When Adebayo Alonge and Amy Kao launched RxAll in 2016, the Yale business school classmates were focused on helping reduce counterfeit medications in the supply chain of African countries. RxAlls flagship RxScanner uses AI and light spectroscopy to spot counterfeit pills, helping pharmacies and regulators improve safety. As the scanner picked up adoption, Kao and Alonge identified additional ways to secure supply chains.
Those now include everything from drug procurementhelping to connect pharmacies and hospitals with companies whose products routinely test as high qualityto demand prediction via a point-of-sale platform, and even financing for independent pharmacies to ensure they can maintain product supplies.
Alonge says that 95% of African pharmacies are independently owned and still operate with handwritten records. The friction really is around understanding what products are low quality, understanding what products are in demand, and getting access to the financing to purchase [quality] products and put them on the shelf, he says, noting that RxAll uses a pharmacys POS dataand aggregated data across regionsto help predict demand.
In the past year, RxAll has seen its network of pharmacies more than double, reaching 5,000-plus locations, largely in Nigeria, Kenya, and Uganda. Meanwhile, the RxScanner has helped remove 1.3 million counterfeit medications from the supply chain.
RxAll is also working with regulators and governments to identify bogus pharmaceuticals and even plan public outreach around illnesses based on what medication is in demand. Last year, the company forged five partnerships with government agencies, including Nigerias National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control. The goal, Kao says, is to enable these public partners to take a more proactive approach and address counterfeiting and drug safety before tainted products get to patients. Ideally, we work ourselves out of a job, she says.
Explore the full list of Fast Companys World Changing Ideas, 100 inspiring projects that are making the world more accessible, equitable, and sustainable for everyone.
Last June, conservative activist Robby Starbuck launched a campaign targeting woke companies, threatening boycotts unless they renounced their policies on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Through the end of 2024, many companies buckled, including Tractor Supply Co., John Deere, Harley-Davidson, and Walmart. The movements momentum continued to grow after the November election, claiming McDonalds, Target, Amazon, Meta, PBS, and others.
Then the anti-DEI mob ran into Ron Vachris, a guy who started at Costco as a forklift driver more than 40 years ago and rose to become the CEO in 2024. In January, the National Center for Public Policy Research submitted an anti-DEI proposal at Costcos annual shareholder meeting. On January 23, Vachris and the companys board of directors unanimously recommended that shareholders reject the proposal, and more than 98% of shareholders did just that. Three days later, 19 Republican state attorneys general sent Vachris a letter demanding Costco end its DEI policies.
Vachris and Costco didnt budge, which is why Fast Company is recognizing him as the inaugural recipient of the World Changing Ideas Visionary of the Year. Vachris declined to talk to Fast Company. (Who can blame him? The last thing he needs is to look like hes taking a victory lap.)
Vachriss actions, says David Glasgow, a DEI expert at NYU Law School, provided a good example for other organizations that are feeling a lot of fear and anxiety right now.
Studies from McKinsey, MIT, and others confirm the long-term financial benefits for companies with strong DEI policies. They tend to have teams that are more creative. Workers tend to be happier. Theres less attrition and turnover when you have a focus on inclusion, says Northwestern Universitys Alvin Tillery.
Costco retains workers at a higher rate than its competitors, and employees earn a median annual wage of $47,000 (compared with about $27,000 at Walmart). Vachris, a prime example to shelf-stocking employees that Costco rewards top performers, may also inspire other leaders to stand up for their principles.
For eight years running, World Changing Ideas has celebrated the people and companies working to make the world safer, cleaner, more sustainable, and more equitable. It’s no small featbut it’s inspiring to see the progress these groups are making and the impact that their projects are already having. This year’s World Changing Ideas Awards recognizes 100 projects around the world that are pursuing innovation for good.
To get there requires an editorial team that spends months poring over applications, vetting projects, and ultimately telling the stories that bring these projects to life. Here is a behind-the-scenes look at how we make it happen.
METHODOLOGY
More than 1,500 applications were submitted to the World Changing Ideas Awards 2025. A team of staff editors and writers, alongside trusted freelancers, assessed each application based on our criteria, which include:
IMPACT
We look for projects that have created (or are trying to create) substantive, positive change in the world. We want the impact to be something that can improve lives, society, or the environmentnot just business bottom lines.
DESIGN
We think about this both conceptually and physically. We look for projects that have well-thought-out plans for how theyll create their impactand how they will avoid potential negative externalities. Functionality and aesthetics are also important when we evaluate applications.
SCALABILITY
Projects may be small right now, but do they have the potential to grow and bring the change to more people? We look for ideas that have the ability to change the world. This can mean projects that create enormous change for a small number of people, as well as projects that will create small but substantive change for an enormous number of people. Either way, we look for projects that can scale to serve the entire market they’re targeting.
INGENUITY
We evaluate projects that range from conceptual to just launched to fully operational. But no matter what stage the idea is in, we judge it on whether it’s bold, new, and innovative. The best entries offer a path-breaking solution to an important problem.
World Changing Ideas taps the collective knowledge of our editors, reporters, and outside writers, says Morgan Clendaniel, Fast Company‘s digital executive editor. We use these writers’ deep understanding of AI, urban design, climate tech, and transportation to create this curated list of the projects delivering the most impact and ingenuity in their sectors.”
Each winner is chosen after multiple rounds of judging and conversations about a project’s role in the current needs and challenges of this moment. This monthslong process ensures that every project chosen to receive a World Changing Idea award is representative of the best work in its field.
