured.

The short answer is—anything you aim to achieve can be measured.

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GROUNDBREAKING

WOMEN The pandemic has forced every aspect of our society to undergo significant change over the past two years. Throughout this transformation, women have risen above the chaos to achieve new highs, seize opportunities and use their voices to uplift other women as well. Here is a list of 50 women who have achieved the extraordinary over the last year, demonstrating that living through multiple historical events presents an opportunity to rewrite a more equitable future.

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G ROU N DB RE AKING WOM E N

Guided by an unrelenting pursuit of happiness and mental well-being, singersongwriter Jewel recently discussed her journey and the steps people can take to find their own happiness in an exclusive interview with Worth.

BY JOSH KAMPEL

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P H OTO B Y D A N A T R I P P E

Sound Mind

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ur lives have an unofficial soundtrack comprised of the songs that have played a role in our personal journeys. Simply hearing a song has the unique power to trigger memories, good and bad, and transport us back to our past. The right combination of lyrics and melody has an amazing ability to make a huge impact on our lives.

Looking back at my personal soundtrack, I remember when I first heard Jewel’s “Who Will Save Your Soul.” MTV still played music videos and the 100-disc changer in my dorm room was loaded with everything from Pearl Jam’s Ten to Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle. It was a time when Jewel, Alanis Morissette and other female singer-songwriters were composing introspective anthems that would resonate with current and future generations.

However, musicians are not only storytellers; they also have a powerful platform to advocate for and influence personal and societal change. It may be through their music itself, like in Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power,” or leveraging their success to take a stand on societal challenges, such as in the case of Jewel’s work with mental health.

Jewel was a homeless teenager who grew up with an abusive, alcoholic father; she went from living in her van to becoming a multi-platinum pop icon. As an extremely self-aware 18-year-old, she debated taking the right record deal so that it would allow her to put her mental health first. She knew that success, along with the associated pressure, could have a negative impact on her well-being.

She is now taking the practices that she used to stay grounded to teach children and adults how to cope with their own mental health challenges. Her Never Broken foundation brings mindfulness and emotional intelligence tools to the masses for free.

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Jewel has also taken much of what she learned in her career and the music business to help organizations support their employees. While she knew that capitalizing on the momentum of her meteoric rise would be the right thing to do for her business, she opted to take periodic breaks to recharge. Counterintuitive to what we see in most business cases, this approach allowed her to refresh, revive and not burn out. Recognizing that supporting the mental health of employees is not only the responsible thing to do, but that there is also a direct cost to organizations for not doing so, Jewel recently teamed up with SaksWorks to launch a new in-person work culture curriculum called the Whole Human. The program is designed to help people in all areas of their lives, by infusing the most impactful tools and practices of psychology into work environments that intuitively help people find ways to feel better and be better.

Last year, she also became an advisor to One Mind, a leading brain health nonprofit committed to healing the lives of people impacted by brain illness and injury through global, collaborative action. One Mind accelerates collaborative research and advocacy to enable all individuals facing brain health challenges to build healthy, productive lives.

Two decades and 30+ million records later, Jewel is on a mission to raise awareness and provide the tools to manage the mental health issues plaguing society.

In the past, you have said that you have been very intentional about putting your mental well-being over your music career. How has this choice impacted you?

I got discovered as a homeless kid when I was 18. I almost didn’t sign the record deal because I was worried about my mental health and my ability to handle such a high-pressure job. I came from an abusive background, moved out on my own at 15 and had suffered from panic attacks and agoraphobia. So, I made a promise to myself that my number one job would be to make [myself ] a happy whole human. And that music would be my number two job. That meant I had to have a plan for my happiness the same way I’d have one for my career. It impacted the types of decisions I made—always putting my health first. I took two years off at the height of my career so I could adjust psychologically. No one did anything like that, and it definitely made my label nervous.

But I needed that time to adjust, and it caused me to change how I went about my career. Turns out, I didn’t like being as famous as I got, and so I learned to take breaks between each album to kill my momentum—again unheard of! But it made the whole thing more tolerable to me. I am proud that I have kept that promise to myself, and that at 47, I am truly happy.

Gen Z is working to normalize conversations around mental health.

Do you think that the way they are doing this, through social media and the internet, is a productive way to open up this conversation?

I love any way of normalizing the mental health conversation.

I love that Gen Z is not willing to sacrifice their emotional health.

That’s powerful.

As a powerful mental health advocate, do you feel that the stigma surrounding this conversation has begun to abate?

I think the stigma is starting to subside, especially in younger generations. Sadly, I feel there is a gap between awareness and usable mental health tools that can be scaled and delivered to consumers.

We learn dental hygiene, but no mental health hygiene. We are aware anxiety and depression are at all-time highs, but other than talking to a therapist, there are very few tools out there to teach people even the basics, like how to curate their thoughts, or even that not every thought and feeling is a fact, and you can choose which ones you participate in, or how to help people overcome distraction addiction to help them learn to be more present. And then, what to do with that presence isn’t even talked about! Being present won’t change your life; it will, however, put you in a position to change it—sort of like getting a car off of autopilot and putting it in neutral.

Once you get in neutral, you have to be taught to drive, ya know?

Success has to include happiness.

Happiness is the side effect of choices. Choices are the side effect of neural programming in many cases. It’s looking at the urges that prompt our decision making that can help people really change their lives” -Jewel

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How do you think “success” or “well-being” is currently defined by our society, and what needs to change?

Success has to include happiness.

Happiness is the side effect of choices. Choices are the side effect of neural programming in many cases. So, it’s looking at the urges that prompt our decision making that can help people really change their lives—to make better choices that lead to happiness as a side effect. My concern about the modern wellness movement is that it has the potential to make us more precious and intolerant. Our self-growth practices should make us more resilient, gritty, tolerant and capable of handling adversity.

Peace is not the absence of what bothers us, it’s learning to come into harmony with what is. So, it’s not trying to avoid all the things that stress us; it’s learning tools to handle stress better.

You recently partnered with One Mind and joined their advisory board, what are you working on with them?

We are really focused on gathering data and creating data-driven solutions to mental health problems—as well as advocacy and education.

What does the Whole Human curriculum you are launching entail?

My goal with Whole Human is to help companies invest in their human capital by bringing mental health curriculum into the workplace. Employers are realizing that by solving pain points that their employees may be experiencing outside of work, they will be able to show up to work with more bandwidth, better engagement and loyalty. Our curriculum is designed to help educate people on how to deal with solving for anxiety, create WORTH.COM

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parenting fitness, relationship fitness and other emotional fitness aspects that sadly have been lost in our human training over the decades. Companies lose trillions of dollars a year to mental health leave, and they are motivated by not only that but by also seeing that we all have a duty to help one another thrive.

The COVID-19 pandemic has generated a drastic decline in mental health as people have been forced to quarantine, lost loved ones and, generally speaking, been exposed to significant amounts of stress. Do you think that the pandemic has raised awareness about mental health, and if so, what are some of the take-aways that might be helpful?

Since day one of the pandemic, I was worried that loss of life from mental health issues could possibly outnumber loss of life from the actual virus. I definitely think that it has placed a sharp focus on a pandemic of depression and suicidal ideation, as we have seen those numbers skyrocket to unprecedented rates. I hope this is the wake-up call for many to put their happiness first in their lives. And to find ways to reduce anxiety drivers.

What are some of the most helpful practices that you have been working to share with others who might not have access to traditional mental health resources?

The best resource I can offer is my free mental health website jewelneverbroken. com—it has exercises I developed over the last 25 years and use every day with our kids in our mental health foundation for at-risk youth.

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Your life will rise to the level you accept.

Don’t settle! Be brave in making those heart-led decisions.”

- Jewel

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What does “worth beyond wealth” mean to you?

When we can see our value is intrinsic, and not dependent on performance, we sink into a whole new level of relaxation. It’s very hard for us to understand that we are worthy of kindness, rest, love, passion—all of it! Just because we are alive. A lot of times we feel we have to have a hit, make money, be perfect, be skinny, be clever…etc., just to deserve feeling good about ourselves. It’s not true! It’s been my life’s work to understand this intrinsic sense of value—it’s a worthy cause!

If anyone wants to know more about my life and what I have overcome and learned, I’d def recommend my autobiography—I wrote it in hopes that it would be helpful in encouraging people to keep going and fight for their happiness.

Opening up the “mic” to you, is there anything else you would like to share with the Worth audience?

I guess the only thing I would add is that your life will rise to the level you accept. Don’t settle!

We have this short, glorious trip around the sun, so listen to your heart and take the things it tells you seriously. Be brave in making those heart-led decisions—you’re worth it!

Jewel is the first in a series of Worthy Artists, who we will sit down with to learn how they’re using their success to have a positive impact on society.

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Magdalena Andersson

Marin Alsop

PRIME MINISTER, SWEDEN

CONDUCTOR Marin Alsop is one of the world’s most distinguished orchestra conductors, not a career with significant female representation. In 2021, she released a documentary, The Conductor, that depicts her life’s journey over three orchestras: Baltimore, São Paulo and Vienna. Although she does not overemphasize institutional discrimination, she takes her own representative role seriously.

In Scandinavia and northern Europe, female heads of government have become almost commonplace, so it’s somewhat surprising that Sweden did not elect one until 2021. Magdalena Andersson has been affiliated with Sweden’s Social Democrat party since her teenage years, and her economic training and political savvy made her a natural steward of the nation’s finances, before taking the top position in November 2021. She firmly believes that economic growth and carbon-emission reduction can go hand-in-hand.

Josephine Baker (In Memoriam) ENTERTAINER & CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST

If you’re a leader, you’re under a magnifying glass. If you don’t own who you are, you are not pushing others’ perception of what a conductor looks like.”

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Iris Apfel FASHION ICON Iris Apfel, an American businesswoman, interior designer and perhaps one of the world’s oldest living fashion icons, turned 100 years old in 2021. She has an eccentric style known for layering colors with patterns, which helped her earn recognition in the design world. As a groundbreaking woman, she continues to make her mark as a fashion idol. She received the Andrée Putman Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021, and on top of that incredible achievement, Apfel is launching a collaboration with H&M that will be available this spring.

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When you think of Josephine Baker, images of a glamorous dancer in a banana skirt from 1920s and ‘30s Paris come to mind. Baker was one of the most lucrative performers in Europe, but what made her an icon was not just her popularity as a performer, but also her fight against discrimination and oppression. During World War II, Baker aided the French Resistance, earning her two of the highest military honors in France. In the ‘50s, she supported the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. And in 1963, she flew to Washington, D.C. from France to speak at the March on Washington—she was the only woman to speak at the rally.

Baker’s impact has transcended time, earning her a spot in the French Panthéon in 2021. Being inducted into the Panthéon is one of the highest honors one can receive in France, housing icons such as Marie Curie, Voltaire and Victor Hugo. Baker’s induction makes her the first Black woman to receive this honor.

Mary Barra CHAIR AND CEO, GM Breaking barriers is nothing new to Mary Barra. In 2014, she became the first woman to lead a major auto maker after being named CEO and chair of General Motors, and last year, she made history again as the first-ever female chair of the Business Roundtable, a nonprofit association comprised of the country’s top CEOs. The Business Roundtable—which spent $29.1 million lobbying for policies to spur job creation, improve U.S. competitiveness and strengthen the economy in 2021—notably redefined the purpose of a corporation in 2019, with 181 CEOs signing a commitment to lead their companies for the benefit of all stakeholders—not just shareholders. And while Barra has taken the helm of one of the nation’s most powerful trade groups, she hasn’t stopped driving progress at GM. Already one of the top three companies in the world for gender equality, Barra is steering GM toward tackling another global problem: climate change. GM recently announced that it’s committing upwards of $7 billion to electric car and battery production, with plans to deliver around 400,000 electric vehicles in the U.S. between now and 2023.

Bela Bajaria VP, GLOBAL TV, NETFLIX In March 2021, Netflix announced that over the course of the next five years, the streamer will be funneling $100 million into the creative equity pipeline to support and amplify traditionally underrepresented voices in the film industry. Bela Bajaria, head of global TV at Netflix, is at the heart of this initiative and announced that the first $5 million of the streaming platform’s fund will go toward uplifting women in the entertainment industry worldwide. As a daughter of immigrant parents and a global citizen, Bajaria is among those who are traditionally underrepresented in the entertainment industry and is working to diversify the original content produced by Netflix for its 200 million subscribers in over 190 countries. As head of global TV, Bajaria facilitates the export of shows written and created all over the world, in many different languages, and finds audiences for those programs.

Investing in women is investing in the future of storytelling. Not only are women the force behind some of our biggest shows, like The Witcher and Sex Education, but we’re also working hard to nurture the next generation,” says Bela Bajaria, head of global TV at Netflix.

“One of the most exciting things for me in this last year was seeing the reception to AlRawabi School for Girls, a show from Jordan with two young Arab women creating and writing a story for and about Arab women.”

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12.3 million The number of women-owned businesses in the U.S.—an increase of nearly 58 percent from 2007, when only 7.8 million firms were owned by women.

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Nathalie Becquart NUN Since Pope Francis took over as the head of the Catholic Church in 2013, he’s made a name for himself as a progressive papal reformer, despite drawing criticism from theological conservatives. And while you’d be hard-pressed to call the pope “liberal”—for example, he remains vehemently opposed to abortion and has strongly criticized gender theory—he has taken steps in recent years to expand women’s roles within the Catholic Church. The most significant move he’s made recently: the February 2021 appointment of Sister Nathalie Becquart as an undersecretary to the general secretariat of the Synod of Bishops, the first woman ever to hold this position. And not only that, Becquart’s new position gives her the right to vote during the summit of bishops—another first, as the privilege has traditionally been reserved for only men.

