Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. By almost every measure, The Honest Company, known for its clean products, is a relatively small player in an enormous ecosystem. With 2025 revenue of $371.3 million and a market capitalization of about $540 million, it is a fraction of the size of Amazon ($717 billion in 2025 sales and $2.87 trillion in market cap) or even General Mills ($19.5 billion in revenue…
Author: Staff Writer
August is quickly coming to a close, but it appears to be ending the way it began: with mass layoffs at some of the biggest tech companies on the planet. Here’s the latest roundup of job cuts from some of the most prominent tech players in the industry. Apple slashes positions on Siri and Vision Pro teams Of all the tech layoffs this month so far, the recent job cuts at Apple seem to have grabbed the most headlines. This is for a couple of reasons. First, Apple rarely announces mass layoffs—so any round of job cuts from the iPhone…
The beginning of the 20th century, much like the beginning of the 21st, was an era of increasing optimism. The financial panics of 1873 and 1893 were in the past, new technologies like electricity and internal combustion were just gaining traction and Morganization was creating trusts insulated from the ravages of competition. The financial journalist Alexander Dana Noyes wrote at the time that the market “based its ideas and conduct on the assumption that we were living in a New Era; that old rules and principles and precedents of finance were obsolete; that things could safely be done today which…
Ben Blumenrose has noticed that the floor for AI-generated website design is rising fast. As co-founder and managing partner at the venture capital firm Designer Fund, and a practicing designer for two decades, Blumenrose has been tracking the rapid improvement of AI-generated visuals. He can still spot the difference between a site designed by a professional human and one produced by a model (some tells: the proliferation of “pills,” floating dashboards, and gradients, gradients, gradients), but the AI results are “five times better than what the same kind of tools did a year ago.” He anticipates the trend will continue.…
Walmart once famously hyped its “low price guarantee,” showcasing how the retailer’s scale helped customers save money. Now, in a push to cut its own costs, Walmart is 3D printing its stores. For the last two years, contractors working for Walmart have used 3D-printed construction at a handful of sites across the U.S. The walls for five additions to existing stores in Tennessee, Missouri, Alabama, and Arkansas have been completed in this fashion so far. It’s the country’s largest deployment of 3D-printed architecture in the commercial sector. The retailer’s scale is catalyzing the growth and adoption of the technology, which…
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is freezing her eggs, and she’s doing it in public. On Instagram, she filmed herself giving the first hormone injection, told her followers not to squirm, and answered the questions they were asking. Why? How much? How long does it take? Most women go through this alone and don’t tell anyone at work. AOC turned it into something people could watch and learn from. Her choice is seen as controversial. It shouldn’t be. I’m convinced it can have a huge, positive impact for working women. Egg freezing, on its own, has theoretically no bearing on a career. What…
Tens of thousands of people in northwest Indiana have been living without electricity for more than a week, yet this disaster received little national attention until residents had already entered what they described as “survival mode.” The blackout began after an August 11 derecho produced winds approaching 99 miles per hour, destroying power lines, transmission equipment, and utility poles across the region. More than 300,000 NIPSCO customers initially lost service, representing over 60% of the utility’s system and the largest outage event in its history. As of August 20, approximately 68,000 customers reportedly remained without power, with parts of Gary…
Employee reviews serve as an essential tool for improving workplace performance. They offer structured feedback that helps you align your personal goals with the organization’s objectives. By identifying strengths and weaknesses, you can set clear targets for improvement. Engaging in these discussions fosters open communication, allowing for a safe environment to share ideas and concerns. Understanding these benefits is important, but there’s more to explore about how to maximize the impact of these reviews. Key Takeaways Employee reviews provide structured feedback, fostering a productive workplace and aligning individual performance with organizational goals. They facilitate open communication, encouraging two-way dialogues that…
The West suddenly discovered that Brazil is sitting on one of the most strategic mineral reserves in the world. The Associated Press reports that Brazil has the second-largest known rare-earth reserves behind China, and foreign interests are now rushing into the country as governments desperately attempt to break China’s grip on the supply chain. More than 86% of Brazil’s rare-earth exploration applications were filed within the last three years, and over 40% have foreign financial backing. This is what happens when governments wake up decades too late to the importance of commodities. China understood long ago that control of natural…
The larger your business grows, the more difficult it is to maintain a highly engaged culture where employees are excited about the work they do and are committed to helping the organization meet its business and branding goals. Why? Because growth automatically introduces complexity in the workplace and causes the distance between the boardroom and the front line to grow as workplace head count increases. As the business scales, instead of experiencing the passion of the founders firsthand, new hires receive guidance from other employees who may not have that same passion for the business. Instead of senior leadership being…