Meet the team
Writers: Maria Jose Gutierrez Chavez, Yasmin Gagne, Steven Melendez, Adele Peters, David Salazar, Grace Snelling, Kristin Toussaint, Talib Visram
Judges: Jeff Beer, Elissaveta M. Brandon, Morgan Clendaniel, Shalene Gupta, Jessica Hullinger, Veronica Irwin, Lily McDonald, Steven Melendez, Jocelyn Mintz, April Mokwa, Alex Pasternack, Adele Peters, Clint Rainey, Aimee Rawlins, Danielle Renwick, David Salazar, Elizabeth Segran, Grace Snelling, Eric Sullivan, Kristin Toussaint, Talib Visram
Editor: Aimee Rawlins
Copy Editors: Joanne Camas, Charissa Jones
Coordinator: Shealon Calkins
Design/Photo: Alice Alves, Jeanne Graves, Heda Hokschirr, Haewon Kye, Eric Perry, Sandra Riao, Daniel Salo, Maja Saphir, Mike Schnaidt, Amy Wong
Development: Bryan Cuellar, Cayleigh Parrish
Theftosterone (noun): When a woman shares an idea with her colleagues, perhaps in a meeting, and five minutes later, a man says almost the exact same thing, posing it as his own original idea in an effort to bolster his professional reputation at the expense of hers. (This aggression is exacerbated when the collective response to the woman is lackluster but the man gets credit for his great suggestion and is all too happy to bask in the praise without the slightest sense of guilt.)
It doesnt matter how smart or accomplished the woman is, men still conversationally steamroll them and sometimes outright steal their ideas. We call this phenomenon theftosterone.It happens even in the highest court in the land. Transcripts of fifteen years of Supreme Court oral arguments show that as more women have joined the court, male justices have increased their interruptions of the female justices. Many male justices interrupt female justices at double-digit rates per term, but the reverse is almost never true. During a twelve-year span, when women made up 24% of the bench, 32% of interruptions were of the female justices, but only 4% were by female justices. Strangely, as the gender imbalance on the court has lessened over the past several years, the incidents of this have not gone down. In fact theyve increased.
When we asked people in a survey for their firsthand experience observing original-thought theft, over 72% said they had indeed seen it take place. Reassuringly, the percentage of times it was called out, either on the spot or reported afterward, was 10% higher than incidents when the perpetrator was not called out on it.
THE MOST VULNERABLE
Kate White, the legendary editor in chief of Cosmopolitan, says that if youre a good idea person, you need to be extra vigilant in anticipating theftosterone and warding it off before it happens.
I came up the ranks as an idea person. And let me tell you, those who are not idea people often steal your ideas out of desperation.There are two ways to protect against that, White says. Whenever possible, put ideas in writing and cc people. If your boss wants you to generate ideas in meetings, use a claim-the-floor strategy.You can say something like If I could have everyones attention, Id like to take a moment to provide some vital information that I think will be eye-opening and of tremendous value. Dont just blurt out something like Maybe we should employ that strategy in California too. It might get lost in the back-and-forth and then someone (probably a guy) will bring it up five minutes later as their own.Instead, gain the floor, and say, I have an idea. I think we should consider employing this strategy in California, and let me offer some research that explains why. Dont start with all the research. Women tend to show their homework first.
BLOCKING THE PUNCH
But what if the theftosterone has already been perpetrated? Here are three possible courses of action:
Amplification: This requires the cooperation and involvement of women colleagues. Juliet Eilperin, a reporter for the Washington Post, spoke with women who worked in the Obama administration who devised an antidote to theftosterone. Its a technique they called amplification. Heres how it works. If a woman in a meeting makes a suggestion or presents an idea, another woman immediately acknowledges it, repeats it, and gives her credit. This shuts down any possibility that a man in the meeting can later stake claim to the idea for himself. The plan was executed with so much success that women in the administration noticed that Obama began calling on women in meetings more often.
Claiming Affirmation: If assembling a team of female support isnt possible for amplification, and youre forced to go it alone, its up to you to speak up. The lines you should have in your back pocket are Im glad you agree with the point I just made or Its so gratifying to get your affirmation of my suggestion from a moment ago.
Male Advocates: Women would benefit from a more equitable enforcement of communication justice. This requires that men also be on high alert for the appropriation of womens ideas at work. When they spot it, they can say, That sounds like exactly what Kristin said just a few minutes ago. Do you have anything more that you could add to that? or Im glad to see that youre aligned with the idea Kristin shared a little earlier.
BALANCING GENDER COMMUNICATION
Unlike imitation, theftosterone is not the sincerest form of flattery. It is what its name suggests: an unjust appropriation of a womans voice.
Given how long men have been engaging in this behavior, the prospect of eliminating or even dramatically curtailing these aggressions seems remote. For years the struggle to be properly respected seemed to be solely a battle for women to fight, and when they elected to go to the mat, often the consequences of being labeled militant or nasty outweighed the benefits.
Men need to recognize the role they can and must play in combating this scourge to bring about more equity in communication in the workplace.Adapted from SPEAK, MEMORABLY: The Art of Captivating an Audience by Bill McGowan and Juliana Silva. Copyright 2025 by Bill McGowan and Juliana Silva. Reprinted courtesy of Harper Business, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Available wherever books are sold.
The robotaxi race is heating up in Austin. A decade after Googles self-driving car project quietly tested on the citys streets, a new wave of autonomous vehicle companies is setting up shop. Waymo, now a dominant force in San Francisco, is expanding to the city. Tesla is preparing to debut its long-promised robotaxi. And smaller players like Zoox, Avride, and ADMT are using the Texas capital as a proving ground.
What was once a fringe experiment is now a high-stakes industry comeback, deep in the heart of Texas.
You have a regulatory environment thats keen to capitalize on these developments, says Alison Brooks, research vice president for worldwide public safety at IDC. At the same time, its a blue city in a red state thats predisposed towards alternative vehicles that are more environmentally friendly.
The self-driving companies converging on Austin
The only fully deployed and operational robotaxi company in Austin is Waymo. In 2023, the company announced it was expanding testing to the city that keeps it weird, more than two years after its Phoenix launch. Since its March launch, Waymo now has about 100 robotaxis in Austin, making up 20% of local Uber trips. By expanding our partnership with Uber to Austin, we were able to bring Waymo rides to residents and visitors in Austin even faster, a representative for Waymo tells Fast Company.