The most important thing is to have women from the beginning involved in the process, bringing their views, taking part in the discernment, writing the text,” she told Religion News Service in an Oct. 2021 interview.

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Becquart, a member of the Xavière Sisters in France, has played an important role in France’s youth ministry over the years, leading to her involvement in the planning of 2018’s Synod of Bishops on “Young People, Faith, and Vocational Discernment,” both in France and Rome. Prior to receiving the undersecretary role, she and four other women became the first female consultors to the general secretariat of the Synod of Bishops in 2019.

Very few women have as much say as Becquart on shaping the future of the church. The next Synod of Bishops will take place October 2022 with the theme: “For a synodal Church: communion, participation and mission.”

Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka ATHLETES In 2021, we saw a real reckoning in sports because of two women: gymnast Simone Biles and tennis player Naomi Osaka. Individually, each athlete is groundbreaking in her own right. Biles is the most decorated gymnast in the world, has four skills named in her honor and was named TIME’s 2021 Athlete of the Year. Osaka has four Grand Slam singles titles to her name, is the first Asian player to reach a ranking of number one in the world for tennis and ESPN has called her “one of the most accomplished tennis players of the Open Era.” And while both Biles and Osaka are incredibly accomplished, they are on our list this year not because of their accolades, but because they did something wholly unusual in sports: They stood up for their own mental health. Last May, Osaka withdrew from the French Open to focus on her mental health. Just a couple months later at the Tokyo Olympics, Biles withdrew to take care of her mental health after experiencing a phenomenon called “the twisties” in which a gymnast gets disoriented mid-air—a condition that can lead to devastating consequences.

Biles’ and Osaka’s decisions might not have been popular at the time, but they have led to greater discussions about the importance of athletes defending and caring for their own mental health.

86

The number of women promoted to manager for every 100 men promoted to the same level.

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Christine Brown CRYPTO COO & VP OF PRODUCT OPERATIONS, ROBINHOOD The male-dominant crypto industry gained a force to be reckoned with this year.

Robinhood appointed industry veteran Christine Brown, who joined the company as a product manager back when it had less than 100 employees, as its chief operating officer to oversee its crypto operations.

Brown will be one of the few women in the industry yielding immense influence on the crypto landscape by building new innovative products and leading the company through a pivotal growth strategy. She recently told Worth that in 2022, her main focus at Robinhood will be about “finding new ways for us to break down the emotional, educational and economic barriers that currently exist in crypto, so that we can ensure the future of our financial system is as inclusive as it is open.”

Since stepping into my role leading Robinhood crypto operations, I’ve been proud to support our teams in launching amazing products and welcoming millions of new people to the blockchain ecosystem for the very first time. That being said, there’s still a lot of work for us to do.”

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Rosalind Brewer CEO, WALGREENS Walgreens has been at the epicenter of the COVID pandemic, and in 2021, it appointed Rosalind Brewer as its CEO, making her one of only two black female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. A Detroit native and Spelman College graduate, Brewer has done stints at Kimberly-Clark, Starbucks and Walmart. Her commitment to corporate diversity has ruffled feathers and even elicited death threats, but she remains committed to using her position to create social change.

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I see so many ills that still need energy and need a voice,” she told the Today Show.

“I hope that I can still be that person to make change happen. I really hope so.”

Kizzmekia S. Corbett

Kristen Clarke

IMMUNOLOGIST

ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR CIVIL RIGHTS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

Kizzmekia S. Corbett, a lead coronavirus scientist and American viral immunologist, has transformed the world since the pandemic first hit. This has been particularly evident in her efforts to develop the Moderna vaccine. In 2021, Corbett was the recipient of the North Carolina Award, the state’s highest honor, for the coronavirus research she completed. She was also brought on to be an assistant professor at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health in 2021 in order to continue her work on vaccine development. On top of her remarkable professional accomplishments, as a Black female scientist, she invests much of her time into being an advocate for STEM education and serving underprivileged communities.

Kristen Clarke was selected by President Joe Biden to head the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and was confirmed by the Senate in May 2021, making her the first woman and the first Black woman to hold the position since the department’s founding in 1957.

The Harvard University and Columbia Law School graduate previously served as the president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, managed the Civil Rights Bureau of the New York State’s Attorney General’s Office and has held leadership roles at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund addressing voting rights and election law across the nation.

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Raquel Coronell Uribe STUDENT AND PRESIDENT, HARVARD CRIMSON After 148 years of publication, the Harvard Crimson, one of America’s oldest and most prestigious daily college newspapers, elected its first Latina president, Raquel Coronell Uribe, last year. The 23-year-old student, who was born in Colombia to journalist parents, took the reins this January and plans to make digital innovation and diversity priorities during her year-long tenure.

It’s an honor to be able to be in that role,” Coronell Uribe told CNN. “At the same time, I think it was overdue.

I’m sure there have been many qualified Latinx people who could have been president in the past. I’m hoping to open the door so that many others after me can walk through it.”

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As of last year, the Crimson’s demographics had reached near parity with those of the university in regard to representation of Black and Hispanic individuals; according to a 2021 staff diversity report, 10.4 percent of staffers identified as Black and 8.9 percent identified as Latinx, while Harvard’s total student body was comprised of 11.3 percent Black students and 8.9 percent of Hispanic origin. But the playing field hasn’t always been so level—a 2017 column called out the Crimson for marginalizing underrepresented voices—so, it’s up to leaders like Coronell Uribe to maintain momentum and keep progress moving forward. Student newspapers are a pipeline into the news media industry, which is currently facing its own workforce diversity crisis. According to a 2021 Reuters Institute analysis, the percentage of non-white top editors in the U.S. is only 18 percent, below half of the percentage of people of color in the general population (40 percent); America’s percentage of nonwhite journalists sits at an abysmal 9 percent. That’s just one of the many reasons Coronell Uribe’s appointment is so significant—not only is she making a difference on Harvard’s campus, but she’s also setting an example for the entire news industry. And media leaders would be wise to follow.

Nia DaCosta DIRECTOR Nia DaCosta rose to fame when she directed the 2021 horror movie Candyman, a new take on the 1992 film. Her version of Candyman was a box office smash, bringing in over $22 million during its first weekend.

Even more spectacular than that? This made the New York City native the first Black woman director to premiere at number one at the box office.

And DaCosta is only continuing to make the history books. She was also tapped to direct 2023’s The Marvels, making her the first Black woman and, at 32, the youngest person to direct a Marvel movie. A relative newcomer to the industry, DaCosta is one to watch.

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Marian Croak and Dr. Patricia Bath ENGINEER AND OPHTHALMOLOGIST After nearly five decades, the National Inventors Hall of Fame (NIHF) announced last September that it will finally induct two black women into the nonprofit organization’s ranks. Engineer Marian Croak and the late ophthalmologist Dr. Patricia Bath, along with 25 other honorees, will be celebrated and inducted into the NIHF this May. Tech pioneer Croak, who currently works as a vice president at Google leading the Research Center for Responsible AI and Human Centered Technology, is being honored for her work on Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)— technology that has become essential for remote work and video conferencing. In addition to having more than 200 patents to her name, Croak also created the “text-todonate” system for charitable donations, which raised $130,000 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and $43 million in the wake of Haiti’s devastating 2010 earthquake.

As the first Black female physician to receive a medical patent, Bath, who passed away from cancerrelated complications in 2019, was used to making history throughout her lifetime with a long list of “firsts” accompanying her name. She will join the Hall of Fame’s upcoming class of ‘22 for her creation of the Laserphaco Probe, an improved device and technique to remove cataracts with lasers. The minimally invasive surgical procedure was groundbreaking because it performs all steps of cataract removal—from making the incision and destroying the lens to vacuuming out fractured pieces. In addition, Bath was one of the first people to document the fact that Black patients had double the rate of glaucoma, leading her to cofound the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness, as well as the Ophthalmic Assistant Training Program at UCLA.

Thasunda Brown Duckett PRESIDENT AND CEO, TIAA Last May, Thasunda Brown Duckett became CEO of the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America (TIAA), making her the second Black woman currently leading a Fortune 500 company and only the fourth Black woman in history to serve as a Fortune 500 CEO. “It does not escape me that I am standing on the shoulders of giants, including the cooks and janitors and others who look like me and were first to enter corporate America,” Duckett told ABC News. “They created the space for me to have this opportunity. My hope is that corporate America realizes that talent is created equally but opportunity is not, and we all acknowledge that there’s still more work to be done.”

Consistently recognized as a leading executive in finance and banking, Duckett was named to Fortune’s 2021 Most Powerful Women list, as well as Black Enterprise magazine’s Most Powerful Women in Corporate America list. Prior to joining TIAA, where she oversees more than $1 trillion of assets under management, Duckett spent nearly five years as the CEO of Chase Consumer Banking, leading a banking network with over $600 billion in deposits and undertaking Chase’s first major branch expansion in 10 years.

Under her leadership, the bank added 400 branches in 20 new markets over five years.

Throughout her career, Duckett has underscored the need to educate, help and inspire underserved communities through financial literacy, hiring diversity and simply giving back to her community. In 2013, she established the Otis and Rosie Brown Foundation to meet the needs of vulnerable children and families in North Texas more effectively.

Amanda Gorman POET LAUREATE In January 2021, Amanda Gorman made history. At 22 years old, she became the youngest inaugural poet in the history of the United States and catapulted her career into the public eye, where she is sure to remain. Amidst one of the most pivotal moments in modern U.S. history, Gorman recited her original poem, “The Hill We Climb,” adeptly and succinctly vocalizing the division and frustration felt by the nation following the insurrection and uplifting her audience through her pervasive and forceful message of hope and unity. The response to her performance was universal and reverberating, causing Gorman (along with Bernie Sanders’ mittens) to go viral during the first week of Biden and Harris’ leadership. Since then, Gorman has recited her poetry at Super Bowl LV, done several commissioned recitations for CBS This Morning and generally has been in very high demand as she gains recognition and traction for her work with the written and spoken word.

Sinead Colton Grant GLOBAL HEAD OF INVESTOR SOLUTIONS, BNY MELLON The Irish-born Sinead Colton Grant has worked her way up through the ranks of the Bank of New York Mellon Corporation (commonly known as BNY Mellon), and in 2021, she was named global head of BNY Mellon Investor Solutions, which has over $29 billion in total assets under management and advisement as of March 31, 2021. Her specialties within the firm include responsible investing and digital assets. “The thing that’s fascinating to me about digital currency is that we really are seeing the advent of a new asset class,” she told the Hardcore Finance podcast.

70 %

The percentage of mothers with children under the age of 18 who participate in the workforce; plus, 75 percent of those moms work full-time.

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Deb Haaland U.S. SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR In March 2021, Deb Haaland was confirmed by the Senate as the 54th U.S. Secretary of the Interior, making her the first Native American to hold the position in the history of the United States. Haaland is a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe and grew up in New Mexico, just as 35 generations of her family have done before her.

From 2019 to 2021, she served as the U.S. representative for New Mexico’s first congressional district. As secretary of the interior, Haaland has launched the Missing and Murdered Unit for Indigenous people. This unit was created to analyze and solve missing people and murder cases involving American Indian and Alaska Native individuals, driving forward Haaland’s mission of increasing accountability and transparency through her new role as secretary of the interior.

Penny Heaton GLOBAL THERAPEUTIC AREA HEAD, VACCINES, JANSSEN PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES OF JOHNSON & JOHNSON COVID made 2021 a huge transition year for Penny Heaton; she went from being CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute to global therapeutic area head, vaccines at the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson.

Yet, the medically trained Heaton insists on a continuity of her mission: “I passionately believe in pushing science as far as possible to combat inequities in health, to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to lead a healthy and productive life, no matter where they live,” she states on her LinkedIn profile.

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Jasmine Harrison ROWER In February of 2021, Jasmine Harrison, at just 21 years old, became the youngest woman to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Beating out the previous record holder, an American named Katie Spotz, the British athlete completed the journey in 70 days, 3 hours and 48 minutes, rowing herself into the history books of endurance athletes and setting a new world record. The 3,000-mile journey is not for the faint of heart, and indeed, there have been less than 1,000 attempts made to row solo across an ocean in the last century. Within that incredibly small number of attempts, only 200 of them have been women and only 18 have successfully crossed the Atlantic. Harrison weathered many difficulties during her journey, including several capsizes, the loss of her speaker, phone and iPad and injuries to her head, elbow and lower back. Harrison had very little rowing experience when she embarked, previously working as a swim instructor and volunteering in disaster relief.

I hope that my achievement of completing the Atlantic Row helps to inspire people, both young and old, that almost anything is possible. You can be free to make your own decisions and create part of your own destiny.”

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Kathy Hochul NEW YORK GOVERNOR Kathy Hochul is no stranger to challenging the status quo. Ever since her activist college years, Hochul has been a trailblazer. Not only is she the first woman to lead the New York Governor’s Office, she is the first governor to come from outside of New York City since 1932.

Since taking office in August 2021, Hochul has not shied away from taking decisive actions, such as enforcing the vaccine mandate for health care workers, reaffirming abortion rights and fighting for families by instituting a $200 million additional food assistance package.

Last month, to fight climate change, she announced a watershed plan to ban natural gas hookups in new buildings which would make New York City the largest city in America to pass this groundbreaking legislation.

Whitney Wolfe Herd CEO, BUMBLE Whitney Wolfe Herd became the youngest woman ever to take a company public last year, when her female-focused dating app Bumble debuted on the Nasdaq exchange in February 2021. The stock unexpectedly surged upon its listing—shares initially valued at $43 jumped to $76 on its opening day, valuing the company at $13 billion and boosting Wolfe Herd’s net worth to approximately $1.5 billion thanks to her 21 percent stake in the company.