Tesla is now gearing up for deployment in the city. The robotaxiwhich Elon Musk has been teasing since 2019appears finally ready for the streets. Musk, who once operated out of the Bay Area, relocated his companies to Texas and brought his robotaxis with him. According to his posts on X, some of the vehicles have already begun driving. (Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.)
For the past several days, Tesla has been testing self-driving Model Y cars (no one in drivers seat) on Austin public streets with no incidents. A month ahead of schedule.Next month, first self-delivery from factory to customer.— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 29, 2025
Several smaller robotaxi companies are also testing in Austin. Zoox, owned by Amazon, is operating vehicles with safety drivers across multiple districts. Avride is running tests as well, though its planned debutthrough a partnership with Uberwill take place in nearby Dallas. ADMT, Volkswagens robotaxi subsidiary, has been testing in Austin since 2023.
As these autonomous vehicle companies converge on Austin, the city is becoming a key arena for robotaxi competition. It may not have the highest adoption of self-driving vehiclesPhoenix and San Francisco still lead in that regardbut with Teslas entry, Austin is fast becoming the most competitive testing ground.
A friendly regulatory environment
Why Austin? Many point to the citys favorable regulatory environment. In Texas, state law preempts local law, which means the relatively relaxed Senate Bill 2205passed in 2017sets the statewide standard for AV regulation. Still, Austins active local government has played a key supporting role, offering infrastructure and coordination through efforts like the Autonomous Vehicle Working Group, which brings together staff from several city departments.
A spokesperson for the City of Austin tells Fast Company that, while the city cannot directly regulate AVs, it can support companies with valuable information. Each robotaxi company has received maps of school zones, schedules for special events, and guidance on emergency vehicle protocols. The spokesperson notes that Tesla, though not required to inform the city of testing, has communicated with the Working Group.
Many companies view this top-down modelless restrictive than frameworks in states like Californiaas an advantage. While California has an extensive permitting system, Texas only mandates that AVs are registered, insured, and have systems to record crash data. A representative for Avride cited the favorable regulatory environment in Austin, adding: The state has clear and supportive laws that allow us to operate and scale our technology confidently, in a statement to Fast Company.
Of course, regulations carry weightboth protective and limiting. They can restrict innovation but also safeguard the public. IDCs Alison Brooks and Remi Letemple, a senior research analyst at the firm, both reference the Cruise crash in San Francisco as a cautionary tale. In 2023, a Cruise robotaxi dragged a pedestrian along the street, prompting a full recall of the companys fleet.
How do we get an environment that balances innovation with regulation in a way that avoids catastrophic events? IDCs Brooks asks. Thats the tension that I think exists in all of those markets. When I talk to adjacent mobility folks, theyre watching this market very carefully as well for the same reasons.
When asked about the risk of crashes or technical failures, the City of Austin spokesperson responded: The City works with AV companies before and during deployment to obtain training for first responders, establish expectations for ongoing communication and share information about infrastructure and events.
Austins intrinsic benefits
Beyond regulations, Austin offers several regional advantages. Its consistently high temperatures tend to keep pedestrians off the streets, reducing unexpected interactions for autonomous vehicles. The city is dense enough to challenge AV systems but not so congested as to make navigation unmanageable. A representative from Avride also highlighted the presence of the University of Texas, noting its strong tech talent pool.
Demographics add to Austins appeal as a testing ground. The city has a sizable base of affluent residentsit now ranks tenth among U.S. cities with the most millionaires. Despite the tech influx, Austin remains largely liberal. Local disability advocates have especially championed robotaxis for broadening access. A representative for Zoox tells Fast Company that locals have established that they like to move around with on-demand rideshare.
Austin also presents unique environmental features including horizontal traffic lights, suspended cable traffic signals, and train track crossings that will help train our AI to better understand and navigate various road patterns and driving conditions, the Zoox representative writes.
Pushback to the AV surge has been muted. Some Austin residents worried about Cruise, specifically cyclists who watched a Cruise vehicle veer into a bike lane in 2023. Kara Kockelman, a professor of transportation engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, says that the only safety worry she’s heard from Austinites was that Cruise cars “came too close to their vehicle.” Now, Cruise AVs are gone from the city’s roads.
“With Waymo, [Austin residents] only complain if it obeys the speed limit,” Kockelman says. “They drive really well, but they do need to speed up.”
Still, Austins local benefits may not translate elsewhere. Other cities have more pedestrians, more complex roadways, or more cautious consumers. I dont think Austin can be patient zero, even if it becomes a success. Its not scalable to other states, says IDCs Remi Letemple. Every city has its own infrastructure and its own barriers.
In a sprawling, 6-square-mile plot of land in rural West Tennessee, the Ford Motor Co. is building a massive new electric vehicle assembly plant it’s calling BlueOval City. Estimated to cost more than $5.6 billion and create more than 6,000 jobs, the industrial park is envisioned as the world’s most modern automotive manufacturing facility since Ford pioneered the assembly line. It will also remake this part of Tennessee, which has seen little, if any, economic development in decades. But despite this scale and ambition, the most impactful part of the project may be tucked inside a 3,600-square-foot dilapidated schoolhouse.
The schoolhouse is being transformed into the new Ford Community Center for the city of Stanton, population 415, which sits closest to the edge of BlueOval City. Located 50 miles outside of Memphis, Stanton is a predominantly Black community built on former plantation land. Once the heart of the community, the schoolhouse was decommissioned after desegregation. Now through an unusually community-centric process, the building is being converted into a resource center that provides residents with job training, financial literacy, healthcare access, legal services, and more.
It’s a front door for helping people who wish to participate in the rising tide of BlueOval City, says Josh McManus. His consultancy, M|B|P, spearheaded this community-focused approach, which involved more than 2,500 hours of community meetings and input sessions to understand what was needed before any investment was made.