Despite struggling to hold on to its IPO momentum—Bumble stock tumbled 26 percent, and Wolfe Herd’s net worth fell by approximately $200 million following the company’s 2021 third quarter earnings report—Bumble isn’t backing away from the global online dating market, which is expected to grow at a 13 percent compound annual growth rate to reach nearly $10 billion by 2025.

In fact, even as spooked investors sent Bumble’s shares down to an all-time low, the company’s 2021 Q3 financials (the most recent available at the time of publication) were already improving—swinging from an $84 million net loss in 2020 to a $302 million net profit in 2021. And Wolfe Herd remains bullish about the online dating space; Bumble made its firstever acquisition in February 2022, buying the French dating app Fruitz.

Indigenous Women, Girls & Allies The conversation surrounding missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMIWG) had been getting louder over the course of 2021, but the Gabby Petito case in September brought it to a head. Gabby Petito went missing and was subsequently found dead in Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park. And while what happened to Petito was incredibly tragic, it also shone a light on “missing white woman syndrome” and began a national discussion on how women of color and MMIWG’s stories often don’t get the same coverage. With over four in five Indigenous women experiencing violence from a non-Indigenous attacker in their lifetime, this is a crisis that demands and deserves our immediate attention. In light of that, this space is dedicated to Indigenous women and girls and for those seeking justice for MMIWG, fighting against the crisis of violence.

Lydia Jett MANAGING PARTNER, SOFTBANK VISION FUND In recent years, Silicon Valley’s venture capital dominance has been challenged by deep-pocketed outsiders, especially SoftBank, an early investor in such titans as Alibaba and TikTok owner ByteDance. Yet, SoftBank as an organization displays little more diversity than the VC industry as a whole. In November 2021, Lydia Jett helped change that, becoming the first woman to become a managing partner at the SoftBank Vision Fund. A veteran of J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs, Jett says, “a passion project for me is empowering women in technology and investing.”

Kathrin Jansen SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND HEAD OF VACCINE RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT, PFIZER 2020 will likely be remembered as the year of COVID, meaning 2021 will go down as the year of COVID vaccines. At the time of writing, over 63 percent of the U.S. population has been fully vaccinated, according to data compiled by the Mayo Clinic from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And we have scientists like Kathrin Jansen to thank for that. Jansen came to Pfizer in 2009 after it acquired Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, the company she was previously with. Jansen is no stranger to creating effective vaccines, as she also was behind the Gardasil vaccine—the first to protect against HPV. Now, with COVID-19 vaccines for the general population off the ground, Jansen is reworking the Pfizer and BioNTech COVID vaccine for young kids to potentially include a third dose. Despite vaccination becoming a highly politicized topic in the wake of the pandemic, scientists like Jansen have made it possible for many to return to the office, go back to school and avoid taking up an extra bed in today’s overcrowded hospitals.

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Rashida Jones and Kim Godwin

Suni Lee

PRESIDENTS OF MAJOR NEWS NETWORKS

Grit, perseverance, determination and confidence led Suni Lee to win a gold medal as the individual all-around gymnastics champion—as well as a silver medal for all-around team and a bronze for the uneven bars—at the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics, which took place last year after being delayed by COVID-19. A six-time member of the U.S. women’s national gymnastics team, she made history as the first-ever Hmong American to compete in the Olympics and the first Asian allaround gymnastics champion of any nationality. On top of an already groundbreaking 2021, Lee went on to compete on season 30 of Dancing With the Stars just a few months after the Olympic Games wrapped up. She and her partner Sasha Farber were eliminated during week nine of the dance competition, finishing in fifth place. However, despite not leaving with the trophy, the real prize was finding herself: “Obviously, we didn’t make it to the finale, but I feel like I finally found myself, and I’m more confident in myself,” the 18-year-old gold medalist shared during a backstage interview.

“And I feel like I’m more open now, and that was the main goal to come on this show…I love myself more than ever, and that is a really important thing.”

New presidents were appointed to MSNBC and ABC last year—both made headlines for being the first Black women to lead major broadcast news networks. Jones was appointed president of MSNBC in February 2021, while Godwin assumed the presidency at ABC in April. Both faced big challenges at their respective networks. With ratings down at MSNBC, Jones has been vying to make MSNBC “the place where people go for hard news when news is happening,” she told The Daily Beast last June. In Godwin’s first few months at ABC, she, too, faced major difficulties. According to Variety, Godwin has had to deal with vacancies in producer positions of shows like Good Morning America and Nightline, taming The View and a lawsuit alleging that former GMA producer Michael Corn sexually assaulted two ABC staff members. As of October, both ABC and Corn had requested to dismiss these charges. Although Jones and Godwin both face obstacles at their respective news companies, their appointments signal a sea change toward making news media more

It feels like I’ve been preparing for this job my entire career, in fact, my entire life, and it led me to this incredible opportunity to make history,” says Godwin. “I’m humbled humb yet determined d to make a difference by being a positive force in both cultural cultura evolution ution and business impact.”

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ATHLETE

135.6

The number of years it will take to close the global gender pay gap, according to the World Economic Forum.

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Kathleen Kim

Karen Lynch

MUPPETEER, SESAME STREET

PRESIDENT AND CEO, CVS

On Thanksgiving 2021, Kathleen Kim made history: She performed Sesame Street ’s first-ever Asian American muppet—Ji-Young, a sevenyear-old Korean American girl. Ji-Young made her debut during a special called Sesame Street: See Us Coming Together.

“To be able to be the representation that I did not have as a kid is…you can’t put words to it,” Kim told NextShark, during a behind-the-scenes interview while she was being filmed meeting the finished Ji-Young muppet for the first time. This representation is so important, she says, because it will help kids be able to see themselves in media and give them a sense of belonging.

Prior to being the muppeteer behind Ji-Young, Kim was the muppeteer for Elena on Sesame Street and plays Toeknee in Comedy Central’s Awkwafina Is Nora From Queens.

Leading through an unprecedented pandemic was a challenge that all executives faced in 2021, but no one had as much of an impact as CVS president and CEO Karen Lynch. Lynch—who took on the role leading America’s fourthbiggest company by revenue, and the largest in health care, in February 2021 during the height of COVID-19—was instrumental in the rollout of CVS Health’s pandemic response. Under her direction, CVS became the nation’s leader in both COVID-19 diagnostic testing and vaccination, administering more than 41 million tests and more than 50 million vaccinations through the end of November 2021. Not only that, CVS didn’t have to sacrifice revenue to serve public health needs; in fact, its stock outperformed the S&P 500 last year, up 17 percent and 10 percent, respectively.

Named the most powerful woman in business by Fortune, Lynch has even loftier goals in mind for the future; through various investments, including up to $3 billion in tech and growth initiatives, she plans to transform CVS’ network of pharmacies into outlets devoted to primary care.

As a first-generation American kid, I learned so much from Sesame Street, including English. It made me feel seen, spoke to me on my level and inspired my imagination. For me, Sesame Street was always a place of possibility. My dream was always to work in kids television, but I didn’t become a puppeteer until I was in my thirties. Ji-Young has become so important to the Asian American community, I don’t think I’ll ever find the words to express what that means to me. The love and support from our young audience and Asian American adults alike has been utterly erly overwhelming. ming. My hope is that future generations ations of kids won’tt find anything newsworthy sworthy about seeing ing themselves represented presented on their eir favorite show.” ow.”

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Pía León CHEF AND OWNER, KJOLLE Pía León is one of those fascinating individuals who knew exactly what she wanted to be when she grew up… and actually accomplished it. León grew up baking delectable sweets, like her lemon pie and carrot cake, before deciding to attend Le Cordon Bleu in her hometown of Lima, Peru.

She went on to join the then-new restaurant Central, which was named best restaurant in Latin America just five years later by The World’s 50 Best—a title Central would hold for three years running. In 2018, she struck out on her own to open Kjolle, a restaurant celebrating Peru’s vibrant local ingredients. That same year, she was dubbed the best female chef in Latin America. But last year, León was named the world’s best female chef of 2021 by The World’s 50 Best, giving her global recognition for her work.

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Meghan Markle PUBLIC FIGURE At the beginning of 2020, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced they would be stepping away from their royal duties. In 2021, they were officially released from their royal roles by Buckingham Palace, making it the couple’s first full year of independence—and it was a whirlwind. The Duchess gave birth to the couple’s second child, a daughter named Lilibet, and published a picture book called The Bench. Together, the Duke and Duchess gave a highly publicized interview with Oprah in a special called Oprah with Meghan and Harry and announced their partnership with Ethic, a fintech platform that caters to sustainability-minded investors.

Various headlines blamed Markle for the couple’s decision to leave their royal roles—subsequently dubbed the Megxit, a term Prince Harry has called misogynistic.

Ultimately, though, making the decision to step away from royal life was bold and controversial, but the two proved that they could be much more than royals in 2021.

Dame Sandra Mason

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala ECONOMIST In March of 2021, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala became the first woman and first African appointed to serve as the director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Okonjo-Iweala is an economist and international development professional with over 30 years of experience working across five continents. Previously, she served two terms as the minister of finance in Nigeria from 2003 to 2006 and from 2011 to 2015, where she was the first woman to hold the position. Never idle, Okonjo-Iweala served as the managing director of the World Bank from 2007 to 2011 in between her terms as Nigeria’s minister of finance. She has also held countless leadership and advisory positions across numerous international nonprofits.

She served as chair of the board at Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance from 2016 to 2022, responsible for the immunization of 760 million children around the globe; in 2020, she was appointed as a COVID-19 special envoy for the African Union and played a crucial role throughout the pandemic, charged with negotiating international financial assistance and mobilizing global support for the continent.

Candace Parker ATHLETE One of the best basketball players of her generation, Candace Parker, who plays forward and center for the WNBA’s Chicago Sky, has had several firsts during her lengthy career. In 2006, for example, she was the first female player to dunk in a NCAA tournament. In September 2021, Parker became the first female athlete to appear on the cover of the massively popular NBA 2K video game.

Parker also has a passion for broadcasting; she has been a commentator on NBA on TNT, as well as the host of a popular podcast about parenting.

PRESIDENT, BARBADOS November was a historic month for Barbados. The island nation saw the end of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign, as it became a republic. And with that, Dame Sandra Mason was elected as the country’s very first president.

Prior to becoming president, Mason had been Barbados’ governorgeneral since 2017. She is no stranger to being a groundbreaking woman, as she was the first female to be admitted to the bar in Barbados and to become a judge on the country’s Court of Appeals.

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Jessica Rosenworcel CHAIR, FCC Jessica Rosenworcel was confirmed by the Senate as the Federal Communications Commissioner in October, making her the first woman to officially lead the FCC in the history of the United States. Prior to her appointment, Rosenworcel had been serving as acting chairwoman of the FCC, but under the Biden administration she was named permanent chair.

Rosenworcel practiced communications law before joining the FCC in 1999, where she has held numerous leadership positions over the past 13 years.

MacKenzie Scott PHILANTHROPIST MacKenzie Scott turned the world of philanthropy inside out in 2021. With little advance warning and next to no staff, she gave away $2.74 billion to 286 nonprofits in June, on top of the $6 billion she had donated the year before. Most important, her grants were given without any requirements about how the money was to be spent.

As Scott explained in a blog post on Medium: “We are governed by a humbling belief that it would be better if disproportionate wealth were not concentrated in a small number of hands, and that the solutions are best designed and implemented by others.”

Keechant Sewell NYPD COMMISSIONER Recently appointed by New York City Mayor Eric Adams, Keechant Sewell became New York City’s first female police commissioner in December 2021.

Previously, Sewell worked at the Nassau County Police Department in the narcotics and major case units and served as a hostage negotiator before being promoted to chief of detectives in 2020.

Winsome Sears LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR, VIRGINIA In November 2021, Winsome Sears became the first Black woman to be elected Lieutenant Governor of Virginia. Sears immigrated to the United States from Jamaica at the age of six and is the first Jamaican American to be appointed to the role. Prior to entering politics, Sears served in the U.S. Marine Corps as an electrician and worked extensively with nonprofit organizations to help support the homeless.

My father arrived in the United States with $1.75, took any job he could find to finance our education, and here I sit today because of his investment. America is still the land of opportunity!”

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JoJo Siwa DANCER Originally known for starring on Dance Moms and famous for her love of sequins, big bows and bright colors, JoJo Siwa is doing much more than dancing and accessorizing. As an American singer, dancer, entertainer and YouTuber, she is creating a transformative environment with her youthful bright light. She came out in 2021 and created change in the culture of how the LGBTQ+ community is viewed, as the first s person to dance in a same sex pair on Dancing with the Stars.

Fid ji Simo CEO, INSTACART Over the summer, Fidji Simo joined Instacart as its new CEO. She came to Instacart from Facebook, where she was head of the Facebook app. Instacart is currently valued at $39 billion, making it one of the most valuable startups in America. Due to COVID, Instacart’s sales quadrupled in 2020, though the company is now seeing sales slow down.

In joining the company, Simo is the first person to take on the CEO role outside of founder Apoorva Mehta. She has big plans for her tenure at the company, including bringing the grocery delivery startup public.

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Sherrese Clarke Soares FOUNDER, HARBOURVIEW EQUITY PARTNERS Sherrese Clarke Soares founded HarbourView Equity Partners in 2021, a private equity firm focused on investing in the entertainment and media industries.