Josh McManus [Photo: courtesy M|B|P]
What you find very fast is there are a lot of lifelong residents in the area who, because there’s been next to no economic activity there for a long time, are in need of hard skills and soft skills, McManus says.
Working directly with Ford Philanthropy, the automaker’s philanthropic arm, and Civic, a New York-based creative and marketing agency, M|B|P did on-the-ground research to learn about the conditions in the community, and used that information to set a 15-mile radius around the plant as the zone of its greatest potential local economic impact. Little by little we came to realize that there’s no physical space for the community to gather. There’s no physical space from which to conduct these forward and upward social services, McManus says.
Dialing in on the needs of the people within that zone, M|B|P suggested creating a central space where community members could access the services, training, and resources they would need to either get a job at the BlueOval City plant or play some other role in the economic development it would bring to the region. The empty schoolhouse, known to nearly everyone in the community, was an obvious location to focus this corporate giving.
Anticipated to fully open by early 2026, the new community center is part of a $9 million investment by Ford Philanthropy in the community around BlueOval City, which has been under construction for three years. Ford announced in September 2024 that production at BlueOval City would be delayed by 18 months, pushing back its opening until 2027. Earlier this year, the company projected up to $5.5 billion in losses on its electric vehicle and software operations in 2025.
Mary Culler is president of Ford Philanthropy, which was founded in 1949 and made more than $76 million in philanthropic contributions in 2024. She says McManus was instrumental in helping ensure the project was more than just a tone-deaf exercise in corporate social responsibility. It’s easy to say let’s do a community center, we’re open to everybody, we’re going to help you or support you. But in some ways you could end up with a big peanut butter smattering of nothingness if you’re not really focused, Culler says.
[Photo: courtesy M|B|P]
McManus has come to understand the importance of using community data and community input to guide these kinds of place-based corporate giving efforts. Born into a middle-class family in a factory town in the South, he started his career at the United Way in Atlanta and then Chattanooga. He went on to found his own nonprofit, CreateHere, focused on arts, economic, and cultural development initiatives in Chattanooga.
In 2015 he relocated to Detroit to serve as chief operating officer of Rock Ventures, the family office of Rocket Mortgage founder Dan Gilbert, who had been investing heavily in redeveloping the struggling city’s downtown, restoring abandoned buildings and leading a surge in downtown’s residential population. Working as Gilbert’s right hand on these interventions, McManus saw the transformative potential of applying a corporation’s deep pockets to projects with both a bottom line and a broader community impact. I had the aha tht [capitalism] wasn’t to be avoided, it was to be harnessed, McManus says, and that there was a way to find the intersection of moral imperative and market imperative.
After leaving Rock Ventures in 2017, McManus dabbled in other place-focused philanthropy and even founded a fintech startup before establishing M|B|P in 2020. Since then, he’s been working with major corporations like Ford, large foundations, and smaller nonprofits to use their philanthropic and mission-driven investments to create more impactful benefits in communities. This approach is a redesigning of corporate social responsibility, engaging more deeply in communities and working to provide the kinds of resources they actually need.
When so much corporate giving takes the form of sprinkling money out into small-scale nonprofits, McManus sees a more targeted and personal strategy that he believes can give both the corporations and the communities more desirable outcomes. I believe that the spray-and-pray model of corporate philanthropy that’s existed before can be improved upon, he says.
The community center connected to BlueOval City is one example of this change. Ford Philanthropy’s Culler says the project shows that there’s a shift underway, and that a growing number of companies are seeing the wisdom in using their dollars more strategically than performatively. She says McManus helped the BlueOval City project to make as comprehensive an impact as it could.
[Photo: courtesy M|B|P]
Instead of bringing in a caterer from Memphis for events, they hired a local cook, and helped turn her into a caterer. Instead of renting tables and chairs from an existing rental company outside of town, they helped locals form their own furniture rental business. Corporate philanthropy has learned that it’s less about dictating programs that they think are important and more about listening to the community and building capacity for organizations to really deploy and do what they probably know best to do right there on the front line, Culler says.
McManus says M|B|Pan homage to architect and urban designer Daniel Burnham’s famous 1909 advice to make big plansis actively working on projects with other Fortune 500 companies, as well as some foundations and family offices like Gilbert’s Rock Ventures. Even at a moment when political friction and economic uncertainty have clouded many companies’ short- and long-term vision, McManus is seeing growing interest in his approach to corporate giving and investment. If you don’t like the big plan that’s in place, he says, posit your alternate scenario and then build audience for that as fast as you can.
That’s the gumption behind the community center in Stanton, and why McManus sees it as a model for corporate giving that actually makes an impact on a community. I mean, it’s a tiny, tiny intervention, he says. But it’s built on a much bigger idea.
The likelihood that everyone in your office has the same shoe size is probably really low. Between differences in height, gender, and age, shoe sizes can vary widely. So when all of your officemates are using the same standard desks and chairs, it would track that a lot of people find that their work environment doesnt quite fit right either.
Compounding this problem is the fact that the average American spends approximately eight to nine hours a day sitting at work. No wonder 42% to 69% of office workers are estimated to have neck pain and 31% to 51% to have lower back pain.
Some of the main risk factors that are leading to those injuries are awkward and non-neutral postures, says Lora Cavuoto, director of University at Buffalos Ergonomics and Biomechanics Lab.
Luckily, learning some of the basics from the field of ergonomics can help you adjust your working environment and lower your risk of developing long-term injuries from sitting improperly at work.
Here are some ways Cavuoto recommends adjusting your work environment:
1. Maintain a neutral position
To begin assessing how ergonomically your office set up is, its important to begin by finding your bodys neutral position. When your body is in neutral posture, your joints are aligned and there is minimal stress on your muscles, tendons, bones, and nerves.