Soares coined the term “content is queen,” when she zeroed in on her mission to invest in content creators and music copyrights— earning her company a $1 billion dollar investment from Apollo Global Management. As the use of technology shifts and music becomes an integral part of content creation and consumption across every platform, the legal and financial industries must keep up to avoid losing extremely valuable opportunities.

Soares recognized the importance of versatility on the technological chessboard and has earned her place among the changemakers at the forefront of lucrative adaptation in this space.

“Content has the extraordinary power to change the world, and creators should be rewarded for their contribution to the world.”

Megan Thee Stallion and Leyna Bloom GROUNDBREAKING COVER STARS In 2021, rapper Megan Thee Stallion and model/activist Leyna Bloom made media and cultural history by debuting on the coveted cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition. Stallion is the first rap star to grace the renowned magazine cover, and Bloom made headlines as the first transgender model to be on the cover of the iconic SI publication. Both were thrilled to be part of the issue and were pleased to help advance social change.

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Taylor Swift SINGER/SONGWRITER

Julie Sweet CHAIR AND CEO, ACCENTURE The New York Times has called Julie Sweet “one of the most powerful women in corporate America,” and in 2021, she added a bit to that power by becoming chair of the board of Accenture (she took over the CEO position in 2019, the first woman to do so). She boasts that Accenture has “a very robust global program around inclusion and diversity.

Wherever it’s legally available, we have benefits available for our LGBTQ community,” she told the Times. In March of 2021, Sweet also joined the board of Catalyst, a nonprofit working to reimage gender equity in the workplace and beyond.

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Although Taylor Swift did not release an official “new” album in 2021, she has still managed to make history once again. With three separate projects catapulting to the top of the Billboard 200 charts over the course of the calendar year, Swift became the first female artist to accomplish this feat. Additionally, in March of 2021, Swift took home her third Grammy Award for Best Album of the Year for her 2020 album, Folklore, making her the first female artist in history to receive three of these awards. In May, the pop star also accepted the Global Icon of the Year award at the 2021 BRIT Awards, making her the first woman to do so. Swift’s iconic rise to fame and recognition has been a force to be reckoned with for more than a decade, and she shows no signs of slowing down.

Sarah Thomas NFL REFEREE Referee Sarah Thomas has a long list of “firsts” when it comes to football: the first woman to officiate a major college football game, the first woman to officiate a bowl game, the first to officiate in a Big Ten stadium—and, in 2015, after 16 years of officiating for high schools and colleges, she was hired as the first full-time female official in NFL history.

Last year, she did it again, taking the field during Super Bowl LV in the down judge position (formerly known as “head linesman,” the position was renamed to be genderneutral in 2017) and making history as the first-ever woman to officiate a Super Bowl.

Michelle Wu

Terry Wheatley

MAYOR OF BOSTON

PRESIDENT, VINTAGE WINE ESTATES

As the first woman and person of color to be elected mayor of Boston, Michelle Wu claims her place among this year’s groundbreaking women. After a 199-year streak of white, male mayors, Wu is helping pave the way for women and people of color in American politics and causing all of us to ask, “how could it have taken this long?”

Wu is no stranger to breaking streaks as she was also the first Asian American woman to serve on the Boston City Council, where she was elected president by her colleagues in a unanimous vote in January 2016.

Terry Wheatley has been in the wine business since she was just 21 years old. She worked for Gallo Winery and Sutter Home (now Trinchero Family Estates) before cofounding Canopy Management. This company would come to house brands they created, including Middle Sister Wines and Purple Cowboy Wines. After growing the company to 300,000 cases, Wheatley sold it to Vintage Wine Estates, where she took up the post of SVP of sales and marketing until 2018, when she was named president.

The dream of taking Vintage Wine Estates public was that of founding partner and CEO Pat Roney. Together, Roney and Wheatley made the dream a reality, taking the company public through a SPAC in June 2021 with a $690 million IPO. And with this achievement, Wheatley became the first woman to take an American multimillion-dollar wine producer public.

Growing up, I didn’t see leaders who looked like me in positions of power— today, I bring my experience as a mom and a daughter of immigrants to everything I do. For me, it’s important to remember what it’s like in our communities on the outside and to really try to get City Hall out of City Hall, to meet people where they are.

Every day I’m inspired and energized by the power of city government to move quickly in partnership with [the[ community, and I’m excited for Boston’s future.”

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As the first woman president to take a multimillion-dollar wine company public, my goal is to continue to raise up the women who follow and also [to] continue to lead Vintage Wine Estates as the industry leader in digital marketing. I am humbled to take my place among the Worth women who share that vision.”

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Malala Yousafzai ACTIVIST AND NOBEL PEACE PRIZE LAUREATE Malala Yousafzai, or just “Malala” as she is endearingly known to the world, has shown her bravery once again. The youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner in the world, renowned human rights activist and survivor of an attempted murder attack for her activism took a public stand against the Taliban for a second time. She penned a letter to Taliban leadership that they are failing, as they promised “to respect the rights of girls and women” and instead are “denying millions their right to learn.” Malala and other notable female activists demanded that the ban on girls’ education be reversed immediately. For her continued courage, Malala is celebrated for her unprecedented contributions toward women’s rights.

Chloé Zhao FILMMAKER At the 2021 Golden Globes, Chloé Zhao made history when she became the first Asian woman to win the award for best director. The film Nomadland, which won Best Motion Picture for Drama, catapulted Zhao to the forefront of the public eye, eliciting a powerful and supportive response. Her film went on to earn her an Oscar for best director, making her the first woman of color to obtain the award. She also became the first woman to get four Oscar nominations in one year for best director, best film editing, best adapted screenplay and best picture. Zhao made history for a third time when she became the first woman of color to direct a movie for the Marvel Cinematic Universe—Eternals.

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The Female Disruptors Creating the Future of Fashion Actress and activist Maggie Q, Latin American fashion czar Silvia Machado and ex-Dolce & Gabbana CEO Tina Bhojwani are leading the disruption of a global industry at a crossroads, transforming it into one that is decidedly more purpose-driven, environmentally conscious, inclusive and women-led.

BY ARICK WIERSON

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S

ustainability is one of those amorphous words that seemingly gets tossed around with much abandon in today’s post-woke corporate lexicon–short-hand for showcasing a moral compass attuned to the modern progressive groupthink. One need not look far to find the term cropping up all over corporate webpages and media listicles touting which companies are doing the most to save the planet.

But behind all the fanfare, there is a real problem at hand. With each passing year, the evidence of climate change has become overwhelming. Whether due to streaming sensations like Don’t Look Up, an endless feed of viral videos showing a planet in distress or simply wacky weather that has no historical comparison, we have all become much more aware of the enormous toll that modern humans’ way of life is having not only on the planet, but also on each other.

Although there are near-endless riffs on the definition of sustainability, it largely all boils down to three interconnected concepts: the environment, ethical behavior and economics. For so much of human history, we as a species were concerned with little else beyond basic survival. But in the last century things changed dramatically, as the pursuit of material goods and conspicuous consumption became the province of industrialized societies.

This modus vivendi has created a world that has become increasingly less habitable, less equitable and inherently more unstable. A world that is forcing scientists to consider the probability of the otherwise unfathomable: the human-driven extinction of mankind.

CODE RED Our planet is nearing the tipping point of near-irreversible runaway global warming. Last year, the UN issued yet another status report that Secretary-General António Guterres described as a “code red for humanity.” The incessant warnings from the scientific community have had

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a profound effect on nearly every major global industry, each grappling with its own respective environmental footprint. Yet, of all the endeavors that mankind has dreamt up, perhaps none is as detrimental to the planet and its people—both in absolute and relative terms—as fashion. Whether it’s a $2 pair of flip flops, a faux leather Members Only bomber jacket or a Birkin bag, its cumulative toll on the earth and humanity is extreme and unmistakable.

Fashion is responsible for 10 percent of all human-caused carbon emissions and 20 percent of global wastewater; the apparel and footwear industry uses more energy than the aviation and shipping sectors combined.

Fashion is responsible for 10 percent of all human-caused carbon emissions and 20 percent of global wastewater; the apparel and footwear industry uses more energy than the aviation and shipping sectors combined. And here’s the really bad news: Fashion is showing no signs of slowing. Since the early 2000s, production has doubled, and it is currently on course to triple by 2050. And because clothing is getting cheaper to produce, it’s also becoming easier to discard. One recent survey found that 20 percent of clothing purchased in the U.S. is never worn; in the UK, it’s an astounding 50 percent.

IS ‘SUSTAINABLE FASHION’ AN OXYMORON? Casual followers of haute couture have likely read about Stella McCartney’s luxury handbags made from mushroom root leather or the new Louis Vuitton sneakers made with field corn and recycled rubber in the soles. From reclaimed ocean plastics to plant-based substitutes (Karl Lagerfeld recently unveiled accessories made from cactus leather), high-end fashion has begun experimenting with alternative inputs; not since the Space Race of the 1960s has fashion been so keen on R&D. But unfortunately, much of this tepid experimentation is relegated to the rarified air of ultra-high-end luxury fashion where brands enjoy the equally ultra-high margins necessary to test the waters. Meanwhile, back on planet earth, time is the one thing climatologists agree we don’t have much of at all.

But whether using bio-based and recycled materials will move the needle is still an open question. Writing for the Harvard Business Review, Kenneth Pucker posits in his essay, “The Myth of Sustainable Fashion,” that the use of so-called “green” inputs is pointless: “Less unsustainable is not sustainable.” Pucker argues that the only solution is increased government intervention that would forcibly and dramatically alter modern consumption habits.

P H OTO B Y D A N I E L A F E D E R I C I

Like other embattled industries at odds with climate change and sensing strong regulatory headwinds, fashion executives have been eagerly jumping on the sustainability bandwagon hoping that a modicum of self-policing will keep regulators at bay—but that milk has already spilt. New York State’s proposed Fashion Sustainability and Social Accountability Act is a sui generis piece of legislation seeking to impose austere sustainabilityrelated obligations on the industry, forcing fashion’s largest companies to comply with a battery of social and environmental requirements.

Other fashion hubs across the globe are likely to follow suit.

THE NEW GUARD Yet, amid all this tumult in the fashion space is a new emergent class of entrepreneurs, influencers and disruptors who understand that changes in the industry must be as bold as they are swift. Chief among them are former Dolce & Gabbana CEO Tina Bhojwani, actress and activist Maggie Q and Silvia Machado, the head of the fashion arm of Magalu, Latin America’s largest retail ecosystem. Although acting in their own spheres of influence, these three leaders are charting a course for an industry that will become not only decidedly more environmentally conscious, but one that is also inclusive and led by women. Together, these innovators are establishing the new color palette for the future of fashion: green, brown and pink.

“The global fashion retail industry is in the midst of a radical transformation, requiring new approaches,” remarked Shelley Kohan, a professor of retail management at New York City’s Fashion Institute of Technology. “Fortunately, one of the outcomes of all this upheaval is a more dynamic and diverse set of C-suite leaders calling the shots—changeagents that embody the value set of younger consumers, namely a steadfast dedication to sustainability, ethical sourcing and diversity.”

TINA BHOJWANI

Tina Bhojwani FROM INSIDER TO FASHION REVOLUTIONARY No one in New York fashion circles knows the business inside and out like Tina Bhojwani. Her impeccable résumé spans four decades and includes prominent posts at Donna Karan, Theory and finally Dolce & Gabbana, where she served as president and CEO for North America.

But as she rose through the ranks, Bhojwani became increasingly—oftentimes painfully—aware of the impact that the industry was having on the planet and its people.

In 2019, Bhojwani switched gears and launched Aera, the world’s first certified carbon negative footwear company where every shoe produced has a hydrocarbon offset of 110 percent. Her approach towards sustainability made Aera the first luxury footwear company to attain B Corp status—the gold standard for rigorous, verified social and environmen-

tal performance, transparency and accountability.

Fern Mallis, the creator of New York Fashion Week and one of the most respected voices in the global fashion industry, is a big believer in Bhojwani and her mission: “There is no question that historically, fashion has been a vector for change and social good, but we can still do better,” remarked Mallis. “Today, it’s strong women leaders and industry veterans like Tina Bhojwani who are laying track for an industry that is poised to become even more diverse and inclusive, increasingly sustainable and ethically sourced—and women led.”

The real impact of Bhojwani’s shoes, which retail in the $400 price range, isn’t in their modest environmental offset, but in the ripple effect of having A-list celebrities gush over sustainable footwear— which doesn’t go unnoticed by larger brands. Aera pumps, sandals and boots have gained a loyal following among celebrities like Katie Holmes,

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DISRU P TORS who chronicled her love for her pair of Aera Charli boots during the pandemic. Emma Roberts, Meryl Streep, Kristen Stewart and Rosario Dawson are also huge fans. “It is exciting to be a pioneer in this space, and Aera is setting an example for more mainstream brands,” observed Bhojwani.

“We need the larger players to think differently if we are going to solve this existential crisis we are facing.”

Maggie Q AGENT OF CHANGE After starring opposite Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible III, Maggie Q has become one of the most sought-after names in Hollywood. From leading roles in the Die Hard and Divergent franchises on the big screen and starring in TV series like Nikita and Designated Survivor to her current role on the Fox primetime comedy Pivoting, Maggie Q has created a powerful platform, enabling her to leverage

MAGGIE Q

her celebrity to drive awareness about social and environmental issues.

For Q, it all started with a chance encounter with a PETA advocate years ago at a music concert in Hong Kong.