When sitting at a desk, this means positioning yourself so that your feet are resting on the floor, you are sitting up straight with your head aligned with your shoulders and hips, your shoulders and neck are relaxed, and your elbows and knees are at 90 degrees.
If your chair and desk do not comfortably allow you to maintain this position, you should consider making some adjustments. Lets say your table is too high, for example, says Cavuoto. Then, in order to rest your arms on the table, you’re winging your arms out so you’re needing to hold up the weight of your arms. All the muscles in your neck and your shoulders really need to engage to do that. Or if your chair is too high and your legs are hanging . . . then you might be putting pressure on the back of the knee, and that can lead to some stopping of blood flow down to the feet, causing your feet to fall asleep.
The solutions for these can be as simple as adjusting your chair height or adding a foot rest under your desk. Adding a box under your desk so that you raise your feet to get your knees into a good position and rest your feet on the ground, or adding a riser to your monitor so that it’s in a good position for you to look comfortably are low-budget ways that can make a big difference, says Cavuoto.
Its also important to consider how these adjustments may need to differ from day to day depending on what you are wearing and what tasks you are completing. One thing we often forget is if you wear different shoes, you may need to adjust the height of your chair, or add or remove a foot rest, Cavuoto says. Even if you’re switching from using a keyboard to writing something on a piece of paper, you might need to adjust the chair a little bit so that your arms are in a better position, because . . . the keyboard has maybe an inch or 2 of elevation.
2. Move your body regularly
Even if you did maintain perfect neutral sitting posture throughout the workday, you might still encounter problems like blood pooling in parts of your body if you arent moving enough to circulate it. Additionally, sitting for long uninterrupted periods of time can lead to your blood sugar levels rising, causing the body to release insulin. Over time, as the body gets used to this, this could lead to inflammation and plaque buildup in your arteries.
Cavuoto recommends getting up and taking regular movement breaks throughout the day to avoid these adverse effects.
She also recommends paying special attention to areas of the body that tend to be under a lot of stress over the workday. Doing regular wrist extensor and wrist flexor exercises are important to stretch those tendons and ligaments in the wrists to reduce pain for people who spend a lot of time typing, she says. Similarly, she recommends taking a few moments throughout the day to stretch your neck.
3. Use a chair with proper back support
Using chairs without good back support for long periods of time can put a lot of stress on your back and leg muscles to hold up your body. If you dont have fully fit core musculature, [and] you’re engaging those muscles all the time . . . those muscles can be tired, causing you to slouch and put pressure on your spine and other muscles, Cavuoto says.
If youre able to choose your work chair, she recommends looking for one that can recline and has a headrest which allows you more flexibility to relieve pressure and adjust your body throughout the day. That allows you to rest your neck, your head, and your shoulders . . . so you can offload that head weight right off your neck, she says.
4. Consider your lighting environment
Its important to note the impact that lighting has on our eyes throughout the day. Eye strain can cause a number of unpleasant effects, from migraines to neck and shoulder pain. While an office setting likely provides more even lighting conditions, Cavuoto says that a lot of people dont think about light sources as much when working from home.
She recommends setting up your work environment with lighting that you can control over the day and to avoid settings that cause strong glare off your screen.
5. Use a monitor or a laptop screen, not both
I don’t really use my laptop screen at all, actually, says Cavuoto. While using an external monitor is helpful because it enlarges the screen, another challenge when youre using a laptop and an external monitor on a desk is that the laptop is down on the surface and the monitor is a little bit raised.
Ideally, to maintain a neutral posture, your screen should be at eye level. But when switching between a laptop and monitor, you may experience some neck pain and eye strain from switching focus between two screens at different heights and scales. If you dont have access to a monitor, try raising your laptop on a stand or stacking books underneath it to get it to eye level.
Fast Company has been covering a sea change in American business over the last 15 years or so. Companies big and small have embraced the idea that they ought to be accountable not just to shareholders but to all stakeholdersincluding workers, customers, communities, suppliers, and the planet.
Some refer to it as stakeholder capitalism. Others like conscious capitalism. And for those of you who prefer woke capitalism, hey, thanks for joining us.
But then, within the last year or two, it all fell apart. Even before Trump retook the presidency, CEOs had begun shuttering DEI programs and climate initiatives, and clamming up about the greater good they were pursuing. What happened? How did a megatrend that transformed boardrooms and C-suites unravel so rapidly?
Thats the big question we asked James Surowiecki to dissect in this issues cover story, How Business for Good Went Bad.”
Surowiecki, a veteran business journalist and author of The Wisdom of Crowds, does not disappoint. He deftly explicates a number of questions inside the big one. Perhaps the most disturbing: Was corporate Americas embrace of stakeholder capitalism ever real in the first place?
In addition to those big words on the cover, Id like to call your attention to some smaller type: Summer 2025. Yes, our print magazine is now quarterly, down from five issues last year. Id like to explain the thinking behind this change, and what it means for the print magazine.
Theres no point in denying the obvious: Print media aint what it used to be. I wouldnt be much of a business journalist myself if I pretended otherwise. Fast Company is susceptible to the same shifting business dynamics and consumer behavior that have forced countless publishers to cut back or eliminate their print products.
And yet! We still believe deeply in print. We know that it delivers a special kind of experience for readers, one that no other medium can match. The beautiful, tactile object you are holding was reported, written, edited, and designed specifically to allow you to engage with the latest ideas of the innovation economy without the distraction and chaos of the daily news cycle. Read it on the weekend, ideally in a hammock.
The coverage areas will be familiar: tech, design, marketing and branding, creativity, social impact, the future of work, and more. But unlike the up-to-the-minute news coverage youll find on fastcompany.com and our social channels, the magazine offers a view from 30,000 feet.
In every article, data report, photo essay, long-form interview, and list of recognition program winners, our reporters analyze and contextualize industry trends, take readers deep inside the worlds most compelling companies, and mine the wisdom of the business leaders who are building tomorrows world today.
We hope you enjoy it, and we welcome your feedback at editor@fastcompany.com.
Mnuka Slab was designed in 2021 by Kris Sowersby for Klim Type Foundry
A playful punch
For this issues headline typeface, we chose Mnuka Slab. Its tall, condensed proportions are like a typographic punch in the guts, says designer Kris Sowersby, making it perfect for an issue that explores how stakeholder capitalism got the wind knocked out of it. Mnuka is inspired by 19th-century wood type, evoking posters that promoted the circus and civil protest. But it has a lighter side: Check out the pigtail of the uppercase Q and the ball terminal of the Jfitting for the issues tribute to Sharpie markers. And like Sharpies, condensed typefaces never go out of style. Mike Schnaidt, creative director
China is developing robotic guards for its Tiangong space station. Equipped with small thrusters, these AI-powered robotic beasts are being developed to intercept and physically shove suspicious objects away from its orbital outpost. It’s a deceptively simple but ingenious step towards active space defense in an increasingly militarized domain. Rather than firing directed energy weapons like lasers or projectiles, which will turn the potential invader into a cloud of deadly shrapnel flying at 21 times the speed of sound, the Chinese have thought of a very zen reed that bends in the wind kind of approach. The bots will grapple a threatening object and lightly push it out of harm’s way. Elegant space jiu-jitsu rather than brute kickboxing.
The announcement, made by scientist Sun Zhibin of China’s National Space Science Centre during a recent talk at Nanjing University of Science and Technology, comes as recent Pentagon reports reveal that China has already staged the first-ever satellite combat operations in low-Earth orbit. It marks a decisive shift from passive space exploration and coexistence to active territorial control at orbital altitudes.
Beijing indicates that it is not arming its space station out of aggression, but as a response to recent threats by a Starlink satellite, which grazed the Tiangong, prompting evasive maneuvers and strong formal protest in the UN by the Chinese delegation. However, it would be naive not to see it as part of the ongoing effort to dominate space by force, which is now ongoing in Russia, the United States, and China.
[Photo: Getty Images]
A logical design
Chinas solution is actually the only possible design that makes sense. On Earth, when you destroy an aerial object, it falls to the ground, where it stays forever thanks to gravity. But firing a projectile at an object approaching a space station wouldnt end a threatit would unleash chaos.
Imagine this: A bullet, no larger than your fist, streaks toward an incoming satellite. They collide not with a Hollywood explosion, but a silent, hyper-violent shattering. At orbital speeds10 times faster than a rifle roundthe impact vaporizes metal, scattering a storm of razor-edged fragments in all directions. Each shard, now a new projectile, inherits the objects original velocity. Some scream toward the void; others carve lethal arcs back toward the station, peppering its hull like cosmic shotgun pellets.
This isnt just debris. Its a permanent minefield that doesnt go away. Those fragments dont slow down. They dont fall. They loop around Earth for decades, crossing orbits like invisible shrapnel. One piece tears through a solar panel, crippling a satellite. Another punches into a fuel tank, triggering a secondary explosion. The cascade begins: each new collision spawns more debris, more weapons. Low-Earth orbitonce a highway of discoverybecomes a junkyard of spinning blades, making space travel impossible for centuries to come. This doomsday scenario is what its technically known as the Kessler effect, which was formulated in 1978 by NASA scientists Donald J. Kessler and Burton G. Cour-Palais.
Firing a laseror any other form of directed energy beamwouldnt stop the incoming object either (to be strictly correct, it would eventually, as light exerts a force on objects, but it would take years, so its not useful for this defense scenario).
Sun’s proposal, however, would theoretically work perfectly. First, its not only about space robots. It outlines a tiered response protocol that transforms space station defense from reactive to proactive operations. When sensors and ground control detect an approaching object, the system initiates a comprehensive intent assessment phase, analyzing the intruder’s trajectory, velocity changes, and behavioral patterns to determine whether the approach represents deliberate reconnaissance, accidental drift, or potential collision threat. The assessment feeds into a decision matrix that weighs multiple response options, ranging from subtle evasive maneuvers and orbital adjustments to the deployment of what Sun describes as specialized robotic thrusterssomething Im calling space guard dogs.
These bots are the most cinematic capability of the defense, involving physical interception. You can think about these space guard dogs as autonomous directional thrusters like the ones that Apollo astronauts used to maneuver the Apollo Command Module or the Lunar Module. The engineers have not presented the design for these bots yet, but they describe small thrusters equipped with sensors, a docking mechanism, and artificial intelligence. After launching from the Tiangong and intercepting the suspicious object, the bots docking mechanismmost likely a grapplewill latch onto the intruders. Once securely attached, the thrusters will fire in a controlled propulsion burn to push targets into safer trajectories, like a tugboat in a port, effectively creating a moveable exclusion zone around China’s premier space asset.
Sometimes another spacecraft may deliberately come closemaybe just to take a lookbut it can still interfere with our operations, Sun explained during his presentation, acknowledging that even ostensibly peaceful approaches can disrupt critical station operations.
The strategic rationale of the system is rooted in past incidents that have highlighted the vulnerabilities of orbital assets. In December 2021, China formally reported to the United Nations that its Tiangong space station was forced to perform two evasive maneuvers in the same year to avoid potential collisions with SpaceX’s Starlink satellites. Starlink-1095 and Starlink-2305 reportedly descended from their typical operational orbits of around 555 kilometers into Tiangong’s zone at approximately 382 kilometers, prompting emergency actions on July 1 and October 21, 2021.
The encounters were observed by Harvard astronomer Jonathan McDowell using U.S. space tracking data, estimating that the Starlink satellite in the October incident might have come within a mere 1.8 miles of the Tiangog station. In space distances, this is the equivalent of two cars coming within fractions of an inch from a crash. The near-misses occurred while astronauts were aboard the station, endangering the life or health of astronauts according to Beijing. China stressed that states are responsible for all national space activities, including those conducted by commercial operators.