The two would have a conversation that changed Q’s life. Today, she leverages her celebrity to promote sustainability, workers’ rights and ethical manufacturing. “Before I was ‘famous,’ I used to push things on people, but nobody cared too much about what I said—but they paid attention to how I lived. Now that I have this ‘celebrity’ status, I am always thinking about how to maximize its impact for social and environmental good. And that all starts with living the life that I talk about,” Q explained.

“The fashion industry is in the midst of a radical transformation.”

-SHELLEY KOHAN

Today, Q is engaged in several entrepreneurial endeavors, including her fast-growing athleisure and swimwear brand Qeep Up, which furthers her goal of cleaning up ocean plastics and preserving wildlife. Each Qeep Up piece is made of 100 percent recycled materials with a portion of each sale donated to the Blue Sphere Foundation, an organization fighting to save marine habitats around the world.

The power of Q’s activism in fashion was on full display during the pandemic when she lent an influential voice to the 45,000 garment workers in Los Angeles— almost all women of color—who had suffered stolen wages as global demand for clothing receded. The result of her work, together with labor organizers, pressured state lawmakers to pass the California Garment Worker Protection Act which, among other achievements, bans piecework, a practice that compensates workers on a per garment basis, effectively paying them less than $6 an hour. “The U.S. tends to point the finger at other countries to highlight human rights abuses, but we also need to know when they happen in our own backyard,” said Q. “The challenges around ethical sourcing in this industry go hand-in-hand with environmental issues.”

REINVENTING FASHION FOR THE MASSES As a Harvard-educated former management consultant, Silvia Machado is an unlikely protagonist in the transformation of the global fashion industry. But by joining one of the world’s largest and most socially progressive companies, Magazine Luiza—or ‘Magalu’ as it is known in Brazil—Machado was handed the keys to an opportunity to effect seismic environmental and ethical change in one of the world’s most populous nations.

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P H OTO C O U R T E S Y O F M J Q

Silvia Machado

CONVERSATIONS ABOUT ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, BLOCKCHAIN, NFTS AND HOW EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES ARE TRANSFORMING BUSINESS AND SOCIETY.

(PICTURED) PAST ATTENDEES INCLUDE: JEFF WEINER, PADMASREE WARRIOR, MARC BENIOFF, PENNY PRITZKER, JACK DORSEY, ANDREW YANG, MARTIN SORRELL, MARK ZUCKERBERG, KIMBERLY BRYANT.

“TECHNOLOGY IS CENTRAL AND INDISPENSABLE TO ALL THE ACTIVITIES OF BUSINESS, AND OF HUMANITY.”

DAVID KIRKPATRICK FOUNDER & EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

DISCOVER MORE AT:

TECHONOMY.COM

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SILVIA MACHADO

“We don’t have decades to get this right.

We need to move now.”

-MAGGIE Q first proprietary brand—Vista—an affordable line that tears down decades of antiquated thinking about what fashion should look like, who it should serve and how it should be made.

For example, every Vista clothing label includes a reminder of the 1-8-0 number, the Brazilian government’s dedicated hotline for reporting domestic violence. Models for Vista mark a stark departure from the Gisele Bündchen-type faces and bodies that still dominate most of Brazilian fashion advertising, and instead mirror the true diversity of Brazil’s consumer base.

From an ethical sourcing and environmental perspective, Machado is investing heavily in compliance to ensure that the manufacturing

of each piece of clothing is traceable and adheres to fair workplace standards while using inputs such as BCI cotton on at least 50 percent of all items produced.

“We aren’t held back by legacy issues that prevent us from really rethinking how fashion can work for everyone at scale—from garment worker to retail employee to end consumer,” said Machado. “And that includes being very intentional about our sourcing while mitigating our environmental footprint.”

CRITICAL PHASE AHEAD From mega Hollywood influencer to fashion insider-turned-pioneer to progressive mass retailer, Maggie Q, Tina Bhojwani and Silvia Machado are at the forefront of a global movement that is pulling at the seams of the fashion industry as we know it, each taking a cut out of the same swatch. These three women also realize that time is of the essence, or as Maggie Q remarked, “We don’t have decades to get this right.

We need to move now.”

P H OTO C O U R T E S Y O F M A G A Z I N E L U I Z A , S . A . / D I V U L G A Ç Ã O

Although she began her career at McKinsey & Company, Machado eventually made the jump to retail, where she led the fashion divisions for several large retailers. But when Magalu CEO Frederico Trajano offered her the chance to build a fashion business from scratch, it was a historic opportunity to redefine the sector—and one she couldn’t refuse.

Magalu is a storied, family-owned retailer, having grown over the past 65 years from a small town gift shop outside of São Paulo to a publicly traded behemoth. With over 1,400 physical locations and a massive ecommerce presence selling electronics, appliances and home goods to middle-class Brazilians, Magalu has also become a standard-bearer for responsible social governance, women’s rights, racial equality and equity in the workplace. Frederico Trajano and his mother, Luiza Helena Trajano—one of the “Time 100” in 2021 for her efforts championing social change in Brazil—have transformed Magalu into the country’s most socially progressive company.

“Magalu has always been on the vanguard of social justice and women’s rights in Brazil, and in recent years, we have dived head-first into diversity and inclusion—leading the national conversation on both fronts,” remarked Luiza Helena Trajano, who now chairs the company board. “As we aggressively expand into fashion and apparel, we have the advantage of starting with a blank slate, absent the legacy issues that stymie change at so many other traditional fashion brands.”

The elder Trajano added, “Magalu’s foray into fashion marks a remarkable opportunity to recast the sector in a new light, proving that it can be profitable yet sustainable and ethical at the same time. And there is no one more qualified to lead this revolution than Silvia Machado.”

Machado oversees not only Magalu’s vast third-party platform that connects tens of thousands of fashion sellers with consumers, but she also just launched Magalu’s

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CONSCIOUS CONSUMERISM

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Sustainability Never Looked So Good

BY EVA CROUSE

T

he fashion industry is one of the key players in global greenhouse gas emissions. According to the UN, it is responsible for 8 to 10 percent of carbon emissions being pumped into the atmosphere.

Everything from material sourcing and manufacturing to distribution and discard has a significant impact on the environment; and every link in the production chain consumes and pollutes massive amounts of water—93 billion cubic meters per year to be exact—in order to produce an estimated 17 million tons of textiles. In short, the way we produce and consume clothing needs to change—and there are people out there working toward this goal.

Worth collaborated with four sustainable fashion brands working to elevate the textile production cycle to be more sustainable and transparent without sacrificing quality or style. These brands have found incredibly innovative ways to tackle some of the biggest challenges in the industry and demonstrate that fashion doesn’t have to come at the expense of the planet.

Small Recycled Sling Bag, $148 (Cuyana) Recycled Sling Bag, $178 (Cuyana)

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CONSCIOUS CONSUMERISM

Eve & Max Eve & Max, founded by Maxine Morgan Trowbridge, is an environmentally conscious ready-to-wear luxury fashion brand that specializes in using natural and certified fabrics to create timeless, minimalist pieces. As a certified B Corp, Eve & Max has prioritized the environmental impact of its clothes without sacrificing quality or style. As a seasonless brand, the company throws the traditional rulebook out the window, choosing to create one collection per year with the aim to limit overproduction, reduce unnecessary inventory and curtail the need for mass production. Eve & Max’s leadership team believe that less is more, and through this model, they hope to change the conversation around the rate of new clothing consumption. eveandmax.com Chiyo Zeke Kimono, available for pre-order, $1,695 (Eve & Max)

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P H OTO S B Y M A D I S O N F E N D E R

Another Tomorrow Another Tomorrow, founded

by Vanessa Barboni Hallik, keeps human, animal and climate well-being top of mind in all that the brand does. Working closely with two ethical, regenerative Tasmanian farms, which is where they source all of their wool, Another Tomorrow’s team ensures that there is zero animal cruelty in the sourcing of their raw materials. Additionally, every garment created by Another Tomorrow comes with its own unique QR code; by scanning the QR code, consumers can see exactly how the product was made. From sourcing and manufacturing to distribution, Another Tomorrow has worked tirelessly to ensure that it has built sustainability and transparency into every level of production. anothertomorrow.co Classic Cashmere Crewneck, $390 (Another Tomorrow) Seamed Waist Jacket, $1,390 (Another Tomorrow)

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CONSCIOUS CONSUMERISM

Gomorrah Gomorrah is a sustainable menswear fashion brand, founded by Itzett Romero and Max Sudak, that works backwards to solve post-consumer textile waste. Gomorrah is one of the only sustainable fashion brands on the market that has successfully created a 100 percent compostable line. By focusing on the impact at the end of their clothes’ life cycle, Gomorrah’s team has worked from the ground up to ensure that every component of their products is natural and clean without sacrificing their other non-negotiable: quality.

By sourcing high-end, all-natural materials and constructing their garments with seam-finishing familiar to haute couture, Gomorrah has built clean sustainability into its luxury, 100 percent plantbased, organic brand. gomorrahnyc.com 70

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Men’s Longsleeve Linen Button-Up, $178 (Gomorrah)

Cuyana Cuyana, cofounded by Karla Gallardo and Shilpa Shah, is a sustainable fashion brand that focuses on three main goals: responsible production, maximizing wear and extending the product life cycle. In 2022, Cuyana is tracking toward its goal of using 100 percent sustainable materials without compromising on design. The company works with a global community of craftsmen and women who are likewise focused on sustainability, and as a team, they develop some of the most innovative and sustainable products on the market. cuyana.com

P H OTO S B Y M A D I S O N F E N D E R

Classic Trench, $298 (Cuyana)

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CONNECTING COMMUNITIES

David Neeleman made aviation history by founding JetBlue and Azul Airlines. Now he’s back with Breeze, a budget airline that aims to connect America’s smaller cities in a powerful new network.

BY RICHARD BRADLEY

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Can Breeze Make Flying…Breezy?

D

avid Neeleman can’t stop moving. The 62-year-old airline entrepreneur has joined a Zoom interview from his home in Utah.

Holding his iPhone in the vicinity of his face, he wanders restlessly from room to room, sometimes sitting for a moment, then jumping up again, as if trying to catch up with the words that rush from his mouth. Talking with Neeleman feels a bit like stepping onto an airport conveyor walkway—it was moving before you got there, and it’ll be moving after you leave.

Neeleman has founded or helped to found five airlines. In the 1980s, he cofounded Morris Air, a low-cost charter airline. In the early 1990s, he helped launch Canada’s WestJet. Then, in 1998, he founded JetBlue, which, with its low fares and emphasis on “bringing humanity back to air travel,” brought a new and cool attitude to the U.S. airline industry. In 2008, he went to Brazil to launch Azul, which raised the bar for air service in that country. And now comes Breeze Airways, which began flying in mid-2021. Five airlines in an industry where profits are notoriously hard to find is a remarkable feat, and I wanted to know why Neeleman kept starting airlines.

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CONNECTING COMMUNITIES

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“The easier you connect your community to the rest of the world, the more lucrative your location becomes.”

-KEVIN DILLON chief marketing officer at the Rhode Island Airport Corporation.

But flying back and forth among these second-tier cities has always been a challenge, typically involving changing to a small plane at a hub such as New York, Atlanta or Chicago.

“Ninety-five percent of Breeze routes previously had no airline serving them nonstop,” says Lukas Johnson, Breeze’s chief commercial officer.

A former actuary, Johnson helped design Breeze’s route map. “If you’re flying American, Delta or United, you’ve got large planes and small regional jets and not a lot in between,” Johnson says. “Bigger planes mean you have to fly to bigger places” in order to fill seats. Breeze, however, began by flying Embraer 195s outfitted with around 118 seats (none of which are middle seats)—a sweet spot between larger jets and regional planes.

For the cities involved, Breeze is a powerful economic accelerant.

First, it creates a tourism market that largely didn’t exist previously. “Breeze

has given us new nonstop service to markets that we didn’t have access to before,” says Helen Hill, the CEO of Explore Charleston, the city’s destination and marketing organization.

“And we know that we can create a market when there’s access.” An added bonus of these new markets?

First-time visitors to a city tend to stay longer and spend more.

“Take Richmond, Virginia,” Hill says. “It’s a great market for Charleston, with people interested in history,

P H OTO B Y M A R Y K I R B Y ; P H OTO B Y A I R W I N D

“I don’t do it just for the sake of doing it,” he tells Worth. “I have to look at a need.” With JetBlue, which began flying with New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport as its base, “JFK was wide open,” Neeleman explains.

“Nobody was there. Brazil, there was a huge need. I would say that Azul is the thing I’m most proud of—creating all that—until now.”

If you haven’t heard of Breeze, that’s probably because it launched about a year into the COVID pandemic and flew largely, well, under the radar, given what else was going on in the world. Another reason might have to do with where Breeze flies to and from. The need that Neeleman saw wasn’t about flying passengers in and out of big cities. Looking across the map of the United States—and scanning passenger data from the U.S. Department of Transportation— Neeleman saw a network of small to mid-sized cities that were almost impossible to fly between on a direct flight. So, he decided to connect them.

As of this writing, Breeze offers direct flights from and to 28 cities in 18 states—places like Bentonville, Arkansas; Charleston, South Carolina; Hartford, Connecticut; Huntsville, Alabama; Norfolk, Virginia; Providence, Rhode Island; Richmond, Virginia; and Tampa, Florida. In demographerspeak, these are “second-tier” cities.

They have a smaller population and lesser economic output than places like New York, Miami or Los Angeles.

Plus, they don’t typically get a lot of attention from the national media.

But in the past decade or so, many of these cities have been rising, attracting new residents seeking a better quality of life in a small city and businesses incentivized by lower costs, taxes and regulation. Many of these cities have cultural offerings— restaurants, museums, clubs—that, in quality if not scale, are just as compelling as those of big cities. The pandemic made those cities even more appealing. “COVID changed a lot of people’s perceptions about where they can live, and also their ability to work remotely,” says Kellie Wright,

food, beaches”—all reasons why millions of people visit Charleston every year. “But it’s a really long way to drive” from Richmond to Charleston.

“All of a sudden, [Richmond residents] have an opportunity to come here.”

Other cities are forming connections that wouldn’t make sense without direct air travel. Norfolk, Virginia, and Newport, Rhode Island, both have outstanding jazz festivals at different times of the year, but “jazz fans in Norfolk really didn’t

have an easy way to get to Newport” and vice-versa, says Kurt Krause, president and CEO of Visit Norfolk.

Now, Norfolk is working with the Rhode Island T.F. Green International Airport to create bilateral marketing efforts. “There’s a partnership there that wouldn’t have happened without Breeze.”

It helps that ticket prices on Breeze can be startlingly low. Emily Nipps, director of communications at Tampa International Airport, recently flew to Charleston—her first time there.

The total cost for two round-trip tickets to take her daughter and herself: $156. Now, Nipps says, “I’m looking at Breeze thinking, ‘Tulsa. I’ve never been to Tulsa.’”

Breeze doesn’t really compete with other airlines, Lukas Johnson argues.

“Frankly, we compete with the couch, with people choosing to spend their money on some leisure activity in their hometown. But if I tell you that you’re going to the beach for $60 instead of going bowling…That gets people jumping out of their seat.”

In addition to low fares, Breeze also emphasizes its culture of “nice.”

The seats, for instance, are ranked as “Nice,” “Nicer” and “Nicest.” Sign up to receive emails from Breeze, and you get a prompt that says, “It’s Nice to Meet You!” According to Breeze’s head of corporate communications Gareth Edmondson-Jones, “We are doing everything we can to make everybody happy and delivering seriously nice.”

That means cheery crew members and a policy that lets passengers change flights up to 15 minutes before takeoff without a fee, and credits for cancellations last for two years rather than the industry-standard one. Also, in the name of niceness, Breeze has eliminated customers’ ability to call the airline over the telephone, requiring customers reach out through email or text. That eliminates long hold times, Neeleman says. “If you can’t do [phone service] well, you just don’t want to do it.” On Facebook, at least, early passenger reviews of the policy are mixed. Though many passengers lauded Breeze’s low fares,

clean planes and friendly flight crews, others lamented the lack of a phone number, citing hours-long wait times for responses to texts and emails that didn’t always address their questions.

“If you’re ever waiting for hours for a response from Breeze, that’s an aberration,” says Edmondson-Jones. “Our average response time is under 20 minutes.”

Many of the cities that Breeze flies to have a corporate presence that supports these new flights. Hartford and Providence are both physically close to Connecticut defense manufacturer General Dynamics, which also has operations in Norfolk. Bentonville has Walmart. Huntsville has a plethora of aerospace and defense contractors, such as Boeing, Blue Origin, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin. Richmond has 12 Fortune 1000 headquarters, including Altria Group and CarMax. “Having direct flights is critical to economic development and business,” says Jennifer Wakefield, president and CEO of economic development group Greater Richmond Partnership. “Companies want to be able to get where they need to go without flying to other locations.”

“There’s no doubt—the easier you connect your community to the rest of the country, the more lucrative your location becomes,” says Kevin Dillon, executive director and CEO of the Connecticut Airport Authority.

“From a business retention standpoint and certainly for attracting new industry, it’s very important.”

“Every time we go into these cities,” David Neeleman says, “we get a hero’s welcome.”

In the months ahead, Breeze plans to grow quickly, adding new cities and larger planes, Airbus A220s— Neeleman calls them “the most advanced airplane in the sky”—that have a longer range and more seating capacity than the Embraer jets. It’s also started a charter aviation service for large groups using its Embraer jets. “Breeze has just been amazing,” Neeleman says. “It’s going to accomplish great things.”

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Crafting Company Culture

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How employee resource groups can empower workers and help organizations of all sizes meet their goals.

BY CHRIS ROBERTS

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S

uccessful companies perform all the basics well. Management demonstrates leadership, the workforce is presented with room for growth and opportunity to innovate, and employee innovation is implemented within the organization. That is the environment in which Caitlin Taylor and her Women at IBM colleagues have made an impact.

Taylor joined the New York offices of IBM—the legacy Fortune 500 company widely considered among the best working environments for women—shortly after graduating college. Soon after her onboarding, she joined an email Listserv focused on opportunities and advancement for women headed by Marianne Cooper, now a company vice president. The email list led to quarterly events and then more frequent meetings on the topics of gender diversity and inclusion, and finally culminated in a formalized organization: the company’s largest chapter of Women at IBM, which boasts more than 1,000 members in the New York City area.

Women at IBM is an example of an employee or business resource group, a collective of company employees affiliated with a particular affinity group that advocates for the needs of that community within the organization. It was Women at IBM that pointed out to company management that not every bathroom at the company’s 131 offices, spread across 97 countries, reliably provided basic feminine hygiene products, forcing women to either bring their own tampons or waste time during work hours rushing out to find some in a hurry. Now, thanks to Taylor and Women at IBM, the global computing powerhouse offers tampons in all of its restrooms worldwide.

“Men might not have to think about that, but women do, monthly,” Taylor said.

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Knowing the work restroom has exactly what you need to carry on throughout the day may seem like a quotidian concern, but small victories like these carry immense psychological benefits. Employees feel empowered, management feels benevolent and the collective feeling of goodwill helps the organization pursue its larger goals. At IBM, this victory may not have happened without an employee resource group (ERG) dedicated to women. And if a company is willing to listen, such groups can impact hiring practices or warn when products or brand identity are inadequate—for people of color, for trans people or for other populations whose perspectives and needs can be directly presented to management by an employee resource group.

First known as “workplace affinity groups,” business resource groups trace their origins in the United States to the racial strife of the Civil Rights movement in the mid-1960s. Executives at Xerox, alarmed by race riots in Rochester, New York, where the company was then headquartered, launched a progressive hiring program. However, new Black hires still encountered discrimination at work, so the company created a workplace group called the National Black Employees Caucus—the country’s first recognized ERG. ERGs have been standard office practice for American companies since at least the early 2000s. Though an increasing number of legacy companies, as well as startups and nonprofits, now have C-suite or senior management positions dedicated to diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI—and many more companies seek advice from outside consultants, including university-level researchers—ERGs “are where the rubber meets the road” when a company sets and meets its DEI goals, Taylor said. “It’s where the actual work that needs to be done to create a truly inclusive organization gets done.”

“They play an even more significant role than ever because of the times we’re going through right now,” agreed Joseph B. Hill, a veteran chief diversity officer and managing partner of JB5C, a DEI-focused consultancy in Atlanta.

There are many incentives for companies large and small, as well as nonprofits, to achieve basic DEI goals, including both an accommodating diverse workplace as well as a brand identity and product offering that’s acceptable to a broad range of people. Board members, as well as the public, pay attention to workforce metrics,

and many companies have mandates from their workers and the public to diversify their employee base, their executive management and their boards.

Gen-Zers and younger millennials have been known to decline a better-paying job offer in favor of a lower-compensated position at a company with a better DEI culture, including company-chartered ERGs. And consumers will quickly abandon a brand that presents a tone-deaf or culturally insensitive front or commits an avoidable PR blunder caused by a too-narrow perspective within the company.

Externally, ERGs identify new markets and product shortcomings, as well as serve as a check on brand consistency and identity. Health care companies need ERGs to inform equitable care; major brands like Nike need ERGs to inform products and marketing to remain relevant with the customer base.

Internally, ERGs go a long way to create employee satisfaction, giving members a voice and the feeling of being recognized and welcomed within the organization. That’s more important than ever during the post-pandemic Great Resignation. “People are leaving their roles if they’re not feeling supported or treated well,” said Hill, who echoed other experts in stressing the importance of employees feeling that they have a voice within the company—and that that voice is heard and acted upon.

“I always say every company could use an ERG,” he added. “It impacts the business, so it becomes a business imperative.”

However, an ERG needs to be more than just a group of likeminded individuals or people with the same gender, skin color or other orientation.

“We’re all longing to belong, and affinity groups are a way in an organization that people can

come together and at least feel like they belong to the group— and the hope is they also belong in the company,” said James T. McKim, Jr., a managing partner at Organizational Ignition, a New Hampshire-based firm that offers DEI training and workshops.

“Affinity groups are sometimes part of what we see as DEI goals.

The DEI goal is, ‘We need to form affinity groups, and once we’ve formed them, we’ve reached that goal,’” McKim added. “But that doesn’t help you achieve organization goals and objectives.”

The challenge, according to McKim, is “if you don’t set up an affinity group with a purpose that is to not only ‘provide a sense of belonging’ but also to contribute to the goals and objectives of the company, it’s just a club. And clubs are great for a sense of belonging, but they don’t help the organization along.”

A true and truly effective ERG, then, will have a charter from the board or a senior executive.

They will have an executive sponsor. They will have the opportunity to present perspective and critiques to the board and management—and the board and management will have the responsibility to listen and heed what the ERG says, even if it’s inconvenient or uncomfortable.

“So if you’ve got a goal, say, to increase your revenue 10 percent next year, there are some things you can do from a DEI perspective that will help you achieve that: tracking innovation, tracking ideas, tracking who’s coming up with ideas,” McKim said. “Are you using the same people to come up with ideas and not getting a diverse perspective from a diverse employee base? Are you using your affinity groups to come up with ideas for products and services? The key here is using affinity groups to achieve business goals or mission goals and directives.”

A true and truly effective ERG will have a clear charter from the board or a senior executive.

They will have an executive sponsor.

They will have the opportunity to present perspective and critiques to the board and management—and the board and management will have the responsibility to listen and heed what the ERG says, even if it’s inconvenient or uncomfortable.

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A legitimate, empowered ERG will also be allowed to develop a long-term vision and a strategic plan to fulfill that vision. However, that plan “should always be aligned with the goals of the company,” McKim added. “An ERG that’s not aligned with the company’s goals and initiatives can become a sort of pseudo union. But that’s not the point.”

However, ERGs are not panaceas. “They don’t solve every problem,” said Alvin B. Tillery, Jr., a professor of political science at Northwestern University and director of the school’s Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy, who noted

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that academic research on ERGs “is not super robust yet.”

Employees who take on leadership or organizational roles at an ERG can soon discover they’ve taken on what can amount to a second job—without extra compensation. “They can be spaces that create a ton of burnout, especially when there’s not a professional support staff,” he said.

Organizations that give employees who work with an ERG extra pay or extra recognition “have really the best results,” Tillery noted. And in the age of social media, “they can’t be BS,” he added.

If a board creates an ERG but then doesn’t adjust hiring practices, promote people of color or heed demands to cut ties with troubling clients, the ERG may reveal cracks within the organization.

And ERGs can create friction within a company, particularly if an ERG driven by younger employees faces a generational divide when presenting their suggestions or demands to a board or executive team. “Let’s be real: baby boomers and older Gen-Xers have very different ideas about what work and the workplace are supposed to be than millennials and Gen-Zers,” Tillery added. If a board creates an ERG but then doesn’t adjust hiring practices, promote people of color within the company or heed demands to cut ties with problematic

clients, the ERG might reveal deepening cracks within the organization that need to be addressed. “That tension is real, and it’s not going away anytime soon,” Tillery said.

It is clear that if a big company wants to attract talent, ERGs are a must. “And that wasn’t the case five years ago,” Tillery said. “I have young, affluent white students who would not work anywhere without ERGs for people of color and LGBT people. I have counseled students to take jobs and they’ve said no, because the culture didn’t feel right for them.”

Gen-Zers and younger millennials have been known to decline a betterpaying job offer in favor of a lowercompensated position at a company with better DEI culture.

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THE BROKEN RUNG

Separating the Glitter from the Glue One founder’s advice for women who want to be entrepreneurs, based on what she’s learned from her own entrepreneurial journey.

BY LAUREN MCGOODWIN

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he business world isn’t a boys’ club anymore. The numbers vary depending on where you look, but according to the most recent annual report from the National Women’s Business Council, women-owned companies represent an estimated 42 percent of all U.S. businesses (nearly 13 million), employ 9.4 million workers and generate $1.9 trillion in revenue.

Female entrepreneurs face all the same challenges that their

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male counterparts do, but women often have additional roadblocks in their way. A 2019 study published in the journal Research Policy found that companies led by women are 63 percent less likely to obtain venture capital than male-led companies. The study’s authors attribute a significant portion (as much as 35 percent) of that gap to genderbased discrimination on the part of investors.

Of course, this bias is not rooted in reality. When they do get funding, women-owned businesses are equally as likely to achieve successful exit outcomes, such as an IPO or acquisition.

In other words, despite mistaken perceptions to the contrary, women have just as much potential for entrepreneurial success as men. However, external factors can make it an uphill battle.

Consider the impact of COVID19. In the United States, the burden of family caregiving still falls largely on women’s shoulders, meaning that when the pandemic forced school closures, many female entrepreneurs found themselves having to balance running a business with full-time parenting.

As the CEO of Career Contessa, a career resource that helps working women be more fulfilled, healthy and successful at work, I talk to a lot of women who are interested in launching their own businesses but don’t know where to begin.

Here are just a few things I’ve learned on my own journey.

GLITTER VS. GLUE When I was first starting out, someone gave me a piece of advice that I’ll never forget. You’re probably familiar with the 5x5 rule, which states that you shouldn’t spend more than five minutes worrying about something that won’t matter in five years. Well, this is a variation on that, to the effect that if you’re not willing to invest five years of your life into building your business, don’t spend five minutes on it.