The Chinese complaint to the UN highlighted the difficulty in predicting the Starlink satellites’ trajectories due to their continuous maneuvering, with their strategies largely unknown and orbital errors hard to assess, thus posing a collision risk. For the July 2021 encounter, there was no advance communication between SpaceX and the China Human Spaceflight Engineering Office (CMSEO) about the pass. SpaceX, for its part, confirmed that it checks for close approaches with both the International Space Station and China’s Space Station.
The United States stated in response that these activities did not meet the threshold for established emergency collision criteria, and therefore, emergency notifications were not warranted. China disagreed, and the International Space Stationmanaged by the United States, Russia, and Europewould have probably executed the same maneuver, according to past operational history.
This divergence in perspectives underscores a critical gap in international norms and communication protocols for space operations. The absence of clear, mutually agreed-upon rules for collision avoidance and maneuver notification between major spacefaring entities fosters an environment ripe for misinterpretation, accidental collisions, and escalating tensions, directly fueling the perceived need for space guard dog capabilities and contributing to a more contested space domain. This is even more important when you take into consideration how all these global powers are actively putting weapons in space and training for space war contravening the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, the document that established international space law and prohibited placing nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit, on celestial bodies, or in outer space.
[Photo: Getty Images]
Advantage China
Chinas protests in the UN are ironic given that Chinas ambitions in space extend far beyond its defensive robots. The country is quickly expanding military space operations, building capabilities that are reshaping the global space landscape. It founded its space force in 2024, declaring orbital operations the most crucial domain for the countrys defense. This is nothing that the United States and Russia havent been doing for decades. The Pentagon also has its own space force armfounded by Trump in his first termand has recently suggested to accelerate the countrys efforts in response to Chinas latest developments.
One of the most concerning developments for the U.S. is China’s demonstrated prowess in rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO), precise spacecraft maneuvers to approach and closely operate near another object satellite. These involve controlled relative motion for activities like inspection, maintenance, docking, or capture. They can be peacefullike filling the fuel tank of a satelliteor military, like taking down another spaceship. U.S. Space Force officials have likened China’s maneuvers to dogfighting in space, a term that evokes Star Wars space battles but that actually occurs in a much different way, with long trajectories that take a long time to complete and none of that Luke versus Vader tit-for-tat. Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael A. Guetlein stated in March 2025 that China has been using experimental satellites to practice these dogfights, an event that has beaten the Pentagons own plans to do the same.
The test involved a series of proximity operations conducted in low-Earth orbit last year, involving five different objects in space maneuvering in and out and around each other in synchronicity, and in control. There were three Shiyan-24C experimental satellitesthink about these as the attackersand two Shijian-6 05A/B experimental space objectsthe targetswhich came within less than roughly half a mile of each other. These operations are not just technical demonstrations; they are seen as practicing tactics, techniques, and procedures to do on-orbit space operations from one satellite to another, the Space Force says, hinting at potential hostile intentions.
It is not the first time China has done it, too. The Shijian (meaning “Practice” in Chinese) series of satellites has long been a focal point of concern for U.S. government and space observers due to their unannounced launches, deployment of undisclosed sub-satellites, and unusual orbital maneuvers. It has demonstrated RPO capabilities, including close inspection and even towing of other objects. The Shijian-17, launched in 2016, was equipped with a robotic arm. U.S. Space Command Commander General James H. Dickinson publicly warned in April 2021 that this robotic arm could be used in a future system for grappling other satellites, highlighting its potential for counter space capabilities. Which brings us back full circle to that idea of the space guard dogs and why Sun believes they need them.
[Photo: Getty Images]
The militarization of space
There have been previous military operations in spacemost notably, the U.S. conducted several nuclear tests in space, like Starfish Prime in 1962, a 1.4 megaton bomb detonated at a high altitude over Johnston Atoll, an island in the Pacific Ocean, aimed t study the effects of EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) on electronics and satellites. But things are getting really heated now.
The U.S. Space Force is playing catch up with Chinese capabilities. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command (SSC) are spearheading initiatives like the Victus Haze mission, which has already been delayed from mid-2025 to a late 2025 launch. Using only two spaceships, it aims to partially match the capabilities demonstrated by the Chinese.
More importantly, however, is President Trumps Golden Dome, an ambitious $175 billion plan to build a coast-to-coast missile defense shield over the U.S. that envisions hundreds or even thousands of satellites in orbit, equipped with advanced sensors and interceptors, including space-based lasers, that are designed to detect, track, and neutralize incoming hypersonic, ballistic, and space-based weapons. Critics warn that such a system, aspiring to make the U.S. invulnerable, could be perceived by adversaries as an attempt to undermine nuclear deterrence, thereby fueling a dangerous global arms race. Indeed, China is already developing counter-stealth materials designed to evade Golden Dome’s detection capabilities.
Russia has been developing orbital anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons for years. U.S. officials have confirmed that Moscow is developing a nuclear weapon designed to target satellites, capable of producing a powerful electromagnetic pulse (EMP) upon detonation that could indiscriminately disable hundreds of government and commercial satellites in low Earth orbit. This threat is particularly concerning given the critical reliance of modern society on satellite infrastructure. The Pentagon further stated that Russia launched an anti-satellite vehicle into orbit in May 2024, placing it in the same orbit as a U.S. government satellite, and that the Kosmos-2553 spacecraft, launched in February 2022, contained components of Russia’s anti-satellite nuclear weapons system.