Instagram and TikTok influencers might make building a business look effortless, but it’s not. It takes grit and persistence. After you have established the basic idea behind your venture—what you’re going to sell or what problem you intend to solve—you need to ask yourself if this is something that’s likely to excite and inspire you just as much down the road as it does right now.

Worth Books is a publishing platform that connects, informs and inspires our community to make a positive impact on the world. We provide a compelling way for executives and entrepreneurs to grow their personal brand and business by bringing their stories from the boardroom to the bookstore. From ghostwriting to marketing and distribution, we work with our authors to tailor a partnership that fits their needs, goals and objectives.

Craig Dowden, PhD A Time To Lead

Andrew Dejoy Behind The Swap

Bill McKendry Do More Good

Gloria Feldt Intentioning

Brad Benbow & Phil Daniels Spiritugraphics

Illana Raia The Epic Mentor Guide

Bella Rushi The Innovating Executive

Patience Marime-Ball & Ruth Saber, MD

Other Worth Books Authors Include:

Elizabeth Andrew VP of Sales, Pluma

Sofia Castro Founder & Principal

Dottie Herman CEO

Frank O’ Connell President & CEO

Ortsac Capital Group

Douglas Elliman

The First Millennial

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The XX Edge

THE BROKEN RUNG If the answer is yes, you might feel inclined to dive into the glamorous side of things first, like picking your brand colors and choosing just the right font. That’s all well and good, but a business needs more than glitter; it also needs glue. Starting out with a solid foundation—including basics like opening a business bank account and understanding how to file your taxes—might spare you a few headaches in the long term.

LEARN TO EMBRACE YOUR MISTAKES Unfortunately, not all headaches are avoidable. No entrepreneurial journey comes without its share of missteps. You will make mistakes, and that’s OK. As counterintuitive as it might seem, in order to succeed you’ll need to embrace failure as a vital part of the process.

As Harvard Business School professor Teresa M. Amabile once noted, “When you’re trying to be innovative, you’re going to end up with a lot of failures. And if you don’t, you’re really not trying hard enough.”

Your mistakes will let you know, in no uncertain terms, what’s working and what isn’t. For example, I failed to prioritize building an email list when I was starting out. By the time I fully realized how important that was to my business, I was already two years in and had to play catch-up.

To return to the metaphor I used earlier, I also placed too much value on the glitter and not enough on the glue. I hired a PR agency and justified the expense by asserting that a higher public profile would help the company grow.

While there was certainly some truth to that, if I were being completely honest about what would really benefit the business, I probably would have enrolled in an SEO course or focused on learning the ins and outs of email marketing instead.

Not quite as glamorous as posing for promo photos or being interviewed on podcasts, but arguably more practical.

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“When you’re trying to be innovative, you’re going to end up with a lot of failures. And if you don’t, you’re really not trying hard enough.”

-TERESA M. AMABILE

BUILD A CONSISTENT ONLINE PRESENCE Time and money are finite resources, and you ought to consider very carefully how you allocate them and why.

Are you investing in the right tools to promote and grow your business?

Having an online presence has long been an important consideration, but the rapid growth in e-commerce spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic has made it more crucial than ever. No matter what goods or services your company offers, you’ll likely find that most of your marketing focuses on attracting and converting customers or clients online.

Even if you don’t consider yourself particularly tech-savvy, a no-code website builder like Leadpages can make a big difference in optimizing your landing page conversions. This will enable you to better connect with your audience, collect qualified leads and sell your services.

Every part of your digital presence needs to be in symbiosis with all the other parts. At Career Contessa, for example, we create a lot of downloadable content that we offer free of charge as a way to give potential customers a taste of what they’ll get if they register for our paid courses.

We promote this free content on our Instagram page, which we also use to convert new signups to our email list.

It all works together.

This is where the glitter and the glue coalesce because you will want to ensure that anyone who comes into contact with your brand at any touchpoint—be it on your landing page, on

social media or through email—has a seamless experience. Select colors and typography that customers can readily identify with your brand and be consistent with the language and messaging you use.

BEYOND THE BOTTOM LINE If all of this seems equally relevant to budding entrepreneurs of all genders, that’s because it is. The day-to-day work of creating a business is essentially the same no matter how you identify. There is, unfortunately, a lingering perception that women somehow possess less inherent business acumen than their male counterparts. When we hear this message often enough, we can internalize it and let it become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In my view, women are uniquely qualified for business leadership in a number of important ways. We are natural problem solvers; we get shit done because we don’t have time to waste. We’re compassionate and empathetic, which means we are often tuned into our customers’ pain points and are driven to solve them. And we grow our businesses in ways that are truly inclusive.

For many of us, starting a business is not strictly about the financial bottom line. It’s about looking at the world—or even just one little corner of a bigger industry—and seeing how we can do things differently and offer products and services that fill customers’ needs in better and more holistic ways.

I’ll give the final word to someone who knows a thing or two about how far women can go in business and tech.

Weili Dai cofounded Marvell Technology, which became one of the top semiconductor companies in the world.

“It is pure mythology that women cannot perform as well as men in science, engineering and mathematics,” she once said. “In my experience, the opposite is true: Women are often more adept and patient at untangling complex problems, multitasking, seeing the possibilities in new solutions and winning team support for collaborative action.”

Key voices, top leaders and executive contributors on Conscious Capitalism, Impact & ESG Investing, Diversity & Inclusion and topics focused on business and society.

A COMMUNITY THAT EMBRACES WORTH BEYOND WEALTH.

BOB DIAMOND

RONAN DUNNE

Founding Partner & CEO Atlas Merchant Capital

Executive Vice President & Group CEO Verizon Consumer

SALLIE KRAWCHECK

DEBRA L. LEE

CEO & Cofounder Ellevest

Cofounder The Monarchs Collective

FOR MORE EDITORIAL, VIDEO AND CONTENT VISIT:

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elcome to Worth’s 2022 Leading Advisors, a guide to some of the nation’s top wealth management professionals. This section offers informed guidance from a select group of vetted advisors with deep expertise.

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While the Leading Advisors program was forced to pivot during the COVID lockdowns, Worth is committed to providing high-level advice and insight from the financial advisor community.

Last year, Worth launched the Wealth of Knowledge video series, which delivers concise, engaging advice from top advisors and executives.

Watch full clips at worth.com/wok-wealthofknowledge We also launched a bimonthly newsletter, the Advisor’s View, which provides insights and analysis for the community that advises high net worth individuals on investments and wealth management.

Subscribe today at worth.com/newsletters

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Should Investors Add Private Credit to Their Fixed Income?

BY LUKE ANDRIUK

Private credit offers several advantages over traditional fixed income:

Luke Andriuk, CFA®, Director of Investments

1. YIELD ENHANCEMENT: Many of today’s traditional fixed income investments have negative real yields. This means the annual return is below zero after accounting for inflation. Exposure to private credit can boost real yields and generate higher annual income.

SAUGATUCK FINANCIAL

Fixed income has long been the ballast in a diversified portfolio. While its returns have historically been lower than equities, investors benefit from fixed income’s stability and low correlation, relative to equity markets.

Over the last 20 years specifically, fixed income exposure helped investors amidst a period of declining and record low interest rates. Following the expected inverse relationship between bond yield and bond prices, as rates and bond yields continued to drop, bond prices rose, culminating in one of the strongest bond bull markets in memorable history.

That bull market looks to have ended, with the Barclays Aggregate Bond Index down 1.5 percent in 2021 and strong anticipation of the Fed increasing rates in 2022. In this environment, it may be prudent to reduce interest rate sensitivity in your fixed income sleeve.

Adding floating rate private credit is one approach worth considering.

WHAT IS PRIVATE CREDIT? Private credit is a lesser known but growing alternative asset class comprised of higher yielding, less liquid debt investments. In private credit, entities who may have trouble securing traditional credit borrow from non-bank lenders. Private credit investors, who are the lenders in this case, expect to earn higher yields than traditional fixed income securities offer. The tradeoff is lower liquidity, longer investment time horizons and potentially higher default rates in a recession.

WHY IS PRIVATE CREDIT WORTH CONSIDERATION?

2. LOW SENSITIVITY TO INTEREST RATES: Because private credit loans typically have floating rates that adjust based on changes in interest rates, floating rate loans can be protective in a rising interest rate environment.

3. DIVERSIFICATION BENEFITS: While traditional fixed income is often held because of its lack of correlation to equities, that hasn’t always been the case. In some periods of high inflation, fixed income correlation with equity markets was positive for multi-year stretches. Private credit securities are less likely to have the same problem due to their lower liquidity.

ACCESSING PRIVATE CREDIT Historically, private credit was only available to investors able to invest seven figures or more in this single asset class. Now, a variety of managed funds have made private credit available to retail investors as well.

ADDITIONAL CONSIDERATIONS A few considerations to keep in mind: These funds are typically less liquid than traditional mutual funds; it may take months, or even years, to redeem invested capital. Also, private credit default rates can vary, but are most comparable to those of high yield bonds.

NEXT STEPS For the right investors, private credit can be a valuable addition to a diversified portfolio, boosting yields and adding some resilience to rising rates. Investors with longer time horizons, higher yield targets and comfort with less liquidity should talk with a knowledgeable financial advisor about whether they may benefit from exposure to this underutilized asset class.

ABOUT SAUGATUCK FINANCIAL

Saugatuck Financial provides comprehensive financial planning and strategy implementation for high net worth and emerging high net worth individuals, families, businesses and institutions. SF partners with each client to create and implement a tailor-made financial plan integrating risk management, wealth management, tax strategies, estate planning and retirement income distribution planning—all under one roof. saugatuck-financial.com 203-221-5275

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luke.andriuk@nm.com

274 Riverside Ave, 4th Floor, Westport, CT 06880

Disclaimer This article is not intended as, and financial representatives do not give, legal or tax advice. Taxpayers should seek advice based on their particular circumstances from an independent tax advisor.

Saugatuck Financial is a marketing name for Justin Charise and is not a broker-dealer, registered investment advisor or federal savings bank. Northwestern Mutual is the marketing name for The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, Milwaukee, WI (NM) (life and disability insurance, annuities, and life insurance with longterm care benefits) and its subsidiaries. Justin Charise provides investment advisory services as an Advisor of Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Company® (NMWMC), Milwaukee, WI, a subsidiary of NM and federal savings bank. Justin Charise is an Agent of NM and Northwestern Long Term Care Insurance Company, Milwaukee, WI, (long-term care insurance) a subsidiary of NM. Justin Charise provides investment brokerage services as a Registered Representative of Northwestern Mutual Investment Services, LLC (NMIS), a subsidiary of NM, registered investment adviser, broker-dealer and member FINRA and SIPC.

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CRYP TO

How We Can Equalize the Crypto Gender Gap Three top female executives explain how we can keep crypto from ultimately becoming a boys’ club. BY EVA CROUSE

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he financial sector has been a traditionally maledominated industry since the beginning, but the birth of the crypto craze has provided us with an opportunity to start from scratch. For many, crypto can be an intimidating space because just as people began to realize that it was not a passing fad, the learning curve became steep and the price of Bitcoin soared.

The gender gap in crypto is, in fact, already mounting. CNBC reported last summer that the crypto gender gap is already wider than it is within more traditional forms of investment, with more than twice the amount of men investing in crypto than women. What doesn’t help is that women don’t feel they know much about cryptocurrency anyway. In a recent study conducted by BlockFi, it was revealed that 94 percent of women have heard of crypto, but only nine percent feel they know a fair amount about the asset class. One of the most valuable aspects crypto brings to the table is its accessibility. The DeFi model allows anyone who has access to the internet and the ability to open a bank account to get involved in this decentralized field. So the question becomes, what is getting in the way of women seizing this opportunity?

Worth sat down with Alizé Marchand, head of crypto at The Strategic Funds, Flori Marquez,

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With Inflation Rising, How Do I Adjust My Investments?

BY JENNIFER KIM

Jennifer Kim, MS, CFP®, CMFC®, CHFC®, CLU® Managing Senior Partner SIGNATURE ESTATE & INVESTMENT ADVISORS, LLC

My first response to that question would be: “Well, you’re already ahead of many investors because you realize that rising inflation should trigger adjustments in your portfolio.”

But by “adjustments,” we do not mean tweaks to a portfolio to keep it safe until inflation calms down. Instead, we mean identifying those sectors in your investments that historically suffer the most from high inflation, as well as those that suffer considerably less, or even thrive.

That is the first step in finding opportunities amidst an inflation spike.

The good news is that historical data provides guidance and precedence for homing in on “inflation opportunity sectors.”

Of course, if you have been working with an astute financial advisory firm, you have already diversified your portfolio to include “safe” investments and “volatile” investments. Our firm calls this strategy “Tactical Allocation,” which, when it comes to equities, looks at two factors to measure an investment’s risk—its capitalization and what we call its “style.”

A firm’s equity capitalization, or the total value of its shares in the market, fits within three designations: large-cap, companies with a market capitalization of more than $10 billion; mid-cap, with a capitalization of $2 billion to $10 billion; and small-cap, with a capitalization under $2 billion. In most instances, the size of a firm’s capitalization determines its level of risk, with large-cap companies presenting the least risk.

As to a firm’s “style” of investing, there are three: 1. “value style,” with a slow-growth/lowrisk approach; 2. “growth style,” where a high-risk/fast-growth approach dominates; and 3. “blend style,” where neither value nor growth dominate.