China has clearly stated that they consider orbital space domination crucial to have military superiority on Earth. They have declared they want technological hegemony in hypersonic space weapons and so far they have achieved it, according to the Pentagon itself, which referred to its tests as close to Sputnik moment back in 2021. William Schneidera senior member of the Hudson Institute think tankwrote in 2022 that Chinas new space hypersonic force is a system of systems designed to beat the U.S.’s early warning capabilities, which detect any nuclear launches in the world. The Chinese Peoples Liberation Army doesnt try to hide its fight for orbital domination, as American Enterprise Institutes analyst Larry Wortzel highlighted as far back as 2007: In a China Military Science article, Major General Liu Jixian of the PLA Academy of Military Science paraphrases Kennedy this way: Whoever controls the universe controls our world; whoever controls space controls initiative in war. Now we are seeing the results of this vision.
Of course, the U.S. thinks the same, as chief of space operations for the U.S. Space Force said in March at the Air & Space Forces Associations Warfare Conference in Aurora, Colorado: We must think of space as a warfighting domain, rather than just a collection of support activities. His thoughts are a summary of the new official Pentagon doctrine for military space operationsSpace Force Doctrine Document 1, published back in April.
These developments, coupled with the deterioration of existing arms control frameworks like the New START Treatyset to expire in February 2026 with no successorand the suspension of U.S.-China arms control talksback July 2024 over US arms sales to Taiwanpaint a grim picture of a space environment increasingly devoid of guardrails. A vacuum of agreed-upon norms and limitations creates a dangerous free-for-all, where each nation’s perceived need for security drives a continuous cycle of innovation and counter-innovation, pushing towards an orbital arms race and bypassing or ignoring the Outer Space Treaty.
Aside from Russias alleged new nuclear satellite, spaceships like the ones used in Victus Haze or Tiangong’s defensive robots operate within a legal gray area that exploits ambiguities in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which prohibits placing weapons of mass destruction in space, but doesnt say anything about conventional defensive systems. By framing the robots as nondestructive tugboats rather than weapons, China maintains plausible deniability while establishing operational precedents that could normalize active space defense measures.
But, as we know, RPO capabilities have offensive applications too: The same robotic systems capable of pushing away threats could theoretically capture or disable hostile satellites through controlled manipulation. Sun’s acknowledgment that satellites sometimes approach deliberately to take a look reflects growing concerns about orbital espionage, where nations deploy satellites for close-range intelligence gathering against foreign space assets.
The development signals that space warfare has moved beyond theoretical planning into operational reality, with the three top world powers now fielding systems capable of engaging hostile targets across the orbital domain. In this emerging environment, the line between defensive maneuvering and offensive action becomes increasingly blurred. And with it, the risk of actual space warwhich could signal the start of a nuclear war on the groundbecomes clearer by the day.
Like so many lines of business, HR departments are increasingly relying on generative artificial intelligence tools. According to Insight Globals 2025 AI in Hiring report, 92% of hiring managers say they are using AI for screening résumés or prescreening interviews and more than half (57%) are using them for skills assessments.
However, even as more teams rely on AI, especially for screening early in the hiring process, the cost may be the very talent companies are seeking. A 2021 report by Harvard Business School and Accenture found that applicant tracking systems were screening out good candidates. According to the report, 88% of employers said that qualified, highly skilled candidates were vetted out of the process by their applicant tracking systems because they did not match the exact job description criteria. The percentage for middle-skills workers was even higher (94%). As candidates have a harder time finding jobs and companies still struggle to find great talent, thats a problem.
I think that many companies have jumped the gun and have implemented some of these tools to help on the operations side, says Hope-Elizabeth Sonam, head of community at marketing firm We Are Rosie. But while recruiters and hiring managers have been looking for productivity improvements, they may not be taking enough time to make sure that the tools that they’re using are creating a fair, inclusive, whole, human approach to how talent is being scrutinized in the process, she says.
While candidate screening tools do offer help to overwhelmed HR teams, they also need thoughtful implementationsand a few safeguardsto ensure that theyre serving up the most comprehensive list of talent available.
Understand the vetting criteria
Sonam says that teams must understand how their tools are vetting candidates. Many end users of these tools . . . don’t understand how the decisions are being made, she says. They don’t understand the logic that is behind this machine learning that is, let’s say, scoring their matches a 2 out of 10 fit. Ask questions about how the tools filter talent, evaluate skills, and perform other functions, she advises.
Anoop Gupta, cofounder and CEO of talent sourcing platform SeekOut, advises opting for tools that use semantic match, which derives meaning from language context rather than simply searching for keywords. That way, he says, you’re not filtering out people and you’re not filtering in people who have just padded their résumé with a variety of keywords. When you understand such criteria, you can adapt your approach and data to help search for certain skills or experience.
Review your training data
Eric Sullano, cofounder of JumpSearch, an AI-powered recruitment platform, says that the data used to train the AI screening systems needs to be carefully reviewed and monitored. Some companies may be so focused on trying to track that magical mix of employees that have been successful at their companies, that they inadvertently train their screening systems to eliminate people who dont match those patterns, he adds.
So, for example, if a company has hired a number of people from specific universities, the platform may begin to deprioritize candidates who do not match those schools. They need to be aware of the data that’s being reflected of their current organizations and their current bias, Sullano says. That way, they can be aware of areas where they may need to look more broadly at skills or unconventional candidates to find the skills they need.
Audit and improve
Fine-tuning screening tools to be accurate and inclusive takes time and human intervention, Sonam says. Periodic auditing of data and results is essential to ensure that the criteria and outcomes reflect the organizations best interest. It really becomes a data science and HR partnership, she says. How can [these tools] be optimized with the whole human in mind if you care about fair and inclusive hiring practices, she saysnot to mention abiding by legal and regulatory issues, as well.
Sullano agrees. The best systems will provide some level of audit capabilities of what is going on with the AI, how it’s making its decisions, what context it has, he says. Humans need to review that information regularly to ensure that the right decisions are being made and, if not, that changes can be implemented to correct mistakes or eliminate overly rigorous screening that may be costing the organization good candidates.
[If theres] a gray area, the hiring managers need to be able to have insight into, and a human in the loop. Feedback is going to be very important, he says. And thats an area where humans will always need to be involved, Sonam adds.