If we add high rates of inflation to this mix, yes, a portfolio will most likely need some sector adjustments based on an investment sector’s resilience during an inflation/interest rate fluctuation period. For example: WITH LOW INTEREST RATES (CURRENTLY): We would overweight investments in energy, materials and health care and underweight investments in info technology and “consumer discretionary” sectors.

WITH RISING INTEREST RATES (MOST LIKELY THIS YEAR): We would make adjustments to overweight consumer staples, health care, telecommunications and utilities, while underweighting industrials, info technology and financials.

WITH HIGH INTEREST RATES (HOPEFULLY NOT): We would overweight real estate, financials, industrials and consumer discretionary while underweighting energy, telecommunications and utilities.

To sum up, every portfolio is different, of course, and many factors determine which investments get overweighted, underweighted or even left unchanged. But when inflation rises and, in turn, interest rates increase, the way to avoid risk and take advantage of opportunities, is to put more emphasis on sectors that perform the best when those two factors are in play.

ABOUT JENNIFER KIM

Jennifer Kim, MS, CFP®, CMFC®, ChFC®, CLU®, is a Managing Senior Partner at SEIA. Currently, she is a licensed independent insurance broker with Signature Comprehensive Insurance Services, LLC (SCIS). Her specialties include estate planning, retirement planning and corporate benefits.

Jennifer has been in the investment management and insurance business since 1993. She has written several articles for Worth, Angeleno and LA Confidential magazines on various financial topics. Jennifer has had numerous speaking engagements, including the USC County Hospital, the Writers Guild of America, Panda Express and Charles Schwab. $17 BILLION ASSETS MANAGED AS OF 12/31/2021 SEIA & ITS AFFILIATES.

seia.com

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jkim@seia.com

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2121 Avenue of the Stars #1600 Los Angeles, CA 90067

Disclaimer This article is not intended as, and financial representatives do not give, legal or tax advice. Taxpayers should seek advice based on their particular circumstances from an independent tax advisor.

Signature Estate & Investment Advisors, LLC (SEIA) is an SEC-registered investment adviser; however, such registration does not imply a certain level of skill or training and no inference to the contrary should be made.

Securities offered through Royal Alliance Associates, Inc. member FINRA/SIPC. Investment advisory services offered through SEIA, LLC, 2121 Avenue of the Stars, Suite 1600, Los Angeles, CA 90067. Royal Alliance Associates, Inc. is separately owned and other entities and/or marketing names, products or services referenced here are independent of Royal Alliance Associates, Inc. (CA Ins. License #0B11807).

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CRYP TO cofounder and SVP of operations at BlockFi, and Marieke Flament, CEO of NEAR, to get their take on why there is such a large gender gap in crypto and what needs to be done to empower more women to get involved.

Marchand pointed out that “it is an issue of messaging and exposure.” In the crypto industry, only 15 percent of investors are women, but the reason for this could be cultural. Marchand says that gender-biased messaging starts at a very young age, and although it is likely unintentional, girls are traditionally encouraged to study things like art, language and communications, whereas boys are encouraged more toward math, science and economics.

Additionally, media outlets can be extremely biased, limiting the financial topics covered for female audiences and expanding on financial topics for male audiences. Marchand also draws a connection between the gender gap and everyday exposure.

“Men tend to talk about things like investments, salaries and negotiating more in friend circles, with colleagues and just in general,” Marchand says. “And each time they mention something like that, they’re being exposed to these words. Women are less likely to talk about these things.”

The good news is there are things that can be done to start to shift this narrative and encourage more women to be open about their financial health and goals.

In order for this to happen, though, women at large need to become more comfortable discussing their finances. “The majority of women rely on conversations with their family and friends to inform their financial decisions,” Marquez says. “And so if you’re in a demographic

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that is excluded from an industry, and you’re getting all your information from your friends and family, who are probably in the same demographic, it’s going to reinforce the exclusion.” In order to break the cycle of exclusion around more complex financial topics, the first step is to start asking questions, no matter how basic they might seem.

Because of how new the crypto industry is, and how complex the technology has become, very few people feel they have a strong understanding of this asset. So, the time is now for women to invest in themselves by learning about crypto. Marieke Flament, CEO of NEAR, emphasizes that education about crypto and blockchain technology is the most important and effective way to invest in yourself because this technology is acting as an additional layer over the existing internet and will eventually transform everything. Marquez doubled down on this idea of investing in yourself, saying that the most effective way to learn about crypto is to work in crypto. “The reality is that if you’re thinking in the long term, giving up cash for a year to invest in yourself and your knowledge and how much you can learn, makes you more valuable and you can cash out on the other end of that at a much higher salary range and career projection than you would be if you just stayed in the big, corporate, safe company where you have to kind of claw your way up the ladder.”

“There’s probably an intersection of whatever you like and crypto because there are so many ways that the technology can be applied.”

-FLORI MARQUEZ

Between 2020 and 2021, career opportunities in crypto rose by almost 400 percent. This is due to the massive amount of venture capital that has been invested in the space, and with that comes the ability for companies to move beyond the core tech, meaning the coding and engineering that powers Bitcoin mining and blockchain development. “When you move from the core tech, the skills that you need actually become, dare I say, more traditional skills,” Flament says. This means that Web 3.0 companies are expanding, and with that comes the need for all different kinds of skills, whether that be legal, marketing, headhunting, managing, etc. Additionally, the accessibility of crypto is only increasing. “There’s probably an intersection of whatever you like and crypto because there are so many ways that the technology can be applied,” Marquez says. So start looking for ways that your skills can be applied to this exploding industry, and invest in yourself.

The gender gap in crypto is inarguable and caused by a plethora of factors; however, by placing these factors under a microscope, we have an opportunity to change the statistics and empower women to help level the playing field in a major financial sector. Marchand says that the industry as a whole needs to tackle this problem head on and ensure that they are providing women with speaking opportunities, media appearances and interviews to increase exposure and allow other women to see themselves in roles like these.

Education and experience are also key factors in equalizing the gender gap in crypto, and although it might seem intimidating, Marquez urges women to take that first step toward investing in themselves and their financial well-being because as this industry explodes, there is a place for everyone, as long as you are brave enough to take it.

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ART

Does Fractional Art Investing Add Up? Not everyone can shell out millions to hang a Basquiat in their home, but you can still own part of a masterpiece—and earn investment returns to beat inflation while you’re at it.

BY JAMES LEDBETTER

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n 2020, the Brooklyn-based art collective MSCHF bought a Damien Hirst print for $30,000 and cut out each of its 88 spots, selling them for $480 apiece. It then auctioned off the leftover paper, retitled “88 Holes,” for more than $260,000.

While cutting up and selling pieces of works of art remains the stuff of highbrow pranks, increasingly, investors are buying fractions of works of art. The motivation is

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easy to understand: Contemporary art investments have outperformed the S&P 500 over the last 25 years (offering a 14 percent annual return versus the S&P 500’s 9.5 percent annual return), according to Citi’s Global Art Market report.

One of the leaders in the fractional art space is Masterworks, based in New York City and founded in 2017. The company says it has more than $300 million in art assets under management.

Here’s how it works: Masterworks signs up members based on their investor profile (it currently claims more than 250,000 registered users, although probably far fewer have actually invested). Those members get access to new deals every few days.

The company creates a Delawarebased limited liability corporation, registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), to “facilitate an investment” in a single work of art by a given artist (one recent example was the renowned German visual artist Gerhard Richter, for which the fund allowed a maximum of $9 million). That company is then chopped up into hundreds of thousands of shares, which are sold to Masterworks’ members until they are gone.

At a fixed point after the shares have been bought, the work of art is professionally appraised, and its investors are given quarterly reports

One Painting’s Fractional Journey July 6, 2020: Masterworks purchases George Condo’s “Staring into Space” for $1.6 million.

July 16, 2020: Masterworks registers the Condo painting with Securities and Exchange Commission.

July 20, 2020: 88,000 shares of the painting are sold to investors.

December 1, 2021: “Staring into Space” sells at auction for $2.9 million, yielding a 31.7 percent internal rate of return, net of fees and costs.

about the work’s value. Eventually, the work is sold, and investors are paid their pro-rated share of the difference in value, minus Masterworks’ fees. The SEC filings indicate that a minimum of $15,000 is required to invest, and a maximum of $100,000 is allowed, although a Masterworks representative told Worth that both of these limits can be waived if individual circumstances warrant (a first-time investor might be allowed to put in $10,000, for example).

Other investment firms take a different approach. At Yieldstreet, they invest not in a single painting, but in a collection of paintings in a genre to diversify the fund. One of Yieldstreet’s funds, for example, collects the work of Harlem Renaissance painters, including Alice Neel and Jacob Lawrence. Yieldstreet’s managing director and head of art investments Rebecca Fine told Worth: “We target artists who are

sort of underappreciated and undervalued, where we really consider that there is room for great appreciation in value.” Interestingly, the vast majority of art that gets securitized and sold is modern/contemporary art. Investment firms say their algorithms show that these works appreciate the most and come up for sale most often.

Fractional art purchases may not suit the needs of all investors. At Yieldstreet, art investors commit to a five-year fund, with two possible one-year extensions. So, while the return can be impressive, it requires much more patience than a stock or ETF. At Masterworks, the investment tie-up in an individual work can be even longer—three to 10 years, although the company points out that it has an incentive to sell sooner rather than later. Masterworks does provide a kind of emergency liquidity exit; its art investors are allowed to sell their shares on a secondary market, but there is no guarantee that the secondary market will be able to make the investor whole.

Moreover, despite the sometimes staggering increases in value that can take place for individual artistic works, prices can go down as well as up. The COVID pandemic had a profound effect on art sales; the lack of in-person art fairs meant far fewer sales, creating in 2020 what an influential art industry report dubbed “the biggest recession in the global art market since the financial crisis of 2009.”

Even so, the market has recovered since, and the long-term numbers are encouraging. And for lovers of art who are also interested in earning investment returns to beat inflation but could never afford to spend millions on a work, it’s hard to improve on owning a piece of an artist you admire.

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20 QUESTIONS

6. Do you fly private or commercial?

Honestly? Driving. I will get on a plane if I have to, but I’m not a fan of flying.

7.

Chrissy Fichtl Everyone loves a great scent—especially Chrissy Fichtl. Fichtl founded soap and candle company Apotheke in 2011 and opened its first factory the next year in her beloved Brooklyn. In 2021, Apotheke opened a new factory and its first flagship store. We caught up with Fichtl to find out what she’s reading, what brands inspire her and why Brooklyn holds a special place in her heart.

1. What are you reading?

I am rereading How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. It’s a classic!

2.

What’s your favorite way to give?

Donating to local nonprofits whenever we can. One of our longtime partners is the Red Hook Art Project, a nonprofit which provides visual art, music and academic help to the kids in our community.

3. Your favorite city? Brooklyn!

4. What do you love about it?

Red Hook, Brooklyn is where our candles are made, it’s where my kids were born—simply, it’s home. And if you want to find a moment of peace and quiet in Brooklyn, walking along the pier is where it’s at.

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Other than a phone or computer, what do you never travel without?

Hand sanitizer and snacks for my kids.

8.

What other companies/brands inspire you?

I know it is a bit out of our fragrance scope, but I love Shake Shack. I think they do a phenomenal job of growth and still staying authentic, sustainable, fun and feeling “small” to me. Their innovations and creative space are always pushing boundaries, and that’s something I would love to see for us as we grow.

9. The most difficult part of being a

founder?

When I started my own company, one of the aspects of being a founder that I relished was getting to make my own decisions. This part is a gift, but also a curse. There’s no one to tell you if what you’re deciding is right or wrong, and there’s pressure when others are relying on you.

10.

How Does Apotheke invest in Itself?

Within Apotheke, I think diversity is key. We not only focus on D2C, but we also focus on wholesale, restaurant programs, private label, collaborations, influencer relationships and any other creative way we can communicate and be creative.

11. What advice would you give to a

younger you?

Trust the process.

12. Drink of choice?

Can’t live without my morning coffee.

And I’m currently obsessing over espresso martinis.

13. Favorite artwork?

Love Matt Schwartz’s work from She Hit Pause. I have a large print of “Candy Store” in our living room.

Brings me back to my days managing a surf shop in Sag Harbor, N.Y.

14. What does “worth beyond

wealth” mean to you?

Balance. When you can enjoy life in all areas between success, kids, my husband, friends, personal time, that is priceless to me.

15. Favorite movie?

Can I say movies? I’m a massive fan of all movies from the ‘80s and am currently on rotation with Back to the Future, Gremlins and Karate Kid. (Can you tell I have two kids?)

16.

What scent always reminds you of home?

Apotheke Charcoal.

17. What keeps you awake

at night?

What keeps me physically awake: my four-year-old, who refuses to sleep without me. What keeps me mentally awake: pesky late-night emails and constantly thinking about what’s the best move for my business.

18.

What’s the biggest challenge you’ve had to overcome?

Dreaming, doing and learning new things comes easy to me, but when it comes to managing people, there has been a learning curve. My family and their lives are fluid with Apotheke, so I have had to remind myself not to take things too personally when it comes to our employees. I really cherish each person we hire, but I also am beginning to understand the impact of boundaries, communication and expectations within a healthy company.

19. What do you deny yourself?

Time off. That was too easy for me to say actually, and I know that it is something I have to start allowing myself to have.

20.

How would you like to be remembered?

I want to be known as someone who cares, who still knows how to have fun and who works hard.

It’s a constant balance I am trying to achieve and can be super hard on myself about, but if my family, friends and employees know me as those three things, I’m happy.

I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y LY N D O N H AY E S

5.

How many days a year do you travel?

These days, not many. But we try to go on family weekend trips upstate as often as we can!

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